A Discourse Approach to Explanation Aware Knowledge Representation

This study describes a discourse approach to explanation aware knowledge representation. It presents a reasoning model that adheres to argumentation as found in written discourse, intended for use in intelligent human-computer collaboration and inter-agent deliberation. The approach integrates the Toulmin model with Rhetorical Structure Theory and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s (1958) strategic forms of argumentative processes to define a set of constraints for governing argumentative interactions and formulating explanations in an ontologically normalized manner. Arguments, when satisfied, are instantiated into a dynamic rhetorical network that represents the system’s model of the situation. Two modalities of instantiation are proposed. Inferential instantiation is used when a claim may be inferred from a ground, and synthetic instantiation is used for descriptive argumentation where both ground and claim must be satisfied for the argument to be instantiated. The instantiation p...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: EXACT
• Authors: Andrew Potter
• Keywords: Applied Computing, EXACT 2007, Explanation Aware Knowledge, Instantiation Process Maps, Intelligent Human-computer Collaboration