Summarization Method of Argumentation Based on Argumentation Framework

Abstract

Visualization of discussions using diagrams is effective in facilitating efficient debates. However, because actual debates involve many conflicts, the diagrams that represent them tend to be complex in structure. Therefore, we use AF and BAF, which have simple structure and semantics to extract arguments that may be included in conclusions of debates, to support real-time debate progression and to verify the logical structure of debates. For this purpose, we propose a “BAF diagram summarization method” that recognizes and reduces subgraphs that represent local arguments about related sub-issues from these diagrams. The final output of this method is a diagram in the form of “Reliability based Argumentation Framework (RAF)”, which consists less nodes and less links between them. RAF is an extensional model of AF in which each argument is assigned an “argument class” based on its feasibility, and semantics for RAF is defined by argument classes of arguments and attack relations between them. The RAF semantics has the role of preserving the semantic information in the BAF diagram summarization method. This is because by computing the semantics of the resulting RAF, it is possible to capture some of the important information in the semantics of the original BAF. Furthermore, we developed an on-line discussion support tool that implements this method, and visualize the results of user input.