A Dialogue Game for Dialectical Interaction with Expert Systems

In a variety of applications the most appropriate model of interaction with a knowledge based system is the dialectical discussion, in which a proposition is proposed and argued for. In the course of such a dialogue the tenability of the proposition will be established and the arguments in favour of it adduced and refined. To enable such an interaction it is necessary to formalise the principles underlying such dialogues in a way from which rules to govern system behaviour can be derived. In this paper we argue that the analysis of arguments given by Stephen Toulmin represents a good starting point, and propose a dialogue game based on this schema, adapted to the needs of knowledge based systems. We then sketch an implementation of this game which would provide an interface to a knowledge based system in which queries, their answers and explanations were interleaved in a manner akin to an interpersonal discussion. Such an interface could be used both to interrogate the knowledge base and, if desired, to extend and modify the rules of the knowledge base.