Discovering Inconsistency through Examination Dialogues

In this paper we introduce examination dialogues, an addition to the dialogue typology of Walton and Krabbe. In educational settings the purpose of dialogue is often to elicit the position of a student, e.g. to test understanding. In other settings, a frequently adopted tactic is to attack an opponent’s stance by exposing internal inconsistencies in their argument. In real debate such inconsistencies will often be rather more subtle than elementary logical fallacies since they arise from contradictions apparent in the opponent’s value system. Protagonists will be better positioned to judge the applicability of this tactic as more information is determined concerning the exact nature of their opponent’s case, e.g. the arguments favoured and values endorsed. One obstacle, however, is that following a request to state a view, the challenged party may refuse to comment. In this paper we present an approach to modelling the evolution of examination dialogues based on the concept of value-based argument frameworks and outline some algorithmic issues regarding argument selection.