Linked and Convergent Structures in Discourse-Based Reasoning

Explanation and argumentation are fundamental to reasoning. They are therefore of some importance to artificial intelligence. Discourse-based reasoning (DBR) is a knowledge representation technology that uses natural patterns of discourse as a basis for a structural ontology of explanatory and argumentative reasoning. By this means, we may ontologize the reasoning process itself, thus rendering it accessible as an explanatory mechanism. Towards this objective, this paper introduces three general categories of rhetorical relations, including inferential, synthetic, and multinuclear. Inferential relations are argumentative, causal, or conditional; synthetic relations are purely explanatory; and multinuclear relations are used to express rhetorically bound pluralities of concept instantiations. These categories are used to explore design-time and runtime dimensions for representing linked and convergent structures. Using discourse-based reasoning, human and artificial agents will engage in collaborative reasoning, discover knowledge, resolve conflict, and render explanations using rhetorically explicit representations.