Optimization of dialectical outcomes in dialogical argumentation

When informal arguments are presented, there may be imprecision in the language used, and so the audience may be uncertain as to the structure of the argument graph as intended by the presenter of the arguments. For a presenter of arguments, it is useful to know the audience’s argument graph, but the presenter may be uncertain as to the structure of it. To model the uncertainty as to the structure of the argument graph in situations such as these, we can use probabilistic argument graphs. The set of subgraphs of an argument graph is a sample space. A probability value is assigned to each subgraph such that the sum is 1, thereby reflecting the uncertainty over which is the actual subgraph. We can then determine the probability that a particular set of arguments is included or excluded from an extension according to a particular Dung semantics. We represent and reason with extensions from a graph and from its subgraphs, using a logic of dialectical outcomes that we present. We harness this to define the notion of an argumentation lottery, which can be used by the audience to determine the expected utility of a debate, and can be used by the presenter to decide which arguments to present by choosing those that maximize expected utility. We investigate some of the options for using argumentation lotteries, and provide a computational evaluation.