We present a unified notation that captures many common models of deliberation for a resourcebounded agent in a time-critical environment. We analyze a greedy time-slicing meta-deliberation procedure within our framework, the same procedure that forms the basis of many diverse metadeliberation algorithms. The procedure is computationally efficient, and our analysis makes explicit the domains ov...

Models of deliberative dialogue are fundamental for developing autonomous systems that support human practical reasoning. The question discussed in this paper is whether existing models are able to capture the complexity and richness of natural deliberation. In real-world contexts, circumstances relevant to the decision can change rapidly. We reflect on today’s leading model of deliberation dia...

One aspect of rational behavior is that agents can pursue multiple goals in parallel. Current BDI theory and systems do not provide a theoretical or architectural framework for deciding how goals interact and how an agent can decide which goals to pursue. Instead, they assume for simplicity reasons that agents always pursue consistent goal sets. By omitting this important aspect of rationality,...

This is the first study to explore the relationship between Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) theory that provides an account of sex differences in human cognition and dual process theories of cognition. 68 undergraduates undertook both performance and self-report assessments of Empathizing, intuition, Systemizing and deliberation. A fast (500ms) and slow (5000ms) version of the Reading the Mind in...

This paper presents an argumentation based framework, developed as an extension of an existing framework for nonmonotonic reasoning, in order to support an agent’s self deliberation process. The framework allows the agent to draw conclusions taking into account in a natural way a given preference policy. After developing the argumentation framework we examine two general cases of such argumenta...

March-April 2012 When assigned the task of describing and updating essential health benefits for qualified health plans in the Affordable Care Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services turned to the Institute of Medicine for advice. An IOM committee recommended that “structured public deliberative processes be established to identify the values and priorities of those citizens eligible to...

The new parties that emerged following the 15-M movement and against the austerity measures in Spain want to build parties open to the participation and deliberation for all the citizenry. To what extent are these ideals being fulfilled? The aim of this article is to describe and assess some of the main online deliberative processes of the two most important parties, Podemos and Barcelona En Co...

Critics of public deliberation as conventionally practiced have charged that it is “just talk” in the sense both that it substitutes sociable conversation for practical deliberation and that it substitutes political talk for political action. I argue that both criticisms rest on unnecessarily restrictive models of talk and politics. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with eighty ...

Prior functional imaging studies of moral processing have utilized 'explicit' moral tasks that involve moral deliberation (e.g., reading statements such as 'he shot the victim' and rating the moral appropriateness of the behavior) or 'implicit' moral tasks that involve moral intuition (e.g., reading similar statements and memorizing them for a test but not rating their moral appropriateness). A...