CMNA 2009

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

CMNA IX - THE 9TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL MODELS OF NATURAL ARGUMENT - To be held as an IJCAI-09 Workshop, 13 July 2009, Pasadena, CA

Organizers: Nancy Green (University of North Carolina Greensboro), Floriana Grasso (University of Liverpool), Rodger Kibble (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Chris Reed (University of Dundee)

The series of workshops on Computational Models of Natural Argument is continuing to attract high quality submissions from researchers around the world since its inception in 2001. Like the past editions, CMNA09 acts to nurture and provide succor to the ever growing community working in "argument and computation". AI has witnessed a prodigious growth in uses of argumentation throughout many of its subdisciplines: agent system negotiation protocols that demonstrate higher levels of sophistication and robustness; argumentation-based models of evidential relations; groupwork tools that use argument to structure interaction and debate; computer-based learning tools that exploit monological and dialogical argument structures in designing pedagogic environments; decision support systems that build upon argumentation theoretic models of deliberation to better integrate with human reasoning. The workshop focuses on the issue of modelling "natural" argumentation. Naturalness may involve the use of means which are more visual than linguistic to illustrate a point, such as graphics or multimedia. Or to the use of more sophisticated rhetorical devices, interacting at various layers of abstraction. Or the exploitation of "extra-rational" characteristics of the audience, taking into account emotions and affective factors. In particular, contributions will be solicited addressing, but not limited to, the following areas of interest:

? The characteristics of "natural" arguments: ontological aspects and cognitive issues. ? The computational use of models from informal logic and  argumentation theory, ? The  linguistic  characteristics   of   natural  argumentation, including  discourse markers,   sentence  format,   referring expressions, and style. ? The generation of natural argument ? Corpus argumentation results and techniques ? Models of natural legal argument ? Rhetoric and  affect:  the  role  of  emotions,  personalities, etc. in argumentation. ? The roles   of  licentiousness  and  deceit   and  the  ethical implications of implemented systems demonstrating such features. ? Natural argumentation in multi-agent systems. ? Methods to better  convey  the structure  of complex  argument, including representation and summarisation. ? Natural argumentation and media: visual  arguments, multi-modal arguments, spoken arguments. ? Evaluative arguments and their application in  AI systems (such as decision support and advice giving). ? Non-monotonic, defeasible and uncertain argumentation. ? Computer supported collaborative argumentation, for pedagogy, e-democracy and public debate. ? Tools for interacting  with structures  of  argument ? Applications of  argumentation  based systems

6 March 2009: Deadline for long papers 1 April 2009: Deadline for short papers 17 April 2009: Notification of acceptance 8 May 2009: Deadline for final camera ready copy to workshop organizer 22 May 2009: Deadline for final copy

Program Committee (Tentative):

Leila Amgoud, IRIT, France Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool, UK Trevor Bench-Capon, University of Liverpool, UK Tim Bickmore, Northeastern University, Boston, US Guido Boella, University of Turin, Italy Giuseppe Carenini, University of British Columbia, Canada Tom Gordon, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Berlin, Germany Marco Guerini, ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy Helmut Horacek, University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken Germany Anthony Hunter, University College London, UK Chris Mellish, University of Aberdeen, UK David Moore, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK Fabio Paglieri, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy Vincenzo Pallotta, University of Fribourg, Switzerland Cecile Paris, CSIRO, Australia Paul Piwek, Open University, UK Henry Prakken, University of Utrecht and University of Groningen, The Netherlands Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen, UK Oliviero Stock, ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy Doug Walton, University of Winnipeg, Canada Adam Wyner, University of Liverpool, UK

Instructions for submitting papers and other information on CMNA will be posted on the CMNA IX web site: http://www.cmna.info/CMNA9/

For information on IJCAI-09 see: http://ijcai-09.org/index.html This CfP was obtained from WikiCFP