Ph.D Thesis

Title: Formal Dialectical Games in MultiAgent Argumentation

Abstract: Formal dialectical games have been developed for use as tools in fallacy research. Recently such games have also found utility in multiagent systems (MAS) as a way to structure argumentative communication between intelligent agents. This thesis investigates dialectical games and proposes a unified representation for disparate games using a theoretical and computational framework named the “Architecture for Argumentation” (A4A). The need for such a framework is established as a way to move beyond the current ad hoc approaches to dialectical game development and is presented in the context of a contemporary move within MAS research towards frameworks for rapid development. Two deployments of the A4A are then explored. The first is in the “MAS and Dialectical Game Architecture” (MASADA) a component-oriented software framework for developing arguing agents. The second deployment is in the i-Xchange project, an investigation of the development of arguing agents that incorporate elements of planning, reasoning and argumentation. Finally the need to evaluate dialectical games is established. Two approaches to evaluation are explored including the use of MASADA components to provide an automated testbed for the comparative evaluation of dialectical games. The knowledge domain used by the agents in the testbed is graph-colouring, which is explored from two perspectives in relation to dialectical games. The first perspective is that of a test bed for evaluating dialectical games, and the second perspective is that of a problem domain in which dialectical games provide tools for solving distributed graph-colouring problems. Dialectical games are thus demonstrated to be more than merely a way to regulate communicative acts between agents but can also be used as a tool for solving distributed problems.