Negotiation is essential in settings where autonomous agents have conflicting interests and a desire to cooperate. For this reason, mechanisms in which agents exchange potential agreements according to various rules of interaction have become very popular in recent years as evident, for example, in the auction and mechanism design community. However, a growing body of research is now emerging which points out limitations in such mechanisms and advocates the idea that agents can increase the likelihood and quality of an agreement by exchanging arguments which influence each others ’ states. This community further argues that argument exchange is sometimes essential when various assumptions about agent rationality cannot be satisfied. To this end, in this article, we identify the main research motivations and ambitions behind work in the field. We then provide a conceptual framework through which we outline the core elements and features required by agents engaged in argumentation-based negotiation, as well as the environment that hosts these agents. For each of these elements, we survey and evaluate existing proposed techniques in the literature and highlight the major challenges that need to be addressed if argument-based negotiation research is to reach its full potential.

We articulate a dialectical argumentation framework for qualitative representation of epistemic uncertainty in scientific domains. The framework is grounded in specific philosophies of science and theories of rational mutual discourse. We study the formal properties of our framework and provide it with a game theoretic semantics. With this semantics, we examine the relationship between the snaphots of the debate in the framework and the long run position of the debate, and prove a result directly analogous to the standard (Neyman-Pearson) approach to statistical hypothesis testing. We believe this formalism for representating uncertainty has value in domains with only limited knowledge, where experimental evidence is ambiguous or conflicting, or where agreement between different stakeholders on the quantification of uncertainty is difficult to achieve. All three of these conditions are found in assessments of carcinogenic risk for new chemicals.

A number of protocols based on the formal dialogue games of philosophy have recently been proposed for interactions between autonomous agents. Several of these proposals purport to assist agents engaged in the same types of interactions, such as persuasions and negotiations, and are superficially different. How are we to determine whether or not these proposals are substantially different ? This paper considers this question and explores several alternative definitions of equivalence of protocols.

Among normative models for democracy, the Deliberative model suggests that public policy decisions should be made only following rational, public deliberation of alternative courses of action. We argue that such a model is particularly appropriate for the assessment of environmental and health risks of new substances and technologies, and for the development of appropriate regulatory responses. To give operational effect to these ideas, we propose a dialectical argumentation formalism for an intelligent system within which deliberative debates about risk and regulation can be conducted. Our formalism draws on various philosophies of argumentation, scientific and moral discourse, and communicative action, due to Toulmin, Pera, Alexy and Habermas.

Abstract. We propose a representation of imperatives in computational systems, and a multi-agent dialogue protocol to argue over these. Our representation treats a command as a presumptive argument for an action to be executed by a designated agent, together with a set of associated critical questions whose answers may defeat the presumption. The critical questions enable the identification of attacks on the uttered command, and so can be used to specify a dialogue game protocol for participants to argue over the command. We present a formal syntax for part of the protocol, called CDP, and outline denotational semantics for both commands and for the protocol.

Abstract: A simple but surprisingly useful system of inquiry is outlined and applied to elicit and validate systemic knowledge. Systemic knowledge is the holistic understanding of interpersonal expectations or norms, the technical system, and the relationships between the two. General systems concepts such as hierarchy and intentionality are employed to generate a new V-model that incorporates the familiar concepts of ‘top down ’ design and ‘bottom up’ implementation. The V-model validates systemic knowledge by testing the strength of a chain of evidence that emerges from the application of design principles to a practical knowledge management problem.

This dissertation focuses on stakeholder relationships and an organization’s commitment to communities, and ultimately, corporate social responsibility. The relationship between corporations and the community stakeholder is being investigated for a number of reasons. First, the concept of corporate social responsibility suggests an organization has responsibilities beyond increasing operating profit and satisfying stockholders to addressing issues of society as a whole. Are organizations responsible to communities and society? If so, how and with whom do organizations attempt to address societal needs and issues? Second, stakeholder theorists suggest an organization’s social responsibility is achieved, in part, by paying attention to all stakeholders of the organization, stakeholders including the community. Using a narrative approach as a guide, this study addresses the question of whether organizations consider the community a stakeholder. In most cases, as the iv reader will see, the answer is yes. Yet, knowing organizations do consider the

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In Informatics, an information technology based information system (an artefact) can be viewed as a rule based agent. The rules are based on values. This view is represented in a definition of IT based IS (Goldkuhl & gerfalk 1998), in the organisational "onion" model of Stamper (1994) and in the Semiotic Framework (Stamper 1996). The aim of the paper is to present a more complex picture of rules in action based on empirical evidence. Field descriptions are based on case studies in Sweden during 1999. Norms, roles and goals of clerks handling cases within two municipal building permission departments are analysed. The result from analysis is compared to claims on public case handling based on literature from the political science especially public administration management area. Challenges in designing a rule based computer are discussed. Keywords: Information systems, IS, value, norm, rule, computer, artefact, language action, municipal, case study 1. Introduction The background for ...

Negotiation is essential in settings where computational agents have conflicting interests and a desire to cooperate. Mechanisms in which agents exchange potential agreements according to various rules of interaction have become very popular in recent years as evident, for example, in the auction and mechanism design community. These can be seen as models of negotiation in which participants focus on their positions. It is argued, however, that if agents focus instead on the interests behind their positions, they may increase the likelihood and quality of an agreement.