Argumentation theory has laid foundations for and has had influence upon a wide variety of computational systems (Reed and Norman, 2003). This chapter explores four distinct areas, reviewing the ways in which argumentation schemes have been put to work: in natural language generation, in interagent communication, in automated reasoning, and in various specific computational applications. To start, however, we look at the tools that are being used to support the development of these applications and that allow the creation, analysis, and manipulation of the raw computational resources that involve argumentation schemes.

SCHEMES IN ARAUCARIA

Following work examining the diagramming of natural argument – an important topic from the practical, pedagogic point of view (van Gelder and Rizzo, 2001), but also a driver of theoretical development in informal logic (Walton & Reed, 2004) – Reed and Rowe (2004) developed Araucaria, a system for aiding human analysts and students in marking up argument. Araucaria adopts the “standard treatment” (Freeman, 1991) for argument analysis, based on identification of propositions (as vertices in a diagram) and the relationships of support and attack holding between them (edges in a diagram). It is thus similar to a range of argument visualization tools (see Kirschner et al., 2003, for an overview), and familiar from AI techniques such as Pollock's (1995) inference graphs and even Bayesian nets and qualitative probabilistic networks.