For the sake of the Argument : explorations into argument-based reasoning
Martin W. A. Caminada · Digital Academic REpository of VU University Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) · 1997
Part of the idea of this thesis originated during a lecture of Arno Lodder at the Vereniging Voor Logica (VVL).To me, the idea of a mathematical description of what rational dialogue or argumentation should look like sounded very appealing.I then studied a number of formalisms in this field, but to my surprise, the informal kinds of dialogues that I observed around me often turned out to have a totally different structure and nature than what was specified by the various dialectical formalisms.It is this deviation that inspired me to write this thesis.There are a few people who directly or indirectly contributed to this thesis that I would like to thank.First of all, there is my promotor, Reind van de Riet, who despite the fact that I moved out of his field of expertise continued to support me.Furthermore, I would like to thank my copromotor, Henry Prakken, for it is his advice that helped to give the thesis its current form.Much informal input has also been gathered by carefully examining the various of discussions that took place during lunch and coffee time, at which Jan Broersen, Radu Serban, Mehdi Dastani and Joris Hulstijn participated.Special thanks go to Leon van der Torre, who also helped to develop a formal account of the original idea.Also very helpful was a discussion with Gerard Vreeswijk.His warning about "hacking", or tuning a particular formalism so that a certain desirable outcome is obtained resulted in an extensive treatment of criteria for the construction of logical formalisms.Last, but not least, I would like to thank Jan-Willem Klop for his support during the difficult last months of writing this thesis.Although the process of producing this thesis has been a difficult one, I hope the result will be worth reading.