Parmenides is an online debate forum that aims to structure political debates while remaining easy to use. It is based on an argument scheme for reasoning about action selection and associated critical questions. Users can critique arguments or provide alternative positions by responding to prompts that represent parts of the argument scheme. The tools analyze debates and display results as argument frameworks showing relationships between positions. Future work includes adding more argument schemes and conducting field trials to test usability.

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Political Engagement Through
Tools for Argumentation
Dan Cartwright and Katie Atkinson
Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, UK
Presentation to COMMA 2008

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Overview
• Background of e-Democracy and current trends
• Overview of Parmenides
• Tools to support and extend Parmenides
• Discussion of future work and concluding remarks

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e-Democracy
• Focuses on the use of computing technologies in
enhancing democratic processes
• Availability of computers & internet access
• Mobilisation of electorate
• Driven by:
• Exploitation of technology

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• e-Consultation systems (Macintosh et al., 2006)
Current Trends
• Highland Youth Voice
• Ur’say
• Support and encourage political participation of young
people in Scotland
• Online policy-debating forum
• Online voting system
• Single-themed discussion forum
• Debate is analysed and report produced

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Current Trends
• e-Petitions allow users to create and “sign” petitions
over the internet
• Example below based on The Fox Hunting Debate
• UK government introduced an e-Petitions website in 2004

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• e-Petitions suffer from similar problems to paper-
based counterparts
• We do not know which part(s) of the petition the signatory
agrees or disagrees with
• Signatories have to agree with “all or nothing”
Current Trends

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Current Trends
• Structured tools
• Tools for argument visualisation
• Example: Araucaria (Reed & Rowe, 2003)
• Tools for decision support
• Example: Zeno (Gordon & Karacapilidis, 1997)
• Issues with ease of use by laypersons
• Visualise textual arguments

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Parmenides – Overview
• An online discussion forum (K. Atkinson et al., 2004)
• Intended as an e-Democracy application
• Government presents policy proposals to public
together with a justification
• Users submit their critique of the proposal
• Based on an argument scheme for reasoning about
action selection and associated set of critical questions
• Aims to provide structure to debate whilst remaining
easy to use

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Parmenides – Argument Scheme
• Parmenides is based on an argument scheme for
persuasive argument about action selection
• AS1 argument scheme:
“ In the current circumstances R, we should perform
action A, which will result in new circumstances S,
which will realise goal G, which will promote some
value V ”
• Argument schemes represent stereotypical patterns
of reasoning

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Parmenides – Critical Questions
• Challenge the presumptions in instantiations of the
argument scheme
• Used to determine which parts of the initial position
the user disagrees with
• Examples:
• Are the circumstances as described?
• Does the goal promote the value?

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Parmenides – Latest Developments
• Parmenides was first implemented to model the Iraq
War Debate
• Since extended to model further debates, such as
the Fox Hunting Debate
• Tools to analyse debate data
• Tools for demographic profiling
• Tools for dynamic debate creation

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Parmenides – Critique
• The Critique section of the website allows the user to
critique each element of the initial position
• Achieved by systematically considering Critical
Questions
• User is not aware that they are using critical questions
or being lead through a particular path: they can respond
with “yes/no” answers
• Underlying structure hidden from user to prevent
confusion

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Parmenides – Critique (2)
• The above is an instantiation of a Critical Question
associated with the argument scheme
• This CQ asks whether the user believes that the
Circumstances stated in the initial position are true

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Parmenides – Alternative Position
• Users can submit an alternative position to the debate
• User does this by instantiating an instance of the
AS1 argument scheme
Circumstances: The ban is not enforced correctly
Action: Improve policing of the ban
Goals: Prevent public contravention of the ban
Values: Animal welfare, Law enforcement
• Example alternative position from the fox hunting debate:

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Parmenides – Alternative Position
(2)
• The user must choose elements of their position
from a drop-down menu
• Allows easy analysis of results and prevents abuse
• However, it does restrict users’ expressiveness
• To overcome this: some free text input

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Parmenides Java Application (1)
• Consists of 2 tools
• Critique statistics tool
• Displays the results in the form of an Argument Framework,
showing arguments and attacks between them
• Analyses user critiques of the argument’s initial position
• Alternative position analysis tool
• Displays results as a Value-based Argument Framework
• Analyses alternative positions submitted by users

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• Critique statistics tool
Parmenides Java Application (2)

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Critique Statistics Analysis
• Each statement is broken down into its constituent
elements
• Each branch consists
of a statement and a
counterstatement
• The numbers above
each node represent
the number of users
who agree with the
element

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Critique Statistics Analysis
• Textual summary is also
available
• Agreement shown as
percentages

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Parmenides Java Application (3)
• Second tool: Alternative position analysis tool
• Displays a Value-based Argumentation Framework (Bench-
Capon, 2003)
• From this, we can determine justifiable arguments
• VAFs are an extension to Dung’s AFs, in which we
represent the social values promoted by each argument
• Determine which attacks succeed by applying a preference
ordering over the values

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Parmenides Java Application (4)
• Alternative position analysis tool

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Parmenides Debate Creator
• Easy to add new debates
• Little technical knowledge
required
• Consistent appearance
• System tested with a small number of new debates
• e.g. Speed Camera Debate, Fox Hunting Debate

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Parmenides Profiler
• Allows demographic profiling of users
• Users can submit information about themselves
• Users optionally log into profiler before participating in
debate
Profiler
Debate
Debate

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Issues
• Analysis of demographic profile data
• Enhance free-text input and analysis
• Security
• Manipulation of results

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Conclusion and Future Work
• Implement other Argument Schemes in Parmenides
• Field trials
• Parmenides aims to provide a balance between
structure and ease of use
• Investigate how these schemes interact
• Example: Argument from Expert Opinion
• We have described Parmenides and a number of
tools to enhance the original system
• Future work is planned

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Thankyou for your attention
• The Parmenides system can be used at
http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~parmenides
• For further information on the topics discussed:
• http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~dan
• dan@csc.liv.ac.uk
• Questions?