Rules for Formal and Natural Dialogues in Agent Communication

The paper aims to bring together and unify two traditions in studying dialogue as a game: dialogical logic introduced by Lorenzen; and persuasion dialogue games as specified by Prakken. The first approach allows the representation of formal dialogues in which the validity of argument is the topic discussed. The second tradition has focused on natural dialogues examining, e.g., informal fallacies typical in real-life communication. Our goal is to unite these two approaches in order to allow communicating agents to benefit from the advantages of both, i.e. to equip them with the ability to persuade each other not only about facts, but also about the classical propositional validity of argument used in a dialogue. To this end, Lorenzen’s system needs to be expressed according to the generic specification for natural dialogues proposed by Prakken. As a result, the system proposed in the paper allows the representation and elimination of formal fallacies committed during a dialogue.