The paper analyzes the move of discrediting the opponent as a means to persuasion in political debates. After analysis of a corpus of political debates, a typology of discrediting strategies is outlined, distinguished in terms of three criteria: the target – the feature of the opponent specifically attacked (dominance, competence, benevolence); the route through which it is attacked – topic, mo...

We examine the power of silent constant-space probabilistic verifiers that watch asymmetric debates (where one side is unable to see some of the messages of the other) between two deterministic provers, and try to determine who is right. We prove that probabilistic verifiers outperform their deterministic counterparts as asymmetric debate checkers. It is shown that the membership problem for ev...

In this paper I first point out the pluralist constitution of science in general and of chemistry in particular and then argue that it is inevitable for epistemological reasons. Once methodological pluralism is accepted, many mainstream philosophical debates that are based on methodological monism become futile, of which I discuss “laws of nature”, “reductionism”, and “scientific realism”. That...

The tool which we tested in the present monolingual retrieval task, Lexware, is based on explicit knowledge representation not on statistic language modeling. In the present task Lexware indexing seems to be satisfactory while its query builder is not. The system has been tested extensively on indexing of Swedish parliamentary debates with very good results. We are happy that Swedish is finally...


 Abstract: The case for capital account liberalization has been the centre of outgoing debate. This paper discusses both short term and longer flows (FDI). is divided into 5 sections. Section 1 presents claims neoclassical economists who believe that free trade same as liberalization. They further point out such increases social welfare promotes efficiency. 2 provides critique classical v...

Argumentative debates are a powerful tool for reaching agreements in open environments. However, in large scale settings, such as social networks and massive multi-agent systems, making sense of ongoing debates may be a compelling task, and debates risk to lose their effectiveness. We thus propose “microdebates” to help organizing and confronting users’ opinions in an automated way.

Abstract This study attempts to measure the deliberation quality of Democratic Opening Debates in Turkish Parliament through Discourse Quality Index (DQI). The majority studies have been conducted on relatively homogenised and developed Western societies less conflictual or contentious topics. In these countries, democratic culture has institutionalised. On contrary, Turkey is a developing coun...

Students should not graduate from high school without understanding that scientific debates are essential components of scientific methodology. This article presents a brief history of ongoing debates regarding the hypothesis that group selection is an evolutionary mechanism, and it serves as an example of the role that debates play in correcting faulty ideas and stimulating new research in the...