Handling enthymemes in time-limited persuasion dialogs

Abstract

This paper is a first attempt to define a framework to handle enthymeme in a time-limited persuasion dialog. The notion of incomplete argument is explicited and a protocol is proposed to regulate the utterances of a persuasion dialog with respect to the three criteria of consistency, non-redundancy and listening. This protocol allows the use of enthymemes concerning the support or conclusion of the argument, enables the agent to retract or re-specify an argument. The system is illustrated on a small example and some of its properties are outlined. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.