A Dialogue System for Evaluating Explanations

Abstract

This chapter presents a theory of explanation by building a dialectical system that has speech act rules that define the kinds of moves allowed, such as putting forward an argument, requesting an explanation and offering an explanation. Pre and post-condition rules for the speech acts determine when a particular speech act can be put forward as a move in the dialogue, and what type of move or moves must follow it. This chapter offers a dialogue structure with three stages, an opening stage, an explanation stage and a closing stage, and shows how an explanation dialogue can shift to other types of dialogue known in argumentation studies such as persuasion dialogue and deliberation dialogue. Such shifts can go from argumentation to explanation and back again. The problem of evaluating explanations is solved by extending the hybrid system of (Bex, Arguments, stories and criminal evidence: a formal hybrid theory. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011) which combines explanations and arguments to include a method of testing stories called examination dialogue. In this type of dialogue an explanation can be probed and tested by arguments. The result is a method of evaluating explanations.