Arguments and Artifacts for Dispute Resolution

In a social context cultural differences, individual interests, and partial awareness are often the causes of disputes. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is usually considered to be alternative to litigation, and can also be used to allow disputing parts to find an agreement. A dispute resolution is not an easy task and usually involves more entities including mediator or arbitrator with multiple dialogue sessions. 

In the paper we focus the attention on dispute resolution system in artificial society proposing a model and a technology to support the persuasive processes. The persuasion is the principal form dialogue used in an ADR system where agents exchange arguments to support their positions. 

The general architecture proposed to build an ADR system exploits two artifacts abstractions – Co-Argumentation Artifact and Dialogue Artifact – that provide the right abstractions to coordinate the agents during the argumentative process. The technological support for the artifacts is provided by the TuCSoN infrastructure, also exploiting a meta-programming technique in Prolog. Finally, in the paper we present a simplified example of the execution of a persuasion dialogue ground on the commitments.