An Axiomatic Study of the Evaluation of Enthymeme Decoding in Weighted Structured Argumentation

TL;DR

This paper introduces an axiomatic framework for evaluating the decoding of enthymemes in structured argumentation, proposing criteria and measures to distinguish reasonable from unreasonable decodings.

Contribution

It develops a set of axioms and criterion measures for objectively evaluating enthymeme decodings, filling a gap in argumentation research.

Findings

Seven criteria for enthymeme decoding evaluation

Axioms for validating criterion measures

Construction of validated criterion measures

Abstract

An argument can be seen as a pair consisting of a set of premises and a claim supported by them. Arguments used by humans are often enthymemes, i.e., some premises are implicit. To better understand, evaluate, and compare enthymemes, it is essential to decode them, i.e., to find the missing premisses. Many enthymeme decodings are possible. We need to distinguish between reasonable decodings and unreasonable ones. However, there is currently no research in the literature on "How to evaluate decodings?". To pave the way and achieve this goal, we introduce seven criteria related to decoding, based on different research areas. Then, we introduce the notion of criterion measure, the objective of which is to evaluate a decoding with regard to a certain criterion. Since such measures need to be validated, we introduce several desirable properties for them, called axioms. Another main contribution of the paper is the construction of certain criterion measures that are validated by our axioms. Such measures can be used to identify the best enthymemes decodings.