Computer decision-support systems for public argumentation: assessing deliberative legitimacy

Recent proposals for computer-assisted argumentation have drawn on dialectical models of argumentation. When used to assist public policy planning, such systems also raise questions of political legitimacy. Drawing on deliberative democratic theory, we elaborate normative criteria for deliberative legitimacy and illustrate their use for assessing two argumentation systems. Full assessment of such systems requires experiments in which system designers draw on expertise from the social sciences and enter into the policy deliberation itself at the level of participants.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: AIS
• Authors: William Rehg, Peter McBurney, Simon Parsons
• Keywords: AIS 2005, Argumentation, Artificial Intelligence, Computer-assisted Argumentation, Deliberative Democratic Theory