# N-Opposition Theory To Structure Debates

Jean SALLANTIN
js@lirmm.fr Antoine SEILLES
Antoine.Seilles@lirmm.fr LIRMM-CNRS UMR 5506 161 rue Ada 34392 Montpellier Cedex 5 - France March 6, 2022

## Abstract 1

2007 was the first international congress on the "square of oppositions". A first attempt to structure debate using n-opposition theory was presented along with the results of a first experiment on the web. Our proposal for this paper is to define relations between arguments through a structure of opposition
(square of oppositions is one structure of opposition). We will be trying to answer the following questions:
How to organize debates on the web 2.0? How to structure them in a logical way? What is the role of n-opposition theory, in this context? We present in this paper results of three experiments (Betapolitique 2007, ECAP 2008, Intermed 2008).

## Introduction

In the era of participatory democracy and web2.0, does a solution to debate exist on the web? Is it even possible? Existing solutions are very limited (chats, forums...). Many sites exist, for Web-users to express their opinion, but can they build structured arguments and confront them? We try to answer these questions by offering new software based on logic. But then, what kind of logic can describe the arguments of a debate? What is the role of n-opposition theory?

In this paper we compare the results of three experiments. First we will introduce some important notions, then we will present our experimental protocol and finally we will present detailed discussion system. We will also explain how we use the n-opposition theory to structure debate and reason. To conclude, we will discuss experiments contexts and results.

## 1 Toward A Web2.0 Debate

The work we will present began in 2007. Today it is related to the Intermed project. The Intermed project aims to provide a set of interoperable tools to debate on the web. This first chapter presents our actual model of debate and define some important notions.

## 1.1 Modeling

We did not create any debate model for our first experiment (Betapolitique 2007). All we had was a set of documents (political articles of betapolitique website www.betapolitique.fr) and users had the opportunity to annotate and express their point of view. We present Annotation in **the next part of this chapter. The users** point of view or argument as we will define it later, comprised part of a **text, a judgment and a comment.**
For our second experiment (ECAP 2008 www.lirmm.fr/ECAP08), the documents are the texts of the congress speakers. Arguments are more structured and selected text can now be rephrased.

For our third experiment (the first Intermed experiment), we had **the opportunity to work with N.Desquinabo**
(phD in Cemagref UMR G-Eau ). N.Desquinabo thesis is about interlocutivs kinds in TV shows [3]. 

arXiv:0909.1151v1 [cs.AI] 7 Sep 2009