Desision Support Systems
...formal argumentation models are being used in their design. However, their use raises a number of conceptual and social-ethical questions that have yet to be fully addressed. We explore some questions raised by two current proposals for computer-mediated argumentation and decision-making, in particular the assessment of substantive quality, inclusiveness, and noncoerciveness, as these bear on legitimate policy decisions.
1. Introduction
Human reliance on computer technology is by now a well-established cultural fact. Indeed, we now rely on computers even for certain forms of decision-making: so-called "knowledge-based expert systems," or "decision support systems," have been developed over the last thirty or so years to support, or sometimes even replace human decision-making (Alty and Coombs 1984; Buchanan and Shortliffe 1984). As the name suggests, expert systems attempt to automate (by means of a knowledge base and inference mechanisms) the knowledge and reasoning skills of experts in a given domain, such as medical diagnosis, marketing decisions, and so on. In this essay we are concerned with recent attempts to develop decision-support systems for processes of public policy argumentation. Like earlier expert systems, these argumentation-support systems incorporate both knowledge bases and inference mechanisms. Unlike the earlier systems, however, they place greater emphasis on the processes used for reasoning and inference than on the database of knowledge from which conclusions are drawn; thus we might designate them as "argumentation systems" in contrast to the earlier "knowledge systems." Dialectical approaches in particular have drawn attention in this developing area of Artificial Intelligence research. Indeed, some commentators have recommended the employment of such systems, via the Internet, to enable democratic participation...
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