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Character Evidence

An Abductive Theory

  • Book
  • © 2006

Overview

Authors:
  1. Douglas Walton

    1. University of Winnipeg, Canada

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  • Brings state of the art tools of argumentation and AI to bear on a fundamental problem that has been highly controversial Anglo-American law.
  • An interdisciplinary approach that applies to many humanities fields, like history, where character judgments are central, providing a new kind of objective basis for evaluating these judgments
  • Provides a fresh new approach to the older positivistic viewpoint that tended to dismiss character judgments as purely subjective and even prejudicial
  • Expands the important notion of abductive reasoning yielding important new way of modeling evidence that has been regarded as highly problematic in the past
  • The author is well known as a leading interdisciplinary researcher whose work has spanned the fields of argumentation, informal logic, law and artificial intelligence

Part of the book series: Argumentation Library (ARGA, volume 11)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XV
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  2. The Problem of Character Evidence

    Pages 1-37

  3. Defining and Judging Character

    Pages 39-78

  4. Integrity and Hypocrisy

    Pages 79-107

  5. Simulative Reasoning and Plan Recognition

    Pages 109-138

  6. Multi-Agent Dialogue

    Pages 139-176

  7. A Multi-Agent System for Character Evidence

    Pages 177-219

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 221-239
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Keywords

About this book

The theory in the book is based on the latest research in argumentation theory, and especially on new applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to legal argumentation. The methodology of the book derives from recent work in argumentation theory and AI in which forms of reasoning other than deductive and inductive have been the focus of much investigation. The aim is not just to show how character judgments are made, but to show how they should properly be made based on sound reasoning, in order to avoid certain fallacies, errors and superficial judgments of a kind that are common. The book is about character judgments, but centrally about the kind of logical reasoning and evidence that should properly be used to support or question such judgments. According to the new theory put forward in this book, such evidence is based on a kind of multi-agent simulative reasoning in which one agent is able to explain the actions of another by understanding the situation confronted by the other,and recreating the plan adopted by the other. According to the theory, one agent can reach reasoned conclusions about the presumed character properties of another, using plan recognition and ar- mentation schemes representing stereotypical forms of reasoning. We use character evidence every day in reasoning, as in the inference, “He has a certain character trait, so that is evidence he is the one who carried out this particular action”. 

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Winnipeg, Canada

    Douglas Walton

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