The Epistemic and Dynamic Aspects of Polarization

Workshop


The wisdom and madness of crowds: argumentation, information exchange and social interaction

Institute for Logic Language and Computation (ILLC), University of Amsterdam

Amsterdam, 31 March - 1 April, 2020 (online, recorded talks at the bottom)

 

Argumentation and exchange of information help groups to coordinate, deliberate and decide. On the other hand, debates often generate detrimental large-scale phenomena such as polarization, informational cascades and echo-chambers, where the behavior of entire groups shifts in seemingly irrational ways.

Understanding the deep mechanisms of informational and social influence that underlie these phenomena in the age of social media is a challenge that engages methods from different disciplines, including philosophy, artificial intelligence, computer and social sciences and psychology. Formal methods from argumentation theory, logic and Bayesian epistemology provide prominent tools to explore this area and to ground data analysis, experimental work and multi-agent social simulations.

This workshop brings together scholars with different theoretical approaches. Its broader aim is to foster an interdisciplinary understanding of the mechanisms that determine the behavior of individuals in a social context from multiple perspectives. 

The workshop is promoted by the project EDAPOL - The Epistemic and Dynamic Aspects of Polarization, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016, nr. 748421) funded by the European Commission.

 

Invited speakers:

  1. Pietro Baroni (University of Brescia, IT)
    • Arguing in the "Laboratory of Dilemmas"
  2. Marcello D’Agostino and Sanjay Modgil (University of Milan, IT - King's College, UK)
    • Dialogical Scaffolding for Human and Artificial Agent Reasoning
  3. Catarina Dutilh Novaes (VU Amsterdam, NED)
    • The role of trust in argumentation
  4. Michael Mäs (University of Groningen, NED)
    • The role of arguments in models of opinion polarization
  5. Henry Prakken (Utrecht University, University of Groningen, NED)
    • Abstract argumentation does not exist
  6. Alice Toniolo (University of St Andrews, UK)
    • A typology for computational deliberation models
  7. Rineke Verbrugge (University of Groningen, NED)
    • Cancelled
  8. Jean Wagemans (University of Amsterdam, NED)
    • Analyzing the characteristics of natural argument

 

Contributed talks:

  1. Daniel Vogt (Leibniz Universität Hannover, DE).
    • Contextual judgement aggregation on three-valued logical spaces - an analytical approach
  2. Giuseppe Primiero and Lorenzo Prandi (University of Milan, IT).
    • A Logic for Paranoid Agents
  3. David Kinney (Santa Fe Institute, US).
    • Why Average When You Can Stack? Better Methods for Generating Accurate Group Credences
  4. Alfredo Burrieza and Antonio Yuste-Ginel (University of Malaga, ES)
    • Basic beliefs and argument-based beliefs in awareness epistemic logic with structured arguments
  5. Tereza Křepelová (Masaryk University - Brno, CZ).
    • Objectivity in Political Philosophy: Normative Stance or Epistemological Desideratum?
  6. Gregory Butterworth (Cardiff University, UK).
    • Multidisciplinary Perspectives as a Catalyst for the Optimisation of Liquid Democracy
  7. Gabriele Pulcini (University of Amsterdam, NED)
    • Optimal abduction via analytic proofs
  8. Mina Young Pedersen (University of Bergen, NOR)
    • Influenced by a Troll: A logic of diffusion in social networks with malicious agents
  9. Joseph Singleton and Richard Booth (Cardiff University, UK)
    • Preliminary Considerations on the Link Between Truth Discovery and Bipolar Argumentation.
  10. Merlin Göttlinger and Lutz Schröder (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, DE).
    • Representation of Social Argumentation
  11. Patrick Skeels (UC Davis, US)
    • The Dynamics of Disagreement
  12. Denis Fedyanin (Trapeznikov Institute, Moscow, RUS)
    • Model of opinion dynamics in a social network when opinions are in logical relations

 

Topics:

Submissions are invited on the general field of argumentation theory, logic and formal epistemology, including, but not restricted to

  • Abstract and structured argumentation
  • Dynamic epistemic logics for correlated information change
  • Logical aspects of argumentation
  • Informal logic
  • Bayesian epistemology
  • Computational approaches to argumentation, social choice and deliberation in multi-agent networks

 

Venue:

Online on zoom.us

 

Recorded talks: 

(Also available at https://sites.google.com/view/workshop-arginfoexchange/home)