Characterising Polemical Disputes

Abstract We want to draw attention to “polemics”, collective processes that are complex, unavoidable and not infrequently of substantial consequence in social, political and economical terms. We propose to address the topic from the perspective of agreement technologies in order to elucidate its inherent epistemic, argumentative and social coordination aspects. Our aim is to develop an analytical framework to describe the key components of actual controversies and eventually provide technological means to participate in an ongoing disputation. In this paper we take three modest steps in that direction: (i) we foray the topic and introduce some conceptual distinctions and terminology, (ii) we characterise a type of polemical dispute that we think is significant from a practical perspective and amenable to formal and computational treatment and (iii) we articulate some salient challenges we find pertinent for the agreement technologies community.

Authors

• Christian Lemaître
• Pablo Noriega

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