An Argumentation System for the Web



Welcome ...

... to our pages. Participate in an already open discussion or initiate your own one, following the Discussion Forum link (top of the page). To find more information about the system's Features, the complete User Manual, and the current and future work related to the system, follow the corresponding links.

At a glance

Hermes is an Argumentation System for cooperative or non-cooperative type of discussions on the Web. It provides means of expressing and weighing individual arguments and preferences, in order to support or challenge the selection of a certain choice. The system supports defeasible and qualitative reasoning in the presence of ill-structured information. Argumentation is performed through a set of discourse acts which call a variety of procedures for the propagation of information in the corresponding discussion graph.

Hermes can be used by groups of agents to express their claims and judgements, aiming at informing or convincing, depending on the kind of the interaction. Unlike most current systems which merely provide threaded, hierarchical discussion forums (for an online survey click here), the system includes reasoning mechanisms that monitor the discussion, performing consistency checking and constantly updating the status of the argumentative discourse according to the proof standards involved.

Hermes focuses on distributed, asynchronous collaboration, allowing agents to surpass the requirements of being in the same place and working at the same time. In order to achieve portability and inexpensive access it is implemented in Java. It can be run using the World Wide Web and any standard browser.


Hermes was the son of Maia, daughter of Atlas. He is primarily known as the god of trade and commerce. But to excel in commerce, one needs to use the art of persuasion. Therefore, Hermes also "served" as the god of oratory. Finally, he was the messenger of gods.
 
Last update: October 20, 1997
Nikos Karacapilidis