This open access book addresses communicative aspects of the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as the epidemic of misinformation from the perspective of argumentation theory. Argumentation theory is uniquely placed to understand and account for the challenges of public reason as expressed through argumentative discourse. The book thus focuses on the extent to which the forms, norms and functions of public argumentation have changed in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This question is investigated along the three main research lines of the COST Action project CA 17132: European network for Argumentation and Public PoLicY analysis (APPLY): descriptive, normative, and prescriptive. The volume offers a broad range of contributions which treat argumentative phenomena that are directly related to the changes in public discourse in the wake of the outburst of COVID-19. The volume additionally places particular emphasis on expert argumentation, given (i) the importance expert discourse has had over the last two years, and (ii) the challenges that expert argumentation has faced in the public sphere as a result of scientific uncertainty and widespread misinformation. Contributions are divided into three groups, which (i) examine various features and aspects of public and institutional discourse about the COVID-19 pandemic, (ii) scrutinize the way health policies have been discussed, debated, attacked and defended in the public sphere, and (iii) consider a range of proposals meant to improve the quality of public discourse, and public deliberation in particular, in such a way that concrete proposals for argumentative literacy will be brought to light. Overall, this volume constitutes a timely inquiry into all things argumentative in pandemic discourse. This volume is of interest to a broad readership including philosophers, linguists, communication and legal scholars, and members of the wider public who seek to better understand the discourse surrounding communicative phenomena in times of crisis. COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding organisation for research and innovation networks. For more information: www.cost.eu

This open access book addresses communicative aspects of the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as the epidemic of misinformation from the perspective of argumentation theory. Argumentation theory is uniquely placed to understand and account for the challenges of public reason as expressed through argumentative discourse. The book thus focuses on the extent to which the forms, norms and functions of public argumentation have changed in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This question is investigated along the three main research lines of the COST Action project CA 17132: European network for Argumentation and Public PoLicY analysis (APPLY): descriptive, normative, and prescriptive. The volume offers a broad range of contributions which treat argumentative phenomena that are directly related to the changes in public discourse in the wake of the outburst of COVID-19. The volume additionally places particular emphasis on expert argumentation, given (i) the importance expert discourse has had over the last two years, and (ii) the challenges that expert argumentation has faced in the public sphere as a result of scientific uncertainty and widespread misinformation. Contributions are divided into three groups, which (i) examine various features and aspects of public and institutional discourse about the COVID-19 pandemic, (ii) scrutinize the way health policies have been discussed, debated, attacked and defended in the public sphere, and (iii) consider a range of proposals meant to improve the quality of public discourse, and public deliberation in particular, in such a way that concrete proposals for argumentative literacy will be brought to light. Overall, this volume constitutes a timely inquiry into all things argumentative in pandemic discourse. This volume is of interest to a broad readership including philosophers, linguists, communication and legal scholars, and members of the wider public who seek to better understand the discourse surrounding communicative phenomena in times of crisis. COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding organisation for research and innovation networks. For more information: www.cost.eu

This book includes revised selected papers from five International Workshops on Artificial Intelligence Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems, AICOL VI to AICOL X, held during 2015-2017: AICOL VI in Braga, Portugal, in December 2015 as part of JURIX 2015; AICOL VII at EKAW 2016 in Bologna, Italy, in November 2016; AICOL VIII in Sophia Antipolis, France, in December 2016; AICOL IX at ICAIL 2017 in London, UK, in June 2017; and AICOL X as part of JURIX 2017 in Luxembourg, in December 2017. The 37 revised full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected form 69 submissions. They represent a comprehensive picture of the state of the art in legal informatics. The papers are organized in six main sections: legal philosophy, conceptual analysis, and epistemic approaches; rules and norms analysis and representation;legal vocabularies and natural language processing; legal ontologies and semantic annotation; legal argumentation; and courts, adjudication and dispute resolution.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2017, held in Nice, France, in October/November 2017. The 24 revised full papers presented together with one abstract of a keynote talk and 11 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 88 submissions. The intention of the papers is to showcase research in several domains, ranging from foundations of agent theory and engineering aspects of agent systems, to emerging interdisciplinary areas of agent-based research.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2015, held in Bertinoro, Italy, in October 2015. The 29 full papers and 24 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 94 submissions. The conference brings together active researchers, developers and practitioners from both academia and industry to showcase, share and promote research in several domains, ranging from foundations of agent theory and engineering aspects of agent systems, to emerging interdisciplinary areas of agent-based research.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Satellite Events of the 12th European Conference on the Semantic Web, ESWC 2015, held in Portoroz, Slovenia, in May/June 2015. The volume contains 12 poster and 22 demonstration papers, selected from 50 submissions, as well as 22 best workshop papers selected from 140 papers presented at the 16 workshops that took place at ESWC 2015. The papers cover various aspects of the semantic web.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on Computational Logic in Multi-Agent Systems, CLIMA XV, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in August 2014. The 12 regular papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 20 submissions. The purpose of the CLIMA workshops is to provide a forum for discussing techniques, based on computational logic, for representing, programming and reasoning about agents and multi-agent systems in a formal way. This edition will feature two special sessions: logics for agreement technologies and logics for games, strategic reasoning, and social choice.