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Beyond contradiction and consistency: A design for a dialectical policy system

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Abstract

It is only within the last ten years that the necessary technical machinery has been developed that enables us to construct models that even begin to approach the complexity of dialectical reasoning. This paper shows both the diversity and the complexity of the concepts that must be woven together in order to construct a dialectic ‘process logic’, i.e., a logic that unfolds over time. It utilizes such concepts as Rescher's and Manor's plausibility calculus, Toulmin's framework for argumentation, and Markov chains. The result is the essence of a design for a computer based dialectical policy system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Business, University of Southern California, 90007, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

    Ian I. Mitroff, Harold Quinton & Richard O. Mason

Authors
  1. Ian I. Mitroff
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  2. Harold Quinton
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  3. Richard O. Mason
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Mitroff, I.I., Quinton, H. & Mason, R.O. Beyond contradiction and consistency: A design for a dialectical policy system. Theor Decis 15, 107–120 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00143067

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