Arguing with Stories
Floris J. Bex1 and Trevor Bench-Capon2
1

Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University. The Netherlands
2
Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, UK

Abstract. Stories can be powerful argumentative vehicles, and they are often
used to present arguments from analogy, most notably as parables, fables or allegories where the story invites the hearer to infer an important claim of the argument. Case Based Reasoning in Law has many similar features: the current
case is compared to previously decided cases, and in case the similarity between
the previous and current cases is deemed sufficient, an similar conclusion canbe drawn for the current case. In this article, we want to take a further step towards computationally modelling the connection between stories and argumentation in analogical reasoning. We show how story schemes can be used to investigate and determine story similarity, and how the point of a story – that is,the conclusion that the storyteller intends the hearer to draw – can be likened to
the ratio decidendi in a legal case. Finally, we present some formal tools formodelling stories based on computational models of practical reasoning.
Keywords: Argumentation, Stories, Analogy

1Introduction

Stories1 can be a powerful vehicle of persuasion. They can be used, for example, to present evidence about “what happened” in a particular case in a coherent and believable way (Wagenaar et al. 1993), or to convince others tofollow a particular course of action (Bex et al. 2014). A story does not persuade by imparting explicit rules, but instead by exposing a coherent narrative
aimed at changing or reinforcing attitudes, whereby the stories illustrate various group cultural norms. Many folktales are of this type, as are many children’s stories. In some genres, such as fables and parables, the main purpose1

We make a distinction common in literature theory, namely between the story andthe discourse of a narrative (Toolan 2001). A story as discussed in this article is the(abstract) sequence of events. The discourse, issues related to which we do not discuss here, is the way in which a story is presented and the medium used (i.e. images,
text, figures, film).

of the story is to support the conclusion. In fables, especially, the lesson isoften made explicit by a “moral”.
Much of our previous work on stories and argumentation (e.g. Bex et al.
2010) focuses mainly on arguments about stories: arguments based on evidence are used to reason about the plausibility of a story. However, it is also
possible to use a story as an argument, that is, propose the story itself as areason for some conclusion (Bex 2013, Bex et al. 2014). Stories can be told
with a variety of purposes and whether a story should be considered as an
explanation, as a source of entertainment or as an argument depends not juston its structure but also on the intention of the author or speaker. This idea
stems from speech act theory (Searle 1969): it is the intention of uttering somelocution – the illocutionary force of the speech act – that determines how thecontents of the speech act should be treated. So if a story is told with the intention of persuading or arguing, we can consider it to be an argument, a reason for a conclusion, whereas if it is told with the intention of explaining we
can consider it to be an explanation (Bex & Walton 2016)2. There are often
strong clues as to the speaker’s intention from the context. The conversation
preceding the story is often important, while the way the conversation continues following the story can show how the hearer has understood the story: thismay be endorsed or challenged by the speaker. This is particularly true ofparables in the Gospels, which are usually told in a context that helps to indicate the intended point. In fables the explicit “moral” fulfils this function.
Stories are often used to present arguments from analogy3, most notably as
parables, fables or allegories where the story invites the hearer to infer an im-

2

The intention can be inferred from the context in which the story is told. If it is delivered aspart of a persuasion or deliberation dialogue (Walton and Krabbe 1995), it will normally be
an argument. While the story in itself may not indicate the intention of the narrator, stories
are typically told in a context. The parables, for example, are always placed in a context,
which is important to their understanding. Of course, the hearer may misjudge the context
and so fail to understand the story properly, but this is a danger with any speech act.

3

Like analogies, a single story can suffice to establish the conclusion. In contrast argumentfrom example requires the cumulative impact of many examples. A similar distinction canbe made between reasoning with legal cases, where a single precedent is, if sufficiently authorative, enough, and knowledge discovery, where the degree of support depends on thenumber of examples found in the dataset.

portant claim of the argument. For example, the New Testament parables,
Aesop’s fables or Plato’s allegories are stories which are meant to persuade usof certain ideas by appealing to, or challenging, our core beliefs and values.
Similarly, thought experiments like Searle’s Chinese Room (Searle 1980),
intended to direct the intuitions of their audience, are often also presented as asmall anecdote or story.
Analogical reasoning, where two stories or cases are compared, has been investigated formally in the field of Case-based Reasoning (CBR) (Gentner&
Forbus 2011), and ideas from this early work were also used in approaches tolegal CBR (e.g. CATO, Aleven 1997), which adds argument moves to explore
the similarities and differences between legal cases. Any legal case can bepresented as a narrative, and the presentation will allow different facts to be
selected and emphasised and different glosses given to explain behaviour orcomplete gaps in a way which will support the interpretation desired by thenarrator. In recent work, we have shown how the legal and the factual level ina case can be mapped onto each other (Bex & Bench-Capon, 2015), and how
argument moves about similarity developed in the legal context can also be
applied to factual stories (Bex et al. 2011). However, what remains to be investigated is how stories can be used in a broader argument: that is, how similarities between stories can be persuasive.
In this article, we want to take a further step towards modelling the connection
between stories and argumentation in analogical reasoning. Section 2 shows
how arguments from analogy can be based on stories, and sections 2.1
through 2.3 then discuss some of the objections to and difficulties of integrating stories and arguments. Section 3 sketches the kind of computational structures that will be required to implement this approach. Section 4 discusses
some leading related work before Section 5 offers a short conclusion.

2

Arguments from Analogy

Much of our everyday reasoning is based on analogy, and hence there is a lotof literature (in philosophy, logic, law, AI) dealing with argument from analo-

gy4. Basically, the argument from analogy works as follows. First, a sourcecase is presented that appears to suggest a statement A as its conclusion; here,
the source case is the reason for conclusion A, an argument in itself. Then atarget case is presented, one that appears similar to the source case in somerelevant ways, and the aim of the argument is to get the respondent to accept
the same conclusion, or a parallel one, mutatis mutandis, in the target case.
Figure 1 illustrates these various steps.
A

C1

conclusionA

C1

conclusion

similarconclusion

C2

A

C2

Figure 1: Drawing the same conclusion from a similar case

The argument scheme on which we base our investigations in this paper is aslightly amended version of the one presented by Walton (2012).
Similarity Premise: In some important respects, case C1 is similar to case C2.
Base Premise: From C1 it can be concluded that A is true (false).
Conclusion: From C2 it can be concluded that A is true (false).

The difference with the original scheme is that whereas Walton’s scheme has
the base premise/conclusion “A is true in C1/C2”, the current scheme correctly
positions A as being a conclusion that is drawn from a case: the case does notstrictly entail the conclusion, and it does not pose its conclusion as a norm.
Rather it invites the hearer to draw the conclusion, so that its force is always
persuasive, never coercive5. This makes the form of the presentation signifi-

4

For example, The Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Staes :”Analogical reasoning isfundamental to human thought and, arguably, to some nonhuman animals as well. Historically, analogical reasoning has played an important, but sometimes mysterious, role in awide range of problem-solving contexts. The explicit use of analogical arguments, since antiquity, has been a distinctive feature of scientific, philosophical and legal reasoning. “5Note that, in theory, we can “coerce” our audience into drawing a particular conclusion if we
succeed in preemptively defeating all other possible conclusions that might be drawn fromthe story. However, it is like a defeasible rule: if it were possible to exclude all exceptions,
we would have a strict (coercive) rule, but it isn't so we don't. Similarly stories can try topreempt alternatives, but can never preempt them all.

cant: an attractive story makes drawing the desired conclusion all the more
enticing. In arguments from analogy, there is usually a point one wants tomake, as simply comparing cases is not very interesting, unless there is some
purpose to it. That A can be regarded as a conclusion is also evident in thecritical questions for the scheme (left unchanged from Walton’s work).
CQ1: Are there respects in which C1 and C2 are different that would tend to undermine the force of the similarity cited?
CQ2: Is A the right conclusion to be drawn in C1?
CQ3: Is there some other case C3 that is also similar to C1, but in which some conclusion incompatible with A should be drawn?

The use of the scheme is as follows. The story acts as C1, and the hearers map
elements of their own situation to form C2.This means that the conclusion to
be drawn from the story becomes applicable to them. For example in the fableof the Ant and the Grasshopper, the hearer should see their own behaviour asmatching that of the grasshopper, and learn from the story that they should
become industrious like the ant.
2.1

Story Similarity

Stories are finite sequences of facts, events or states of affairs. Different stories can be seen as being similar for various reasons. For example, they may
have the same subject, or a similar structure and themes.
The comparison of cases has been investigated formally in AI in the field ofCase-based Reasoning (see Gentner & Forbus 2011 for an overview). The
computational process of analogising in CBR usually consists of the following
steps. First, given base case C1 a target case C2 is retrieved and a mapping isconstructed. This mapping consists of a set of correspondences, each linking aparticular item in the base with a particular item in the target. This is like thestory case described above, where the story, like the precedent, is mapped into
the current situation, so that it can be applied to it. This mapping can also contain candidate inferences, surmising what is true in C2 based on projecting thestructure of C1, and an evaluation score which indicates the extent to which
the two cases are similar. The results of the comparison of C1 and C2 may thenbe generalised and stored as an abstract schema, and in the final step one orboth of the cases may be amended to provide a better match.

In (Bex et al. 2011), we presented a model of story similarity which is basedon this earlier work combined with insights from the well-known work by
Schank and Abelson (1977) as well as work on legal CBR (Aleven 1997). In
our work, we distinguish stories, specific sequences of events, and story
schemes, general scenarios consisting of general roles (Propp 1968) that elements of a story can fulfil. Stories can be matched to schemes by assigning
the facts to their respective roles, and two cases are thus said to be similar ifthey can be matched to the same story scheme. Thus, analogising in (Bex etal. 2011) is similar to mapping two cases directly without an intermediate
story scheme as in (Gentner & Forbus 2011), but a scheme allows us to match
two similar cases C1 and C2 even if not every element of C1 maps to an element of C2 (as long as the elements of C1 and C2 match a story role in thescheme).
As an example of story similarity, consider the story in Searle’s Chinese
Room Argument (Searle 1980)6. The story supposes that a man, who knows
no Chinese, is locked in a room, and that he has sets of rules for correlatingsets of Chinese symbols with other sets of Chinese symbols in a meaningful
way. People outside the room cannot see what is in the room but they can passpieces of paper with questions in Chinese through a slit. The man will look up
the characters on the piece of paper and write the appropriate answer (as given
by his rules) on another piece of paper and pass this back to the person outside. Thus, from the point of view of somebody outside the room in which theman is locked, his answers to any questions are absolutely indistinguishable
from those of native Chinese speakers.
Searle’s point is that, even though the “room as a whole” might (and, it can beassumed, does) pass the Turing test, the man in the room clearly does not understand Chinese. Searle makes this point to then draw the analogy from the
Chinese Room to a computer: if you give a Chinese character, or any
knowledge unit for that matter, to a computer all it does is perform a lookup
operation without understanding the knowledge.

6

Interestingly, in his 1980 article 0Searle uses the Chinese Room experiment to argue against
Schank and Abelson’s (1977) work on story understanding, which he regards as the paradigmatic example of strong AI.

The argument associated with the Chinese room thought-experiment is now asfollows. First, the story about the man in the room is posed and compared to asimilar story about a computer performing lookups. This comparison can bemodelled by way of an intermediate story scheme as in (Bex et al. 2011),
which is illustrated in Figure 2. Once the two stories are matched, we can takethe conclusion of story 1 (i.e. “the man is not using any intelligence eventhough the room exhibits apparently intelligent behaviour”) and draw a similar conclusion from story 2 (i.e. “the computer processor is not intelligent
even though the computer exhibits apparently intelligent behaviour”).

there is a
man in a
room

Story 1: Chinese Roomman looks up
Chinese character
rule forx is passed tocharacter x,manfinds yman presents thecorresponding
character y to theoutsideenclosedprocessor

pass knowledge
to processor

lookup knowledge andfind correspondingknowledge

pass correspondingknowledge to outside

Computerprocessor

Input text into
computercomputerlooks upcorresponding
text

computer shows
output on screen

Story 2: Computer

Figure 2: Chinese Room Argument: matching two stories to a scheme

Legal Case-based Reasoning such as (Aleven 1997) takes a similar approachto (Gentner & Forbus 2011), but makes the identification of relevant similarities and differences between legal cases the subject of argumentation. For
example, one can argue that a story does not match the scheme established by
the precedent (CQ1, known as distinguishing in the legal context), or one canpresent another story as a counterargument to the original argument (CQ3).
CQ2 is not relevant to legal CBR since the conclusion is the decision given in
the precedent, which is a matter of record beyond dispute.
Whilst in (Bex et al. 2011) the focus is on factual stories instead of legal cases, it is still possible to use the argumentative moves of (Aleven 1997) to ex-plore similarities between stories. Take, as an example, a third story as acounterargument to the original argument. In case of the Chinese Room, one
is reminded of the original Mechanical Turk, a chess playing automaton in the
18th century. Everyone thought the machine was intelligent until it was revealed to have human operator hidden within it. Figure 3 shows that this story
can also be matched to the same story scheme as the Chinese Room and thecomputer story in Searle’s thought experiment. With this story we can argue
that intelligence is possible for a machine: no-one disputes the intelligence ofthe operator of the Turk. The argumentative process can continue further after
this: it can be argued that the Mechanical Turk story is different because theoperator thinking of the appropriate counter-move is not a lookup operation
like a computer or the man in the Chinese Room performs (distinguishing theprecedent). This distinction can perhaps be countered (downplaying a distinction) by arguing that chess players (like the operator) actually systematicallyconsider multiple options they know from experience of previous games andthus perform what one might call a “lookup operation”. Few people, however,believe that you can (currently at least) play chess (after the opening) bysimply looking up responses: there are too many positions to be considered. In
this case the plausibility of the look up table existing is less than the possibility of an intelligent machine.

there is anoperator intheautomaton

enclosedprocessor

Story 3: Mechanical Turk
Operator
Chess movethinks ofpassed on toappropriate
operatorcountermove

pass knowledge
to processor

lookup knowledge andfind correspondingknowledge

Operator has
automaton play themove

pass correspondingknowledge to outside

Figure 3: Matching the Mechanical Turk story to the same scheme as the Chinese Room

Note that the original story can be told in such a way that possible futurecounterarguments based on critical questions are pre-empted. This can be seen
in a Parable like the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), which Jesus tells toprovide an answer to the question who is my neighbour? Jesus tells of a man
who is robbed and beaten and left at the side of the road. In the course of thestory, some expected answers to the question (my co-religionists, my countrymen) are mooted and dismissed as the priest and Levite pass by on the other side, before the correct answer any human being who shows compassion –even my religious and national enemy – is provided in the person of the Samaritan. In this way two of the possible responses which might have led to
CQ3 are proposed and dismissed, so there is no opportunity to counter with,for example, the story of the Good Priest.
Contrast this with Aesop’s fable the Ant and the Grasshopper. In that fable
the grasshopper sings through the summer while the ant toils to build up a
surplus. When winter comes, the grasshopper is starving and begs the ant forsome food. The ant refuses. In La Fontaine’s version he tells the grasshopperthat having sung throughout the summer, he can now dance. The lesson is
obvious: work hard and look to the future (Bex et al. 2014).
However, the simple narrative does offer scope for continuations to provide
CQ3 objections. Suppose the ant laughs so hard at La Fontaine’s little jokethat he chokes to death7. Now the moral is different: perhaps gather ye rosebuds while ye may. To subvert the original message even further suppose thegrasshopper is next of kin to the ant and inherits his stock of food. Now perhaps he who laughs last laughs longest is the moral to be drawn.
Or we could change the story itself so that the ant behaves like the father inthe parable of the prodigal son8 rather than the elder brother, and opens his
stores to the grasshopper. There is no obvious moral, but the encouragement
to be generous rather than judgemental is clear in this variation.
2.2

Drawing Conclusions from Stories

An important question is: how can we draw a conclusion from a particularstory? In legal CBR, there are legal rules and principles that allow us to infer
the conclusion from the factors in a case (Prakken & Sartor 1998). For stories,
we need to look at their point (Bex 2013). Stories are often told to make apoint, and it is this point that can be regarded as the conclusion of a story told

7

Cf. the parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:13-21.

8

Luke 15:11-32.

as an argument9. But what kinds of points are often made using stories? And,
perhaps more importantly, how do we establish the point of a particular story?
Often the point has to do with a “twist in the tale”, which adds persuasivenessto the story10. Wilensky (1982) calls these internal points, parts of the story
text that generate interest. This dramatic content or twist in a story can befound by looking at deviations from “normal behaviour” by characters in thestory. For example, the original audience may have expected the Samaritan toleave the man or even steal his remaining clothes (because of the enmity between Samaritans and Judeans), but instead the Samaritan shows compassion
and goes beyond what is normally expected in such situations.
Story schemes play an important part in establishing the dramatic content: it isa deviation of the standard script that counts as a twist in the tale. In the caseof Searle’s Chinese room story, for example, the Chinese Room satisfies theTuring test. Our standard script is that if something satisfies the Turing test, it
can be said to be intelligent. Searle’s dramatic twist is then that there is actually no intelligence being engaged even with a human inside.
So the dramatic story content plays an important part in establishing the pointof a story; “neutral” stories, in which there is no dramatic resolution to some
central event, are often regarded as pointless11. With respect to such content it
is also important to take the intention of the narrator and the knowledge andbeliefs of the audience into account. Story schemes are part of our knowledge
and influence when we think something is “normal” and when we think astory “has a twist”. Thus, deeply entrenched beliefs influence the point thatpeople read in a story. Furthermore, an audience will identify more with acharacter who is in a similar situation or who has a similar worldview. If we

9

In fables the point is usually made explicit in the form of the moral. In parables the point isoften not made explicit, but can be inferred from the context: for example the parable of theGood Samaritan is told in repose to the question “Who is my neighbour?”10

Such twists are much more common in stories intended to persuade – to lead to a change of
attitude, such as parables, than stories intended to reinforce existing attitudes, such as fables.

11

Fables seem to rely on their charm, and the fact that the leading roles are typically taken byanthropomorphic animals. This, their suitability for illustration, and their unchallenging
messages all mean they are nowadays usually presented to children rather than adults..

tell the parable of the Good Samaritan to someone with no knowledge of thecontext (of the enmity between Judeans and Samaritans), it will have less impact because the point of the story will be less clear.
It is also important to take the intention of the narrator into account when determining what the point of a story is. As was briefly indicated above, theintention of the narrator (as represented by the illocutionary force of the
speech act(s) of telling the story) influences how a story should be interpreted:a story may be told with the intention of explaining, arguing and so forth. Thisintention may depend on the dialogical context in which a story is told (Reed2011, Bex & Bench-Capon 2014)). For example, Jesus tells the story of theGood Samaritan to answer the question “Who is my neighbour?” Now, if like
Schank et al. (1982) and Bex & Walton (2016) we interpret the point of thestory to be the intention of the narrator, the point of Jesus telling the story is toanswer the question, and to provide a reason for the answer.
In sum, the point of a story is the interaction between the structure and contents of the story and the knowledge and beliefs of the reader. The story teller
intends the story to have such an interaction and thus change the beliefs of thereader in a particular way.
2.3

Story points and legal ratio decidendi

The point of a story can be compared with the ratio decidendi of a legal case.
The ratio decidendi, literally the reason for the decision, is the basis on which
the case was decided, and hence the rule which will be binding on other decisions in future. This contrasts with the obiter dicta (other statements) which
are observations which may have persuasive but not binding force on subsequent cases. Rarely, however, is the ratio made explicit in the decision itself,
giving rise to two positions. One is that the case does have a ratio associatedwith it, which can be discovered by a correct interpretation of the decision.
This view is encouraged by the use of headnotes, which offer such an interpretation, and which usually include a ratio.
The other view is that the ratio is not fixed, but is capable of reinterpretationin the light of subsequent cases: the task of the legal interpreter being to makesense of a whole body of case law, considered hermeneutically. On this view

the ratio of a case may turn out to be other that was originally thought, if thisis necessary to make it cohere with later decisions.
We find interesting parallels with the kinds of stories we have been considering. Fables tend to look like the first kind of view: their point is usually clear
and often explicitly stated as the moral of the fable. Other stories, such a parables, may be less clear, and require interpretation. And these interpretations
may change, either in response to different social contexts, or in order toachieve coherence with other parables. Also it is often said that a parable
should have a single point. This does not prevent preachers from drawing
additional lessons from the obiter dicta of the parable12.

3

Formal Tools for Modelling Stories

In Bex et al. (2014), we have presented a formal, computational framework
for modelling stories. We argue that because a story can be seen as a sequenceof events, in particular where that sequence is a selection from a number ofpossible events, a natural computational structure for exploring stories is astate transition diagram. State transition diagrams come in a variety of forms,
but at their simplest comprise a series of states linked by actions possible inthe state, indicating the state that will be reached if the action is performed.
Consider the Ant and the Grasshopper fable. The scenario can be represented
as the State Transition Diagram shown in Figure 4.
Now the Ant and the Grasshopper fable becomes two different paths throughthis diagram: the ant takes A1 followed by A3, while the grasshopper takes
A2, A4. Someone might object that the ant would be generous and so the sequence would be A2, A5, A3, but this would receive the reply “ants don’t
behave that way”, or “it would not be wise to trust to the generosity of others.” At the very least the grasshopper risks ending in Q3. Note that the diagram serves to circumscribe what is possible: if we want to allow for the ant
dropping dead we would need a transition A6: has apoplexy leading to a newstate Q4 (dead, food plentiful, food stock). The point of the story is that Q3 isa clearly undesirable state which one should avoid, and so one should choose

12

For example the parable of the Prodigal Son is often used to make points based on the response of the elder brother.

A1 rather than A2 in Q0, and so avoid even the possibility of reaching ofreaching Q3.
Q0: alive
food plentiful
no food stock
A2: playQ2: alive
food scarce
no food stock

A1: work
A3: eat

Q1: alive
food scarce
food stock

iven
eg, g
A5: b

A4: beg, not given

Q3: deadfood plentiful
no food stock

Figure 4: State transition diagram for The Ant and The GrasshopperThis simple state transition diagram serves for a simple story such as the Ant
and the Grasshopper. For more complicated stories, such as the Good Samaritan, we would need a richer diagram. For example the Action Based Alternating System with Values proposed in (Atkinson & Bench-Capon 2007) enables
us to explore the effect of interactions between several agents, and explains
the desirability or otherwise of various states by labelling the transitions withthe social values promoted and demoted. This can be used to reason about the
motives of the agents concerned in terms of the ordering agents put on thesevalues (Bex et al. 2014, Bex & Bench-Capon 2014). For the Good Samaritan
the value labelling would suffice to enable us to represent the different preferences of the people involved, and so recognise that our current preferences(assuming we share the preferences of the brother) are less than ideal. For theremainder of this paper, however, we will focus on the simpler case of thedifferent paths through the simple transition diagram shown in Figure 4.
To return to the Ant and the Grasshopper we need five components:

A set of propositions: in this case the three propositions: agent isalive, food is plentiful, agent has food.
A set of states, one for each possible assignment of truth values tothese propositions (Q0-Q3 in Figure 1). By convention Q0 is the current or initial state.
A set of actions: A1 to A5 in Figure 1.



A set of preconditions defining which actions are available in eachstate
A transition function stating which state is reached when an action is
executed in a given state.

The preconditions and transitions can conveniently be represented as a transition matrix or read from the diagram.
The AATS with values additionally requires a set of agents, a set of joint actions constructed from the actions of the individual agents, a set of values, anda function to related promotion and demotion of values to transitions.
A story scheme is now a particular path through a transition diagram. In order
to be able to argue from analogy we need to augment the story schemes withan ontology. Clearly any animal at all can play the role of agent in the transition diagram of Figure 4. Therefore we could have told the fable about any
pair of animals. The ontology required to support fables will focus on animals,
and will associate them with stereotypical properties (owls are wise, foxes arecunning, ants are industrious and grasshoppers are frivolous etc). Anothersuitable pair could have been selected from the ontology: for example if we
prefer to use mammals rather than insects, we may say squirrels are industrious and hares are frivolous, so that we could tell the fable of the Squirrel andthe Hare. As far as the story scheme is concerned, this will mean that in addition to the transition diagram and the path through it, we will add the associated qualities of the agents following a given path.
To deploy the fable in argument we need to find a context in which we aretrying to persuade someone who is frivolous to be industrious. Thus the match
which triggers the use of the diagram will be on the contrasting qualities of
the animals in the story. The point will then be grasped by the audience ifthey:
1. identify themselves with the grasshopper, either on the basis of theattribute, or simply because they prefer to play rather than work:
2. recognise that the situation reached by the grasshopper is undesirable
and needs to be avoided
3. realise that it can be avoided by adopting the qualities (or at least the
behaviour) of the ant.

4

Related research

The connection between stories and arguments has been explored in more
informal models of argumentation and reasoning. Walton (2012), for example,
has explored the required similarities between stories and arguments fromanalogy. Govier and Ayers (2012) argue that stories can be presented as arguments in themselves. They use the Good Samaritan as an example, settingout the argument that they reconstruct from the story Their reconstruction
requires them to include some additional, “implicit” premises. These areshown in italics.
1.

2.

3.
4.
5.
6.

If supposedly holy people (the priest and the Levite) were to ignore an
unknown and needy person on a road, they would not treat that person asa neighbour.
If a person who was of no special status and did not know an unknown
and needy person on a road were to treat him with mercy and kindness,that person would treat the needy person as a neighbour. So
What matters about being a neighbour is not one’s status or one’s priorknowledge of a person.
What matters about being a neighbour is treating another with mercy andkindness when that person is needy and one encounters him.
It is good to treat a needy stranger as a neighbour if one encounters him.
Therefore,
One should treat other people, when they are in need and one encountersthem, as one’s neighbours with mercy and kindness.

In this reconstruction of the Good Samaritan, two crucial premises and theconclusions are said to be implicit: that is they are not present in the parable,
but supplied by Govier and Ayers. The addition of premise 1 is perhaps notimportant: it simply explains the role of the priest and the Levite, which are
not really central to the argument anyway. The addition of premise 5 is more
contentious because it transforms the nature of the argument. Without premise
5 it is a classification argument with a factual conclusion - the Samaritan isneighbour to the traveller - which was the conclusion drawn by the lawyer towhom Jesus told the parable in Luke 10:36. Premise 5 turns it into an argument with a normative conclusion, advocating particular behaviour. This isperhaps justified by the comment ‘Go and do thou likewise’ made by Jesus inLuke 10:37, since this shows that the intention in telling the parable is to affect future actions.
Whilst Govier and Ayers’ reconstruction is interesting, we contend that the
point of the parable is not to impose a norm, but rather an invitation to adopt
different attitudes, to recognise that duties between people arise from theircommon humanity rather than any social or religious ties. This will lead people to act in accordance with the norm, but motivated by a ‘change of heart’
which makes them want to act properly, rather than recognition of, and compliance with, a norm (as was already argued in section 2). Certainly the Samaritan is acting because he is the sort of person he is, not because he wishes
to comply with a norm not acknowledged by the priest and the Levite.
The correct argument, in our view, is as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Conventional attitudes would lead to the traveller being left for dead.
The traveller shouldn’t be left for dead.
Someone with the Samaritan’s attitudes would help the traveller
Therefore you should adopt the Samaritan’s values

In contrast with Govier and Ayers’ reconstruction, this argument has a clear
analogical component (Samaritan has attitude a leading to positive results, so
you should also adopt attitude a). However, in order to make this argument
more concrete we need a detailed account of the internal reasoning, the deliberations of the Samaritan, the Levite and the Priest. We believe that the computational model sketched in section 3 is the first step towards such an account: once we have the AATS with values of a story, we can generate arguments for the various choices of the characters according to their values andtheir preferences between these values..

5

Conclusion

In this paper we have tried to demonstrate some next steps towards a fully
integrated account of argument and narrative. We have shown how stories canbe used to present arguments from analogy, and how such arguments (andtheir critical questions) can be formally modelled using familiar techniquesfrom CBR, especially legal CBR. Additionally we have explained how thecommon computational structures of state transition diagrams and ontologies
can be used to underpin our account.
Argument from analogy preys on the temptation to generalise from limited
experience which seems ever present in people, often leading people to state
fallacious generalisations. (“Whenever I take an umbrella it does not rain.”).
In its standard form the argument from analogy is very plain. But stories cangive the analogy more substance and hence more persuasiveness. Also notethat often it is not the truth of a story that is at issue, the power of an argument
based on a story comes from the aptness and plausibility of the story not fromwhether it is taken to be finctional or not. For example Wittgenstein (1980)
argued that “Christianity is not based on truth; rather, it offers us a narrativeand says: now, believe!” A compelling argument does not necessarily have to
be true, especially when it appeals to values (as parables often do)13.
There remain a large number of open questions regarding the interactions
between narrative and argument. For example, how exactly can we derive thepoint of a story from the story and the context in which it is told? How dodifferent types of stories change or reinforce attitudes? Are stories just a rhetorical “trick” or can they be used to express information that otherwise remains implicit? Providing formal answers to these and other questions is pertinent if we want to fully integrate stories and arguments.

References
V. Aleven (1997) Teaching Case Based Argumentation Through an Example and Models. PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
K. Atkinson, T.J.M. Bench-Capon (2007) Practical reasoning as presumptive
argumentation using action based alternating transition systems. Artificial Intelligence 171(10-15): 855-874.
T. Bench-Capon & F.J. Bex (2015) Cases and Stories, Dimensions andScripts Legal Knowledge and Information Systems. JURIX 2015: The

13

For Apollonius of Tyana, a 1st-century CE philosopher, the lack of any pretence to truth wasa major strength of Aesop’s fables: “Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than thepoets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but
he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very
fact that he did not claim to be relating real events.”

Twenty Eight Annual Conference. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligenceand Applications 279.
F.J. Bex (2013) Values as the point of a story. In K. Atkinson, H. Prakken &A. Wyner (eds.) From Knowledge Representation to Argumentation in
AI, Law and Policy Making. A Festschrift in Honour of Trevor BenchCapon, pp. 63-78. College Publications, London.
F.J. Bex & T. Bench-Capon (2014) Understanding Narratives with Argumentation. Computational Models of Argument. Proceedings of
COMMA 2014, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications 266.
pp. 11 – 18. IOS Press, Amsterdam.
F.J. Bex, K. Atkinson & T. Bench-Capon (2014) Arguments as a new perspective on character motive in stories. Literary and Linguistic Computing 29 (4). pp. 467 – 487.
F.J. Bex, T. Bench-Capon & B. Verheij (2011) What Makes a Story Plausible? The Need for Precedents. JURIX 2011. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications 235.
F.J. Bex, P.J. van Koppen, H. Prakken and B. Verheij (2010). A Hybrid
Formal Theory of Arguments, Stories and Criminal Evidence. Artificial
Intelligence and Law 18:2, 123–152.
F.J. Bex & D. Walton (2016) Combining Explanation and Argumentation in
Dialogue. Argument and Computation, to appear.
D. Gentner & K.D. Forbus (2011) Computational models of analogy. Wiley
Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2:3, 266-276.
T. Govier & L. Ayers (2012) Logic, Parables and Argument Informal Logic
32:2.
H. Prakken & G. Sartor (1998) Modelling Reasoning with Precedents in a
Formal Dialogue Game. Artificial Intelligence and Law 6: 231-287.
V. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale. Laurence Scott (trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968.
C. Reed (2011) Implicit speech acts are ubiquitous. Why? They join thedots. In Proceedings of the Conference on Argumentation: Cognition
and Community (OSSA-2011), Windsor, ON.
R.C. Schank and R.P. Abelson (1977) Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: an Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale (New Jersey).
R.C. Schank, G.C. Collins, E. Davis, P.N. Johnson, S. Lytinen & B.J. Reiser(1982) What’s the Point? Cognitive Science 6, 255-275.
J.R. Searle (1969) Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.
Cambridge University Press.
J.R. Searle (1980) Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and brain sciences 3 (3): 417-457.
M. Toolan (2001) Narrative: a critical linguistic introduction, 2nd edition,
Routledge, London, New York (New York).

D. Walton (2012) Story Similarity in Arguments from Analogy. Informal
Logic, 32(2), 190-218.
D, Walton and E.C. Krabbe,(1995). Commitment in dialogue: Basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. SUNY press.
R. Wilensky (1982) Points: A Theory of the Structure of Stories in Memory.
In Lehnert and Ringle (eds.) Strategies for Natural Language Processing, Erlbaum, NJ.
L. Wittgenstein (1980) Culture and value. University of Chicago Press.