Dialogical logic (also known as the logic of dialogues) was conceived as a pragmatic approach to the semantics of logic that resorts to concepts of game theory such as "winning a play" and that of "winning strategy".
Since dialogical logic was the first approach to the semantics of logic using notions stemming from game theory, game theoretical semantics (GTS) and dialogical logic are often conflated under the term game semantics. However, as discussed below, though GTS and dialogical logic are both rooted in a game-theoretical perspective, in fact, they have quite different philosophical and logical background.
Nowadays it has been extended to a general framework for the study of meaning, knowledge, and inference constituted during interaction. The new developments include cooperative dialogues and dialogues deploying a fully interpreted language (dialogues with content).
Origins and further developments
The philosopher and mathematician Paul Lorenzen (Erlangen-Nürnberg-Universität) was the first to introduce a semantics of games for logic in the late 1950s. Lorenzen called this semantics 'dialogische Logik', or dialogic logic. Later, it was developed extensively by his pupil Kuno Lorenz (Erlangen-Nürnberg Universität, then Saarland). Jaakko Hintikka (Helsinki, Boston) developed a little later to Lorenzen a model-theoretical approach known as GTS.
Since then, a significant number of different game semantics have been studied in logic. Since 1993, and his collaborators have developed dialogical logic within a general framework aimed at the study of the logical and philosophical issues related to logical pluralism. More precisely, by 1995 a kind of revival of dialogical logic was generated that opened new and unexpected possibilities for logical and philosophical research. The philosophical development of dialogical logic continued especially in the fields of argumentation theory, legal reasoning, computer science, applied linguistics, and artificial intelligence.
The new results in dialogical logic began on one side, with the works of Jean-Yves Girard in linear logic and interaction; on the other, with the study of the interface of logic, mathematical game theory and argumentation, argumentation frameworks and defeasible reasoning, by researchers such as Samson Abramsky, Johan van Benthem, Andreas Blass, Nicolas Clerbout, Frans H. van Eemeren, Mathieu Fontaine, Dov Gabbay, Rob Grootendorst, Giorgi Japaridze, Laurent Keiff, Erik Krabbe, Alain Leconte, Rodrigo Lopez-Orellana, Sébasten Magnier, Mathieu Marion, Zoe McConaughey, Henry Prakken, Juan Redmond, Helge Rückert, Gabriel Sandu, Giovanni Sartor, Douglas N. Walton, and John Woods among others, who have contributed to place dialogical interaction and games at the center of a new perspective of logic, where logic is defined as an instrument of dynamic inference.
Five research programs address the interface of meaning, knowledge, and logic in the context of dialogues, games, or more generally interaction: