An Overview of Argumentation Semantics

Una Revisión de las Semánticas de Argumentación

Juan Carlos Nieves¹, Mauricio Osorio² and Ulises Cortés¹

¹ Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Software Department (LSI) c/Jordi Girona 1–3, E08034, Barcelona, Spain E–mail: jcnieves@lsi.upc.edu, ia@lsi.upc.edu

² Universidad de las Américas – Puebla CENTIA, Sta. Catarina Mártir Cholula, Puebla, 72820 México E–mail: osoriomauri@googlemail.com

Article received on April 14, 2008
Accepted on June 20, 2008

Abstract

The main purpose of argumentation theory is to study the fundamental mechanisms that humans use in argumentation, and to explore ways to implement these mechanisms on computers. During the last years, argumentation has been gaining increasing importance in Computer Science, especially in areas as Artificial Intelligence, e–commerce, Multi–agent Systems and Decision–Making.

In this paper, we present a brief overview of abstract argumentation semantics. In order to promote and disseminate this young area, we describe the fundamental role of argumentation in a medical application. Moreover, we present some results in order to close the huge gap between argumentation theory and argumentation systems. We will see that these results also suggest a general method for exploring some challenges in argumentation theory.

Keywords: Argumentation Theory, Logic Programming, Non–Monotonic Reasoning.

Resumen

El principal propósito de la teoría de argumentación es el estudio de los mecanismos básicos que los humanos usan en argumentación y además explorar métodos para implementar dichos mecanismos en las computadoras. Durante los últimos años, argumentación ha ganado importancia en el área de las ciencias de la computación muy en especial en los campos de la inteligencia artificial, comercio electrónico, sistemas multi – agentes y toma de decisiones.

En este articulo, presentamos una breve revisión de los patrones mas aceptados en la selección de argumentos — a dichos patrones se les llama semánticas de argumentación. Con el propósito de promover y difundir esta joven área de investigación, se describirá el uso de argumentación en una aplicación médica. Además, presentaremos algunos resultados que contribuyen a la integración de modelos teóricos de argumentación a sistemas reales basados en argumentación.

Palabras Clave: Teoría de Argumentación, Programación Lógica, Razonamiento No Monótono.

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Acknowledgement

We are grateful to anonymous referees for their useful comments. J.C. Nieves thanks to CONACyT for his PhD Grant. J.C. Nieves and U. Cortés would like to acknowledge support from the EC funded project SHARE–it: Supported Human Autonomy for Recovery and Enhancement of cognitive and motor abilities using information technologies (FP6–IST–045088). The views expressed in this paper are not necessarily those of the SHARE–it consortium.

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