Nonmonotonic reasoning and argumentation for agent systems by Martin Caminada and Henry Prakken

Course description:

In order for agents to be able to reason with uncertain information or "rules of thumb", some model of defeasible reasoning is required. The disadvantage of many of today's formalisms for defeasible reasoning is that they have a mathematical nature that is quite remote from how people actually perceive their everyday commonsense reasoning. This makes it quite difficult for people to understand and trust the behavior of an agent system. The argumentation approach is to bridge this gap by coming up with a formalism that is rigid enough to be implemented in an agent system, while at the same time close enough to informal reasoning to be understood by users.

In the current course we discuss the fundamental concepts and structure of argumentation formalisms. We also show how existing approaches to defeasible reasoning (such as default logic) can be seen as instances of argumentation, and how some instances of argumentation can be specified in the form of a dialectical process in which a proponent and an opponent discuss about the validity of a main claim. We also discuss some problems and pitfalls that are associated with today's generation of argumentation formalisms, as well as how to deal with this. In short, the course will give an overview of the things that every agent designer should know before enhancing his agent system with defeasible reasoning capabilities.

Tutor bio:

Martin Caminada has written his Ph.D. (2004, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) on the topic of formal argumentation ("For the Sake of the Argument; explorations into argument-based reasoning"). Since 2004, he has been working as a postdoc on an EU-sponsored research project (ASPIC) on the topic of formal argumentation (www.argumentation.org).

Henry Prakken is senior lecturer in artificial intelligence at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences of Utrecht University and professor of law and ICT at the Faculty of Law, University of Groningen. His main research interests concern artificial Intelligence and law, logical foundations of commonsense reasoning and the application of argumentation in procedures for dispute resolution, group decision making and negotiation. With Gerard Vreeswijk he wrote a chapter on 'Logical systems for defeasible argumentation' in the Handbook of Philosophical Logic (2nd edition). Prakken was the program co-chair of DEON-1998 (the 4th International Workshop on Deontic Logic in Computer Science), Bologna, Italy and the program chair of ICAIL-2001 (the 8th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law), St. Louis, USA. Currently he is vice-president of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law.