A constrained argumentation system for practical reasoning

ABSTRACT

Practical reasoning (PR), which is concerned with the generic question of what to do, is generally seen as a two steps process: (1) deliberation, in which an agent decides what state of affairs it wants to reach -- that is, its desires; and (2) means-ends reasoning, in which the agent looks for plans for achieving these desires. A desire is justified if it holds in the current state of the world, and feasible if there is a plan for achieving it. The agent's intentions are thus a consistent subset of desires that are both justified and feasible. This paper proposes the first argumentation system for PR that computes in one step the intentions of an agent, allowing thus to avoid the drawbacks of the existing systems. The proposed system is grounded on a recent work on constrained argumentation systems, and satisfies the rationality postulates identified in argumentation literature, namely the consistency and the completeness of the results.

REFERENCES

• 1: L. Amgoud. A formal framework for handling conflicting desires. In Proc. of ECSQARU'03, pages 552--563. 2003.
• 2: Leila Amgoud , Claudette Cayrol, Inferring from Inconsistency in Preference-Based Argumentation Frameworks, Journal of Automated Reasoning, v.29 n.2, p.125-169, 2002 [doi>10.1023/A:1021603608656]
• 3: L. Amgoud and S. Kaci. On the generation of bipolar goals in argumentation-based negotiation. In Proc. of ArgMAS. 2004.
• 4: K. Atkinson, T. Bench-Capon, and P. McBurney. Justifying practical reasoning. In Proc. of CMNA'04, 2004.
• 5: M. Caminada and L. Amgoud. An axiomatic account of formal argumentation. In Proc. of AAAI'05, pages 608--613. AAAI Press, 2005.
• 6: C. Cayrol. On the relation between argumentation and non-monotonic coherence-based entailment. In Proceedings of IJCAI'95, pages 1443 -- 1448, 1995.
• 7: C. Cayrol and M.-C. Lagasquie-Schiex. On the acceptability of arguments in bipolar argumentation frameworks. In Proc. of ECSQARU'05 - LNAI 3571, pages 378--389, 2005.
• 8: S. Coste-Marquis, C. Devred, and P. Marquis. Symmetric argumentation frameworks. In Proc. of ECSQARU'05, pages 317--328, 2005.
• 9: S. Coste-Marquis, C. Devred, and P. Marquis. Constrained argumentation frameworks. In Proc. of KR' 06, pages 112--122, 2006.
• 10: Phan Minh Dung, On the acceptability of arguments and its fundamental role in nonmonotonic reasoning, logic programming and n-person games, Artificial Intelligence, v.77 n.2, p.321-357, Sept. 1995 [doi>10.1016/0004-3702(94)00041-X]
• 11: Dana Nau , Malik Ghallab , Paolo Traverso, Automated Planning: Theory & Practice, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2004
• 12: G. Harman. Practical aspects of theoretical reasoning. The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, pages 45--56, 2004.
• 13: J. Hulstijn and L. van der Torre. Combining goal generation and planning in an argumentation framework. In Proc. of BNAIC'03, pages 155--162, 2003.
• 14: Iyad Rahwan , Leila Amgoud, An argumentation based approach for practical reasoning, Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, May 08-12, 2006, Hakodate, Japan [doi>10.1145/1160633.1160696]
• 15: J. Raz. Practical reasoning. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978.
• 16: Stuart J. Russell , Peter Norvig, Artificial intelligence: a modern approach, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1995
• 17: Guillermo R. Simari , Ronald P. Loui, A mathematical treatment of defeasible reasoning and its implementation, Artificial Intelligence, v.53 n.2-3, p.125-157, Feb. 1992 [doi>10.1016/0004-3702(92)90069-A]
• 18: R. H. Thomason. Desires and defaults: A framework for planning with inferred goals. In Proc. of KR'2000.
• 19: Gerard A. W. Vreeswijk, Abstract argumentation systems, Artificial Intelligence, v.90 n.1-2, p.225-279, Feb. 1997 [doi>10.1016/S0004-3702(96)00041-0]
• 20: D. Walton. Argument schemes for presumptive reasoning, volume 29. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.
• 21: M. J. Wooldridge. Reasoning about Rational Agents. MIT Press, 2000.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.3 Deduction and Theorem Proving

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence

General Terms:
Human Factors, Theory

Keywords:
argumentation, practical reasoning