Using Collaborations for Distributed Argumentation with Defeasible Logic Programming

MATTHIAS THIMM; ALEJANDRO J. GARCÍA; GABRIELE KERN-ISBERNER; GUILLERMO R. SIMARI

Sydney, Australia

Workshop; Twelfth International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR 2008); 2008

In this paper, we extend previous work on distributedargumentation using Defeasible Logic Programming.There, several agents form a multi agent setting, inwhich they are able to generate arguments for a givenquery and counterarguments to the arguments of otheragents. The framework is monitored by a moderator,which coordinates the argumentation process and canbe seen as a judge overlooking the defender and accuserin a legal case. We extend this framework by allowingthe agents to form alliances. We introduce a notion ofcooperation for agents called collaborations, which allowthe agents not only to argue with one another, butto share their beliefs in order to jointly generate new arguments.We give a declarative definition as well as analgorithmic characterization of the argument generationprocess and relate our framework with general DefeasibleLogic Programming.