Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems

The theory of argumentation is a rich, interdisciplinary area of research lying across philosophy, communication studies, linguistics, and psychology (at least). Its techniques and results have found a wide range of applications in both t- oretical and practical branches of arti?cial intelligence and computer science. Several theories of argumentation with various semantics have been proposed in the literature. Multi-agent systems theory has picked up argument-inspired approaches and speci?cally argumentation-theoretic results from many di?erent areas. The community of researchers in argumentation and multi-agent systems is currently presented with a unique opportunity to integrate the various und- standings of argument into a coherent and core part of the functioning of - tonomouscomputationalsystems.Thebene?tsrangefromextendedsemanticsof arguments construed as relationships between epistemic atoms, through conv- sation protocols for argumentation with serendipitous information exchange, to models of dialectical practical reasoning, both intra- and inter-agent (and a m- ture of the two). In all these cases argumentation is used to structure knowledge representation, reasoning and agent interaction, and o?ers a potential means of better integrating these disparate problems.