Abduction in argumentation frameworks and its use in debate games

Abstract

This paper studies an abduction problem in formal argumentation frameworks. Given an argument, an agent verifies whether the argument is justified or not in its argumentation framework. If the argument is not justified, the agent seeks conditions to explain the argument in its argumentation framework. We formulate such abductive reasoning in argumentation semantics and provide its computation in logic programming. Next we apply abduction in argumentation frameworks to reasoning by players in debate games. In debate games, two players have their own argumentation frameworks and each player builds claims to refute the opponent. A player may provide false or inaccurate arguments as a tactic to win the game. We show that abduction is used not only for seeking counter-claims but also for building dishonest claims in debate games.