An argumentation framework for merging conflicting knowledge bases

Abstract

The problem of merging multiple sources of information is central in many information processing areas such as databases integrating problems, multiple criteria decision making, etc. Recently several approaches have been proposed to merge classical propositional bases. These approaches are in general semantically defined. They use priorities, generally based on Dalal's distance for merging classical conflicting bases and return a new classical base as a result. In this paper, we present an argumentation framework for solving conflicts which could be applied to conflicts arising between agents in a multi-agent system. We suppose that each agent is represented by a consistent knowledge base and that the different agents are conflicting. We show that by selecting an appropriate preference relation between arguments, that framework can be used for merging conflicting bases and recovers the results of the different approaches proposed for merging bases [8], [12], [14], [13], [16], [17]. © 2002 Springer-Verlag.