Argumentation Semantics for Defeasible Logic Guido Governatori School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia email:
[email protected] Micheal J. Maher Department of Computer Science, Loyola University Chicago, 6525 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60626 USA email:
[email protected] Grigoris Antoniou Department of Computer Science, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, Heraklion, Crete, GR-71409, Greece, email:
[email protected] David Billington School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia, email:
[email protected] Abstract Defeasible reasoning is a simple but efficient rule-based approach to nonmonotonic reasoning. It has powerful implementations and shows promise to be applied in the areas of legal reasoning and the modeling of business rules. This paper establishes significant links between defeasible reasoning and argumentation. In particular, Dung-like argumentation semantics is provided for two key defeasible logics, of which one is ambiguity propagating and the other ambiguity blocking. There are several reasons for the significance of this work: (a) establishing links between formal systems leads to a better understanding and cross-fertilization, in particular our work sheds light on the argumentation-theoretic features of defeasible logic; (b) we provide the first ambiguity blocking Dung- like argumentation system; (c) defeasible reasoning may provide an efficient implementation platform for systems of argumentation; and (d) argumentation-based semantics support a deeper understanding of defeasible reasoning, especially in the context of the intended applications. Journal of Logic and Computation, 14 (5): 675–702. c Oxford University Press, 2004 The original publication is available at doi: 10.1093/logcom/14.5.675.