A taxonomy of argumentation models used for knowledge representation

• Published in: The Artificial intelligence review Vol. 33; no. 3; pp. 211 - 259
• Main Authors: Bentahar, Jamal, Moulin, Bernard, Bélanger, Micheline
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.03.2010; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Case studies; Computer Science; Decision making; Intelligence; Knowledge acquisition; Knowledge representation; Logic programming; Philosophy; R&D; Reasoning; Research & development; Software engineering; Taxonomy; Courses of action; Argumentation models; Argumentation theory; Knowledge representation
• ISSN: 0269-2821; 1573-7462
• DOI: 10.1007/s10462-010-9154-1

Understanding argumentation and its role in human reasoning has been a continuous subject of investigation for scholars from the ancient Greek philosophers to current researchers in philosophy, logic and artificial intelligence. In recent years, argumentation models have been used in different areas such as knowledge representation, explanation, proof elaboration, commonsense reasoning, logic programming, legal reasoning, decision making, and negotiation. However, these models address quite specific needs and there is need for a conceptual framework that would organize and compare existing argumentation-based models and methods. Such a framework would be very useful especially for researchers and practitioners who want to select appropriate argumentation models or techniques to be incorporated in new software systems with argumentation capabilities. In this paper, we propose such a conceptual framework, based on taxonomy of the most important argumentation models, approaches and systems found in the literature. This framework highlights the similarities and differences between these argumentation models. As an illustration of the practical use of this framework, we present a case study which shows how we used this framework to select and enrich an argumentation model in a knowledge acquisition project which aimed at representing argumentative knowledge contained in texts critiquing military courses of action.