Argumentation and Trust

In this chapter we discuss the ways in which trust can be combined with argumentation. This is a new field of research that is showing promising approaches to a number of problems in both argumentation and trust. We discuss three ways in which trust and argumentation are combined. The first is to use the trustworthiness of an agent as a level of confidence in the arguments it provides. Parsons et al. take this a step further and consider the ramifications for this in the combination of arguments from different sources. The second way that trust and argumentation are combined is to compute the trustworthiness of an agent based on arguments about its behavior and we discuss two different approaches to this. Finally, argumentation can be used to improve communication about trust. Methods for doing this are discussed at the end of this chapter.