A Formal Argumentation Framework for Deliberation Dialogues

Agents engage in deliberation dialogues to collectively decide on a course of action. To solve conflicts of opinion that arise, they can question claims and supply arguments. Existing models fail to capture the interplay between the provided arguments as well as successively selecting a winner from the proposals. This paper introduces a general framework for agent deliberation dialogues that uses an explicit reply structure to produce coherent dialogues, guides in outcome selection and provide pointers for agent strategies. Category: I.2.11 [Artificial Intelligence] Distributed Artificial Intelligence-- Languages and structures, multi-agent systems. General Terms: Design, Languages.

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