TaPP'14 Keynote by Stefan Woltran

An Introduction to Abstract Argumentation

Argumentation is a highly interdisciplinary field with links to psychology, linguistics, philosophy, law theory, and computer science. Formal argumentation studies how to model arguments and their relationships with the ultimate goal of solving conflicts in the presence of diverging opinions.  For the latter task, the concept of abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs) due to Dung has been a key development. AFs treat arguments as abstract entities and are only concerned with the relation between them, thus providing a simple yet powerful framework for reasoning under conflicting information. AFs have proven useful in several application domains including decision support, legal reasoning, coalition formation and many more.

In this talk, we first review the fundamentals of abstract argumentation and reflect the state of the art within the field. Then we focus on some recent developments which take dynamics of argumentation into account and discuss some open research questions. Finally, potential applications of abstract argumentation in other research branches of computer science are highlighted.

Short Bio

Stefan Woltran is an associate professor in the Database and Artificial Intelligence Group at the Vienna University of Technology. His research focuses on problems in the area of knowledge representation and reasoning; in particular, complexity analysis in AI and logic programming. In winter term 2013, he held a position as deputy professor at Leipzig University. In 2013, he received the prestigious START award from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).