Backing and undercutting in defeasible logic programming

Abstract

Two important notions within the field of classical argumentation are undercutting defeaters and backings. The former represent an attack to an inference step, and the latter intend to provide defense against this type of attack. Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP) is a concrete argumentation system that allows to identify arguments whose conclusions or intermediate conclusions are in contradiction, capturing the notion of rebutting defeater. Nevertheless, in DeLP is not possible to represent neither undercutting defeaters nor backings. The aim of this work is to extend the formalism of DeLP to allow attack and support for defeasible rules. Thus, it will be possible to build arguments for representing undercutting defeaters and backings. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.