Abstract
This paper studies the application of argumentation theory and methods from Artificial Intelligence to the problem of conflict resolution. It shows how the decision theories of each of the parties involved in a conflict can be captured and formalized within a framework of preference-based argumentation. In particular, it studies how the SoDA methodology and its support tool, Gorgias-B for developing argumentation software, facilitate the elucidation of each party’s preferences over their available options for addressing the conflict, and, through this, the construction of appropriate argumentation theories corresponding to the decision theories of the parties involved. These argumentation theories are generated automatically and can be executed directly to find out the position of each party at any particular stage of the negotiation process. This connection between argumentation and conflict resolution is illustrated through a real-life example of conflict resolution between the US and China after a plane collision.
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Notes
- 1.
SPEM is a standard for defining software processes, http://www.omg.org/spec/SPEM/2.0/.
- 2.
For simplicity we will assume that the background theory is monotonic, i.e. contains strict information that is not defeasible. Otherwise, the same process needs to be followed for the defeasible belief predicates in analogy with the process for the option predicates that we are describing here.
- 3.
Note that the condition \(goal(saving\_face)\) does not appear in this fragment of the China theory as this condition only plays a role in the default preference of the all the options over the first option of \(accept(regret\_yihan)\) which we are not considered in this fragment.
- 4.
Gorgias-B is a Java application with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that is freely downloadable from its web-site and can execute in a computer with the minimum requirements of a Windows OS, SWI-Prolog version 7.0 or later, and Java version 1.7 or later. Download it from http://gorgiasb.tuc.gr.
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Spanoudakis, N.I., Kakas, A.C., Moraitis, P. (2017). Conflicts Resolution with the SoDA Methodology. In: Aydoğan, R., Baarslag, T., Gerding, E., Jonker, C., Julian, V., Sanchez-Anguix, V. (eds) Conflict Resolution in Decision Making. COREDEMA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10238. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57285-7_6
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