Practical reasoning using values: an argumentative approach based on a hierarchy of values (Q2294587)

This paper develops a formalism that combines actions, values and argumentation to model policy-making agents. It focuses on the description of a value-based agent specification and on the mechanisms that integrate defeasible argumentation into the agent reasoning process. In the proposed approach, agents look for achieving a state of the world by a plan of actions starting from a given specific situation. It discusses how the agent can represent its values and uses this representation to decide among the possible action plans. An argumentation-based development is employed to analyze how actions lead to transactions from one state to another. The agent's knowledge is represented by a defeasible logic programming. Neither the values nor the preferences according are not measured but only ordered. A framework is set with the agent values initially ordered in a hierarchy and rules to compare the action plans explore such ordering.