Solving power and trust conflicts through argumentation in agent-mediated knowledge distribution

Distributing pieces of knowledge in large, usually distributed organizations is a central problem in Knowledge and Organization management. Policies for distributing knowledge and information are mostly incomplete or in potential conflict with each other. As a consequence, decision processes for information distribution may be difficult to formalize on the basis of a rationally justified procedure. This article presents an argumentative approach to cope with this problem based on integrating the JITIK multiagent system with Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP), a logic programming formalism for defeasible argumentation. We show how power relations, as well as delegation and trust, can be embedded within our framework in terms of DeLP, in such a way that a dialectical argumentation process works as a decision core. Conflicts among policies are solved on the basis of a dialectical analysis whose outcome determines to which specific users different pieces of knowledge are to be delivered....

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: KES
• Authors: Carlos Iván Chesñevar, Ramón F. Brena, José-Luis Aguirre
• Keywords: Defeasible Argumentation, Defeasible Logic Programming, Dialectical Argumentation Process, Information Technology, KES 2006