Contrastive Explanations for Argumentation-Based Conclusions

Abstract

In this paper we discuss contrastive explanations for formal argumentation - the question why a certain argument (the fact) can be accepted, whilst another argument (the foil) cannot be accepted under various extension-based semantics. The recent work on explanations for argumentation-based conclusions has mostly focused on providing minimal explanations for the (non-)acceptance of arguments. What is still lacking, however, is a proper argumentation-based interpretation of contrastive explanations. We show under which conditions contrastive explanations in abstract and structured argumentation are meaningful, and how argumentation allows us to make implicit foils explicit.

arXiv commentForthcoming as an extended abstract in the Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2022)