Normative Practical Reasoning: An Argumentation-Based Approach

Abstract

Autonomous agents operating in a dynamic environment must be able to reason and make decisions about actions in pursuit of their goals. In addition, in a normative environment an agent's actions are not only directed by the agent's goals, but also by the norms imposed on the agent. Practical reasoning is reasoning about what to do in a given situation, particularly in the presence of conflicts between the agent's practical attitude such as goals, plans and norms. In this thesis we aim: (i) to introduce a model for normative practical reasoning that allows the agents to plan for multiple and potentially conflicting goals and norms at the same time (ii) to implement the model both formally and computationally, (iii) to identify the best plan for the agent to execute by means of argumentation framework and grounded semantics, (iv) to justify the best plan via argumentation-based persuasion dialogue for grounded semantics.