Tech Reports

ULCS-04-002

Syntax and Semantics of the Fatio Argumentation Protocol

Peter McBurney and Simon Parsons

Abstract

Recent work in the design of agent interaction protocols as focused on applications involving dialectical argumentation - the giving and receiving of reasons for statements. Yet no widely-accepted standard set of illocutions exist for such argument. Drawing on both speech act theory and the theory of communicative action, we first present a novel typology of speech acts for agent communications. We use this as the basis for proposing an interaction protocol, the Fatio protocol, comprising five loctions we consider necessary for argumentation. In this report, we present both an axiomatic and an operational semantics for this protocol.

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