An executable specification of an argumentation protocol

Abstract

Open multi-agent computational systems are composed of heterogeneous and possibly antagonistic software entities. Characteristic features are limited trust and unpredictable behaviour. Members of such systems may fail to, or even choose not to, conform to the norms governing their interactions. It has been argued that systems of this type should have a formal, declarative, verifiable, and meaningful semantics. We present a theoretical and computational framework being developed for the executable specification of such systems. We adopt an external perspective and view open computational systems as instances of normative systems. In this paper we demonstrate how the framework can be applied to specifying and executing an argumentation protocol based on Brewka's reconstruction of Rescher's theory of formal disputation. The specification is formalised in the action language C+ and executed using the 'Causal Calculator' (CCALC) implementation.