Tech Reports

ULCS-08-016

Representing Abductive Practical Reasoning as an Action-Based Alternating Transition System

Floris Bex, Katie Atkinson and Trevor Bench-Capon


Abstract

In this report we present an approach to abductive reasoning by examining it in the context of an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. We present a particular scheme, based on one for practical reasoning, that can be used to reason abductively about how an agent might have acted to find itself in a particular scenario, and its motivations for doing so. We provide a formal representation of the scheme, and its associated critical questions, in terms of Action-based Alternating Transition Systems to allow for the automatic generation of arguments.

[Full Paper]