Background

Previously, in ASPIC... Query: outcome(patient1, X).

Example: diagnosis.pro. Available from http://www.argumentation.org.

ASPIC inference engine comments

The ASPIC inference engine was a useful proof of concept and demonstration tool. But...

• The argument generation and the status evaluation were very tightly coupled
• Had a closed source distribution model.
• A great deal of work went into the argument generation, which was needed in order to be able to use the engine, but this wasnt the most interesting element of the engine.

Dungine

Dungine is a generic Dung Reasoner designed to be able to consume any source of arguments. It distils the lessons from the ASPIC inference engine to produce a Dung reasoner that's:

• lightweight
• easy to use
• intended for developers
• independent of argument source

The current version implements a Grounded Sceptical and Preferred Credulous Reasoner and implementes a simple argument source. Dung reasoning is implemented using argument game proofs that allow a justification to be shown for each argument's evaluation.

Dungine - lightweight

The key classes and interfaces are shown in this diagram.

Dungine - demo

A simple string argument source is implemented for test and demonstration purposes. A default GUI is provided called the ScratchPad which allows you to experiment with the engine.

Dungine - tests

A series of reviewed examples are used as tests. A basic GUI is provided to allow those tests to be reviewed.

Dungine - Araucaria integration

Here's a demonstration of how it can be used for a non ASPIC argument source.

Conclusions

This is relatively recent work but the project has achieved it's immediate goals and, so far, it's shown itself to be very easy to integrate with other argumentation based software. Anticipated future work includes:

• Further integrations
• Extensions
  • Additional semantics
  • AIF
  • Defeasible Knowledge Base (DKB)
  • Decision

Dungine is released on an open source license (LGPL) and hosted on sourceforge: http://argkit.org.