A structured argumentation framework for detaching conditional obligations
This addresses a foundational issue in deontic logic and AI ethics for researchers in formal argumentation, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing argumentation-theoretical approaches.
The paper tackles the problem of determining when unconditional obligations can be derived from conditional ones in formal argumentation, presenting a general framework that uses Dung-style semantics to evaluate arguments for and against detachment.
We present a general formal argumentation system for dealing with the detachment of conditional obligations. Given a set of facts, constraints, and conditional obligations, we answer the question whether an unconditional obligation is detachable by considering reasons for and against its detachment. For the evaluation of arguments in favor of detaching obligations we use a Dung-style argumentation-theoretical semantics. We illustrate the modularity of the general framework by considering some extensions, and we compare the framework to some related approaches from the literature.