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Background

Argumentation has evolved from its original study primarily by philosophers to emerge in the last ten years as an important sub-discipline of Artificial Intelligence. Among the significant contributions resulting have been approaches to modelling and analysis of defeasible reasoning, formal bases for negotiation and dialogue processes in multiagent systems, and the use of argumentation theory in A.I. applications whose nature is not best described through traditional logics, e.g. legal reasoning, evaluation of conflicting beliefs, etc. The process of interpreting and and exploiting classical treatments of Argumentation Theory in effective computational terms has led to a rich interchange of ideas among researchers from diverse disciplines such as Philosophy, Linguistics, A.I. and Economics.

Argumentation related workshops are now well-established events at the major Artificial Intelligence related Conferences, e.g. the workshop series on Computational Models of Natural Argument held in conjunction with IJCAI and ECAI, and the series of ArgMAS workshops held in conjunction with AAMAS.

While work over the past five years has done much to consolidate diverse contributions to the field, many new concerns have been identified and form the basis of current research. Among such concerns are: approaches to coping with intractability issues; representation of argument structures in multiagent system settings; developing robust treatments of dynamically evolving argumentation frameworks; semantics for capturing concepts such as "persuasiveness", "credibility" and "impact" of arguments; computational bases for distinguishing classes of ``acceptable'' arguments, etc.

This special issue of Artificial Intelligence Journal on the theme of Argumentation in A.I., is intended to present the current state-of-the-art in argumentation to a general audience, thus increasing awareness of the possibilities that argumentation offers among specialists in areas of A.I. which have not yet considered this as a way of addressing their problems. Equally it will present opportunities for those not currently involved with argumentation to consider new perspectives from which to tackle problems. In sum, the special issue aims both to spread the dissemination of argumentation ideas, and to widen the boundaries of the argumentation community.