Using n-ary multi-modal logics in argumentation frameworks to reason about ethics

Abstract

Autonomous behaviors may raise ethical issues that agents must consider in their reasoning. Some approaches use deontic logics, while others consider a value-based argumentation framework. However, no work combines both modal logic and argumentation to reason about ethics. Hence, we propose a new argumentation framework where arguments are built from a n-ary multi-modal logic. It allows to express different kinds of operators, e.g. nullary choice or moral worth operators, dyadic deontic operators or mental states. However the standard attacks based on logical contradictions are no longer sufficient to catch an intuitive meaning for attacks. Hence, we enrich standard attacks by characterizing how oppositions between modal operators arise. Furthermore we show the standard logic-based attacks have a quasi-symmetry property, i.e. when an argument attacks another, this argument is necessarily attacked by another one. Our modal attacks do not have this property, which is highly relevant to decide a dilemma.