Discussion Graph Semantics of First-Order Logic with Equality for Reasoning about Discussion and Argumentation

Abstract: We formulate discussion graph semantics of first-order logic with equality for reasoning about discussion and argumentation as naturally as we would reason about sentences. While there are a few existing proposals to use a formal logic for reasoning about argumentation, they are constructed bottom-up and specialised to the argumentation model by Dung. There is indeed a conspicuous lack of a formal reasoning framework for handling general discussion and argumentation models. We achieve the generality through a top-down formulation of the semantics of first-order logic (with equality) formulas, addressing the current shortage.