On the Logical Aspects of Argument-Based Negotiation Among Agents

Abstract

The use of agents in Electronic Commerce (EC) environments leads to the necessity to introduce some formal analysis and definitions. Negotiations which take into account a multi-step exchange of arguments provide extra information, at each step, for the intervening agents, enabling them to react accordingly. This argument-based negotiation among agents has much to gain from the use of logical mechanisms. Although the use of logic to express arguments in Law is well known, EC poses new challenges. Concepts such as round and probable conflict are important in the formalization of negotiation arguments. The ideas of conflict/attack and victory/defeat are some of the most important to be formalized.

Incomplete information is common in EC scenarios therefore, arguments must take into account the presence of statements with an unknown valuation.

The set of rules that is to express the knowledge of an agent needs priorization; i.e., some rules have a higher priority than others. Priorities are usually set by the relative ordering of clauses, however, through knowledge classification and the introduction of embedded priority rules, an higher flexibility is reached.