Argumentation-Based Semantics for Logic Programs with First-Order Formulae

This paper studies different semantics of logic programs with first order formulae under the lens of argumentation framework. It defines the notion of an argumentation-based answer set and the notion of an argumentation-based well-founded model for programs with first order formulae. The main ideas underlying the new approach lie in the notion of a proof tree supporting a conclusion given a program and the observation that proof trees can be naturally employed as arguments in an argumentation framework whose stable extensions capture the program’s well-justified answer semantics recently introduced in [23]. The paper shows that the proposed approach to dealing with programs with first order formulae can be easily extended to a generalized class of logic programs, called programs with FOL-representable atoms, that covers various types of extensions of logic programming proposed in the literature such as weight constraint atoms, aggregates, and abstract constraint atoms. For example, it shows that argumentation-based well-founded model is equivalent to the well-founded model in [27] for programs with abstract constraint atoms. Finally, the paper relates the proposed approach to others and discusses possible extensions.