On Construction and Evaluation of Analogical Arguments for Persuasive Reasoning

Abstract

Analogical reasoning is a complex process based on a comparison between two pairs of concepts or states of affairs (aka. the source and the target) for characterizing certain features from one to another. Arguments which employ this process to support their claims are called analogical arguments. Our goals are to study the structure and the computation for their defeasibility in light of the argumentation theory. Our proposed assumption-based argumentation with predicate similarity ABA(p) framework can be seen as an extension of assumption-based argumentation framework (ABA), in which not only assumptions can be used but also similarity of predicates is used to support a claim. ABA (p) labels each argument tree with an analogical degree and different ways to aggregate numerical values are studied toward gullible/skeptical characteristics in agent reasoning. The acceptability of analogical arguments is evaluated w.r.t. the semantics of abstract argumentation. Finally, we demonstrate that ABA (p) captures the argumentation scheme for argument from analogy and provides an explanation when it is used for persuasion.

Keywords

• analogical reasoning
• metaphorical reasoning
• description logic
• assumption-based argumentation
• persuasive reasoning