La théorie de l'argumentation abstraite de Dung est un formalisme permettant d'utiliser un système d'argumentation afin de représenter des informations conflictuelles. Des sémantiques à base d'extensions ont d'abord été introduites dans le but de déterminer quels arguments peuvent être conjointement acceptés. Cependant, ces sémantiques ne sont pas appropriées pour certaines applications, c'est pourquoi des sémantiques à base de classement, permettant de classer les arguments du plus acceptable au moins acceptable, ont été introduites. Le but de cette thèse est donc de proposer et d'étudier ces sémantiques à base de classement dans le contexte de l'argumentation abstraite.Nous définissons d'abord une nouvelle famille de sémantiques à base de classement basées sur un principe de propagation permettant de contrôler l'influence des arguments non-attaqués sur l'acceptabilité des arguments. Nous étudions les propriétés de ces sémantiques, les relations entre elles ainsi qu'avec d'autres sémantiques existantes.Nous proposons ensuite deux méthodes pour comparer les sémantiques à base de classement. La première est une comparaison empirique sur des systèmes d'argumentation générés aléatoirement donnant un aperçu des similitudes et des différences entre ces sémantiques. La seconde est une comparaison axiomatique de toutes ces sémantiques à la lumière des propriétés proposées visant à mieux comprendre le comportement de chaque sémantique.Enfin, nous remettons en question la capacité des sémantiques existantes à capturer certains principes de persuasion et introduisons une nouvelle sémantique paramétrée à base de classement plus appropriée pour ce contexte précis. / Dung’s theory of abstract argumentation is a formalism that represents conflicting information using an argumentation framework. Extension-based semantics have been introduced to determine, given an argumentation framework, the justifiable points of view on the acceptability of the arguments. However, these semantics are not appropriate for some applications. So alternative semantics, called ranking-based semantics, have recently been evolved. Such semantics produces, for a given argumentation framework, a ranking on its arguments from the most acceptable to the least one(s). The overall aim of this thesis is to propose and study ranking-based semantics in the context of abstract argumentation. We first define a new family of ranking-based semantics based on a propagation principle which allow us to control the influence of non-attacked arguments on the acceptability of arguments. We investigate the properties of these semantics, the relationships between them but also with other existing semantics. Then, we provide a thorough analysis of ranking-based semantics in two different ways. The first one is an empirical comparison on randomly generated argumentation frameworks which reveals insights into similarities and differences between ranking-based semantics. The second one is an axiomatic comparison of all these semantics with respect to the proposed properties aiming to better understand the behavior of each semantics. At last, we question the ability of the existing ranking-based semantics to capture persuasion settings and introduce a new parametrized ranking-based semantics which is more appropriate in this context.

Purchasing products from online e-stores is getting popular with the advance of Internet infrastructure and network security. At current stage, most e-stores resemble vending machines rather than real stores because they lack clerks to persuade prospects into buying products and to bargain with the customers for making a good deal. This research aims to design an easy-to-use and autonomous sales-agent, called Isa, to act as a virtual clerk in an e-store. A new approach is proposed to enable the agent to dynamically adopt different persuasion and negotiation strategies according to different characteristics of human buyers. Additionally, this approach enables a sales-agent to learn the best strategies without seller¡¦s instructions. Both laboratory and field experiments are conducted to assess Isa¡¦s performance. The experimental results reveal that Isa can improve a seller¡¦s surplus and increase a buyer¡¦s product evaluation, willingness to pay more money for the product, and satisfaction with visiting the s-store.

The study of nonmonotonic logics is one mayor field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The reason why such kind of formalisms are so attractive to model human reasoning is that they allow to withdraw former conclusion. At the end of the 1980s the novel idea of using argumentation to model nonmonotonic reasoning emerged in AI. Nowadays argumentation theory is a vibrant research area in AI, covering aspects of knowledge representation, multi-agent systems, and also philosophical questions. Phan Minh Dung’s abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs) play a dominant role in the field of argumentation. In AFs arguments and attacks between them are treated as primitives, i.e. the internal structure of arguments is not considered. The major focus is on resolving conflicts. To this end a variety of semantics have been defined, each of them specifying acceptable sets of arguments, so-called extensions, in a particular way. Although, Dung-style AFs are among the simplest argumentation systems one can think of, this approach is still powerful. It can be seen as a general theory capturing several nonmonotonic formalisms as well as a tool for solving well-known problems as the stable-marriage problem. This thesis is mainly concerned with the investigation of metalogical properties of Dung’s abstract theory. In particular, we provide cardinality, monotonicity and splitting results as well as characterization theorems for equivalence notions. The established results have theoretical and practical gains. On the one hand, they yield deeper theoretical insights into how this nonmonotonic theory works, and on the other the obtained results can be used to refine existing algorithms or even give rise to new computational procedures. A further main part is the study of problems regarding dynamic aspects of abstract argumentation. Most noteworthy we solve the so-called enforcing and the more general minimal change problem for a huge number of semantics.

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have recently been proposed as a versatile generalization of Dung's abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs). In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the computational complexity of ADFs. Our results show that while ADFs are one level up in the polynomial hierarchy compared to AFs, there is a useful subclass of ADFs which is as complex as AFs while arguably offering more modeling capacities. As a technical vehicle, we employ the approximation fixpoint theory of Denecker, Marek and Truszczyński, thus showing that it is also a useful tool for complexity analysis of operator-based semantics.

Cette thèse traite du problème de l'intégration d'une nouvelle information dans un système d'argumentation abstrait. Un tel système est un graphe orienté dont les nœuds représentent les arguments, et les arcs représentent les attaques entre arguments. Il existe divers moyen de décider quels arguments sont acceptés par l'agent qui utilise un tel système pour représenter ses croyances.Il peut arriver dans la vie d'un agent qu'il soit confronté à une information du type "tel argument devrait être accepté", alors que c'est en contradiction avec ses croyances actuelles, représentées par son système d'argumentation.Nous avons étudié dans cette thèse diverses approches pour intégrer une information à un système d'argumentation.Notre première contribution est une adaptation du cadre AGM pour la révision de croyances, habituellement utilisé lorsque les croyances de l'agent sont représentées dans un formalisme logique. Nous avons notamment adapté les postulats de rationalité proposés dans le cadre AGM pour pouvoir caractériser des opérateurs de révision de systèmes d'argumentation, et nous avons proposé différents moyens de générer les systèmes d'argumentation résultant de la révision.Nous avons ensuite proposé d'utiliser la révision AGM comme un outil pour réviser les systèmes d'argumentation. Il s'agit cette fois-ci d'une approche par encodage en logique du système d'argumentation, qui permet d'utiliser les opérateurs de révision usuels pour obtenir le résultat souhaité.Enfin, nous avons étudié le problème du forçage d'un ensemble d'arguments (comment modifier le système pour qu'un ensemble donné soit une extension). Nous avons proposé une nouvelle famille d'opérateurs qui garantissent le succès de l'opération, contrairement aux opérateurs de forçage existants, et nous avons montré qu'une traduction de nos approches en problèmes de satisfaction ou d'optimisation booléenne permet de développer des outils efficaces pour calculer le résultat du forçage. / This thesis tackles the problem of integrating a new piece of information in an abstract argumentation framework. Such a framework is a directed graph such that its nodes represent the arguments, and the directed edges represent the attacks between arguments. There are different ways to decide which arguments are accepted by the agent who uses such a framework to represent her beliefs.An agent may be confronted with a piece of information such that "this argument should be accepted", which is in contradiction with her current beliefs, represented by her argumentation framework.In this thesis, we have studied several approaches to incorporate a piece of information in an argumentation framework.Our first contribution is an adaptation of the AGM framework for belief revision, which has been developed for characterizing the incorporation of a new piece of information when the agent's beliefs are represented in a logical setting. We have adapted the rationality postulates from the AGM framework to characterize the revision operators suited to argumentation frameworks, and we have identified several ways to generate the argumentation frameworks resulting from the revision.We have also shown how to use AGM revision as a tool for revising argumentation frameworks. Our approach uses a logical encoding of the argumentation framework to take advantage of the classical revision operators, for deriving the expected result.At last, we have studied the problem of enforcing a set of arguments (how to change an argumentation framework so that a given set of arguments becomes an extension). We have developed a new family of operators which guarantee the success of the enforcement process, contrary to the existing approaches, and we have shown that a translation of our approaches into satisfaction and optimization problems makes possible to develop efficient tools for computing the result of the enforcement.

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have recently been proposed as a versatile generalization of Dung''s abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs). In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the computational complexity of ADFs. Our results show that while ADFs are one level up in the polynomial hierarchy compared to AFs, there is a useful subclass of ADFs which is as complex as AFs while arguably offering more modeling capacities. As a technical vehicle, we employ the approximation fixpoint theory of Denecker, Marek and Truszczyński, thus showing that it is also a useful tool for complexity analysis of operator-based semantics.

The study of nonmonotonic logics is one mayor field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The reason why such kind of formalisms are so attractive to model human reasoning is that they allow to withdraw former conclusion. At the end of the 1980s the novel idea of using argumentation to model nonmonotonic reasoning emerged in AI. Nowadays argumentation theory is a vibrant research area in AI, covering aspects of knowledge representation, multi-agent systems, and also philosophical questions. Phan Minh Dung’s abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs) play a dominant role in the field of argumentation. In AFs arguments and attacks between them are treated as primitives, i.e. the internal structure of arguments is not considered. The major focus is on resolving conflicts. To this end a variety of semantics have been defined, each of them specifying acceptable sets of arguments, so-called extensions, in a particular way. Although, Dung-style AFs are among the simplest argumentation systems one can think of, this approach is still powerful. It can be seen as a general theory capturing several nonmonotonic formalisms as well as a tool for solving well-known problems as the stable-marriage problem. This thesis is mainly concerned with the investigation of metalogical properties of Dung’s abstract theory. In particular, we provide cardinality, monotonicity and splitting results as well as characterization theorems for equivalence notions. The established results have theoretical and practical gains. On the one hand, they yield deeper theoretical insights into how this nonmonotonic theory works, and on the other the obtained results can be used to refine existing algorithms or even give rise to new computational procedures. A further main part is the study of problems regarding dynamic aspects of abstract argumentation. Most noteworthy we solve the so-called enforcing and the more general minimal change problem for a huge number of semantics.

El trabajo realizado en esta tesis pertenece al área de argumentación en inteligencia artificial. La representación de conocimiento en un formalismo basado en argumentación se realiza a través de la especificación de argumentos, cada uno en favor de una conclusión a partir de ciertas premisas. Dado que estas conclusiones pueden estar en contradicción, se producen ataques entre los argumentos. Luego, la evaluación de toda la información presente podría dar preponderancia a algunos argumentos por sobre aquellos que los contradicen, produciendo un conjunto de conclusiones que se considera ran garantizadas. El objetivo principal de esta tesis es la definición de un nuevo marco argumentativo capaz de manejar dinámica de conocimiento. En este sentido, se da una representación no sólo a los argumentos, sino que también se introduce la noción de evidencia como entidades especiales dentro del sistema. En cada instante, el conjunto de evidencia se corresponde con la situación actual, dándole contexto al marco argumentativo. La plausibilidad de los argumentos en un instante dado depende exclusivamente de la evidencia disponible. Cuando la evidencia es suficiente para dar soporte a un argumento, éste se denominará activo. También se considera la posibilidad de que algunos argumentos se encuentren activos aun sin encontrar soporte directamente desde la evidencia, ya que podrían hacerlo a través de las conclusiones de otros argumentos activos. Estas conexiones entre argumentos dan lugar a lo que en esta tesis se denomina estructura argumental, proveyendo una visión un tanto más compleja que la usual en cuanto a la representación de conocimiento argumentativo. Los resultados obtenidos en esta tesis permitirán estudiar la dinámica de conocimiento en sistemas argumentativos. En la actualidad, ya se han publicado artáculos que presentan un formalismo que combina argumentación y la teoría clásica de revisión de creencias. En esta línea de investigación se denen operadores de cambio que se aplican sobre el marco argumentativo abstracto dinámico y tienen como objetivo alcanzar cierto estado del sistema; por ejemplo, garantizar un argumento determinado. Por otra parte, este marco también permitirá estudiar métodos para acelerar el computo de garantía a partir del proceso de razonamiento realizado en estados anteriores.