An argumentation-based semantics for agent communication languages

Abstract. In recent years, the importance of defining a stan-dard framework for agent communication language (ACL) has been widely recognized. However, classical proposals (mental-istic semantics and social semantics) fail to meet the objec-tives of verifiability and flexibility required in complex interac-tions involving heterogenous agents possibly designed by dif-ferent programmers. In this paper we propose an ACL which allows heterogenous agents to engage flexibly in the different kinds of dialogues identified by Walton and Krabbe in [14]. To this end, we propose a two-layered semantics which includes a commitment level and a reasoning level based on argumen-tation