Argumentation Theory and Decision Aiding

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the existent and potential contribution of argumentation theory to decision aiding, more specifically to multi-criteria decision aiding. On the one hand, decision aiding provides a general framework that can be adapted to different contexts of decision making and a formal theory about preferences. On the other hand, argumentation theory is a growing field of Artificial Intelligence, which is interested in non-monotonic logics. It is the process of collecting arguments in order to justify and explain conclusions. The chapter is decomposed into three successive frames, starting from general considerations regarding decision theory and Artificial Intelligence, moving on to the specific contribution of argumentation to decision-support systems, to finally focus on multi-criteria decision aiding.