An analysis of critical-link semantics with variable degrees of justification

Abstract

This paper is to critically examines Pollock’s critical-link semantics with variable degrees of justification. Some possibly counterintuitive consequences of Pollock’s definition of degrees of justification are identified and a modified definition is proposed which avoids these consequences. Then the new solution is applied to the case of so-called presumptive defeat. A second contribution of the paper is to show how the modified semantics can be applied to the ASPIC+ framework: first the ASPIC+ framework is modified to allow for variable degrees of justification and then the modified way to compute these degrees is applied in a new notion of an argument graph