This paper discusses argumentation in inference and decision-making from the perspective of requirements for argumentation services in medicine. A body of work centred on applications of argumentation in biomedicine, such as risk assessment and treatment planning, has led to a comprehensive view of argumentation as a form of evidential reasoning. This in turn has stimulated the development of a general formalisation of argumentation for reasoning and decision-making, which has been used as the foundation for a number of tools for modelling and supporting medical decision-making and workflow management. Over a similar period ideas of “adversarial” argumentation and non-monotonic logic have become established, notably Dung’s seminal calculus of opposition. The diverse approaches to argumentation led to the EU-funded ASPIC project which aims to develop a theoretical consensus on argumentation and to translate this consensus into practical standards and tools. The second part of the paper presents some results of the ASPIC project focusing particularly on inference and decision-making.
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