UCL Discovery

Abstract

A key goal for a scientist is to find evidence to argue for or against universal statements (in effect first-order formulae) about the world. Building logic-based tools to support this activity could be potentially very useful for scientists to analyse new scientific findings using experimental results and established scientific knowledge. In effect, these logical tools would help scientists to present arguments and counterarguments for tentative scientific knowledge, and to share and discuss these with other scientists. To address this, in this paper, we explain how tentative and established scientific knowledge can be represented in logic, we show how first-order argumentation can be used for analysing scientific knowledge, and we extend our framework for evaluating the degree of conflict arising in scientific knowledge. We also discuss the applicability of recent developments in optimizing the impact and believability of arguments for the intended audience.