Argumentative Approaches to Reasoning with Maximal Consistency

Reasoning with the maximally consistent subsets (MCS) of the premises is awell-known approach for handling contradictory information. We introduce two argumentation-based methods for doing so: a declarative approach that is related to Dung-style semantics for abstract argumentation, and a computational approach that is based on extensions of Gentzen-type proofs systems. This brings about a new perspective on reasoning with MCS which shows a strong link between the latter and argumentation systems, and which can be extended to related formalisms. A by-product of this is the introduction of a dynamic proof system for classical logic and rebuttal attacks, which is sound and complete with respect to Dung's stable semantics for the associated argumentation framework.