Explaining Argumentation over Alignment Agreements

Argumentation frameworks have been used as tools for reconciliating ontology alignments, through a series of proposals and counter-proposals, i.e., arguments. However, argumentation outcomes may not be so obvious to human users. Explaining the reasoning behind the argumentation process may help users to understand its outcome, and influence the user´s confidence and acceptance on the results. This paper presents a mechanism for providing explanations on the way agreed alignments are established. Our mechanism is based on tracing each step of the argumentation process. These traces are then interpreted using a set of association rules, built from a decision tree that represents all possible statuses of arguments. From these rules, a multi-level explanation, in natural language, is provided to the users.