Reasoning with Normative Systems

The cognitive attitudes and operations involved in dealing with large normative systems are significantly different from those involved in complying with isolated social norms. While isolated norms may be directly applied by the agents endorsing them, this does not happen with regard to large normative systems. In the latter case, the agent must first inquire what the system requires from him (or what it allows him to do), namely, what is obligatory or permitted with regard to the normative system, and thus what would be required for complying with it, under different circumstances. I shall propose an argumentation-based approach for enabling an agent to process such requests, as resulting from a normative system and the existing factual circumstances.