EXPLAINER is an Inria international associated team established with Anthony Hunter (University College London). It studies implicit arguments and neuro-symbolic reasoning.

Following the tragic loss of Anthony Hunter, Antonio Rago (King’s College London) has taken over as UK co-PI. Victor David coordinates the Inria side.

In memory of Tony Hunter

Tony was not only an exceptional researcher, but also a dear friend and a mentor to me. His kindness, generosity and intellectual curiosity made him a truly remarkable person. He inspired so many people throughout the argumentation community, and his influence will continue to live on through the people he supported and the ideas he shared. I will always be grateful for everything I learned from him and for the friendship we shared.

Scientific objectives

Human communication frequently leaves premises or conclusions unstated. These implicit components, or enthymemes, raise challenges for understanding and evaluating arguments. EXPLAINER develops logical representations, argument graphs and neuro-symbolic methods to reconstruct and assess them.

  • Identify and represent implicit components of natural-language arguments.
  • Decode and compare multiple plausible interpretations.
  • Evaluate reconstruction quality and its consequences for argumentative relations.
  • Develop interpretable approaches combining logic and language models.

Team and activities

Coordination: Victor David (Inria) and Antonio Rago (King’s College London). Founded in collaboration with Anthony Hunter (UCL). Contributors include Serena Villata, Elena Cabrio, Pierre Monnin, Ameer Saadat-Yazdi, Elfia Bezou Vrakatseli and Nino Pireaud.

  • April 2025 — official validation of the EXPLAINER associated team.
  • 2025 — Nino Pireaud’s M2 internship and Anthony Hunter’s research visit.
  • 2026 — Nino Pireaud’s research engineering work and the arrival of postdoctoral researchers Ameer Saadat-Yazdi and Elfia Bezou Vrakatseli.
  • 2026–2029 — Nino Pireaud’s PhD on persuasion.

Scientific contributions

Research papers related to the team’s themes. Article titles are kept in their original language.

2026

  • Learnable Multi-Attribute Gradual Semantics for Predicting Persuasion in Argumentative Debates — Nino Pireaud, Victor David, Anthony Hunter, Pierre Monnin, Elena Cabrio. KR 2026 – KR meets Machine Learning and Explanation. PDF.
  • Elucidating Arguments Maps in Propositional Logic: Addressing Enthymemes and their Relationships — Jonathan Ben-Naim, Victor David, Anthony Hunter. KR 2026 – Main Track. PDF.
  • Do Argumentation Schemes Help? An Assessment of Their Role in Formalising Natural Language Arguments — Ameer Saadat-Yazdi, Victor David, Anthony Hunter, Serena Villata. COMMA 2026. PDF.
  • How Can Similarity Be Explained? Modeling Multiple Points of View with Inverse simFOL — Nino Pireaud, Victor David, Pierre Monnin, Elena Cabrio, Serena Villata, Anthony Hunter. COMMA 2026. PDF.

2025

  • A Logic-based Framework for Decoding Enthymemes in Argument Maps Involving Implicitness in Premises and Claims — Victor David, Anthony Hunter. IJCAI 2025. PDF.
  • An Axiomatic Study of a Modular Evaluation of Enthymeme Decoding in Weighted Structured Argumentation — Jonathan Ben-Naim, Victor David, Anthony Hunter. KR 2025. PDF.