Logic, arguments and inconsistencies: an introduction to the festschrift in honour of Philippe Besnard

In this special issue of the Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, we aim to celebrate the recent retirement of Philippe Besnard as directeur de recherche in the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Philippe has made many important contributions to the use of logic in artificial intelligence, in particular non-monotonic reasoning, argumentation and inconsistency-tolerant reasoning. In order to honour these achievements, this special issue brings together leading researchers in the field with contributions that touch on the questions and interests of Philippe over the past 40 years. The special issue contains 15 scientific contributions from 37 authors, among them Philippe’s colleagues, former students and friends. In this introduction, we group these contributions into four themes that reflect the main areas of Philippe’s research activity over the past four decades.