Admissibility in Strength-based Argumentation: Complexity and Algorithms (Extended Version with Proofs)

TL;DR

This paper advances the study of strength-based argumentation frameworks by proposing new admissibility semantics, analyzing their computational complexity, and developing efficient algorithms with experimental validation.

Contribution

It introduces an alternative admissibility-based semantics for StrAFs, analyzes their properties, and provides scalable algorithms for computing extensions.

Findings

Complexity of reasoning is similar to standard frameworks.

Proposed translation in pseudo-Boolean constraints is effective.

Algorithms scale well for extension enumeration.

Abstract

Recently, Strength-based Argumentation Frameworks (StrAFs) have been proposed to model situations where some quantitative strength is associated with arguments. In this setting, the notion of accrual corresponds to sets of arguments that collectively attack an argument. Some semantics have already been defined, which are sensitive to the existence of accruals that collectively defeat their target, while their individual elements cannot. However, until now, only the surface of this framework and semantics have been studied. Indeed, the existing literature focuses on the adaptation of the stable semantics to StrAFs. In this paper, we push forward the study and investigate the adaptation of admissibility-based semantics. Especially, we show that the strong admissibility defined in the literature does not satisfy a desirable property, namely Dung's fundamental lemma. We therefore propose an alternative definition that induces semantics that behave as expected. We then study computational issues for these new semantics, in particular we show that complexity of reasoning is similar to the complexity of the corresponding decision problems for standard argumentation frameworks in almost all cases. We then propose a translation in pseudo-Boolean constraints for computing (strong and weak) extensions. We conclude with an experimental evaluation of our approach which shows in particular that it scales up well for solving the problem of providing one extension as well as enumerating them all.