Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have been introduced as a formalism for modeling and evaluating argumentation, allowing for general logical acceptance conditions of arguments. Different criteria used to settle the acceptance of arguments are called semantics. Two-valued semantics of ADFs reflect the ‘black-and-white’ character of classical logic in non-monotonic frameworks. Stable semantics of ADFs were introduced to exclude cycles of self-justification of arguments among two-valued models. The stable semantics faces the challenge of potential non-existence of stable models. However, one might still want to draw conclusions even in case that an ADF has no two-valued models or stable models. Recently, the notions of semi-two-valued semantics and semi-stable semantics were introduced for ADFs. In the current work, we study the computational complexity of these two novel semantics. We show that the complexity of the semi-stable semantics is in general one level up in the polynomial hierarchy, compared to the stable semantics. We study the prominent reasoning tasks of credulous and skeptical reasoning, as well as the verification problem.

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have been introduced as a formalism for modeling and evaluating argumentation allowing general logical satisfaction conditions. Different criteria used to settle the acceptance of arguments are called semantics. Semantics of ADFs have so far mainly been defined based on the concept of admissibility. Recently, the notion of strong admissibility has been introduced for ADFs. In the current work we study the computational complexity of the following reasoning tasks under strong admissibility semantics. We address 1. the credulous/skeptical decision problem; 2. the verification problem; 3. the strong justification problem; and 4. the problem of finding a smallest witness of strong justification of a queried argument.

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have been introduced as a formalism for modeling and evaluating argumentation allowing general logical satisfaction conditions. Different criteria that have been used to settle the acceptance of arguments are called semantics. However, the notion of semi-stable semantics as studied for abstract argumentation frameworks has received little attention for ADFs. In the current work, we present the concepts of semi-two-valued models and semi-stable models for ADFs. We show that these two notions satisfy a set of plausible properties required for semi-stable semantics of ADFs. Moreover, we show that semi-two-valued and semi-stable semantics of ADFs form a proper generalization of the semi-stable semantics of AFs, just like two-valued model and stable semantics for ADFs are generalizations of stable semantics for AFs.

Generalizing the attack structure in argumentation frameworks (AFs) has been studied in different ways. Most prominently, the binary attack relation of Dung frameworks has been extended to the notion of collective attacks. The resulting formalism is often termed SETAFs. Another approach is provided via abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs), where acceptance conditions specify the relation between arguments; restricting these conditions naturally allows for so-called support-free ADFs. The aim of the paper is to shed light on the relation between these two different approaches. To this end, we investigate and compare the expressiveness of SETAFs and support-free ADFs under the lens of 3-valued semantics. Our results show that it is only the presence of unsatisfiable acceptance conditions in support-free ADFs that discriminate the two approaches.

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have been introduced as formalism for the modeling and evaluating argumentation. However, the role of discussion in evaluating of arguments in ADFs has not been clarified well so far. We focus on the grounded semantics of ADFs and provide the grounded discussion game. We show that an argument is acceptable (deniable) in the grounded interpretation of an ADF without any redundant links if and only if the proponent of a claim has a winning strategy in the grounded discussion game.

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) are generalizations of Dung argumentation frameworks where arbitrary relationships among arguments can be formalized. This additional expressibility comes with the price of higher computational complexity, thus an understanding of potentially easier subclasses is essential. Compared to Dung argumentation frameworks, where several subclasses such as acyclic and symmetric frameworks are well understood, there has been no indepth analysis for ADFs in such direction yet (with the notable exception of bipolar ADFs). In this work, we introduce certain subclasses of ADFs and investigate their properties. In particular, we show that for acyclic ADFs, the different semantics coincide. On the other hand, we show that the concept of symmetry is less powerful for ADFs and further restrictions are required to achieve results that are similar to the known ones for Dung's frameworks. We also provide experiments to analyse the performance of solvers when applied to particular subclasses of ADFs.