Mechanism design for abstract argumentation

Since their introduction by Dung over a decade ago, abstract argumentation frameworks have received increasing interest in artificial intelligence as a convenient model for reasoning about general characteristics of argument. Such a framework consists of a set of arguments and a binary defeat relation among them. Various semantic and computational approaches have been developed to characterise the acceptability of individual arguments in a given argumentation framework. However, little work exists on understanding the strategic aspects of abstract argumentation among self-interested agents. In this paper, we introduce (game-theoretic) argumentation mechanism design (ArgMD), which enables the design and analysis of argumentation mechanisms for self-interested agents. We define the notion of a direct-revelation argumentation mechanism, in which agents must decide which arguments to reveal simultaneously. We then design a particular direct argumentation mechanism and prove that it is strategy proof under specific conditions; that is, the strategy profile in which each agent reveals its arguments truthfully is a dominant strategy equilibrium.