On Strategic Argument Selection in Structured Argumentation Systems

This paper deals with strategical issues of arguing agents in a multi-agent setting. We investigate different scenarios of such argumentation games that differ in the protocol used for argumentation, i. e. direct, synchronous, and dialectical argumentation protocols, the awareness that agents have on other agents beliefs, and different settings for the preferences of agents. We give a thorough investigation and classification of these scenarios employing structured argumentation frameworks which are an extension to Dung’s abstract argumentation frameworks that give a simple inner structure to arguments. We also provide some game theoretical results that characterize a specific argumentation game as strategy-proof and develop some argumentation selection strategies that turn out to be the dominant strategies for other specific argumentation games.