Balanced Semantics for Argumentation based on Heider's Socio-Psychological Balance Theory

Argumentation, whether philosophical or formal and mathematical, is a discipline of interdisciplinary nature, per se. The recent works on the computational argumentation formalism and their foundations, however, have rested only on logic or logical account. In this paper, we reconsider Dung’s seminal argument acceptability notion in the context of Heider’s socio-psychological balance theory, where there can be 4 balanced (stable) interaction rules of the form of a triad: (1) the friend of my friend is my friend, (2) the friend of my enemy is my enemy, (3) the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and (4) the enemy of my friend is my enemy. The third one may be a counterpart of Dung’s argument acceptability. We propose an innovative argumentation semantics named balanced semantics, taking into account all of the four balanced triads. It naturally leads to an argumentation framework with both attack and support incorporated from the start.