Argument, I Choose You! Preferences and Ranking Semantics in Abstract Argumentation

Preference-based argumentation and ranking semantics are two important research topics in the computational argumentation literature. Surprisingly, no study investigates to what extent preferences over arguments and ranking semantics can interact. This paper fills the gap between the relative priorities that one can express and the evaluation of arguments individual acceptability. More precisely, we propose a natural principle that should be satisfied by a ranking semantics for Preference-based Argumentation Frameworks. We show that although existing semantics do not satisfy this desirable principle, they can be used to define new ranking semantics that exhibit the expected behavior. Finally, we discuss an application of these semantics to the modeling of human reasoning.