On the Semantics of Abstract Argumentation Frameworks: A Logic Programming Approach

Recently there has been an increasing interest in frameworks extending Dung's abstract Argumentation Framework (AF). Popular extensions include bipolar AFs and AFs with recursive attacks and necessary supports. Although the relationships between AF semantics and Partial Stable Models (PSMs) of logic programs has been deeply investigated, this is not the case for more general frameworks extending AF. In this paper we explore the relationships between AF-based frameworks and PSMs. We show that every AF-based framework Delta can be translated into a logic programP(Delta)so that the extensions prescribed by different semantics of Delta coincide with subsets of the PSMs ofP(Delta). We provide a logic programming approach that characterizes, in an elegant and uniform way, the semantics of several AF-based frameworks. This result allows also to define the semantics for new AF-based frameworks, such as AFs with recursive attacks and recursive deductive supports.