Collective Argumentation: The Case of Aggregating Support-Relations of Bipolar Argumentation Frameworks

In many real-life situations that involve exchanges of arguments, individuals may differ on their assessment of which supports between the arguments are in fact justified, i.e., they put forward different support-relations. When confronted with such situations, we may wish to aggregate individuals’ argumentation views on support-relations into a collective view, which is acceptable to the group. In this paper, we assume that under bipolar argumentation frameworks, individuals are equipped with a set of arguments and a set of attacks between arguments, but with possibly different supportrelations. Using the methodology in social choice theory, we analyze what semantic properties of bipolar argumentation frameworks can be preserved by aggregation rules during the aggregation of support-relations.