Hybrid Semantics Accounting for Argument Types

Abstract

Assessing the strength of arguments is essential for determining the outcomes of any argument-based system. A wide range of semantics has been proposed in the literature. These take as input a set of arguments—each assigned a basic weight and potentially subject to attacks from others—and compute a single strength value for each argument. Despite the diversity of argument types (or schemes), existing semantics apply uniform evaluation criteria across all arguments. In this paper, we advocate for type-dependent evaluations, acknowledging that the impact of attacks can vary across types. Given that many argument-based systems involve heterogeneous types of arguments, we propose a broad family of hybrid semantics that combine distinct base semantics, each tailored to specific argument types. We investigate their theoretical properties, present concrete instances within this family, and examine their computational complexity.