On Input/Output Argumentation Frameworks

This paper introduces Input/Output Argumentation Frameworks, a novel approach to characterize the behavior of an argumentation framework as a sort of black box exposing a well-defined external interface. As a starting point, we define the novel notion of semantics decomposability and analyze complete, stable, grounded and preferred semantics in this respect. Then we show as a main result that, under grounded, complete, stable and credulous preferred semantics, Input/Output Argumentation Frameworks with the same behavior can be interchanged without affecting the result of semantics evaluation of other arguments interacting with them.