Choosing the Lens: Strategic Perspective Activation in Context-Dependent Argumentation
This work addresses the problem of strategic manipulation of argument evaluation for an agent with influence over the external regime, providing a new formal framework for this scenario.
This paper introduces Context-Dependent Argumentation Frameworks (CDAFs) to model how an agent can strategically influence the evaluation of arguments by choosing the external regime or context. It demonstrates that an agent's target argument, rejected under full-relevance injective priorities, can be accepted under partial activations, including some that cannot be mirrored by a standard VAF audience.
The same arguments often need to be evaluated under different external regimes. An agent with influence over the regime has a strategic lever that standard formalisms do not directly capture. We introduce context-dependent argumentation frameworks (CDAFs), an extension of Dung's theory in which a defeat function determines, per context, which attacks succeed. A perspective-labeled specialisation derives the defeat function from a relevance set $ρ$ and a priority $π$. The relevance set is the agent's action space. In a small worked example, the agent's target argument is rejected under every full-relevance injective priority, yet accepted under partial activations, one of which no VAF audience can mirror. We define the corresponding decision problem, ACTIVATION-MANIPULATION, and record baseline complexity bounds. Tight bounds and multi-agent variants are left open.