[2603.00008] Strength Change Explanations in Quantitative Argumentation

Computer Science > Multiagent Systems arXiv:2603.00008 (cs) [Submitted on 26 Jan 2026] Title:Strength Change Explanations in Quantitative Argumentation Authors:Timotheus Kampik, Xiang Yin, Nico Potyka, Francesca Toni View a PDF of the paper titled Strength Change Explanations in Quantitative Argumentation, by Timotheus Kampik and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:In order to make argumentation-based inference contestable, it is crucial to explain what changes can achieve a desired (instead of the contested) inference result. To this end, we introduce strength change explanations for quantitative (bipolar) argumentation graphs. Strength change explanations describe changes to the initial strengths of a subset of the arguments in a given graph that can achieve a desired ordering based on the final strengths of some (potentially different) subset of arguments. We show that the existing notions of inverse and counterfactual problems can be reduced to strength change explanations. We also prove basic soundness and completeness properties of our strength change explanations, and demonstrate their existence and non-existence in some special cases. By applying a heuristic search, we demonstrate that we can often successfully find strength change explanations for layered graphs that are common in typical application scenarios; still, limitations remain for settings where we do not provide guarantees for the presence (or absence) of explanations. Comments: Subjec...