Collapse in Formal Argumentation Systems

Over the last decennia, many systems for formal argumentation have been defined. The problem, however, is that these systems do not always satisfy reasonable properties. In this paper, we focus on the particular property that a conflict between two arguments cannot keep other unrelated arguments from becoming justified. Although this property appears obvious, it is in fact violated by several existing argumentation formalisms. In this paper we examine what exactly goes wrong and how things can be improved.