Resolutions in Structured Argumentation

Recently resolution of attacks has been studied in the context of abstract argumentation frameworks. In this paper it is claimed that resolutions should be studied under the assumption that they are generated through the acquisition of preference information, and that this implies that the existing study of resolutions has limited applicability. A formalisation of preference-based resolutions is defined in the context of the ASPIC+framework for structured argumentation, and several properties of resolutions are proven or disproven. It is also argued that when resolutions are modelled without specifying the structure of arguments, then it is easy to overlook that assumptions made at the abstract level do not hold for all reasonable instantiations of the abstract framework, thus reducing its significance.