On the Epistemic Foundations of Agent Theories

We argue that none of the existing epistemic logics can adequately serve the needs of agent theories. We suggest a new concept of knowledge which generalizes both implicit and explicit knowledge and argue that this is the notion we need to formalize agents in Distributed Artificial Intelligence. A logic of the new concept is developed which is formally and practically adequate in the following sense: first, it does not suffer from any kind of logical omniscience. Second, it can account for the intuition that agents \emph{are} rational, though not hyper-rational. Third, it is expressive enough. The advantages of the new logic over other formalisms is demonstrated by showing that none of the existing systems can fulfill all these requirements simultaneously.

@InProceedings{Duc97ATAL,
  author = 	 {H. N. Duc},
  title = 	 {On the Epistemic Foundations of Agent Theories},
  booktitle = 	 {Intelligent {A}gents {IV}. {P}roceedings of {ATAL-97}},
  OPTcrossref =  {},
  OPTkey = 	 {},
  OPTeditor = 	 {},
  OPTvolume = 	 {},
  OPTnumber = 	 {},
  OPTseries = 	 {Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence},
  year =	 {1997},
  OPTorganization = {},
  publisher =	 {Springer Verlag},
  OPTaddress = 	 {},
  OPTmonth = 	 {},
  OPTpages = 	 {},
  OPTnote = 	 {},
  OPTannote = 	 {}
}

Ho Ngoc Duc <duc@informatik.uni-leipzig.de>

Last modified: Mon Jun 9 11:36:53 MEZ 1997