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Formalising Collaborative Decision Making and Practical Reasoning in Multi-Agent Systems

Formalising Collaborative Decision Making and Practical Reasoning in Multi-Agent Systems
Formalising Collaborative Decision Making and Practical Reasoning in Multi-Agent Systems
In this paper, we present an abstract formal model of decision-making in a social setting that covers all aspects of the process, from recognition of a potential for cooperation through to joint decision. In a multi-agent environment, where self-motivated autonomous agents try to persue their own goals, a joint decision cannot be taken for granted. In order to decide effectively, agents need the ability to (a) represent and maintain a model of their own mental attitudes, (b) reason about other agents' mental states. Social mental shaping is advocated as a general mechanism for attempting to have an impact on agents' mental states in order to increase their cooperativeness towards a joint decision. Our approach is to specify a novel, high-level architecture for collaborative decision-making in which the mentalistic notions of belief, desire, goal, intention, preference and commitment play a central role in guiding the individual agent's and the group's decision-making behaviour. We identify preconditions that must be fulfilled before collaborative decision-making can commence and prescribe how cooperating agents should behave, in terms of their own decision-making apparatus and their interactions with others, when the decision-making process is progressing satisfactorily. The model is formalized through a new, many-sorted, multi-modal logic.
55-117
Panzarasa, P.
944f5943-da9b-4a9a-bb7b-b5391e3fb405
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Norman, Timothy
663e522f-807c-4569-9201-dc141c8eb50d
Panzarasa, P.
944f5943-da9b-4a9a-bb7b-b5391e3fb405
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Norman, Timothy
663e522f-807c-4569-9201-dc141c8eb50d

Panzarasa, P., Jennings, N. R. and Norman, Timothy (2002) Formalising Collaborative Decision Making and Practical Reasoning in Multi-Agent Systems. Journal of Logic and Computation, 12 (1), 55-117.

Record type: Article

Abstract

In this paper, we present an abstract formal model of decision-making in a social setting that covers all aspects of the process, from recognition of a potential for cooperation through to joint decision. In a multi-agent environment, where self-motivated autonomous agents try to persue their own goals, a joint decision cannot be taken for granted. In order to decide effectively, agents need the ability to (a) represent and maintain a model of their own mental attitudes, (b) reason about other agents' mental states. Social mental shaping is advocated as a general mechanism for attempting to have an impact on agents' mental states in order to increase their cooperativeness towards a joint decision. Our approach is to specify a novel, high-level architecture for collaborative decision-making in which the mentalistic notions of belief, desire, goal, intention, preference and commitment play a central role in guiding the individual agent's and the group's decision-making behaviour. We identify preconditions that must be fulfilled before collaborative decision-making can commence and prescribe how cooperating agents should behave, in terms of their own decision-making apparatus and their interactions with others, when the decision-making process is progressing satisfactorily. The model is formalized through a new, many-sorted, multi-modal logic.

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Published date: 2002
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 253745
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/253745
PURE UUID: 4c418c48-9926-42a2-838a-96638a463d2b
ORCID for Timothy Norman: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6387-4034

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Date deposited: 01 Nov 2002
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:53

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Contributors

Author: P. Panzarasa
Author: N. R. Jennings
Author: Timothy Norman ORCID iD

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