A computer program capable of acting intelligently in the world must have a general representation of the world in terms of which its inputs are interpreted. Designing such a program requires commitments about what knowledge

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In this paper we discuss and formalise collective aspects of obligations and commitments. Collective obligations are analysed and formalised in a deontic logic framework. The notions of individual and collective commitment are defined to specify which individual has the responsibility to fulfill an `internal' obligation as part of the collective obligation. In DAI theories of organisations ([6]), it is emphasized that `commitment' is a crucial notion to analyse a collective activity or the structure of an organisation. In this paper we gave a first attempt to formalise the notion of commitment to determine which plan has to be followed to achieve a joint goal, i.e. the fulfillment of a collective obligation. keywords: deontic logic, commitment, social agents, DAI-theory 1

ii This thesis investigates verbal and prepositional representations of change under a non-localistic analysis based on the mereology of events, i.e., a system of aspect that uses event parts as primitives in lieu of path parts. Localistic analyses, developed from motional concepts (e.g., Verkuyl 1993, Asher & Sablayrolles 1994), do not extend to non-motional data (e.g., changes of state or possession) except via metaphor, thereby bypassing essential generalizations about change. It is argued that, instead of modeling change after the tripartite source-route-goal divisions of a spatial path, the various combinations of two eventive primitives-distinguished point and distinguished process- are sufficient and necessary in accounting for abstract and concrete data, including the four aspectual verb classes of states, activities, achievements and accomplishments (Vendler 1967). The medial lexical specification, route, is shown to be unnecessary, being an epiphenomenon of two distinguished points interacting, or inferable through pragmatic considerations.

this paper to establish those who should be granted civilian (i.e., protected) status. Rather, I wish to call attention to the need for a practical ontology pertaining to the distinction. Second, The term combatant denotes those who are distinguished from terrorists, thugs, and murderers. This too is a problematic distinction, which lacks a sufficient ontological foundation

Multi-Agent Systems are computational systems in which a collection of autonomous agents interact to achieve a certain task, for example to full an obligation directed to the whole group, i.e., a collective obligation. Since, such a collective obligation is beyond the capacity of an individual agent, the agents has to communicate, cooperate, coordinate and negotiate with each other, to achieve the collective task: the fullment of the obligation. In this paper we discuss and formalise collective aspects of obligations and commitments. Collective obligations are analysed and formalised in a deontic logic framework. The notions of individual and collective commitment are dened to specify which individual has the responsibility to fulll an `internal' obligation as part of the collective obligation. In DAI theories of organisations ([5]), it is emphasized that `commitment' is a crucial notion to analyse a collective activity or the structure of an organisation. In this paper we gave a rst attempt to formalise the notion of commitment to determine which plan has to be followed to achieve a joint goal, i.e. the fulllment of a collective obligation by using several concepts as commitment, delegation and authority-relation.

In this paper we address the problem of collective norms, and discuss two action logics for that purpose. The rst action logic is based on the action modality E i , where expressions of the form E i p are read as `agent i brings about (sees to it) that p'. This operator relates an agent with the eects of his action, and abstracts away details of the speci c actions. We will show that this abstraction often leads to an unacceptable level of ambiguity. Therefore we have developed another action logic, which is an extension and a variant of dynamic logic. The extension consists of groups of agents to express collective actions for representing collective norms.

Abstract. The sentences of deontic logic may be understood as describing what an agent ought to do when faced with a given set of norms. If these norms come into conflict, the best the agent can be expected to do is to follow a maximal subset of the norms. Intuitively, a priority ordering of the norms can be helpful in determining the relevant sets and resolve conflicts, but a formal resolution mechanism has been difficult to provide. In particular, reasoning about prioritized conditional imperatives is overshadowed by problems such as the ‘order puzzle ’ that are not satisfactorily resolved by existing approaches. The paper provides a new proposal as to how these problems may be overcome.

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The social context of any human comprises a set of groups that affect his/her behaviour or he/she has an interest in. The social position of humans is specified by the positions they occupy in one or more groups inside their social context, where each position corresponds to a specific role. The management of the social context of humans has become quite important due to its increasing complexity and dynamics. The aim of this paper is to present a prototype system towards empowering humans to deliberatively form and manage their social context and position via personal agents that act as their representatives. Personal agents represent humans and form their “digital analogue” within organizations. The whole approach is based on a role-based model concerning consistency and reliability of role-playing within a social context.