In a multi-agent environment, where self-motivated agents try to pursue their own goals, cooperation cannot be taken for granted. Cooperation must be planned for and achieved through communication and negotiation. We present a logical model of the mental states of the agents based on a representation of their beliefs, desires, intentions, and goals. We present argumentation as an iterative process emerging from exchanges among agents to persuade each other and bring about a change in intentions. We look at argumentation as a mechanism for achieving cooperation and agreements. Using categories identified from human multi-agent negotiation, we demonstrate how the logic can be used to specify argument formulation and evaluation. We also illustrate how the developed logic can be used to describe different types of agents. Furthermore, we present a general Automated Negotiation Agent which we implemented, based on the logical model. Using this system, a user can analyze and explore differe...

In this paper, we address the issue of how Gelfond and Lifschitz's answer set semantics for extended logic programs can be suitably modified to handle prioritized programs. In such programs an ordering on the program rules is used to express preferences. We show how this ordering can be used to define preferred answer sets and thus to increase the set of consequences of a program. We define a strong and a weak notion of preferred answer sets. The first takes preferences more seriously, while the second guarantees the existence of a preferred answer set for programs possessing at least one answer set. Adding priorities

This paper presents a formal account of how to determine the discourse relations between sentences in a text, and the relations between the events they describe. The distinct natural interpretations of texts with similar syntax are explained in terms of defeasible rules. These characterise the effects of causal knowledge and knowledge of language use on interpretation. Patterns of defeasible entailment that are supported by the logic in which the theory is expressed are shown to underly temporal interpretation. 1 The Problem of Temporal Relations An essential part of text interpretation involves calculating the relations between the events described. But sentential syntax and compositional semantics alone don't provide the basis for doing this. The sentences in (1) and (2) have the same syntax, and so using compositional semantics one would predict that the events stand in similar temporal relations. (1) Max stood up. John greeted him. (2) Max fell. John pushed him. But in (1...

The paper describes an extension of well-founded semantics for logic programs with two types of negation. In this extension information about preferences between rules can be expressed in the logical language and derived dynamically. This is achieved by using a reserved predicate symbol and a naming technique. Conflicts among rules are resolved whenever possible on the basis of derived preference information. The well-founded conclusions of prioritized logic programs can be computed in polynomial time. A legal reasoning example illustrates the usefulness of the approach. 1. Introduction: Why Dynamic Preferences are Needed Preferences among defaults play a crucial role in nonmonotonic reasoning. One source of preferences that has been studied intensively is specificity (Poole, 1985; Touretzky, 1986; Touretzky, Thomason, & Horty, 1991). In case of a conflict between defaults we tend to prefer the more specific one since this default provides more reliable information. E.g., if we know t...

Research on nonmonotonic and default reasoning has identified several important criteria for preferring alternative default inferences. The theories of reasoning based on each of these criteria may uniformly be viewed as theories of rational inference, in which the reasoner selects maximally preferred states of belief. Though researchers have noted some cases of apparent conflict between the preferences supported by different theories, it has been hoped that these special theories of reasoning may be combined into a universal logic of nonmonotonic reasoning. We show that the different categories of preferences conflict more than has been realized, and adapt formal results from social choice theory to prove that every universal theory of default reasoning will violate at least one reasonable principle of rational reasoning. Our results can be interpreted as demonstrating that, within the preferential framework, we cannot expect much improvement on the rigid lexicographic priority mechanisms that have been proposed for conflict resolution.

THE aim of this thesis is to investigate logical formalisms for describing, reasoning about, specifying, and perhaps ultimately verifying the properties of systems composed of multiple intelligent computational agents. There are two obvious resources available for this task. The first is the (largely AI) tradition of reasoning about the intentional notions (belief, desire, etc.). The second is the (mainstream computer science) tradition of temporal logics for reasoning about reactive systems. Unfortunately, neither resource is ideally suited to the task: most intentional logics have little to say on the subject of agent architecture, and tend to assume that agents are perfect reasoners, whereas models of concurrent systems from mainstream computer science typically deal with the execution of individual program instructions. This thesis proposes a solution which draws upon both resources. It defines a model of agents and multi-agent systems, and then defines two execution models, which ...

We propose a new approach to the use of circumscription for representing knowledge. Nested abnormality theories are similar to simple abnormality theories introduced by McCarthy, except that their axioms may have a nested structure, with each level corresponding to another application of the circumscription operator. The new style of applying circumscription sometimes leads to more economical and elegant formalizations. Mathematical properties of nested abnormality theories may be easier to investigate. These advantages are demonstrated by recasting several familiar applications of circumscription in the new format, including some examples of inheritance hierarchies, the domain closure assumption and causal minimization. Nested abnormality theories provide also a convenient representation for the explanation closure approach to the frame problem developed by Schubert.

INTRODUCTION In nonmonotonic reasoning conflicts among defaults are ubiquitous. For instance, more specific rules may be in conflict with more general ones, a problem which has been studied intensively in the context of inheritance networks (Poole,1985; Touretzky, 1986; Touretzky et al., 1991). When defaults are used for representing design goals in configuration tasks conflicts naturally arise. The same is true in model based diagnosis where defaults are used to represent the assumption that components typically are ok. In legal reasoning conflicts among rules are very common (Prakken, 1993) and keep many lawyers busy (and rich). The standard nonmontonicformalisms handle such conflicts by generating multiple belief sets. In default logic (Reiter, 1980) and autoepistemic logic (Moore, 1985) these sets are called extensions or expansions, respectively. In circumscription (McCarthy, 1980) the belief sets correspond to different classes of preferred models. Usually, not all of the beli

We introduce a methodology and framework for expressing general preference information in logic programming under the answer set semantics. An ordered logic program is an extended logic program in which rules are named by unique terms, and in which preferences among rules are given by a set of atoms of the form s t where s and t are names. An ordered logic program is transformed into a second, regular, extended logic program wherein the preferences are respected, in that the answer sets obtained in the transformed program correspond with the preferred answer sets of the original program. Our approach allows the specification of dynamic orderings, in which preferences can appear arbitrarily within a program. Static orderings (in which preferences are external to a logic program) are a trivial restriction of the general dynamic case. First, we develop a specific approach to reasoning with preferences, wherein the preference ordering specifies the order in which rules are to be applied. We then demonstrate the wide range of applicability of our framework by showing how other approaches, among them that of Brewka and Eiter, can be captured within our framework. Since the result of each of these transformations is an extended logic program, Affiliated with the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.

In this tutorial-overview, which resulted from a lecture course given by the authors at