Within many domains, among which biological, cognitive, and social areas, multiple interacting processes occur among agents with dynamics that are hard to handle. This paper presents the predicate logical Temporal Trace Language (TTL) for the formal specification and analysis of dynamic properties of agents and multi-agent systems. This language supports the specification of both qualitative and quantitative aspects, and therefore subsumes specification languages based on differential equations and qualitative, logical approaches. A software environment has been developed for TTL, which supports editing TTL properties and enables the formal verification of properties against a set of traces. The TTL environment proved its value in a number of projects within different biological, cognitive and social domains.

This paper addresses the dynamics of mental states in relation to the dynamics of the interaction with the external world. It contributes a formalised temporal-interactivist approach to these dynamics based on temporal traces for semantics and a temporal trace language to provide an expressive means to formulate dynamic properties. The approach provides both a foundation for the dynamical and interactivist perspective on cognitive phenomena, and a supporting software environment for practical application.

this paper the internal dynamics of mental states, in particular states based on beliefs, desires and intentions, is formalised using a temporal language. A software environment is presented that can be used to specify, simulate and analyse temporal dependencies between mental states in relation to traces of them. If also relevant data on internal physical states over time are available, these can be analysed with respect to their relation to mental states as well

In this paper a modelling approach to the dynamics within a multiagent organisation is presented. A declarative, executable temporal modelling language for organisation dynamics is proposed as a basis for simulation. Moreover,

Please consult the published version for purposes of quotation.

In this paper a temporal trace language is defined in which formulae can be expressed that provide an external temporal grounding of intentional notions. Justifying conditions are presented that formalise criteria that a (candidate) formula must satisfy in order to qualify as an external representation of a belief, desire or intention. Using these conditions, external represenation formulae for intentional notions can be identified. Using these external representations, anticipatory reasoning about intentional dynamics can be performed. 1

One of the problems encountered in Philosophy of Mind is that cognitive theories have a nontrivial dependence on the context of specific neurological makeups or mechanisms of individuals and species. Due to this context-dependency, for example, regularities or relationships between cognitive states are not considered genuine laws and cannot be directly related to neurological laws. The classical approaches to reduction such as bridge law reduction, functional reduction and interpretation mappings do not explicitly address this context-dependency. In this paper it is shown how these reduction approaches can be refined to incorporate the context-dependency. It is shown how the context-dependent reduction approaches obtained make explicit in which sense laws or regularities in a cognitive theory on the one hand relate to neurological laws and on the other hand to specific makeups.

In this paper a temporal trace language is defined in which statements can be expressed that provide an external temporal grounding of intentional notions. Justifying conditions are presented that formalise criteria that a (candidate) statement must satisfy in order to qualify as an external representation of a belief, desire or intention. Using these conditions, external representation statements for intentional notions can be identified.

Relations between mental and physical aspects of an agent can be of various types. Sensing and acting are among the more commonly modelled types. In agent modelling approaches often this is the only interaction between the physical and mental; other possible types of interactions are abstracted away. If it is also taken into account that the agent's mind has a materialisation in the form of a brain, the relations between mind and matter may become more complex. An explanation of a dynamic pattern may involve mental aspects, physical aspects, and interactions between mental and physical aspects. An explanatory perspective sometimes advocated for such more complex phenomena is explanatory pluralism. According to this perspective an explanation can consist of parts of a different signature, for example, a partial physical explanation, and a partial mentalistic explanation. Each of these partial explanations is insufficient to explain the whole phenomenon, but together they do explain the whole, if some interaction is assumed. How for such explanations the different types of interaction between mind and matter of an agent and the material world can be modelled in a conceptually and semantically sound manner, and how the overall explanation is composed from the parts, using these interactions, is the main topic of this paper. The generic model presented can be used to model, explain and simulate a variety of phenomena in which multiple mind-matter interactions occur, including, for example, sensing and acting, (planned) birth and death, bacterial behaviour, getting brain damage, psychosomatic diseases, and applications of direct brain-computer interfaces.

This document presents the results of a collaboration between the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Artificial Intelligence and Force Vision to investigate coordination approaches for complex software systems. The project was funded by Force Vision. More in particular, the following people participated: Force Vision: Rob Duell, Andy van der Mee, and Bas Vermeulen.