Using Situation Descriptions and Russellian Attitudes for Representing Beliefs and Wants

A representation scheme for arbitrary beliefs and wants of an agent in respect to a situation, as well as to arbitrary beliefs and wants of other agents, is presented. The representation makes use of elementary situation descriptions (which are formulated in KL-ONE and delimitated by partitions), and acceptance attitudes in respect to these descriptions, or to attitudes thereabout. The scheme forms the representational base of VIE-DPM, the user modelling component of the German-language dialogue system VIE-LANG.