Knowing how to play: uniform choices in logics of agency

Reasoning about capabilities, strategies and knowledge is important in the analysis of multiagent systems. Alternating-time Temporal Epistemic Logic (ATEL) was designed with this aim. Nevertheless, the original interpretation of the language suffered from some counterintuitive properties. These are due to the fact that the strategies the agent applies in worlds that he cannot distinguish may not be uniform, in the sense that the same action is applied in all indistinguishable worlds. Several refinements of the original ATEL semantics were proposed since then. In this paper we argue that the STIT framework can easily account for uniform strategies. STIT is a logic of agency that has been proposed in the 90ies in the domain of philosophy of action. It is the logic of constructions of the form "agent a sees to it that φ". To support our claim, we first present a straightforward solution in STIT logic augmented by a modal operator of knowledge. Then we offer a simplification, by introducing a modal logic of knowledge-based uniform agency, for one-step strategies, alias choices.

[1]  Andreas Herzig,et al.  From Coalition Logic to STIT , 2006, LCMAS.

[2]  Andreas Herzig,et al.  A STIT-Extension of ATL , 2006, JELIA.

[3]  Andreas Herzig,et al.  Embedding Alternating-time Temporal Logic in Strategic STIT Logic of Agency , 2006, J. Log. Comput..

[4]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Tractable multiagent planning for epistemic goals , 2002, AAMAS '02.

[5]  W. Jamroga.  Some Remarks on Alternating Temporal Epistemic Logic , 2003 .

[6]  J. Horty.  Agency and Deontic Logic , 2001 .

[7]  Marc Pauly,et al.  Logic for social software , 2000 .

[8]  Wojciech Jamroga,et al.  Agents that Know How to Play , 2004, Fundam. Informaticae.

[9]  Geert Jonker,et al.  On Epistemic Temporal Strategic Logic , 2005, LCMAS.

[10]  Rohit Parikh,et al.  The Logic of Knowledge Based Obligation , 2006, Synthese.

[11]  Wojciech Jamroga,et al.  Comparing Semantics of Logics for Multi-Agent Systems , 2004, Synthese.

[12]  Thomas A. Henzinger,et al.  Alternating-time temporal logic , 1997, Proceedings 38th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.

[13]  N. Belnap,et al.  Facing the Future: Agents and Choices in Our Indeterminist World , 2001 .

[14]  Wojciech Jamroga,et al.  What agents can achieve under incomplete information , 2006, AAMAS '06.

[15]  Nuel Belnap,et al.  The deliberative stit: A study of action, omission, ability, and obligation , 1995, J. Philos. Log..

[16]  Pierre-Yves Schobbens,et al.  Alternating-time logic with imperfect recall , 2004, LCMAS.

[17]  Lennart Åqvist.  The logic of historical necessity as founded on two-dimensional modal tense logic , 1999, J. Philos. Log..