Towards a Pragmatic Theory of Interactions

First International Conference on Multiagent Systems

Volume

First International Conference on Multiagent Systems

Contents

This article provides a specification of the reason-lug processes that guide communicative actions of agents towards a potential cooperation. For this purpose we develop a formal theory with an internal perspective, which enables us to identify the key data structures and specify the relationships between them. The reasoning processes are described in terms of beliefs, desires and intentions of individual agents. The logical model of these attitudes are used to formally define a number of important states including agent to agent commitments. The reasoning processes are in essence the transitions through these states, specified by a set d rules as part of our specification language. As a result of these processes, an agent may adopt goals to communicate. These goals are fed back into the reasoning process to find appropriate communication plans that fulfill them. Our approach is pragmatic since it enables a direct coup]lug of the theoretical concepts to an implementable model.