Semantical Considerations on Dialectical and Practical Commitments

This paper studies commitments in multiagent systems. A dialectical commitment corresponds to an agent taking a position about a putative fact, including for the sake of argument. A practical commitment corresponds to an agent being obliged to another to bring about a condition. Although commitments have been used in many works, an adequate formal semantics and axiomatization for them does not yet exist. This paper presents a logic of commitments that illustrates the commonalities and differences of the two kinds of commitments. In this manner, it generalizes the developments of previous papers, precisely delineates the meanings of commitments, and identifies important postulates used informally or semiformally in previous work. This paper considers "social" commitments as introduced in (Singh 1991): by one agent to another, not of an agent to itself. Commitments help formalize a variety of interactive, loosely contractual, settings especially including argumentation and bus...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: AAAI
• Authors: Munindar P. Singh
• Keywords: AAAI 2008, Commitment Corresponds, Commitments, Intelligent Agents, Paper Studies Commitments