language: en

Reasoning about Other Agents: Philosophy, Theory, and Implementation.

Piotr J. Gmytrasiewicz and Edmund H. Durfee
Department of Computer Science Hebrew University,
Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
piotr@cs.huji.ac.il, durfee@engin.umich.edu

Abstract Drawing on on our work in the area of Distributed Artificial Intelligence, we propose the rudiments of a view of multiagent reasoning that relates current philosophical intuitions, theoretical foundations, and preliminary implementation. The philosophical position we take is a combination of Daniel Dennett's philosophy of the ladder of per-sonhood (consisting of rationality, intentionality, stance, reciprocity, communication, and consciousness) on one hand, and the utilitarian philosophy of selfish utility maximization on the other hand. The theories we incorporate are logics of knowledge and belief, which in addressing the multiagent issues can be developed based on a recursive version of the Kripke structure, and the related fields of utility, decision and game theories. Our preliminary implementation, the Recursive Modeling Method (RMM), lets an agent coordinate its actions with the actions of other agents, cooperate with them when appropriate, and rationally choose an optimal form of communication with them.

1 Introduction