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Mark Jago
Introduction
Hintikkas logic of knowledge and belief [8] has become a standard logical tool for
dealing with intentional notions in artificial intelligence and computer science.
One reason for this success is the adoption by many computer scientists of modal
logics in general, as tools for reasoning about relational structures. Many areas
of interest to computer scientists, from databases to the automata which underlie
many programs, can be thought of as relational structures; such structures can
be reasoned about using modal logics. Hintikkas work can be seen as the start
of what is known to philosophers, logicians and computer scientists as formal
epistemology: that branch of epistemology which seeks to uncover the formal
properties of knowledge and belief.
In Reasoning About Knowledge [6], Fagin, Halpern, Moses and Vardi showed
how logics based on Hintikkas ideas can be used to solve many real-world problems; these were problems about other agents knowledge, as well as problems
in which agents reason about the world. Solutions to such problems have applications in distributed computing, artificial intelligence and game theory, to
name a but a few key areas. With the appearance of Reasoning About Knowledge, Hintikkas approach was firmly cemented as the orthodox logical account
of belief for philosophers and computer scientists alike.
It is rare for an orthodox account of such popularity to receive no criticism
and Hintikkas framework is no exception. One major source of objections is
the so-called problem of logical omniscience whereby, as a result of the modal
semantics applied to knows (and believes), agents automatically know every
tautology as well as every logical consequence of their knowledge. Just how such
a consequence should be viewed is a moot point; perhaps this notion of knowledge applies to ideal agents, or perhaps it is an idealised notion, saying what a
non-ideal agent should believe (given what it already does believe). Although
neither account is entirely satisfactory, defenders of the approach claim that,
in many cases, the assumptions are harmless, and that the applications which
such logics have found speak for themselves. [11] surveys logics for which logical
omniscience is a problem and concludes that an alternative logic of knowledge
and belief is required, if real-world agents are to be modelled with any kind of
fidelity.
However, my aim here is not to criticise Hintikkas approach on the ground of
logical omniscience. Instead, I show that the assumptions required by Hintikkas
approach cannot be justified by an acceptable account of belief. I concentrate
throughout on the notion of belief, rather than that of knowledge, as the former
is (usually) regarded as the more primitive notion; an account of knowledge will
usually proceed from an account of belief. Hintikkas logic is not in itself such
an account, a fact which has been ignored in the recent literature in artificial
intelligence and computer science. Hintikkas approach cannot be seen as a
definition of belief without vicious circularity. I then argue that any acceptable
account of belief must be able to account for Freges problem of informativeness
and settle on a partly representational, partly dispositional account of belief.
Such an account clearly shows the mistaken assumptions in Hintikkas approach.
In the second half of the paper, I introduce a new approach to epistemic
logic, based on these considerations.1 The logic is introduced for the case of
rule-based agents of the kind common in artificial intelligence but is then extended to a full propositional reasoner. The logic differs from Hintikkas in using
representational elements to classify belief states and in treating temporal and
alethic modality as essential components of an account of the dynamics of belief
states. The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In the following section,
I present Hintikkas proposal and, in section 3, discuss the basis notion behind
it, that of an epistemically possible world. In section 4, I discuss and reject accounts of belief which are formulated in terms of Fregean senses, before putting
forward my own account of belief (section 5). Sections 6 and 7 present the
logic of dynamic belief states, including some interesting properties possessed
by models of the logic. An axiomatization of the logic is also given and proved
to be complete with respect to these models. To conclude, I briefly mention
ways in which this approach to epistemic logic can be implemented in real AI
systems, where Hintikkas approach has proved troublesome.
Epistemic Logic
What of a traditional problem for accounts of belief: the substitution of coreferring terms? This has been viewed as a problem because, in a sense, a belief
about Bob Dylan is a belief about Robert Zimmerman, for they are one and
the same person. Yet, I may believe Dylan, but not Zimmerman, to be a great
songwriter. The problem is blocked in Hintikkas account by requiring that
the worlds in W need only be epsitemically possible. That is, the condition
for membership of W is just the epistemic possibility of a worlds logically
primitive true sentences. The truth of logically complex sentences is then given
by the standard recursion clauses for Booleans and quantifiers. The thought is
that even though a and b are co-denoting terms, it is at least an epistemic
possibility that the two refer to different entities. That is, even though a = b in
actuality, it remains epistemically possible that a 6= b.
Epistemic Possibility
There are many worries raised by this account of belief; not least that, as mentioned in the introduction, agents are modelled are being logically omniscient.
There is perhaps a place for such abstraction and it has proved popular in AI
and computer science; my target here is to concentrate on two problems which
remain even if we allow this idealisation. The first is that we have not been
given an account of what beliefs are at all; the second is that, if the account
were correct, it would give us no reason for thinking that the logical principles
upon which the account is based should hold of belief. Both of these problems
relate to the notion of epistemically possible worlds. Just what kind of entities
are they? Evidently, they are worlds in which Robert Zimmerman need not be
Bob Dylan, even though Robert Zimmerman is in actuality Bob Dylan. Yet,
identity is a matter of de re necessity: entities are necessarily self-identical.
Kripke [12] gives us additional reasons to suppose that identity statements involving distinct rigid designators are either necessarily true or necessarily false.
If a = b is true at any world, it is true at all worlds in which a exists. Epistemic possibilities, we must conclude, need not be metaphysical possibilities.
But what right have we to call such possibilities entities?
I take it that, by world, it is meant an entity, the truths about which form
a maximal consistent set (a consistent set which, upon the addition of just one
extra formula, would become inconsistent). We might then think of worlds
simply as assignments to the primitive constructs in the language, together
with the closure of such under the satisfaction statements for Booleans and
quantifiers. Does this conception entitle us to think of any such assignment as
giving an entity? It does not; we may describe a logical theory by assigning
different elements of our domain to the constants a and b at a world w1 ,
and assigning them the same element at w2 . As far as the logical theory goes,
this is fine; but we are then caught in a dilemma. Either we treat epistemically
possible worlds simply as logical notions; or we treat them as genuine entities. If
we take the latter horn, we are left explaining how something, whose existence is
impossible, can exist (I take it that the scope of metaphysical possibility decides
all questions of ontological possibility).
If we take the former horn of the dilemma, we arrive at the original accusation
that we do not have a theory of belief at all. For why should a logical point,
or a logical theory, be considered to be epistemically possible or impossible by
an agent? On what basis would we make such a judgement? It seems that one
would judge such a logical point to be epistemically impossible, in the sense
settled on in the previous section, precisely because ones beliefs rule it out as
a contender for actualityand possible otherwise. To put the point another
way, what could count as the truthmaker for a logical point, or a logical theory,
being epistemically possible for an agent, other than what that agent considers
possible? But the sense of epistemically possible settled on in the previous
section is in no way comparable to objective notions of metaphysical possibility,
as the example of scepticism has shown. An agent considers a state of affairs
epistemically possible, in the sense required for the standard epistemic logic to
be useful, precisely when her beliefs do not rule it out. This sense of epistemic
possibility cannot be accounted for without a prior understanding of belief.
Standard epistemic logic, then, is not in itself a theory of belief at all. Given
what an agent considers possible, the theory tells us what beliefs she has and
what follows from those beliefs. But, to fix what an agent considers possible,
it is necessary to fix what her beliefs are first. Belief is the more fundamental
notion here. Now, it is not always incumbent on a logic of some concept to
explain, on its own, what that concept is or means. Logics may help focus
our thoughts when thinking about a particular concept. A logic of belief can
help us top become clearer about the implications our account (for example by
settling whether ones believing implies believing that one believes ). But
then we must search elsewhere for an account of beliefs, their meanings and
their identity.
There is a second worry concerning modal epistemic logic, which challenges
its claim even to help us to clarify questions concerning the logic of belief. The
worry is this. Let us grant the required notion of epistemic possibility, either as
genuine entities (ignoring the remarks above) or as purely logical notions. Given
that these possibilities lie outside the scope of the metaphysically possible, what
weight can there be to the insistence on logical necessity that is supposed to
hold at such worlds? When we say that some formula is a logical consequence
of another, we mean that the former cannot be true unless the latter is too,
on pain of contradiction. But, in the realm of the conceptually possible but
metaphysically impossible, why should the threat of contradiction pain us? Why
should the notion of logical consequence hold any weight at all? To put the point
another way, consider the propositional case, in which precisely one value is
assigned to each primitive proposition in the language at each world. Now, what
is our criterion for calling these values truth values, rather than just arbitrary
assignments of one symbol to another? With no notion of metaphysical necessity
in play, it seems we can make no headway with the notion of truth.
Some logicians, e.g. Hintikka [9] and Levesque [13], endorse this thought and
treat it as an advantage, allowing for primitive propositions to be both true and
false at a world. Let us call such a world a paraconsistent world. Allowing paraconsistent worlds in the domain W allows for a logic in which agents may have
inconsistent beliefs and need not believe every classical tautology. In the former
case, all accessible worlds will be paraconsistent. (If a logic is concerned with
which beliefs are true, it must force worlds which are accessible to themselves
to be classical. Otherwise, an agent might have the belief that, say, p as well as
the belief that p; but these beliefs cannot be true at the same time.)
We have seen that we have no reason to suppose classical logic to be the
logic of each epistemically possible world. We equally have no reason to sup5
pose that any logic can fulfil this role without conflicting with the given account
of epistemic possibility. Suppose a modal system contains worlds which contain
a non-modal logic (for example, in paraconsistent propositional modal logic,
the theory of each world contains the theorems of paraconsistent propositional
logic).2 Each member of will be epistemically necessary and so must be believed by any agent, regardless of which worlds she considers possible. The
question is, given the account of epistemic possibility, why should any sentence
be considered a universal epistemic necessity? We could always find some element of which someone could take to be false. Suppose we have little reason,
for all we know, to consider a sentence to be a theorem of but equally little
reason to think that it is not (perhaps is undecidable; perhaps the complexity
of validity checking too high). It seems that the theoremhood or otherwise of
is epistemically open. Yet, according to the standard epistemic logic over
, is universally and globally believed iff it is -valid. The only logic which
could avoid this difficulty is the zero logic , which contains no theorems whatsoever; and it is clear that the zero logic cannot provide us with a useful tool
for analysing belief at all.
Fregean senses
Frege [7] discusses two questions which are of interest to us, viz. (i) why is it that
co-denoting terms are not substitutable salva veritate in belief contexts? and
(ii) how is it possible that certain identity statements are informative? The
latter is known as the problem of cognitive significance and clearly impacts on
the former. In summary, Freges solution is that senses mediate reference and
that propositions, or thoughts, consist of senses. Frege thought of senses as
mind-independent entities, distinct both from the physical world and the realm
of language. Thoughts qua entities consisting of senses are not, on this view,
mental entities at all. Thoughts are mind-independent and thus the very same
thought (the same token, not just the same type) may be grasped by more
than one person. Understanding simply consists in the grasping of a thought.
Roughly, we may think of the sense of a term a as a way in which its referent a
is presented. The problem of cognitive significance then vanishes, for the terms
a and b may have very different senses, even if a = b. One would grasp a
different thought in understanding the sentence a = b than the thought grasped
in understanding a = a.
A major problem with this view is in part caused by the inherent abstract
nature of such entities. The metaphor of grasping a terms sense lacks any explanatory force; nor does a more informative answer seem possible. One simply
has to posit non-natural mental powers in order to account for our understanding and, since a theory of understanding is a theory of meaning, the meaning
of language is treated as primitive and impossible to analyse further. Secondly,
if the sense of a sentence is a thought, then we should treat the senses of the
constituents of a sentence as the constituents of thought, i.e. as concepts. Frege
allows this by treating the senses of singular terms (by which Frege included descriptions as well as names, demonstratives and indexicals) as primitive, whereas
the sense of predicates and relational terms are to be treated as functions.
2 The
Belief States
An account of what belief is is now owed. Accounts of belief in terms of epistemically possible worlds or Fregean senses have been rejected; so let us consult
our intuitions concerning what would and would not count as a belief. Senses
were originally invoked to solve the problem of informativeness of different yet
co-denoting terms. The problem can be re-cast in terms of sentences by dealing with equivalences rather than identity statement. Where Frege asked how
it can be that a = b is informative, we may ask how it is that someone is a
bachelor if and only if he is an unmarried man is informative, whereas someone
is a bachelor if and only if he is a bachelor is not. One possibility is that, in
combining ones concept of marriage (or being unmarried) with that of a man,
one does not necessarily arrive at ones concept of a bachelor. This would be
the case when one has been told that, say, Rob is a bachelor but does not know
what bachelor means. Yet, without a prior understanding of what concepts
are, this is simply a re-statement the problem.
An account of concepts in terms of Fregean senses has been rejected. May
concepts instead be accounted for as abilities? Certainly, to have a concept is
to have an ability, to be able to distinguish things which fall under that concept
from those that do not. However, one need not be disposed to correctly make all
such distinctions in order to possess the relevant concept. My concept of an elm
is distinct from my concept of a beech and yet, presented with one type of tree,
I doubt I could say which it is. This is not a defect in my conceptual scheme;
I simply lack the requisite information to distinguish instances of the one type
from those of the other. This suggests the question, how are the two concepts
distinct at all? Were I asked to list distinct types of tree, I would certainly utter
both beech and elm; this seems evidence that my concepts elm and beech are
distinct. I have a repository of information associated with each term, or with
the mental equivalent thereof. Rather than assuming the concept is nothing
but this information, as the senses-qua-bundle-of-descriptions account does, the
repository of information relating to elms seems intrinsically linked to my uses
of elm. Were I to learn that elms possess a property P lacking in beech trees, I
become disposed to assert elms are P . Notice that this new information might
not provide me with the ability to distinguish elms from beeches, for I might
be unable to identify the P s from non-P s. The identity of concepts, then, goes
beyond particular distinguishing abilities.
The notion of a concept is best explained on the analogy of a mental repository of information. The information associated with a particular concept may
change, in some cases dramatically, yet what the concept is a concept of stays
the same. My concept of an elm is intrinsically linked to the term elm; rather
than the word being a label for the concept, as the Fregean account presupposes,
the very identity of the concept appears tied to a linguistic, or at least representational, entity. In fact, in order to account for the problem of informativeness,
concepts must be to a greater or lesser extent representational. There is not the
space here to argue for a representational account of concepts in the detail it
deserves; the aim, after all, is to provide a logic of belief. It suffices to say that,
if this account is correct, then what one believes about elms is what representational information one associates with ones elm concept. Certain information
disposes one to assert certain sentences and not others; having a certain belief
is therefore a disposition to assert certain sentences and not others.
This latter formulation, if correct, allows an analysis of belief free from
assumptions about the nature of the mind. Yet this formulation is not correct
as it stands and is in a degree of tension with the formulation in terms of
representational mental information. Consider these two cases. You are asked
whether the Eiffel tower is taller than Elvis ever was. You have never made such
a comparison before yet, with relatively little mental effort, you answer in the
affirmative. You believe that things are so and your disposition to answer the
question in the affirmative is evidence of this belief. Now suppose a logician is
asked whether a sentence is a theorem of some logic . After a week of a priori
mental toil, she responds that it is. Did she believe it to be so at the instant the
question was posed? Surely not, for then she would not have taken so long and
taken such pains to reply. She was disposed to assert that is a theorem but
only after a great deal of mental gymnastics. Her mental state at the posing of
the question cannot be considered a state of belief (about ), yet we suppose
that ones mental state in the case of the Eiffel tower-Elvis comparison is a
state of belief. Surely the difference is only a matter of degree?the former
case requires a great deal of thought before an assertion is made, the latter very
little. In the case of the logician, she arrives at the belief that is a theorem
precisely when her deliberatingthe kind of thought process which enables one
8
From what has been said above, it should be clear that the aim is to provide
a descriptive model of an agents beliefs, rather than a normative account. It
seems the question of whether an artificial agent believes a sentence can be
settled by considering the internal state of the agentby looking at which values
have been assigned to which variables. By limiting the focus to what such an
agent believes now, we are likely to arrive at a very dull logic of belief. It is
therefore necessary to be clear as to why a logic of belief is desirable at all.
One answer is the following. There has been considerable interest in the last
twenty years in verifying properties of programs. Knowing that a program will
not enter a loop from which it will never exit, or that a server cannot enter a
state in which two users can change the content of a database at the same time,
are clearly useful things to know. The same kind of knowledge is desirable with
artificial agents in the picture. We judge many current artificial agents to be
stupid because they frequently do stupid things. No doubt, the programmers
did not envisage such possibilities coming about and would like to ensure future
generations of the agent avoid similar mistakes, i.e. to verify that the future
generation satisfies certain properties. One use for a logic of belief is to enable
properties to be verified at the intentional level, the descriptive level at which
the agent is said to have concepts, to believe this, to desire that and so on.
Such a logic cannot just talk of belief; it must include temporal and alethic
notions, allowing for judgements such as the agent may reach a state in which
it believes in ten cycles, the agent can reach its goal in ten cycles or the
agent cannot reach a state in which it believes within ten cycles (here cycle
means something like the change from one belief state to another).
The logic is illustrated by the various belief states of Doris, who singlehandedly runds Doris Dating Agency. Doris is a rule-based agent, whose program
incorporates rules such as
suits(x,y), suits(y,x) match(x,y)
(if x is suited to y and vice versa, then they are a good match for one another).
Such rules are read by Doris as inference rules: given that suits(x,y) and
suits(y,x) have been derived (where x and y are consistently replaced with
constants), infer match(x,y) (with the same constants substituted for x and y).
In reasoning about Doris, replace have been derived with are believed and
infer with believe in this reading. Such rules are a species of condition-action
rule; the condition is the current state of Doris beliefs, the action required is for
Doris to form a new belief. Doris works in cycles. In each cycle, she checks her
beliefs against her rules, trying to find a consistent matching instance. If there
are matches, she picks one and forms the belief it tells her to. More precisely,
an instance of a rule is obtained by uniformly replacing all variables by with
constants. Let be some substitution function from the set of variables of the
rule into the set of constants and be our notation for the instance of the rule
under . For example, if assigns Rob to x and Roberta to y, then
suits(x,y), suits(y,x) suited(x,y)
=
suits(Rob,Roberta), suits(Roberta,Rob) suited(Rob,Roberta)
10
Given a rule instance under the substitution , Doris can fire that instance,
adding the new belief (the consequent of the rule under the substitution ,
written cn() ) to her working memory. Only one rule instance may be fired at
a time, for rule firing is strictly serial.
In order to reason about Doris belief states, let us introduce a further language, containing sentences such as B male(Rob)B suits(Roberta,Rob), read
as Doris believes that Rob is male and that Roberta is suited to Robert. The
question is, what kind of logical apparatus can be applied to such sentences? To
be sure, the above sentence should be true precisely when Doris has those two
beliefs, i.e. when both male(Rob) and suits(Roberta,Rob) are held in Doris
working memory; but what logical principles hold of the beliefs themselves?
Suppose Doris believes the rule male(x) female(x), which she matches to
produce the instance male(Rob) female(Rob). Does this mean that, if Doris
believes male(Rob), then she believes female(Rob)? It does not, for we can
easily imagine a case in which the former is held is working memory but the latter
is not. Perhaps Doris has discovered many instances of the rule and is working
through them one at a time, checking which may be fired, and has not yet come
to seeing whether she believes male(Rob). Thus, B male(Rob) female(Rob)
is not equivalent to B male(Rob) Bfemale(Rob). We can say that, given
enough time, and provided she has enough room in her memory to add new beliefs, Bfemale(Rob) will eventually become true. We can also say that Doris
could fire that rule instance and add female(Rob) to her beliefs at the very
next cycle; nothing prevents Doris beliefs evolving this way.
As this brief discussion shows, the interesting features of Doris belief states
go beyond what she believes now to include what she will and what she she
could believe in the future, given her current belief state. As mentioned above,
temporal and alethic matters are important in reasoning about belief states, yet
this platitude is ignored by standard epistemic logics. The approach here is to
combine temporal and alethic modalities by using a discrete branching model of
time. Figure 1 shows part of such a a model. Time is said to be branching in the
y kkkkkk
SSSS
SS
ww
ww
w
w
w
x GG
GG
GG
G kkkkk
kS
z SSSSS
6.1
Language
We fix the set of predicate symbols P and the set of constants D. We denote
the set of all possible substitutions : X D by , where X is any set of
rules. Given a rule = (1 , . . . , n ), where each i is a literal, the instance
of under , written , is 1 , . . . , n . Note that given finite sets X and
D, is also finite; then the set of all possible rule instances is finite as well.
The agents internal language L(P, D) over P and D contains only rules and
ground literals. Since we assume both P and D are fixed throughout, we may
drop these arguments and refer to the agents internal language simply as L.
The following notation is used:
literals are denoted by , 1 , 2 , . . .
ground literals are denoted by , 1 , 2 , . . ., where
rules of the form 1 , . . . n are denoted by , 1 , 2 , . . .
instances of a rule are denoted , where
Only ground literals and rules, the s and the s, are considered well-formed
formulas of L. Arbitrary formulas of L are denoted , 1 , . . . . The modal language ML(P, D), which is used to reason about the agents beliefs, is built from
formulas of L(P, D). ML(P, D) contains the usual propositional connectives
, , , , the 3 modality and a belief operator B. Given a literal , a rule
and a substitution function , B and B are primitive wffs of ML(P, D).
There are no other primitive wffs. If 1 and 2 are both ML(P, D) wffs, the
12
6.2
A model M is a structure
hS, T, V i
where S is a set of states; T S S is the transition (accessibility) relation
on states; and V : S (L) is the labelling function assigning to each state
the set of L-formulas which the agent believes in that state. The definition of
a formula of ML being true, or satisfied, by state s in a model M (written
M, s
) is as follows:
M, s
B iff V (s)
M, s
iff M, s 6
M, s
1 2 iff M, s
1 and M, s
2
M, s
1 2 iff M, s
1 or M, s
2
M, s
1 2 iff M, s 6
1 or M, s
2
M, s
3 iff there exists a state s S such that T ss and M, s
By substituting the definition of 2 into the clause for 3, we get M, s
2
iff, for all states s S such that T ss , M, s
.
Definition 1 (Global satisfiability and validity) An ML formula is globally satisfied in a model M = hS, T, V i, notation M
, when M, s
for
each state s S. Given a class of models C, is said to be valid in C or C-valid,
written C
, when M
for any M C. Validity (simpliciter) is validity
in any class. A set of ML formulas is said to be satisfied at a state s S,
written M, s
, when every element of is satisfied at s. is then globally
satisfied, C-valid or valid in a similar way.
This formulation applies to relational structures in general, not just to models of rule-based agents. To get the desired class of model, structures have to
be restricted in the following way. To begin with, the agents programthe
set of rules it believesis finite by definition and does not change; rules are
neither learnt nor forgot. This is standard practise in rule-based AI systems.
This means that, if the set R contains all rules believed at a state s, then the
rule believed at all states reachable from s (i.e. in some unspecified number of
transitions) will also be precisely those in R (and similarly for all states from
which s is reachable). To say that a rule has an instance (which may be fired)
is to say that the rule is believed and that there is a substitution such that the
13
premises of the rule are believed (under that substitution) but the consequent
is not (agents do not try to derive what they already believe). Such rules are
said to match. When a rule matches under a substitution , we say that ()
is a matching instance of under .
Definition 2 (Matching rule) Let be a rule of the form 1 , . . . , n
and a substitution function for . is then said to be s--matching, for some
state s S, iff V (s), each 1 , . . . , n V (s) but 6 V (s).
As explained above, transitions from one state to another correspond to the
agent firing a rule instance and adding a new belief to its working memory.
When a rule instance may be fired in a state s, and a transition to a further
state s is possible, s must then be just like s except for the addition of that
new belief. In such cases, we say that s extends s by that new belief.
Definition 3 (Extension of a state) Let be a substitution function for a
rule and be the consequent of under . Then a state s is said to extend
a state s by when V (u) = V (s) { }.
One exception is made to the stipulation that transitions correspond to a
rule instance being fired, purely for technical reasons. If there are no matching
rules at a state (and so no rule instances to fire), that state is a terminating
state and has a transition to itself (or to another identical state, which amounts
to much the same in modal logic). This ensures that every state has an outgoing
transition; in other words, T is a serial relation. As a consequence, the question
what will the agent doing after n cycles may always be answered, even if the
agent ran out of rules to fire in less than n cycles.
Definition 4 (Terminating state) A state s is said to be a terminating state
in a model M iff, for all substitution functions , no rule is s--matching.
Transitions may relate terminating states. If, on the other hand, there is a
matching rule at a state s, then a transition should only be possible to a state
s when s extends s by an appropriate belief (i.e. the consequent of a matching
rule instance at s). We capture such transition systems in the class S (for single
agent models).
Definition 5 The class S contains precisely those models M which satisfy the
following:
S1 for all states s S, if a rule 1 , . . . , n is s--matching, then there is
a state s S such that T ss and s extends s by .
S2 for any terminating state s S, there exists a state s S such that V (s ) =
V (s) and T ss
S3 for all states s, s S, T ss only if either (i) there is an s--matching rule
1 , . . . , n and s extends s by ; or (ii) s is a terminating state and
V (s) = V (s ).
There may, of course, be many rules matching at a given state and many matching instances of each (i.e. instances in which the consequent of the rule, under
14
that substitution, is not already believed). For each such instance of each matching rule at a state s, there will be a state s with an transition to it from s. Each
transition may be thought of as corresponding to the agents nondeterministic
choice to fire one of these rule instances (i.e. to add the consequent of that rule
instance to its set of beliefs). may then be read as after some such choice,
will hold. We can think of the agents reasoning as a cycle:
1. match rules to produce rule instances;
2. choose a rule instance;
3. add the consequent of that instance to the set of beliefs; repeat.
By chaining diamonds (or boxes), e.g. 333 we can express what properties
can (and what will) hold after so many such cycles. We can abbreviate sequences
of n diamonds (or n boxes) as 3n and 2n respectively. 2n , for example,
may be read as is guaranteed to hold after n cycles. Note that the choices
made in each of these cycles are nondeterministic; that the agents set of beliefs
grows monotonically state by state and that the agent never revises its beliefs,
even if they are internally inconsistent. In [4], an analysis of an agent which
makes a deterministic choice of which rule instance to fire at each cycle is given.
In [3], it is shown how similar agents can revise inconsistent belief states in
a computationally efficient way. In the deterministic case, models are linear
rather than branching, i.e. each state has a transition to a unique successor
state. Given a program (a finite set for rules) R for the agent, models in the
class SR are those models in which the agent believes all the rules in R and no
further rules. Each program R thus defines a unique class of model, SR , such
that models in this class represent agents which reason based on that program.
Definition 6 (The class SR ) Let R be a set of rules. A model M SR iff
M S and, for every state s in M , M, s
B iff R. Given a set of ML
formulas and an ML formula , we write
R iff every model of which
is in the class SR is also a model of .
6.3
This section surveys a few of the more interesting properties of the class SR
(for some fixed program R); a more detailed discussion is given in [10]. A few
definitions need to be given first.
Definition 7 (Label equivalence) Given models M = hS, T, V i and M =
hS , T , V i, states s S and s S are said to be label equivalents, notation
s L s , iff V (s) = V (s ).
Definition 8 (Modal equivalence) Given models M = hS, T, V i and M =
hS , T , V i, the theory of a state s S, written th(s), is the set of all formulas
satisfied at s, i.e. { | M, s
}. States s S and s S are modally
equivalent, written s ! s , iff they have the same theory. Similarly for models,
the theory of M is the set { | M
} and M is modally equivalent to M ,
M ! M , iff their theories are identical.
15
s )
Forth If Zss and T su, then there is a state u S such that T s u and Zuu
Back If Zss and T s u , then there is a state u S such that T su and Zuu
When these conditions hold, we say s and s are bisimilar and write M, s
M , s (or simply s s if the context makes it clear which models s and s
belong to). When there exists such a Z, we write M M .
Proposition 1 Given two models M = hS, T, V i and M = hS , T , V i, for all
s S and s S , s s implies s ! s .
Proof: The proof is standard; see, for example, [5, p.67].
A tree model has the form diagrammed in figure 1, such that each state s
has a unique parent (the state from which there is a transition to s) except the
root.
Proposition 2 Every model M has a bisimilar tree model.
Proof: A tree model M can be obtained by unravelling M ; the proof that M
and M are bisimilar is standard.
2
What is the significance of this result? It means that any satisfiable ML
formula can be satisfied in a finite model. Suppose M satisfies ; then there
is a tree model M bisimilar to M , so M must satisfy too. Now, consider a
syntax tree for with all but the modalities removed from the nodes (so that
the same number of modalities appears on the tree as in ). Then the greatest
number of modalities which can be traced from a leaf to the root is called the
modal depth of . For example, the modal depth of 2(3p 32q) is 3. If a
formula is satisfiable, it is satisfiable in a tree model whose longest branch does
not exceed the modal depth of the formula. To obtain this model, simply take
the tree model for the formula and chop off the branches at (the modal depth
of ) states from the root. The upshot is that modal logics are decidable in an
extremely robust way. It easy to find models for satisfiable formulas using the
automatic technique of model checking. Of course, chopping a model down in
this way may disqualify it from membership of SR ; but this can be re-instated
by taking a chopped down model and continuing each branch until no matching
rules are left; then looping the last state on the branch back to itself. Since R
and D are finite, this is guaranteed to happen in finitely many steps.
It is well-known that the converse of proposition 2 does not hold in general.
Given a model M , we can construct a modally equivalent model M containing
an infinite branch for which there can be no bisimulation Z : M M (if we
suppose there is, we will eventually come to a point on the infinite branch in
M for which the corresponding point in M has no successor; hence they cannot
be bisimilar states). However, we do have a restricted result in the converse
direction:
16
Proposition
3 (Hennessy-Milner Theorem) A model is image finite if the
S
set sS {s | T ss } is. Then, given two image finite models M = hS, T, V i and
M = hS , T , V i, for all s S and s S, s ! s implies s s .
Proof: See, for example, [5, p.69]
cn(1 , . . . , n ) =
(1)
17
Proof: Without loss of generality, assume M and M are both tree models
and that s L s , but not s ! s for s in M and s in M . Then there is some
such that M, s
but M , s 1 , hence a path from s in M such that,
for some i, there is no path from s in M such that [i] L [i]. But this
contradicts lemma 1.
2
Corollary 2 Let M SR be a model in which s L s , X = {u S | T us }
and Y be the set of all states reachable from s but not from s. Let M be the
model in which S = S (Y {s }), T is just like T (restricted to S ) except
T us for each x X and v = v restricted to S . Then there is a bisimulation
Z : M M .
Proof: Given s L s , we have s ! s (theorem 1). So assume there is no
such bisimulation Z. Since M is identical to M except for the descendants of
each u X, there must a formula and state x X such that M, x
but
M , x 6
. But we have M, u
iff M, s
iff M , u
, for each u X.
Hence our assumption was wrong.
2
This last result says that if we take any model and squash together similarly
labelled states, we get a model which satisfies a formula iff the original model
did. As can be seen, models of rule-based agents (those in the class SR , for some
program R) have many desirable properties, several of which are not possessed
by models of modal logics in general. The computational properties of models
of rule based agents make it easy to verify properties of the agents they model;
this can only be a sign of the success of the logic. In the following section, an
axiomatization of the logic is given.
6.4
Fix a program R and a finite set of constants D which may be used in substitutions. To axiomatize the transition systems in which every transition corresponds to firing exactly one rule instance in R, the following abbreviations are
helpful.
df
match(1 , . . . , n ) = B1 Bn B
(2)
_
df
match =
match
(3)
18
where R
A2 B
where 6 R
A3 B 2B
A4 B(1 , . . . , n ) B1 Bn 3B
A5 3(B B) B B
W
A6 3B (B R,: cn() = match )
V
A7 match1 1 matchm n 6=i ,6=j match
h
i
2 B cn(1 )1 B cn(n )m
V
A8 R match 3
MP
N
for each
1 i m, 1 j n
The logic can easily be extended to accommodate a system of agents in communication with one another. To accommodate multiple agents, we replace
the labelling function V with a family of such functions. To model a system
consisting of n agents comprising the set A, a model is an n + 3-tuple
hS, A, T, {Vi }iA i
20
where each Vi is the labelling function for agent i. The language of these models
is extended, first to include a belief operator Bi for each agent i A and secondly
to include formulas for communication between agents, such as ask(i, j)
and tell(i, j) . These are read as agent i has asked agent j whether
and agent i has told agent j that ; such formulas are called asks and tells,
respectively. As above, is some ground literal (these are the only types of
belief which rule-based agents communicate). The primitive wffs of the modal
language ML(P, D) are then
Bi | Bi tell(i, j) | Bi ask(i, j) | Bi
and the complex wffs are as above. The definition of
changes its first clause
to:
M, s
Bi iff Vi (s), for i A, L
but the remaining clauses stay the same. The definition of a matching rule is
also made relative to each agent; instead of a rule being s--matching, it will
now be Vi (s)--matching, for some agent i. The class M, for multi-agent models,
is defined in much the same way as the class S modulo the amendments just
noted. Although agents share a common language, each has its own unique
program. There are restrictions on which rules which may appear in an agents
program, which we summarise here. A rule may appear in Ri , for any agent
i A, only if:
1. for any ask or tell in the antecedent of , s second argument is i; or
2. for any ask or tell in the consequent of , s first argument is i
A program for an agent is then a finite set of rules which satisfy these conditions.
Given a program Ri for each agent i A, we define the program set
R = {R1 , . . . , Rn }
for A. Just as in the single agent case above, the class MR contains precisely
those models in which agents believe all the rules in their program (in R) and
no further rules. To axiomatize the resulting logic, the following axiom schemes
need to be added to those in figure 2:
W
A6-tell 3Bi tell(j, i) Bi tell(j, i) Rj , cn() =tell(j,i) matchj
A6-ask 3Bi ask(j, i) Bi ask(j, i)
Rj , cn() =ask(j,i)
matchj
A9 Bi tell(i, j) Bj tell(i, j)
A10 Bi ask(i, j) Bj ask(i, j)
In addition, A7 needs to be replaced with the following similar-looking axiom
(the differences is just that the substitution is no longer uniform; there may
be a distinct substitution for each matching rule of each agent).
V
A7 matchi11 1 . . . matchinm n (,)6{(1 ,1 ),...,(m ,n )} match
2 Bi1 cn(1 )1 . . . Bin cn(n )m
Call the resulting logic R . The following result then holds (the proof is much
the same as that of theorem 2 above and can be found in [10]).
21
[] []
..
..
.
.
Rules:
p|q
pr
qr
p|q, p
p|q, p, r
p|q, q
p|q, q
p|q, q, r
s1
p|q, p, r
s2
s3
s4
1. split s1 to move to s2 ;
2. extend s2 s top alternative to move to s3 ;
3. finally, extend s3 s bottom alternative to move to s4 .
To be precise, an alternative w is said to extend another, w, as in definition
3 above (replacing state with alternative). In the example, the top alternative
in s3 extends the top alternative in s2 (by r). A state s is now said to extend
a state s when one alternative in s extends one in s and all others remain the
same. In the example, s3 extends s2 . A state s is said to split a state s when
they differ only in that an alternative w s, labelled with a disjunction 1 |2 ,
is replaced by alternatives w1 , w2 s , such that 1 labels w1 and 2 labels w2 ;
otherwise, w1 and w2 agree with w. In the example, s2 splits s1 . A transition
is allowed between states s and s only when s extends s, or s splits s, or both
s, s are terminating states. Models of a set A of n agents are now n + 3-tuples
hW, A, T, {Vi }iA i
where W is a set of alternatives, T (W ) (W ) is a serial relation on states
(i.e. on sets of alternatives) and each Vi : W (L) assigns a set of L formulas
to each alternative. Finally, a belief holds at a state s for agent i when Vi
labels every alternative in s with :
M, s
Bi iff Vi (w) for all w s
In this way, agents which reason in a full propositional language (with variables and substitution) can be modelled. The restriction to rule-based agents
is not a restriction of this logical approach. Rule-based agents were introduced
because they provide a clear example of agents which form new beliefs as a
deductive step-by-step process, and because their models have interesting computational properties.
Conclusion
Standard epistemic logic is not, in itself, an account of belief; yet it appears that
no acceptable account of belief can justify the assumption which the logic makes.
Belief should be thought of in terms of the mental representations disposing an
agent to make the relevant assertion. The logic presented here makes use of the
connection between belief and internal representation, in capturing an agents
23
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24
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