Reasoning about Rational Agents

Reasoning about Rational Agents PDF Author: Michael Wooldridge
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262265027
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book focuses on the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model of rational agents, which recognizes the primacy of beliefs, desires, and intentions in rational action. One goal of modern computer science is to engineer computer programs that can act as autonomous, rational agents; software that can independently make good decisions about what actions to perform on our behalf and execute those actions. Applications range from small programs that intelligently search the Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, to autonomous space probes. This book focuses on the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model of rational agents, which recognizes the primacy of beliefs, desires, and intentions in rational action. The BDI model has three distinct strengths: an underlying philosophy based on practical reasoning in humans, a software architecture that is implementable in real systems, and a family of logics that support a formal theory of rational agency.The book introduces a BDI logic called LORA (Logic of Rational Agents). In addition to the BDI component, LORA contains a temporal component, which allows one to represent the dynamics of how agents and their environments change over time, and an action component, which allows one to represent the actions that agents perform and the effects of the actions. The book shows how LORA can be used to capture many components of a theory of rational agency, including such notions as communication and cooperation.

Reasoning about Rational Agents

Reasoning about Rational Agents PDF Author: Michael Wooldridge
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262265027
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book focuses on the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model of rational agents, which recognizes the primacy of beliefs, desires, and intentions in rational action. One goal of modern computer science is to engineer computer programs that can act as autonomous, rational agents; software that can independently make good decisions about what actions to perform on our behalf and execute those actions. Applications range from small programs that intelligently search the Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, to autonomous space probes. This book focuses on the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model of rational agents, which recognizes the primacy of beliefs, desires, and intentions in rational action. The BDI model has three distinct strengths: an underlying philosophy based on practical reasoning in humans, a software architecture that is implementable in real systems, and a family of logics that support a formal theory of rational agency.The book introduces a BDI logic called LORA (Logic of Rational Agents). In addition to the BDI component, LORA contains a temporal component, which allows one to represent the dynamics of how agents and their environments change over time, and an action component, which allows one to represent the actions that agents perform and the effects of the actions. The book shows how LORA can be used to capture many components of a theory of rational agency, including such notions as communication and cooperation.

Collective Rationality and Collective Reasoning

Collective Rationality and Collective Reasoning PDF Author: Christopher McMahon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521011785
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book examines the issue of rational cooperation, especially cooperation between people with conflicting moral commitments. The first part considers how the two main aspects of cooperation - the choice by a group of a particular cooperative scheme and the decision by each member to contribute to that scheme - can be understood as guided by reason. The second part explores how the activity of reasoning itself can take a cooperative form. The book is distinctive in offering an account of what people can accomplish by reasoning together, of the role of deliberation in democratic decision making, and of the negotiation of the proper use of concepts. Presenting for the first time a detailed analysis of the general problem of cooperation and collective reasoning between people with different moral commitments, this book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences and to students in political science, sociology and economics." --Cambridge Press.

Rationality and Decision Making

Rationality and Decision Making PDF Author: Marek Hetmański
Publisher: Poznań Studies in the Phi
ISBN: 9789004357235
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book Here

Book Description
Rationality and Decision Making: From Normative Rules to Heuristics' offers a broad overview of both classic and very recent discussions concerning rationality and strategies of individual and group decision making. They are considered from a methodological, ethical, sociological, historical, cultural as well as an evolutionary perspective. Decision making, both rational and irrational, is treated in its complexity as an algorithmic, heuristic and intuitive process. The volume analyzes the theoretical and practical aspects of decision making in individual intentional endeavors and group or institutionalized undertakings. The analyses are mostly theoretical but they also appeal to empirical studies, proposed by philosophers and cognitive scientists who have studied logical, cognitive, biological, social and evolutionary aspects of human rationality.

Common Sense, Reasoning, & Rationality

Common Sense, Reasoning, & Rationality PDF Author: Renée Elio
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195147669
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
While common sense and rationality have often been viewed as two distinct features in a unified cognitive map, this volume engages with this notion and comes up with novel and often paradoxical views of this relationship.

Foundations of Rational Agency

Foundations of Rational Agency PDF Author: Michael Wooldridge
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401592047
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume represents an advanced, comprehensive state-of-the-art survey of the field of rational agency as it stands today. It covers the philosophical foundations of rational agency, logical and decision-theoretic approaches to rational agency, multi-agent aspects of rational agency and a number of approaches to programming rational agents. It will be of interest to researchers in logic, mainstream computer science, the philosophy of rational action and agency, and economics.

Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision

Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision PDF Author: Robert Audi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134219210
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presenting the most comprehensive and lucid account of the topic currently available, Robert Audi's "Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision" is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of reason in ethics or the nature of human action. The first part of the book is a detailed critical overview of the influential theories of practical reasoning found in Aristotle, Hume and Kant, whilst the second part examines practical reasoning in the light of important topics in moral psychology - weakness of will, self-deception, rationalization and others. In the third part, Audi describes the role of moral principles in practical reasoning and clarifies the way practical reasoning underlies ethical decisions. He formulates a comprehensive set of concrete ethical principles, explains how they apply to reasoning about what to do, and shows how practical reasoning guides moral conduct.

Reasons Without Persons

Reasons Without Persons PDF Author: Brian Hedden
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198732597
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book Here

Book Description
Brian Hedden defends a radical view about rationality, personal identity, and time. He argues that what it is rational to do should not depend on your past beliefs or actions, which are not part of your current perspective on the world. His impersonal approach holds that what rationality demands of you is solely determined by your evidence.

Brute Rationality

Brute Rationality PDF Author: Joshua Gert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139454153
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents an account of normative practical reasons and the way in which they contribute to the rationality of action. Rather than simply 'counting in favour of' actions, normative reasons play two logically distinct roles: requiring action and justifying action. The distinction between these two roles explains why some reasons do not seem relevant to the rational status of an action unless the agent cares about them, while other reasons retain all their force regardless of the agent's attitude. It also explains why the class of rationally permissible action is wide enough to contain not only all morally required action, but also much selfish and immoral action. The book will appeal to a range of readers interested in practical reason in particular, and moral theory more generally.

Thinking about Acting

Thinking about Acting PDF Author: John L. Pollock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199838860
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
John Pollock aims to construct a theory of rational decision making for real agents--not ideal agents. Real agents have limited cognitive powers, but traditional theories of rationality have applied only to idealized agents that lack such constraints. Pollock argues that theories of ideal rationality are largely irrelevant to the decision making of real agents. Thinking about Acting aims to provide a theory of "real rationality."

Unsettled Thoughts

Unsettled Thoughts PDF Author: Julia Staffel
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198833717
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
How should thinkers cope with uncertainty? Julia Staffel breaks new ground in the study of rationality by answering this question and many others. She also explains how it is better to be less irrational, because less irrational degrees of belief are generally more accurate and better at guiding our actions.