Abstract

As part of our work on agent-oriented programming,1 we are developing an agent description language. We describe an agent's “mental state” in terms of its knowledge, beliefs, desires, commitments, and abilities. Our goal is not to specify human knowledge, beliefs, etc., but rather to devise a more limited, precise language to facilitate programming agents and interagent communication. We believe that borrowing from our intuition about these commonsense terms will simplify the human designer's job. This article describes a preliminary version of our language. We define a temporal language with modal operators representing knowledge, belief, desire, commitment, and ability. This is a propositional language with quantification over time points and agents only.

Keywords

Computer scienceIntuitionMental stateProgramming language specificationArtificial intelligenceCognitive scienceProgramming languageProgramming paradigmPsychologyProgramming domain

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Publication Info

Year
1991
Type
article
Volume
6
Issue
5
Pages
497-508
Citations
35
Access
Closed

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Becky Thomas, Yoav Shoham, Anton Schwartz et al. (1991). Preliminary thoughts on an agent description language. International Journal of Intelligent Systems , 6 (5) , 497-508. https://doi.org/10.1002/int.4550060504

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DOI
10.1002/int.4550060504