what is now the mainstream view as to the best way forward in the dream of engineering reliable software systems out of autonomous agents. The way of using formal logics to specify, implement and verify distributed systems of interacting units using a guiding analogy of beliefs, desires and intentions. The implicit message behind the book is this: Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) can be a respectable engineering science. It says: we use sound formal systems; can cite established philosophical foundations; and will (...) be able to build reliable and flexible software systems. (shrink)

Previous edition, 1st, published in 1971.

This work adopts H. Kelsen’s concept of legal system, proposes a formal definition for such notion, and introduces an operational semantical framework for legal systems that are situated in agent societies. Agent societies are defined. Relevant formal properties of situated legal systems are discussed; the way they are exposed in the operational semantical framework is explained, and their truth formally proved. Also, for the sake of a better understanding of the legal-theoretic assumptions of the paper, recurring issues regarding Kelsen’s theory (...) of law are briefly reviewed. They are put in confrontation with the points of view of R. Dworkin, H. Hart, and J. Raz, and an attempt is made to clarify them from the perspective of the provided formalization. A brief case study in agent-based modeling and simulation of public policy processes is presented, as an illustration of the way of using situated legal systems, and the proposed operational semantical framework, in a practical application. (shrink)

POLITICS is a system of computer programs which simulates humans in comprehending and responding to world events from a given political or ideological perspective. The primary theoretical motivations were: (1) the implemention of a functional system which applies the knowledge structures of Schank and Abelson (1977) to the domain of simulating political belief systems; (2) the development of a tentative theory of intentional goal conflicts and counterplanning. Secondary goals of the POLITICS project include developing a representation for belief systems, investigating (...) cognitive processes such as goal‐directed inferencing, and the integration of several types of knowledge representations into a functional system. (shrink)