A Multi-subset Possible World Semantics for Intention Operator of Agent

Abstract

Intentions, a crucial part of the mental state of an agent, play an important role in determining the behavior of rational agents. In order to eliminate the flaws with existing logic of intention, in this paper, we address the requests for intention semantics on formal frameworks of rational agents and the problems with existing logic of intention, put forward a novel semantics for intention, called the multi-subset possible world semantics, and its application in the formalization of intention for agent. The multi-subset possible world semantics use three subsets to describe intention. It not only avoids the logical omniscience problem and other related problems (such as side-effect problem, and etc) but also overcomes the shortcomings of the true-false subset semantics and twin-subset semantics. Compared with Konolige and Pollack’s model of intention, this semantics model doesn’t lose the reasoning ability of non-equivalent intention, and what’s more, it is simpler, more natural and satisfies the K axiom and the Joint Consistency. Our framework invalidates the problematic properties with existing logic of intention. And by imposing certain constraints on the algebraic structure of the models, many desirable properties can be obtained. At last we make an analysis for the multi-subset possible world semantics. Actually the multi-subset possible world semantics provides a new method for semantic representation of non-normal modal operators. It can be used in establishing new proper agent’s logic systems.