Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

A temporal modal defeasible logic for formalizing social commitments in dialogue and argumentation models

  • Published:
Applied Intelligence Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, we extend a temporal defeasible logic with a modal operator Committed to formalize commitments that agents undertake as a consequence of communicative actions (speech acts) during dialogues. We represent commitments as modal sentences. The defeasible dual of the modal operator Committed is a modal operator called Exempted. The logical setting makes the social-commitment based semantics of speech acts verifiable and practical; it is possible to detect if, and when, a commitment is violated and/or complied with. One of the main advantages of the proposed system is that it allows for capturing the nonmonotonic behavior of the commitments induced by the relevant speech acts.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

References

  1. Alberti M, Daolio D, Torroni P, Gavanelli M, Lamma E, Mello P (2004) Specification and verification of agent interaction protocols in a logic-based system. In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM symposium on applied computing. ACM, pp 72–78

  2. Amgoud L, Maudet N, Parsons S (2000) Modelling dialogues using argumentation. In: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on multi-agent systems. IEEE, pp 31–38

  3. Antoniou G, Billington D, Maher MJ (1999) On the analysis of regulations using defeasible rules. In: Proceedings 32nd Hawaii international conference on systems science. IEEE, pp 7–10

  4. Antoniou G, Billington D, Governatori G, Maher MJ (2001) Representation results for defeasible logic. ACM Trans Comput Log (TOCL) 2(2):255–287

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Antoniou G, Billington D, Governatori G, Maher MJ (2006) Embedding defeasible logic into logic programming. Theory Pract Log Program 6(6):703–735

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Antoniou G, Dimaresis N, Governatori G (2009) A modal and deontic defeasible reasoning system for modelling policies and multi-agent systems. Expert Syst Appl 36(2):4125–4134

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Austin JL (1962) How to do things with words. Clarendon, Oxford 2005, pp 619–650

  8. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, Marengo E (2010) Constraints among commitments: regulative specification of interaction protocols. In: Proceedings of international workshop on agent communication, pp 2–18

  9. Bassiliades N, Antoniou G, Vlahavas I (2006) A defeasible logic reasoner for the semantic web. Int J Semant Web inf Syst (IJSWIS) 2(1):1–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Bentahar J, Moulin B, Chaib-draa B (2003) Commitment and argument network: a new formalism for agent communication. In: Workshop on agent communication languages. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 146–165

  11. Bentahar J, Moulin B, Meyer JJC, Chaib-draa B (2004) A logical model for commitment and argument network for agentcCommunication. In: Proceedings of the third international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems, vol 2. IEEE Computer Society, pp 792–799

  12. Bentahar J, Moulin B, Meyer JJC, Lespérance Y (2006) A new logical semantics for agent communication International workshop on computational logic in multi-agent systems. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 151–170

  13. Bentahar J, El-Menshawy M, Qu H, Dssouli R (2012) Communicative commitments: model checking and complexity analysis. Knowl-Based Syst 35:21–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Chaib-draa B, Dignum F (2002) Trends in agent communication language. Comput Intell 18(2):89–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Chesani F, Mello P, Montali M, Torroni P (2009) Commitment tracking via the reactive event calculus. In: IJCAI, vol 9, pp 91–96

  16. Chopra A, Singh M (2003) Nonmonotonic commitment machines. In: Workshop on Agent Communication Languages. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 183–200

  17. Chopra AK, Singh M (2006) Contextualizing commitment protocol. In: Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems. ACM, pp 1345–1352

  18. Chopra AK, Singh M (2009) Multiagent commitment alignment. In: Proceedings of the 8th international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems, vol 2, pp 937–944

  19. Colombetti M (2000) A commitment-based approach to agent speech acts and conversations. In: Proceedings of the workshop on agent languages and conversational policies, pp 21–29

  20. Cogan E, Parsons S, McBurney P (2005) What kind of an argument are we going to have today? In: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems. ACM Press, Utrecht, Netherlands, pp 544–551

  21. Cohen P, Levesque H (1995) Communicative actions for artificial agents. In: Proceedings of the international conference on multi-agent systems. AAAI Press, San Francisco

  22. Dastani M, Hulstijn J, der Torre L (2000) Negotiation protocols and dialogue games. In: Proceeding of the Belgium/Dutch artificial intelligence conference, pp 13–20

  23. Desai N, Chopra AK, Singh M (2007) Representing and reasoning about commitments in business processes. In: AAAI, vol 22, pp 1328–1333

  24. Abraham E (1961) Science and the structure of ethics. In: (Neurath et al. 1970). University of Chicago Press, pp 273–377

  25. FIPA: 2002 (2002) FIPA Communicative act library specification. Technical report, Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents

  26. Fornara N, Colombetti M (2002) Operational specification of a commitment-based agent communication language. In: Proceedings of the first international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems: part 2. ACM, pp 536–542

  27. Garruzzo S, Rosaci D (2006) HISENE2: a reputation-based protocol for supporting semantic negotiation. In: OTM Confederated international conferences “On the move to meaningful internet systems”. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 949–966

  28. Garruzzo S, Rosaci D (2007) Ontology enrichment in multi agent systems through semantic negotiation. In: OTM Confederated international conferences “On the move to meaningful internet systems”. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 391–398

  29. Garruzzo S, Rosaci D (2008) Agent clustering based on semantic negotiation. ACM Trans Auton Adapt Syst (TAAS) 3(2):1–40

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Giordano L, Martelli A, Schwind C (2007) Specifying and verifying interaction protocols in a temporal action logic. J Appl Log 5(2):214–234

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  31. Governatori G, Olivieri F, Rotolo A, Scannapieco S (2013) Computing strong and weak permissions in defeasible logic. J Philos Log 42(6):799–829

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  32. Governatori G, Olivieri F, Rotolo A, Scannapieco S (2011) Three concepts of defeasible permission. In: JURIX, vol 235 , pp 63–72

  33. Governatori G, Hulstijn J, Riveret R, Rotolo A (2007) Characterising deadlines in temporal modal defeasible logic. In: Australasian joint conference on artificial intelligence. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 486–496

  34. Governatori G, Rotolo A, Sartor G (2005) Temporalised normative positions in defeasible logic. In: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on artificial intelligence and law. ACM, pp 25–34

  35. Governatori G, Maher MJ, Antoniou G, Billington D (2004) Argumentation semantics for defeasible logic. J Log Comput 14(5):675–702

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  36. Guerin F, Pitt J (2001) Denotational semantics for agent communication language. In: Proceedings of the fifth international conference on autonomous agents. ACM, pp 497–504

  37. Kontopoulos E, Bassiliades N, Governatori G, Antoniou G (2008) Extending a defeasible reasoner with modal and deontic logic operators. In: IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on Web intelligence and intelligent agent technology, vol 3 , pp 626–629

  38. Lam HP, Governatori G (2011) What are the necessity rules in defeasible easoning? In: International conference on logic programming and nonmonotonic reasoning. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 187–192

  39. Letia IA, Vartic R (2006) Commitment-based policies in persuasion dialogues with defeasible beliefs. In: Agent communication II. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 243–257

  40. Lillis D, Collier RW (2010) Augmenting agent platforms to facilitate conversation reasoning. In: International workshop on languages, methodologies and development tools for multi-agent systems. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 56–75

  41. Maher MJ (2001) Propositional defeasible logic has linear complexity. Theory Pract Logic Program 1 (06):691–711

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  42. Maher MJ, Rock A, Antoniou G, Billington D, Miller T (2001) Efficient defeasible reasoning systems. Int J Artif Intell Tools 10(4):483–501

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Mallya AU, Huhns MN (2003) Commitments among agents. IEEE Internet Comput 7(4):90–93

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Maudet N, Chaib-Draa B (2002) Commitment-based and dialogue-game-based protocols: new trends in agent communication languages. Knowl Eng Rev 17(02):157–179

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. McBurney P, Parsons S (2002) Games that agents play: a formal framework for dialogues between autonomous agents. J Log Lang Inf 11(3):315–334

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  46. McBurney P, Parsons S (2005) A denotational semantics for deliberation dialogues. In: Rahwan I, Moraitis P, Reed C (eds) First international workshop on, argumentation in multi-agent systems, lecture notes in artificial intelligence 3366 . Springer, Berlin, pp 162–175

  47. McBurney P, Parsons S (2007) Retraction and revocation in agent deliberation dialogs. Argumentation 21 (3):269–289

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. McBurney P, Parsons S (2009) Dialogue games for agent argumentation. In: Argumentation in artificial intelligence. Springer, US, pp 261–280

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  49. Moubaiddin A, Obeid N (2007) Towards a formal model of knowledge acquisition via cooperative dialogue. In: ICEIS (5), pp 182–189

    Google Scholar 

  50. Moubaiddin A, Obeid N (2007) The role of dialogue in remote diagnostics. In: Proceedings of the 20th international conference on condition monitoring & diagnostic engineering management , pp 677–686

  51. Moubaiddin A, Obeid N (2008) Dialogue and argumentation in multi-agent diagnosis. In: New challenges in applied intelligence technologies, studies in computational intelligence, vol 134. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 13–22

  52. Moubaiddin A, Obeid N (2009) Partial information basis for agent-based collaborative dialogue. Appl Intell 30(2):142– 167

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Moubaiddin A, Obeid N (2013) On formalizing social commitments in dialogue and argumentation models using temporal defeasible logic. Knowl Inf Syst 37(2):417–452

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Obeid N (2000) Towards a model of learning through communication. Knowl Inf Syst 2(4):498–508

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  55. Obeid N (2005) A formalism for representing and reasoning with temporal information, event and change. Appl Intell 23(2): 109–119

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  56. Obeid N, Moubaiddin A (2010) Towards a formal model of knowledge sharing in complex systems. In: Smart information and knowledge management, studies in computational intelligence series. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 53–82

  57. Obeid N, Rao RB (2010) On integrating event definition and event detection. Knowl Inf Syst 22(2):129–158

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. Parsons S, Wooldridge M, Amgoud L (2002) An analysis of formal inter-agent dialogues. In: Proceedings of the first international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems: part 1. ACM, pp 394–401

  59. Grosof BN, Labrou Y, Chan HY (1999) A declarative approach to business rules in contracts: courteous logic programs in XML. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM conference on electronic commerce. ACM, pp 68–77

  60. Robertson D (2004) A lightweight coordination calculus for agent systems. In: International workshop on declarative agent languages and technologies. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 183–197

  61. Sabri KE, Obeid N (2016) A temporal defeasible logic for handling access control policies. Appl Intell 44 (1):30–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Searle J (1969) Speech acts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

  63. Searle J (1975) A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In: Gunderson K (ed) Language, mind, and knowledge, Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science VII. University of Minnesota Press, pp 344–369

  64. Singh M (1998) Agent communication languages: rethinking the principles. IEEE Comput 31:40–47

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. Singh M (1999) A social semantics for agent communication languages. In: IJCAI’99 workshop on agent communication languages, pp 75–88

  66. Singh M (2000) Synthesizing coordination requirements for heterogeneous autonomous agents. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 3(2):107–132

    Article  Google Scholar 

  67. Skylogiannis T, Antoniou G, Bassiliades N, Governatori G, Bikakis A (2007) DR-NEGOTIATE–a system for automated agent negotiation with defeasible logic-based strategies. Data Knowl Eng 63(2):362–380

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Torroni P, Chesani F, Mello P, Montali M (2009) Social commitments in time: Satisfied or compensated. In: International workshop on declarative agent languages and technologies. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 228–243

  69. Verdicchio M, Colombetti M (2005) A commitment-based communicative act library. In: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems. ACM, pp 755–761

  70. Winikoff M, Liu W, Harland J (2004) Enhancing commitment machines. In: International workshop on declarative agent languages and technologies. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg , pp 198–220

  71. Wooldridge M (2000) Semantic issues in the verification of agent communication languages. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 3(1): 9–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. Yolum P, Singh M (2002) Flexible protocol specification and execution: applying event calculus planning using commitments. In: Proceedings of the first international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems: part 2. ACM, pp 527–534

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

    Asma Moubaiddin

  2. Department of Computer Science, King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

    Imad Salah

  3. Department of Computer Information Systems, King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

    Nadim Obeid

Authors
  1. Asma Moubaiddin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Imad Salah
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Nadim Obeid
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nadim Obeid.

Appendix A: Time theory based on points and intervals (PI)

Appendix A: Time theory based on points and intervals (PI)

Let ti, tj, tk, tr, tm ,tn ∈ I and tp, tp1 ∈ P. Let → be the implication of classical logic and A ⇔ B iff (A → B) ∧ (B → A).

A time structure is a tuple, MT = 〈P, I, <P , Meets, In 〉 where

  1. (1)

    P and I are non-empty sets of points and intervals respectively,

  2. (2)

    <P is a precedence relation on points of time. <P has the following properties:

    1. (P1)

      (tp1 <P tp2) ∧ (tp2 <P tp3) → tp1 <P tp3 (Transitivity)

    2. (P2)

      ¬ (tp1 <P tp1) (Irreflexivity)

    3. (P3)

      (tp1 <P tp2) ∨ (tp1 = tp2) ∨ (tp2 <P tp1) (linearity)

    4. (P4)

      (∀t p) (∃ tp1)(tp <P tp1) (U-Unboundedness)

    5. (P5)

      (∀t p) (∃ tp1)(tp1 <P tp) (L-Unboundedness)

    6. (P6)

      (∀t p1, tp2)(tp1 <P tp2)(∃ t p3)((tp1 <P tp3) ∧ (tp3 <P tp2)) (Density)

    (P4) (resp. P5) states that for any time point tp, there exists a point tp1 that comes after it, U-Unboundedness (resp. before it, L-Unboundedness).

  1. (3)

    Meets is axiomatized [1] as follows:

    1. (I1)

      (∀ ti, tj)(∃ tk) (Meets(ti, tk) ∧ Meets(tk, tj) →

      (∀ tr) (Meets(ti, tr) ≡ Meets(tj, tr))

    1. (I2)

      (∀ ti, tj)(∃ tk) (Meets(tk, ti) ∧ Meets(tk, tj) →

      (∀ tr) (Meets(tr, ti) ≡ Meets(tr, tj))

    1. (I3)

      (∀ ti, tj, tk, tr)(Meets(ti, tj) ∧ Meets(tk, tr) →

      Meets(ti, tr) XOR

      (∃ tm)(Meets(ti, tm) ∧ Meets(tm,tr) XOR

      (∃ tn)(Meets(tk, tn) ∧ Meets(tn, tj)

    1. (I4)

      (∀ ti)((∃ tj, tk)(Meets(tj, ti) ∧ Meets(ti, tk))

    1. (I5)

      (∀ ti, tj (Meets(ti, tj) → (∃ tk = ti + t j,)(∃ tm,tn)(Meets(tm, ti) ∧

      Meets(ti, tj) ∧ Meets(tj, tn) ∧

      Meets(tm, tk) ∧ Meets(tk, tn))

    where XOR denotes exclusive OR. (I1) and (I2) state that every interval has a unique start point and a unique end point. (I3) defines all the possible relations between any two meeting places. (I4) states that every interval has one interval that precedes and an interval that succeeds it. tk = ti + t j is only definable if Meets(i, j) holds and k contains exactly ti, tj and their meeting points tp, i.e., tk = ti ∪{tp} ∪t j. (I5) states that for any two adjacent intervals ti and tj, there exists an interval tk such that tk = ti + t j.

  1. (4)

    In is a point-interval relation that is governed by the following axiom:

(PI1):

(∀t i)(∃ t p1, tp2) (In(tp1, ti) ∧ In(tp2, ti) ∧ (tp1≠ tp2) ∧ (tp1<P tp2)

We may add the following definition:

Definition A.1

Let t ∈P ∪I.

Duration (t) = 0 iff t ∈P and

Duration(t) >0 iff t ∈I.

Given the above set of axioms we may define other interval-interval relations. It is well known that there are 13 differentbinary relations between intervals on a linear order (and quite a few more on a partial ordering) as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Binary relations between intervals

Full size image

We may also define point-interval relations. Let tp,tp1,tp2 ∈P and t,t1 ∈I.Begin(tp,t) states thattpis the lower limit(beginning) of t. End(tp,t)states that t p is the Upperlimit (end) of t. Begin(tp,t)and End(tp,t)can be defined as:

(Def1):

Begin(tp,t)iff (∀t p1)[(In(tp1,t) → tp≤Ptp1) ∧

(∀t p2)if (tp2≠tpand (In(tp1, t) → tp2 < Ptp1)then tp2 < Ptp].

(Def2):

End(tp,t)iff (∀t p1)[(In(tp1,t) → tp1 < Ptp) ∧

(∀t p2)if (tp2≠tpand (In(tp1, t) → tp1 < Ptp2)then tp < Ptp2].

From these definitions, we may derive the following axioms:

(PI2):

(∀t) (∀t p) (∀t p1)(Begin(tp,t) ∧End(tp1,t) → tp<P tp11)

(PI3):

(∀t)(∃ tp)(∃ tp1)(Begin(tp,t) ∧End(tp1,t))

(PI4):

(∀t)(Begin(tp,t) ∧Begin(tp1,t)) → tp = tp1

(PI5):

(∀t)(End(tp,t) ∧End(tp1,t)) → tp = tp1

(PI6):

(∀t) (∀t1)(Begin(tp,t) ∧End(tp1,t) ∧Begin(tp, t1) ∧End(tp1, t1)) → t = t1.

(Def3):

Before(tp,t) iff tp <P tp1 where Begin(tp1, t).

(Def4):

After(tp,t) iff tp2 <P tp where End(tp2, t).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Moubaiddin, A., Salah, I. & Obeid, N. A temporal modal defeasible logic for formalizing social commitments in dialogue and argumentation models. Appl Intell 48, 608–627 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-017-0983-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-017-0983-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation