The Ratio Project

Development of a Logical Theory of
Practical Reasoning and Rationality
in Resource-Bounded Agents

Overview

We are interested in developing a logical theory of rationality in high-level resource-bounded agents; such as ourselves. Consequently we assume that our agents have mental states consisting of beliefs, desires, intentions, goals, obligations, etc., and that their capacities for reasoning and acting are limited. While much work has been done on formalising various components of such agents, little has been done on the interactions between them and what Nils Nilsson calls the rational balance amongst them. We are investigating this problem by developing a planning theory of practical reasoning and rationality.

Funding

This project was funded by the United Kingdom Science and Engineering Research Council under grant number GR/L34914 from December 1996 to November 1999.

People

John Bell, Zhisheng Huang.

Illustrative Papers

J. Bell, A Planning Theory of Practical Rationality . Presented at the AAAI'95 Fall Symposium on Rational Agency: Concepts, Theories, Models and Applications, MIT, November 1995.

J. Bell and Z. Huang, Dynamic Goal Hierarchies . In: Intelligent Agent Systems: Theoretical and Practical Issues, L. Cavedon, A. Rao, and W. Wobcke (eds.). LNAI no. 1209, Springer, Berlin, 1997, pp. 88-103.

J. Bell and Z. Huang, Dynamic Belief Hierarchies . In: Formal Models of Agents, J.J. Meyer and P.Y. Schobbens (eds.), LNAI No. 1760, Springer, Berlin, 1999, pp. 20-35.

J. Bell and Z. Huang, Dynamic Obligation Hierarchies . In: Norms, Logics and Information Systems , P. McNamara and H. Prakken (eds.), Ios Press, Amsterdam, 1999, pp. 231-246.

J. Bell and Z.Huang, Seeing is Believing; A common sense theory of the adoption of perception-based beliefs. . Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing , Vol 13, 1999, pp. 133-140.

Related Activities

Workshop series on Practical Reasoning and Rationality .