English

Intention as Commitment toward Time

Logic in Computer Science 2020-04-20 v1 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

In this paper we address the interplay among intention, time, and belief in dynamic environments. The first contribution is a logic for reasoning about intention, time and belief, in which assumptions of intentions are represented by preconditions of intended actions. Intentions and beliefs are coherent as long as these assumptions are not violated, i.e. as long as intended actions can be performed such that their preconditions hold as well. The second contribution is the formalization of what-if scenarios: what happens with intentions and beliefs if a new (possibly conflicting) intention is adopted, or a new fact is learned? An agent is committed to its intended actions as long as its belief-intention database is coherent. We conceptualize intention as commitment toward time and we develop AGM-based postulates for the iterated revision of belief-intention databases, and we prove a Katsuno-Mendelzon-style representation theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.08144,
  title  = {Intention as Commitment toward Time},
  author = {Marc van Zee and Dragan Doder and Leendert van der Torre and Mehdi Dastani and Thomas Icard and Eric Pacuit},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.08144},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

83 pages, 4 figures, Artificial Intelligence journal pre-print

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:55:01.285Z