Modal Tableaux for Verifying Security Protocols

To develop theories to specify and reason about various aspects of multi-agent systems, many researchers have proposed the use of modal logics such as belief logics, logics of knowledge, and logics of norms. As multi-agent systems operate in dynamic environments, there is also a need to model the evolution of multi-agent systems through time. In order to introduce a temporal dimension to a belief logic, we combine it with a linear-time temporal logic using a powerful technique called fibring for combining logics. We describe a labelled modal tableaux system for a fibred belief logic (FL) which can be used to automatically verify correctness of inter-agent stream authentication protocols. With the resulting fibred belief logic and its associated modal tableaux, one is able to build theories of trust for the description of, and reasoning about, multi-agent systems operating in dynamic environments

Modal tableaux for verifying stream authentication protocols

To develop theories to specify and reason about various aspects of multi-agent systems, many researchers have proposed the use of modal logics such as belief logics, logics of knowledge, and logics of norms. As multi-agent systems operate in dynamic environments, there is also a need to model the evolution of multi-agent systems through time. In order to introduce a temporal dimension to a belief logic, we combine it with a linear-time temporal logic using a powerful technique called fibring for combining logics. We describe a labelled modal tableaux system for the resulting fibred belief logic (FL) which can be used to automatically verify correctness of inter-agent stream authentication protocols. With the resulting fibred belief logic and its associated modal tableaux, one is able to build theories of trust for the description of, and reasoning about, multi-agent systems operating in dynamic environments

Arrow update logic

We present Arrow Update Logic, a theory of epistemic access elimination that can be used to reason about multi-agent belief change. While the belief-changing "arrow updates" of Arrow Update Logic can be transformed into equivalent belief-changing "action models" from the popular Dynamic Epistemic Logic approach, we prove that arrow updates are sometimes exponentially more succinct than action models. Further, since many examples of belief change are naturally thought of from Arrow Update Logic's perspective of eliminating access to epistemic possibilities, Arrow Update Logic is a valuable addition to the repertoire of logics of information change. In addition to proving basic results about Arrow Update Logic, we introduce a new notion of common knowledge that generalizes both ordinary common knowledge and the "relativized" common knowledge familiar from the Dynamic Epistemic Logic literature

A family of graded epistemic logics

Multi-Agent Epistemic Logic has been investigated in Computer Science [Fagin, R., J. Halpern, Y. Moses and M. Vardi, “Reasoning about Knowledge,” MIT Press, USA, 1995] to represent and reason about agents or groups of agents knowledge and beliefs. Some extensions aimed to reasoning about knowledge and probabilities [Fagin, R. and J. Halpern, Reasoning about knowledge and probability, Journal of the ACM 41 (1994), pp. 340–367] and also with a fuzzy semantics have been proposed [Fitting, M., Many-valued modal logics, Fundam. Inform. 15 (1991), pp. 235–254; Maruyama, Y., Reasoning about fuzzy belief and common belief: With emphasis on incomparable beliefs, in: IJCAI 2011, Proceedings of the 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, July 16–22, 2011, 2011, pp. 1008–1013]. This paper introduces a parametric method to build graded epistemic logics inspired in the systematic method to build Multi-valued Dynamic Logics introduced in [Madeira, A., R. Neves and M. A. Martins, An exercise on the generation of many-valued dynamic logics, J. Log. Algebr. Meth. Program. 85 (2016), pp. 1011–1037. URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jlamp.2016.03.004; Madeira, A., R. Neves, M. A. Martins and L. S. Barbosa, A dynamic logic for every season, in: C. Braga and N. Martí-Oliet, editors, Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications – 17th Brazilian Symposium, SBMF 2014, Maceió, AL, Brazil, September 29-October 1, 2014. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8941 (2014), pp. 130–145. URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15075-8_9]. The parameter in both methods is the same: an action lattice [Kozen, D., On action algebras, Logic and Information Flow (1994), pp. 78–88]. This algebraic structure supports a generic space of agent knowledge operators, as choice, composition and closure (as a Kleene algebra), but also a proper truth space for possible non bivalent interpretation of the assertions (as a residuated lattice).publishe

Bisimulation and expressivity for conditional belief, degrees of belief, and safe belief

Plausibility models are Kripke models that agents use to reason about knowledge and belief, both of themselves and of each other. Such models are used to interpret the notions of conditional belief, degrees of belief, and safe belief. The logic of conditional belief contains that modality and also the knowledge modality, and similarly for the logic of degrees of belief and the logic of safe belief. With respect to these logics, plausibility models may contain too much information. A proper notion of bisimulation is required that characterises them. We define that notion of bisimulation and prove the required characterisations: on the class of image-finite and preimage-finite models (with respect to the plausibility relation), two pointed Kripke models are modally equivalent in either of the three logics, if and only if they are bisimilar. As a result, the information content of such a model can be similarly expressed in the logic of conditional belief, or the logic of degrees of belief, or that of safe belief. This, we found a surprising result. Still, that does not mean that the logics are equally expressive: the logics of conditional and degrees of belief are incomparable, the logics of degrees of belief and safe belief are incomparable, while the logic of safe belief is more expressive than the logic of conditional belief. In view of the result on bisimulation characterisation, this is an equally surprising result. We hope our insights may contribute to the growing community of formal epistemology and on the relation between qualitative and quantitative modelling

Logic and Topology for Knowledge, Knowability, and Belief - Extended Abstract

In recent work, Stalnaker proposes a logical framework in which belief is realized as a weakened form of knowledge. Building on Stalnaker's core insights, and using frameworks developed by Bjorndahl and Baltag et al., we employ topological tools to refine and, we argue, improve on this analysis. The structure of topological subset spaces allows for a natural distinction between what is known and (roughly speaking) what is knowable; we argue that the foundational axioms of Stalnaker's system rely intuitively on both of these notions. More precisely, we argue that the plausibility of the principles Stalnaker proposes relating knowledge and belief relies on a subtle equivocation between an "evidence-in-hand" conception of knowledge and a weaker "evidence-out-there" notion of what could come to be known. Our analysis leads to a trimodal logic of knowledge, knowability, and belief interpreted in topological subset spaces in which belief is definable in terms of knowledge and knowability. We provide a sound and complete axiomatization for this logic as well as its uni-modal belief fragment. We then consider weaker logics that preserve suitable translations of Stalnaker's postulates, yet do not allow for any reduction of belief. We propose novel topological semantics for these irreducible notions of belief, generalizing our previous semantics, and provide sound and complete axiomatizations for the corresponding logics.Comment: In Proceedings TARK 2017, arXiv:1707.08250. The full version of this paper, including the longer proofs, is at arXiv:1612.0205