AGM-Style Revision of Beliefs and Intentions from a Database Perspective (Preliminary Version)

We introduce a logic for temporal beliefs and intentions based on Shoham's database perspective. We separate strong beliefs from weak beliefs. Strong beliefs are independent from intentions, while weak beliefs are obtained by adding intentions to strong beliefs and everything that follows from that. We formalize coherence conditions on strong beliefs and intentions. We provide AGM-style postulates for the revision of strong beliefs and intentions. We show in a representation theorem that a revision operator satisfying our postulates can be represented by a pre-order on interpretations of the beliefs, together with a selection function for the intentions

Revising conflicting intention sets in BDI agents

Autonomous agents typically have several goals they are pursuing simultaneously. Even if the goals themselves are not necessarily inconsistent, choices made about how to pursue each of these goals may well result in a set of intentions which are conflicting. A rational autonomous agent should be able to reason about and modify its set of intentions to take account of such issues. This paper presents the semantics of some preferences regarding modified sets of intentions. We look at the possibility of simply deleting some intention(s) but more importantly we also look at the possibility of modifying intentions, such that the goals will still be achieved but in a different way

Unearthing the Role of Cultural Perception in Homeownership Behavior: A Conceptual Exploration

Received 3 November 2023. Accepted 4 March 2024. Published online 5 April 2024.Homeownership, viewed as a form of economic behavior, warrants a comprehensive examination considering individual perspectives. This study seeks to redefine cultural perception as an additional variable that extends the influential Theory of Planned Behavior, which serves as the foundational framework for studies in economic behavior. It presents a conceptual framework introducing the pivotal concept of cultural perception in the analysis of homeownership, drawn from an extensive literature review in economics and housing. The study delves into the notions of cultural dimensions, norms rooted in culture, homeownership, Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), addressing the existing gap regarding the “cultural influence” within the TPB framework. Furthermore, this study introduces a novel perspective by expanding TPB by incorporating perception variables linked to cultural values, forming a synthesis of economics, cultural, and psychological disciplines. A metric for assessing perception concerning cultural values is also proposed to effectively encapsulate the essence of the homeownership concept. This study is anticipated to augment the precision and comprehensiveness of investigations into the dynamics of homeownership behavior, and thus enrich the behavioral literature by integrating ideas from diverse disciplines.This work was supported by the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) under Project ID: F01/GRADUATES/2094/2021

Intention Reconsideration in Artificial Agents: a Structured Account

An important module in the Belief-Desire-Intention architecture for artificial agents (which builds on Michael Bratman's work in the philosophy of action) focuses on the task of intention reconsideration. The theoretical task is to formulate principles governing when an agent ought to undo a prior committed intention and reopen deliberation. Extant proposals for such a principle, if sufficiently detailed, are either too task-specific or too computationally demanding. I propose that an agent ought to reconsider an intention whenever some incompatible prospect is sufficiently valuable along some dimension that can be assessed at zero or near-zero computational cost

Humor and preschoolers’ trust: Sensitivity to changing intentions

This research demonstrates that preschoolers (a) avoid trusting informants with humorous intentions when learning novel information and (b) flexibly consider current intentions rather than initial intentions when determining who to trust. In Study 1 (N = 61), 3- and 4-year-olds based their trust on intentions or intentional cues alone, trusting a sincere informant over a joker, even when no prior accuracy or inaccuracy was displayed. In Study 2 (N = 32), 3- and 4-year-olds flexibly based their trust on the informants’ current intentions or intentional cues rather than their initial ones. Children trusted a sincere informant, who originally joked, over a joker, who was originally sincere. In Study 3 (N = 89), 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds tracked changing intentions, and not just intentional cues, in determining who to trust. Children trusted an informant who joked during training trials but was sincere during test trials over an informant who was ignorant during training trials and was sincere during test trials. However, if the ignorant informant became knowledgeable and the joker continued to joke, the pattern reversed. This is the first study to show that preschoolers consider intentions to joke when learning information. This is also the first study to show that preschoolers do not see trust as stable but rather see it as a function of changing intentions

Intention in Intervention: A Philosophical, Theoretical and Empirical Exploration

This thesis seeks to explore the role of agent or 'user' intention in the fields of Management Science and Systems Thinking. Primarily through the use of various modelling approaches these fields seek to provide assistance to organisational stakeholders who are looking to intervene in situations with a view to dealing with problems and/or bringing about some form of 'improvement'. Although the literature acknowledges that the various methodologies, techniques and tools of MS/ST can be used flexibly depending upon user intention, to date, intention itself has not been the subject of detailed investigation. The thesis seeks to plug this gap in the literature. In exploring intention in some detail the thesis interlinks philosophy, theory and empirical work. The philosophical and theoretical components allow us to conceptualise intention and better understand how it might work in concrete settings. The empirical component, conducted with a team of action researchers, grounds the discussion in practice. The main proposition of the thesis is that intention is a dual-sided phenomenon, i.e. "we do things intentionally, and we intend to do things" (Bratman, 1997). Thus intention has a present and a future side. The research reported on through the thesis shows how, through language and actions, both sides of intention can significantly shape the nature of interventions. This being the case, the value of the work is that it provides new ways of accounting for and learning from interventions; in particular, it provides new frameworks for practitioners to better reflect on and guide their actions

Towards a theory of intention revision

Although the change of beliefs in the face of new information has been widely studied with some success, the revision of other mental states has received little attention from the theoretical perspective. In particular, intentions are widely recognised as being a key attitude for rational agents, and while several formal theories of intention have been proposed in the literature, the logic of intention revision has been hardly considered. There are several reasons for this: perhaps most importantly, intentions are very closely connected with other mental states—in particular, beliefs about the future and the abilities of the agent. So, we cannot study them in isolation. We must consider the interplay between intention revision and the revision of other mental states, which complicates the picture considerably. In this paper, we present some first steps towards a theory of intention revision. We develop a simple model of an agent’s mental states, and define intention revision operators. Using this model, we develop a logic of intention dynamics, and then investigate some of its properties