Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings. 07122 - Normative Multi-agent Systems
Doi
Abstract
It is argued that norms are best understood as classes of constraints on practical reasoning,
which an agent may consult either to select appropriate goals or commitments according to
the circumstances, or to construct a discursive justification for a course of action after the event.
We also discuss the question of how norm-conformance can be enforced in an open agent society,
arguing that some form of peer pressure is needed in open agent societies lacking
universally-recognised rules or any accepted authority structure. The paper includes formal
specifications of some data structures that may be employed in reasoning about normative agents