Introspective and elaborative processes in rational agents

Abstract

This paper explores the design of rational agent architectures from the perspective of the dynamics of information change. The procedural elements that guide an agent’s behavior and that reflect the evolution of prodattitudes (for example, from desire to intention to plan) are described in terms of McCarthy’s notion of a reified mental action. The function of each module of an agent architecture is exactly specified by identifying processes with each module and then describing the effects of those processes or mental actions (such as updating beliefs, elaborating plans, deliberating, reconsidering, revising intentions, filtering intentions, and monitoring) in the same way as one would describe the effects of physical actions. A new semantics for intention is presented that is both dynamic and causal in the sense that it is given in terms of the relation of an intention to both previous and subsequent mental states as well as to the choice of physical action. Desires are given a syntactic analysis while the prodattitude of intentionsdthat, which has been proposed in the SharedPlans framework of Grosz and Kraus, is axiomatized in terms of an evolving commitment to certain deliberative, mental actions that evolve as a function of knowledge of the state of the joint activity.