=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Changing Agreements: Intention Reconsideration based on Assumptions and Reasons
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-918/111110262.pdf
|volume=Vol-918
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/at/MarosinPT12
}}
==Changing Agreements: Intention Reconsideration based on Assumptions and Reasons==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-918/111110262.pdf
Changing Agreements:
Intention Reconsideration Based On Assumptions And Reasons ∗ † ‡
Diana Marosin1 , Henderik A. Proper2,3 , and Leendert van der Torre1
1
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
2
CRP Henri Tudor, Luxembourg
3
Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
marosin.diana@gmail.com,erik.proper@tudor.lu,leon.vandertorre@uni.lu
Most researchers in agreement technologies are working on how to make or
negotiate new agreements, less on changing existing agreements. This motivates
our main research question: How to develop technology to support the change
of agreements? In the master’s thesis [1] of the first author we start from a
real-world case study in enterprise architecture [2]. We notice that, similar to
agreement technology, the revision of architectural decisions is a key issue in
enterprise architecture. Therefore, we focus our work on creating an abstract
framework supporting the change of agreements. We represent agreements as
intentions, which are plans the agents commit to, chosen from a set of possi-
ble alternatives under discussion. Change of agreements is therefore intention
reconsideration.
The past work on intention reconsideration of Cohen and Levesque [3] or Rao
and Georgeff [4] describes three types of commitment strategies: open-minded,
single-minded and blindly committed. The agents are reconsidering their com-
mitments based on their belief of a possible fulfilment or on the existence of a
goal. In these scenarios, the commitments are not explicitly linked to assump-
tions about the world or based on intentions previously committed to. What is
missing is a reason for intentions, which can be another intention. Having this
observation as starting point, we focus on creating a framework that can accom-
modate reasons for intentions, underlying assumptions for an intention, revision
of intentions as well as creation of new ones as alternatives. We do not fully
automate the change of agreements. Instead, our logical abstract framework for
intention reconsideration provides a setting to define actual procedures.
Even if we are inspired by Shoham’s model of intention reconsideration [5,
6], a key difference is the fact that our framework provides actual algorithms
for intention reconsideration, whereas Shoham gives rationality postulates for
change of intentions based on the AGM paradigm.
For representing the assumptions, we use Shoham’s optimistic preconditions.
A plan is a sequence of actions, and the particular property of Shoham’s model
∗
AT2012, 15-16 October 2012, Dubrovnik, Croatia. Copyright held by the authors.
†
This short paper presents the main challenges addressed by the master’s thesis of D.
Marosin, “Changing Enterprise Architectures: Abstract Framework, Revision Pro-
cedures and Algorithms.” [1]
‡
This work has been partially sponsored by the Fonds National de la Recherche Lux-
embourg (www.fnr.lu), via the PEARL programme.
is that a plan does not have to imply the preconditions of its actions. The only
condition is that the preconditions of the actions are possible. He calls this an
optimistic interpretation of plans. We do not discuss whether this assumption is
realistic in his setting, but we adopt this optimistic interpretation for assump-
tions. When an assumption does not hold, we treat it as a precondition which is
violated.
Agreements are often modelled as a set of dependencies, but opinions differ on
how to represent dependencies and relate them to other concepts. A dependency
is not only an intention, but also a reason for the intention. Consequently, to
define agreements as sets of dependencies, we also need to represent the reasons
for the intentions. Moreover, these reasons are needed to explain how intentions
are reconsidered.
Our algorithms are based on three ideas. First, if an assumption is violated,
then we have to reconsider all intentions based on the assumption. Second, if
an intention is retracted, then we have to find new intentions to satisfy the
reasons. However, in general, when intentions have to be reconsidered, there
can be many reasons for this change. To be able to change the assumptions and
intentions, we introduce the notion of explained event. Third, an explained event
contains not only the assumptions which are violated and the intentions which
are reconsidered, but also the reasons for the violations and reconsiderations.
Our goal is to keep our framework as simple as possible. The logical foun-
dations introduced by Cohen and Levesque are relatively complex and with two
more extensions (reasons and assumptions) the language would become too dif-
ficult to use in many applications, such as enterprise architecture or agreement
technologies. The abstract framework created by us is intended to be used in en-
terprise architecture, whose domain is less formal, more human orientated. We
believe that by the abstract nature of our work, it can be applied successfully
to other types of agreements. In addition, we provide a graphical representation
of the framework, incorporating agreements, alternatives, reasons and assump-
tions.
References
1. Marosin, D.: Changing Enterprise Architectures: Abstract Framework, Revision
Procedures and Algorithms. Master’s thesis, University of Luxembourg (2012)
2. Jonkers, H., Band, I., Quartel, D.: The ArchiSurance Case Study. White Paper
Y121, The Open Group (January 2012)
3. Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Intention is choice with commitment. Artif. Intell.
42(2–3) (1990) 213–261
4. Rao, A.S., Georgeff, M.P.: Intentions and rational commitment. In: Proceedings of
the First Pacific Rim Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI-90). (1993)
5. Shoham, Y.: Logical theories of intention and the database perspective. Journal of
Philosophical Logic 38 (2009) 633–647
6. Icard, T.F., Pacuit, E., Shoham, Y.: Joint revision of beliefs and intention. In: KR.
(2010)