Précis zu: Agents' Abilities

Modelling and verifying abilities of rational agents

Formalising Abilities and Opportunities of Agents

We present a formal system to reason about and specify the behavior of multiple intelligent arti cial agents. Essentially, each agent can perform certain actions, and it may possess a variety of information in order to reason about its and other agent's actions. Thus, our KARO-framework tries to deal formallywith the notion ofKnowledge, possessed by the agents, and their possible execution of a...

Précis of implicit nationalism.

While the study of nationalism has received much attention throughout the social sciences and humanities, the experimental investigation of it lags behind. In this paper we review recent advances in the examination of implicit nationalism. In the first set of experiments we survey, the Palestinian, Israeli, Italian, and Russian flags were primed (or not, in the control conditions) and their eff...

Précis of Objects and Persons

There are no statues or chairs or rocks or planets. But there are microscopic objects. Let’s call them—whatever they may turn out to be—‘atoms’. And although there are no statues, there are atoms “arranged statuewise.” There are also atoms arranged chairwise, atoms arranged rockwise, and atoms arranged planetwise. I “eliminate” many familiar composite macroscopic objects. But I say there are at...

Précis of doing without concepts.

Although cognitive scientists have learned a lot about concepts, their findings have yet to be organized in a coherent theoretical framework. In addition, after twenty years of controversy, there is little sign that philosophers and psychologists are converging toward an agreement about the very nature of concepts. Doing without Concepts (Machery 2009) attempts to remedy this state of affairs. ...