Beliefs, obligations, intentions, and desires as components in an agent architecture

In this paper we discuss how cognitive attitudes like beliefs, obligations, intentions and desires can be represented as components with input/output functionality. We study how to break down an agent specification into a specification of individual components and a specification of their coordination. A typical property discussed at the individual component specification level is whether the input is included in the output, and a typical property discussed at the coordination level is whether beliefs override desires to ensure realism. At the individual level we show how proof rules of so-called input/output logics correspond to properties of functionality descriptions, and at the coordination level we show how global constraints coordinating the components formalize coherence properties.