There are fundamental limitations on using mental attitudes to formalise the semantics of an Agent Communication Language (ACL). In this paper, we define a general semantic framework for a class of ACLs in terms of protocols, and develop a method for designing and specifying a member of this class, and configuring it for a particular application. We then analyse the performatives and protocols ...

We discuss novel data involving attitude predicates in American Sign Language. We offer evidence against the uniform treatment of attitudes by revealing new structural and interpretive differences between proffering and doxastic embedding predicates. Besides providing evidence for this distinction from a new domain, the data also advance the current understanding of the formal syntactic/semanti...

According to the pragmatic or functional conception of attitudes, we can say that John desires A iff John behaves such that he tends to bring it about that the actual world is an A-world, if his beliefs are true. This puts certain constraints on how to analyse desire attributions, but it leaves open a number of alternative analyses. Several alternatives will be discussed and compared in this pa...

In this paper, I point out the problems of the semantics of intensional transitive verbs (e.g.,“seek,” “worship,” and “imagine”) proposed by Graham Priest in his book Towards Non-Being (TNB). On the basis of noneism, a version of Meinongian theory of nonexistent objects, TNB basically takes an intensional transitive as representing a relation between an ordinary individual object and a (possibl...

The representation of propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.) and the anolysis of natural-language, propositional-attitude reports presents difficult problems for cognitive science and artificial intelligence. In particular, various representational approaches to attitudes involve the incorrect “imputation,” to cognitive agents, of the use of artificial theory-laden notions. Interestin...

Computers and computer-assisted instruction are being used with increasing frequency in the area of undergraduate paramedic education. Paramedic students’ attitudes towards the use of e-learning technology and computer-assisted instruction have received limited attention in the empirical literature to date. The objective of this study was to determine paramedic students’ attitudes towards e-lea...

OBJECTIVE Examining factors influencing food label use among Singapore's supermarket shoppers using the Theory of Planned Behavior. DESIGN A point-of-purchase survey among general shoppers in 2 supermarkets. SETTING Singapore, a country whose population is exposed to a wide range of food labeling formats because of the import-dependent nature of the food industry. PARTICIPANTS A total of ...

Conventional approaches to the modeling of autonomous agents and agent communication rely heavily on the ascription of mental properties like beliefs and intentions to the individual agents. These “mentalistic” approaches are, when applicable, very powerful, but become problematic in open environments like the Semantic Web, Peer2Peer systems and open multiagent systems populated by truly autono...

The purpose of this study is to examine different formats of comment data to predict student performance. Having students write comment data after every lesson can reflect students’ learning attitudes, tendencies and learning activities involved with the lesson. In this research, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (pLSA) are employed to predict student ...

A growing number of users in Web 2.0 based social network sites and photo sharing portals upload millions of images per day. In many cases, this leads to serious privacy threats. The images reveal not only the personal relationships and attitudes of the user who uploads the images, but those of other persons displayed in the images as well. In this paper, we propose a system architecture for pr...