Information, Interaction, and Agency

The essays in this volume refer explicitly to Knowledge or Belief, thus establishing a connection between the notion of Information and the notion of Agency. Agents perform actions, and so the emphasis is put primarily on the dynamics of Information: agents either perform epistemic programs, or revise their beliefs, move in a game structure, or even learn. In order to decide which action to perform, or which move to make, the notion of Agency assumes that of rationality. Concepts of the notion of rationality, such as games and strategies, are studied in a multi-agent perspective: rather than portraying an isolated decision maker, reasoning solely in view of his own information and strategies, he is placed in a context with other agents, with some implicit or explicit assumptions about their Interaction.

This volume demonstrates that 'classical'  approaches to Information and Agency co-exist well with more modern trends, giving this collection a broad and refreshing methodological perspective: among the topics reflected upon in this volume are classical AGM-likeb belief revision, but also modern approaches to Dynamic Epistemic Logic; von Neumann games, but also Evolutionary Game Theory, a branch of game theory that loosens the classical assumptions about hyper-rational players. Some essays deal exclusively with logical theories, but one also suggests how we can bridge the gap between symbolic and connectionist approaches to cognition. Finally, there is a contribution on voting that relativises Condercet's 'classical' Jury's Theorem.

Contemporary epistemological and cognitive studies, as well as recent trends in computer science and game theory have revealed an increasingly important and intimate relationship between Information, Interaction, and Agency. Agents perform actions based on the available information and in the presence of other interacting agents. From this perspective Information, Interaction, and Agency neatly ties together classical themes like rationality, decision-making and belief revision with games, strategies and learning in a multi-agent setting. Unified by the central notions Information, Interaction, and Agency, the essays in this volume provide refreshing methodological perspectives on belief revision, dynamic epistemic logic, von Neumann games, and evolutionary game theory; all of which in turn are central approaches to understanding our own rationality and that of other agents. Reprinted from Synthese, 139:2 and 142:2 (2004), Special Section Knowledge, Rationality, and Action.

Foreword; Wiebe van der Hoek. Logics for Epistemic Programs; Alexandru Baltag and Lawrence Moss. A Counterexample to Six Fundamental Principles of Belief Revision; Hans Rott. Comparing Semantics of Logics for Multi-Agent Systems; Valentin Goranko and Wojciech Jamroga. A Characterization of Von Neumann Games In Terms of Memory; Giacomo Bonanno. An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Perspective on Learning in Multi-Agent Systems; Karl Tuyls, Ann Nowe, Tom Lenaerts and Bernard Manderick. Evolution of Conversational Meaning and Conversational Principles; Robert van Rooy. Monotonic Inference and Neural Networks; Reinhard Blutner. A Model of Jury Decisions Where All Jurors Have the Same Evidence; Franz Dietrich and Christian List. A SAT-Based Approach to Unbounded Mode Checking for Altnernating-Time Temporal Epistemic Logic; M. Kacprzak and W. Penczek. Update Semantics for Security Protocols; Arjen Hommerson, John-Jules Meyer and Erik de Vink. Index.