Hans van Ditmarsch

Dynamic Epistemic Logic

The appendix to the chapter on dynamics supplements the chapter with an overview of dynamic epistemic logic: a branch of logic mainly developed in the decade after the first edition of this handbook was published. Dynamic epistemic logic is an extension of epistemic logic (the logic of knowledge), which focusses on information change, such as communication, usually involving more than one agent. The information of the agents includes information about each others information, socalled higher-order information. The appendix consists of three parts. In the first part an example scenario is presented which can be captured by dynamic epistemic logic. The second part is a historical overview of the main approaches in dynamic epistemic logic is presented. The last part is a look towards the future which attempts to connect ideas from dynamic approaches to language with dynamic epistemic logic.

Prolegomena to Dynamic Logic for Belief Revision

In ‘belief revision’ a theory \( \mathcal{K} \) is revised with a formula ϕ resulting in a revised theory \( \mathcal{K}*\phi \). Typically, ¬ϕ is in \( \mathcal{K} \), one has to give up belief in ¬ϕ by a process of retraction, and ϕ is in \( \mathcal{K}*\phi \). We propose to model belief revision in a dynamic epistemic logic. In this setting, we typically have an information state (pointed Kripke model) for the theory \( \mathcal{K} \) wherein the agent believes the negation of the revision formula, i.e., wherein B¬ϕ is true. The revision with ϕ is a program *ϕ that transforms this information state into a new information state. The transformation is described by a dynamic modal operator [*ϕ], that is interpreted as a binary relation 〚*ϕ〛 between information states. The next information state is computed from the current information state and the belief revision formula. If the revision is successful, the agent believes ϕ in the resulting state, i.e., B ϕ is then true. To make this work, as information states we propose ‘doxastic epistemic models’ that represent both knowledge and degrees of belief. These are multi-modal and multi-agent Kripke models. They are constructed from preference relations for agents, and they satisfy various characterizable multi-agent frame properties. Iterated, revocable, and higher-order belief revision are all quite natural in this setting. We present, for an example, five different ways of such dynamic belief revision. One can also see that as a non-deterministic epistemic action with two alternatives, where one is preferred over the other, and there is a natural generalization to general epistemic actions with preferences.

‘KNOWABLE’ AS ‘KNOWN AFTER AN ANNOUNCEMENT’

Public announcement logic is an extension of multi-agent epistemic logic with dynamic operators to model the informational consequences of announcements to the entire group of agents. We propose an extension of public announcement logic with a dynamic modal operator that expresses what is true after any announcement: ♦ϕ expresses that there is a truthful announcement ψ after which ϕ is true. This logic gives a perspective on Fitch’s knowability issues: for which formulas ϕ does it hold that ϕ → ♦Kϕ? We give various semantic results, and we show completeness for a Hilbert-style axiomatization of this logic. There is a natural generalization to a logic for arbitrary events.

The Russian Cards Problem

Suppose we have a stack of cards that is divided over some players. For certain distributions of cards it is possible to communicate your hand of cards to another player by public announcements, without yet another player learning any of your cards. A solution to this problem consists of some sequence of announcements and is called an exchange. It is called a direct exchange if it consists of (the minimum of) two announcements only. The announcements in an exchange have a special form: they are safe communications, an interesting new form of update. Certain unsafe communications turn out to be unsuccessful updates. A communication is a public announcement that is known to be true. Each communication may be about a set of alternative card deals only, and even about a set of alternatives to the communicating players own hand only. We list the direct exchanges for a deal of seven cards where the two players holding three cards communicate their hands to each other. Our work may be applicable to the design of cryptographic protocols.Suppose we have a stack of cards that is divided over some players. For certain distributions of cards it is possible to communicate your hand of cards to another player by public announcements, without yet another player learning any of your cards. A solution to this problem consists of some sequence of announcements and is called an exchange. It is called a direct exchange if it consists of (the minimum of) two announcements only. The announcements in an exchange have a special form: they are safe communications, an interesting new form of update. Certain unsafe communications turn out to be unsuccessful updates. A communication is a public announcement that is known to be true. Each communication may be about a set of alternative card deals only, and even about a set of alternatives to the communicating players own hand only. We list the direct exchanges for a deal of seven cards where the two players holding three cards communicate their hands to each other. Our work may be applicable to the design of cryptographic protocols.

EPISTEMIC LOGIC AND INFORMATION UPDATE

Epistemic logic investigates what agents know or believe about certain factual descriptions of the world, and about each other. It builds on a model of what information is (statically) available in a given system, and isolates general principles concerning knowledge and belief. The information in a system may well change as a result of various changes: events from the outside, observations by the agents, communication between the agents, etc. This requires information updates. These have been investigated in computer science via interpreted systems ; in philosophy and in artificial intelligence their study leads to the area of belief revision. A more recent development is called dynamic epistemic logic. Dynamic epistemic logic is an extension of epistemic logic with dynamic modal operators for belief change (i.e., information update). It is the focus of our contribution, but its relation to other ways to model dynamics will also be discussed in some detail.

Group Announcement Logic

Two currently active strands of research on logics for multi-agent systems are dynamic epistemic logic, focusing on the epistemic consequences of actions, and logics of coalitional ability, focusing on what coalitions of agents can achieve by cooperating strategically. In this paper we bridge these topics by considering the question: “what can a coalition achieve by making public announcements?”. We propose an extension of public announcement logic with constructs of the form hGi’, where G is a group of agents, with the intuitive meaning that G can jointly execute a publicly observable action such that ’ will be true afterwards. Actions here are taken to be truthful public announcements, but turn out also to include sequences of such joint actions as well as protocols with alternating actions by dierent agents, in response to the actions of others. We also study in detail the dierence between ‘knowing how’ (knowing de re) and ‘knowing that’ (knowing de dicto) in our framework: both can elegantly be expressed in the single-agent case. We present several meta-logical properties of this Group Announcement Logic, including a sound and complete axiomatisation, expressivity and the complexity of model checking. The results are based on but greatly extend a part of [2].

Descriptions of Game Actions

To describe simultaneous knowledge updates for different subgroups we propose anepistemic language with dynamic operators for actions. The language is interpreted onequivalence states (S5 states). The actions are interpreted as state transformers. Two crucial action constructors are learning and local choice. Learning isthe dynamic equivalent of common knowledge. Local choice aids in constraining theinterpretation of an action to a functional interpretation (state transformer).Bisimilarity is preserved under execution of actions. The language is applied todescribe various actions in card games.To describe simultaneous knowledge updates for different subgroups we propose an epistemic language with dynamic operators for actions. The language is interpreted on equivalence states (S5 states). The actions are interpreted as state transformers. Two crucial action constructors are learning and local choice. Learning is the dynamic equivalent of common knowledge. Local choice aids in constraining the interpretation of an action to a functional interpretation (state transformer). Bisimilarity is preserved under execution of actions. The language is applied to describe various actions in card games.

Tableaux for Public Announcement Logic

Public announcement logic extends multi-agent epistemic logic with dynamic operators to model the informational consequences of announcements to the entire group of agents. In this article, we propose a labelled tableau calculus for this logic, and show that it decides satisfiability of formulas in deterministic polynomial space. Since this problem is known to be PSPACE-complete, it follows that our proof method is optimal.

What will they say?—Public Announcement Games

Dynamic epistemic logic describes the possible information-changing actions available to individual agents, and their knowledge pre- and post conditions. For example, public announcement logic describes actions in the form of public, truthful announcements. However, little research so far has considered describing and analysing rational choice between such actions, i.e., predicting what rational self-interested agents actually will or should do. Since the outcome of information exchange ultimately depends on the actions chosen by all the agents in the system, and assuming that agents have preferences over such outcomes, this is a game theoretic scenario. This is, in our opinion, an interesting general research direction, combining logic and game theory in the study of rational information exchange. In this article we take some first steps in this direction: we consider the case where available actions are public announcements, and where each agent has a (typically epistemic) goal formula that she would like to become true. What will each agent announce? The truth of the goal formula also depends on the announcements made by other agents. We analyse such public announcement games.

On the logic of lying

We model lying as a communicative act changing the beliefs of the agents in a multi-agent system. With Augustine, we see lying as an utterance believed to be false by the speaker and uttered with the intent to deceive the addressee. The deceit is successful if the lie is believed after the utterance by the addressee. This is our perspective. Also, as common in dynamic epistemic logics, we model the agents addressed by the lie, but we do not (necessarily) model the speaker as one of those agents. This further simplifies the picture: we do not need to model the intention of the speaker, nor do we need to distinguish between knowledge and belief of the speaker: he is the observer of the system and his beliefs are taken to be the truth by the listeners. We provide a sketch of what goes on logically when a lie is communicated. We present a complete logic of manipulative updating, to analyse the effects of lying in public discourse. Next, we turn to the study of lying in games. First, a game-theoretical analysis is used to explain how the possibility of lying makes games such as Liars Dice interesting, and how lying is put to use in optimal strategies for playing the game. This is the opposite of the logical manipulative update: instead of always believing the utterance, now, it is never believed. We also give a matching logical analysis for the games perspective, and implement that in the model checker DEMO. Our running example of lying in games is the game of Liars Dice.