Vincent Louis

Norms, institutional power and roles: towards a logical framework

In the design of the organisation of a multiagent system the concept of role is fundamental. We informally analyse this concept through examples. Then we propose a more formal definition that can be decomposed into: the conditions that have to be satisfied to hold a role, the norms and institutional powers that apply to a role holder. Finally, we present a modal logical framework to represent these concepts.

Speech acts with institutional effects in agent societies

A general logical framework is presented to represent speech acts that have institutional effects. It is based on the concepts of the Speech Act Theory and takes the form of the FIPA Agent Communication Language. The most important feature is that the illocutionary force of all of these speech acts is declarative. The formal language that is proposed to represent the propositional content has a large expressive power and therefore allows to represent a large variety of speech acts such as: to empower, to appoint, to order, to declare,...etc. The same formal language is also used to express the feasibility preconditions, the illocutionary effects and the perlocutionary effects.