Semantical Considerations on Dialectical and Practical Commitments

Abstract

This paper studies commitments in multiagent systems. A dialectical commitment corresponds to an agent taking a po-sition about a putative fact, including for the sake of argu-ment. A practical commitment corresponds to an agent being obliged to another to bring about a condition. Although com-mitments have been used in many works, an adequate formal semantics and axiomatization for them does not yet exist. This paper presents a logic of commitments that illustrates the commonalities and differences of the two kinds of com-mitments. In this manner, it generalizes the developments of previous papers, precisely delineates the meanings of com-mitments, and identifies important postulates used informally or semiformally in previous work. This paper considers “social ” commitments as introduced in