Semantic, Normative and Practical Aspects of Agent Communication

Marco Colombetti

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Project
Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione
Politecnico di Milano
Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32
20133 Milano
Italy

Email:	Marco.Colombetti@PoliMi.It
Voice:	(+39) 02 2399 3686
Fax:	(+39) 02 2399 3411


Abstract
Most approaches to agent communication, including proposals of agent
communication languages, are based on some notion of communicative act.  I
argue that a satisfactory model of communication should properly deal with
three related but conceptually independent aspects of communicative acts:
the semantic aspect, concerning the literal meaning of communicative acts;
the normative aspect, concerning the obligations, permissions, and so on,
created by performing a communicative act; and the practical aspects,
concerning the role of communication in the context of rational action.  I
propose an approach to the definition of the semantics of communicative
acts based on modal logic.  The approach is then extended to deal with the
normative component.  Finally, I argue that the practical side of
communication involves general AI techniques, and therefore should not be
part of the definition of an agent communication language.