Reasoning About KnowledgeReasoning about knowledge—particularly the knowledge of agents who reason about the world and each other's knowledge—was once the exclusive province of philosophers and puzzle solvers. More recently, this type of reasoning has been shown to play a key role in a surprising number of contexts, from understanding conversations to the analysis of distributed computer algorithms. Reasoning About Knowledge is the first book to provide a general discussion of approaches to reasoning about knowledge and its applications to distributed systems, artificial intelligence, and game theory. It brings eight years of work by the authors into a cohesive framework for understanding and analyzing reasoning about knowledge that is intuitive, mathematically well founded, useful in practice, and widely applicable. The book is almost completely self-contained and should be accessible to readers in a variety of disciplines, including computer science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, and game theory. Each chapter includes exercises and bibliographic notes. |
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview | 1 |
Chapter 2 A Model for Knowledge | 15 |
Chapter 3 Completeness and Complexity | 49 |
Chapter 4 Knowledge in MultiAgent Systems | 109 |
Chapter 5 Protocols and Programs | 163 |
Chapter 6 Common Knowledge and Agreement | 189 |
Chapter 7 KnowledgeBased Programming | 253 |
Chapter 8 Evolving Knowledge | 304 |
Chapter 9 Logical Omniscience | 333 |
Chapter 10 Knowledge and Computation | 391 |
Chapter 11 Common Knowledge Revisited | 415 |
Bibliography | 463 |
488 | |
491 | |
Other editions - View all
Reasoning About Knowledge Ronald Fagin,Joseph Y. Halpern,Yoram Moses,Moshe Vardi Limited preview - 2004 |
Reasoning About Knowledge Ronald Fagin,Joseph Y. Halpern,Yoram Moses,Moshe Vardi Limited preview - 2004 |
Reasoning About Knowledge Ronald Fagin,Joseph Y. Halpern,Yoram Moses,Moshe Vardi No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
actions agent algorithm Alice allow approach assignment assume assumption attack attain awareness axiom Chapter common knowledge complete compute condition consider consistent context coordinated corresponding decide define definition delivered described determined discussed distributed easy environment equivalent event example Exercise fact failures false follows formally formula function give given global holds implies induction initial interest interpreted system Intuitively knowledge-based program knows Kripke structure language Lemma logic means muddy nonstandard Note notion observed operators particular performed player possible precisely primitive propositions problem proof properties propositional protocol prove provides reasoning recall received relation representing require respect result round satisfies semantics sending sent sequence simultaneous situation sound specification standard structure Suppose tests Theorem true truth valid