Logics for Epistemic Programs

• Published in: Synthese (Dordrecht) 2004-03, Vol.139 (2), p.165-224
• Main Authors: Baltag, Alexandru, Moss, Lawrence S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accessibility relation; Computer science; Dissertations & theses; Dynamic semantics; Epistemic logic; Epistemology; History of science and technology; Knowledge; Logic; Logic and calculus; Mathematical sciences and techniques; Model theory; Semantic models; Semantics; Sentences; Signatures; Syntactics; Syntax
• ISSN: 0039-7857; 1573-0964
• DOI: 10.1023/B:SYNT.0000024912.56773.5e

We construct logical languages which allow one to represent a variety of possible types of changes affecting the information states of agents in a multi-agent setting. We formalize these changes by defining a notion of epistemic program. The languages are two-sorted sets that contain not only sentences but also actions or programs. This is as in dynamic logic, and indeed our languages are not significantly more complicated than dynamic logics. But the semantics is more complicated. In general, the semantics of an epistemic program is what we call a program model. This is a Kripke model of 'actions'. represeting the agents' uncertainty about the current action in a similar way that Kripke models of 'states' are commonly used in epistemic logic to represent the agents' uncertainty about the current state of the system. Program models induce changes affecting agents' information, which we represent as changes of the state model, called epistemic updates. Formally, an update consists of two operations: the first is called the update map, and it takes every state model to another state model, called the updated model; the second gives, for each input state model, a transition relation between the states of that model and the states of the updated model. Each variety of epistemic actions, such as public announcements or completely private announcements to groups, gives what we call an action signature, and then each family of action signatures gives a logical language. The construction of these languages is the main topic of this paper. We also mention the systems that capture the valid sentences of our logics. But we defer to a separate paper the completeness proof. The basic operation used in the semantics is called the update product. A version of this was introduced in Baltag et al. (1998), and the presentation here improves on the earlier one. The update product is used to obtain from any program model the corresponding epistemic update, thus allowing us to compute changes of information or belief. This point is of interest independently of our logical languages. We illustrate the update product and our logical languages with many examples throughout the paper.