Ascription of intensional ontologies in anthropological descriptions of Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

This paper introduces a new way of describing ontologies used in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) which is intended as a means to allow interoperability of MAS. It is inspired by a pragmatic theory of intensionality worked out as part of an anthropological approach to agent migration. An agent observing an unfamiliar society of agents can ascribe such an ontology to that MAS by interviewing those agents, somewhat in the way a social-anthropologist does in fieldwork practice. We present this new form of ontology which is based on the concept of subjective intensionality, concentrating particularly on individual terms. We also discuss how an agent can ascribe this sort of ontology to a society it does not know. Moreover, we formalise some of these ideas using a framework for formalisation of agent theories, based on the Z formal specification language. Further, we compare our proposal to other current approaches to ontology. We conclude by stating our expectations from this work concerning the foundational aspects of interaction among disparate agencies.