Cognitive agents

Several researchers have proposed using cognitive concepts as a semantic basis for agent communications (M.N. Huhns and M.P. Singh, 1997). One of the leading candidates for such a semantics is based on Arcol, the communication language used within Artimis. Interestingly, this application (not only of Arcol, but also in general) appears extremely misguided. The intentional concepts are well suited to designing agents, but are not suited to giving a basis to a public, standardizable view of communication. A challenge for using the cognitive concepts is that although they are natural in several respects and can guide implementations, full blown implementations that try to be faithful to every aspect of the model can end up being computationally demanding. As the cognitive concepts are put to use in real applications, the principles for simplifying the implementations will emerge. In any case, because of their naturalness to humans, the cognitive concepts are here to stay, and we will do well to consider them in the design of our agents