International Workshop on
Regulated Agent-Based Social Systems:
Theories and Applications (RASTA'02)
Abstract for
- 11:30 - 12:30 (first presentation)
- Abstract Norms and Electronic Institutions
Frank Dignum
The study and modeling of norms has attracted the interest of scientists from different disciplines such as sociology, economics, philosophy, and computer science. According to sociology, a norm is a rule or standard of behavior shared by members of a social group (Encyclopedia Britannica). According to philosophy, a norm is an authoritative rule or standard by which something is judged and on that basis approved or disapproved (Columbia Encyclopedia). Examples of norms include standards of right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, and truth and falsehood. According to economics, a norm (from norma, Latin for carpenter s level) is a model of what should exist or be followed, or an average of what currently does exist in some context, such as an average salary among members of a large group. Norms can be either informal, when there is no formal regulation of the norm and no formal sanction for violating the norm, or they can be formal when they are incorporated in laws or regulations from the institutions that regulate the behaviour of the people within the society. In this paper we will concentrate on the formal norms and in particular on the question how the specified norms can be incorporated in the structure of the institution such that the agents operating within the institution will operate according to these norms. Many attempts have been made to formally specify norms in e.g. deontic logic. Although it is possible to capture the norms in this way and even give them a certain kind of semantics and reason about the consequences of the norms etc. this kind of formalization does not yet indicate how the norm should be interpreted within a certain institution. For instance, we can formalize a norm like it is forbidden to discriminate on the basis of age in deontic logic as F(discriminate(x,y,age)) (stating that it is forbidden to discriminate between x and y on the basis of age). However, the semantics of this formula will get down to something like that the action discriminate(x,y,age) should not occur. However, it is very unlikely that the agents operating within the institution will explicitly have such an action available. The action actually states something far more abstract. We claim that the level on which the norms are specified is more abstract and/or general than the level on which the processes and structure of the institution are specified. Therefore we need to translate the norms specifically to a level where their impact on the institution can be described directly. This translation is dependent on the domain of the institution and therefore the translation rules depend on e.g. the ontology for that domain. Because even the concrete translations of norms do not have a direct counterpart in the institution, another translation is needed on this level to indicate how the norm is implemented. For instance, the norm to pay when you have bought a product can be implemented by restricting the available actions in the institution after the buying action to just the paying action. However, one might also implement this norm by not allowing an agent to leave the institution before he has paid (in case he bought something). This means that the agent can still perform all kinds of actions, but always has to pay at some time.
Daniel Moldt
Last modified: Fri Jun 21 16:08:23 CEST 2002