Multi-agent Justification Logic: communication and evidence elimination

This paper presents a logic combining Dynamic Epistemic Logic, a framework for reasoning about multi-agent communication, with a new multi-agent version of Justification Logic, a framework for reasoning about evidence and justification. This novel combination incorporates a new kind of multi-agent evidence elimination that cleanly meshes with the multi-agent communications from Dynamic Epistemic Logic, resulting in a system for reasoning about multi-agent communication and evidence elimination for groups of interacting rational agents. 1 Introductory Example Consider the following email exchange among friends planning a party. x1 { To: Bob, Charlie From: Anne If the cheese store is still open, then I’ll bring the cheese tonight. x2 { To: Anne, Bob From: Charlie Re: x1 OK, Anne. If you bring the cheese, then I’ll bring the crackers. x3 { To: Bob, Charlie From: Anne I just checked. The cheese store is still open! x4 { To: Anne, Bob From: Charlie Re: x3 It’s great the store’s still open! I’ll go get the crackers. After this sequence of messages, Bob and Charlie are each able to conclude that Anne is bringing the cheese. After all, each of Bob and Charlie has message x1 as evidence that “Anne will bring the cheese if the store is open” along with message x3 as evidence that the store is indeed open. So by combining their evidence x1 and x3, they each have evidence that Anne will bring the cheese. c ©2011 The Author(s). Citation: Bryan Renne. Multi-Agent Justification Logic: Communication and Evidence Elimination. Synthese, 185(S1):43–82, 2012.