Strategies for Resolving Norm Conflict in Practical Reasoning

Norm-governed agents act according to norms such as obligations, permissions or prohibitions. In their practical reasoning, they are not only influenced by what they actually belief, desire and intend, but what they are obliged, permitted or prohibited to do they are governed by norms. When agents adopt such norms, specific care must be taken to avoid conflicts, so that consistency of the set of norms currently held by the agent is preserved. In this paper, a set of conflict scenarios is outlined and strategies presented to solve such conflicts. With such strategies in place, the possible influence of obligations on the consistency of the agent’s currently held norms is analysed. The NoA Normative Agent Architecture is used for these investigations.