A Conceptual Model for Situating Purposes in Artificial Institutions

Abstract

{In multi-agent systems, artificial institutions connect institutional concepts, belonging to the institutional reality, to the concrete elements that compose the system. The institutional reality is composed of a set of institutional concepts, called Status-Functions. Current works on artificial institutions focus on identifying the status-functions and connecting them to the concrete elements. However, the functions associated with the status-functions are implicit. As a consequence, the agents cannot reason about the functions provided by the elements that carry the status-functions and, thus, cannot exploit these functions to satisfy their goals. Considering this problem, this paper proposes a model to express the functions -- or the purposes -- associated with the status-functions. Examples illustrate the application of the model in a practical scenario, showing how the agents can use purposes to reason about the satisfaction of their goals in institutional contexts.