Epistemic Logic
| Lecturer | Prof. Dr. Gerhard Jäger, Dr. Roman Kuznets |
| Lecture Number | W6080 |
| ECTS credits | depend on students' majors. |
| Start | September 21, 2011 |
| Time |
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| Venue | Lecture Room A97 |
| Content | Reasoning about knowledge has a long history, especially in philosophical tradition, dating back to the ancient Greeks. Recent developments in this area have been triggered by the need for dealing in a more formal way with knowledge and knowledge change in such areas as database theory, multi-agent and distributed systems, artificial intelligence, game theory, and economics. The course will start off with standard modal logics for multi-agent systems. We present their syntax and semantics, explain how to model individual and group knowledge and discuss some famous examples (e.g., the alternating bit protocol). Then we will turn to more advanced concepts of common knowledge and knowledge change, in particular, knowledge change as a result of updates and public announcements. We will discuss how adding these constructs to the language affects its expressivity, e.g., whether public announcements can be defined within the standard modal logics. We will also spend some time on the so-called action models. We envision conducting the class in the form of a tutorial, taking the textbook
as a foundation. Sufficient number of copies will be made available. |
| Remarks | This lecture is well suited for students who are interested in logic and in the foundations of mathematic and/or computer science. It provides an introduction into a research topic which has been actively pursued in the Bern group during the previous years. |
| Requirements | Basic knowledge in mathematical logic and/or theoretical computer science. |
| References | Dynamic Epistemic Logic, Hans van Ditmarsch, Wiebe van der Hoek, Barteld Kooi, Springer, 2007 |
