Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Repository | Journal | Volume | Article

234348

A logic of goal-directed knowing how

Yanjing Wang

pp. 4419-4439

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a decidable single-agent modal logic for reasoning about goal-directed “knowing how”, based on ideas from linguistics, philosophy, modal logic, and automated planning in AI. We first define a modal language to express “I know how to guarantee (varphi ) given (psi )” with a semantics based not on standard epistemic models but on labeled transition systems that represent the agent’s knowledge of his own abilities. The semantics is inspired by conformant planning in AI. A sound and complete proof system is given to capture valid reasoning patterns, which highlights the compositional nature of “knowing how”. The logical language is further extended to handle knowing how to achieve a goal while maintaining other conditions.

Publication details

Published in:

van der Hoek Wiebe, Holliday Wesley H., Wang Wen-fang (2018) Logic, rationality and interaction (LORI-5). Synthese 195 (10).

Pages: 4419-4439

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-016-1272-0

Full citation:

Wang Yanjing (2018) „A logic of goal-directed knowing how“. Synthese 195 (10), 4419–4439.