Dear all,

We will have our next LIRa session on Thursday, February 11th. Our speaker is Elise Perrotin. You can find the details of the talk below. We will use our recurring zoom link: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/92907704256?pwd=anY3WkFmQVhLZGhjT2JXMlhjQVl1dz09 (Meeting ID: 929 0770 4256, Passcode: 036024).

Speaker: Elise Perrotin

Date and Time: Thursday, February 11th 2021, 16:30-18:00, Amsterdam time.

Venue: online.

Title: Knowledge "whether" and belief "about" as a lightweight alternative to Dynamic Epistemic Logic.

Abstract. Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) is the standard logic used to reason about agents' knowledge and the actions that may affect both their knowledge and the world around them. It is very expressive and general, but this comes at a cost: in particular, DEL planning (that is, determining the existence of a plan given a planning task) is undecidable.

In this talk I will be presenting the logic EL-O, a lightweight logic based on observation (or "knowing whether"), and how it can be applied to planning. This logic is more expressive than other attempts at simplifying DEL for planning, while retaining the same complexities as classical propositional calculus and classical planning through polynomial translations. I will also be precisely situation EL-O w.r.t. to DEL and arguing that EL-O is not only interesting as a "weak DEL", but has a number of advantages over DEL in terms of how intuitive it makes designing models and actions. I will finish by discussing our current attempts to extend this approach to beliefs, going from "believing that" to "having a belief about" and considering the possible ramifications of epistemic-doxastic situations.

Hope to see you there!

The LIRa team