A Logic for Reasoning about Counterfactual Emotions

The aim of this work is to propose a logical framework for the specification of cognitive emotions that are based on counterfactual reasoning about agents’ choices. An example of this kind of emotions is regret. In order to meet this objective, we exploit the well-known STIT logic [Belnap et al., 2001; Horty, 2001]. STIT logic has been proposed in the domain of formal philosophy in the nineties and, more recently, it has been imported into the field of theoretical computer science where its formal relationships with other logics for multiagent systems such as ATL and Coalition Logic (CL) have been studied. STIT is a very suitable formalism to reason about choices and capabilities of agents and groups of agents. Unfortunately, the version of STIT with agents and groups has been recently proved to be undecidable. In this work we study a decidable fragment of STIT with agents and groups which is sufficiently expressive for our purpose of formalizing counterfactual emotions.

Emiliano Lorini, François Schwarzentruber