Parameterized complexity of theory of mind reasoning in dynamic epistemic logic
Publication year
2018Number of pages
40 p.
Source
Journal of Logic, Language, and Information, 27, 3, (2018), pp. 255-294ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
SW OZ DCC AI
Journal title
Journal of Logic, Language, and Information
Volume
vol. 27
Issue
iss. 3
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 255
Page end
p. 294
Subject
Cognitive artificial intelligence; DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 2: Perception, Action and Control; Language in InteractionAbstract
Theory of mind refers to the human capacity for reasoning about others' mental states based on observations of their actions and unfolding events. This type of reasoning is notorious in the cognitive science literature for its presumed computational intractability. A possible reason could be that it may involve higher-order thinking (e.g., 'you believe that I believe that you believe'). To investigate this we formalize theory of mind reasoning as updating of beliefs about beliefs using dynamic epistemic logic, as this formalism allows to parameterize 'order of thinking'. We prove that theory of mind reasoning, so formalized, indeed is intractable (specifically, PSPACE-complete). Using parameterized complexity we prove, however, that the 'order parameter' is not a source of intractability. We furthermore consider a set of alternative parameters and investigate which of them are sources of intractability. We discuss the implications of these results for the understanding of theory of mind.
Subsidient
NWO (Grant code:info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/NWO/Gravitation/024.001.006)
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [227727]
- Electronic publications [107315]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [28430]
- Open Access publications [76441]
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