Role-based Semantics for Agent Communication Languages

We consider agents having multiple communication ses-sions at the same time. We assume that FIPA semantics of agent communication languages can still be used when we attribute mental attitudes for each session, which we call the roles of the agents, and we assume that we have to dis-tinguish the mental attitudes attributed to the roles from the mental attitudes of the agents. We consider several conse-quences of the distinction between the mental attitudes at-tributed to the roles and the mental attitudes attributed to the agent. First, in attributing mental attitudes to an agent or to one of its roles, we argue that only mental attributes are attributed to an agent’s role when these attributes follow directly from the agent’s communication. They are therefore public in the sense that every agent who has overheard th