The book presents theoretical, methodological, and technical advances in the study of norms in societies of autonomous intelligent agents, based on a collaboration among social, computational, and cognitive scientists. By conceptualizing norms as social and cognitive phenomena undergoing a complex dynamics, and thanks to a computational, agent-based approach, contributors address three sets of questions: (a) What are norms, and how may we differentiate them from social conformism on one hand and acquiescence under menace on the other? (b) How do norms emerge and change? An innovative answer is found in the interplay between the mental and social dynamics of norms. (c) How can we characterize the agents from among which norms emerge, why and how people represent norms and abide with or violate them in a non-necessarily deliberative way? Throughout the book, the surprise is that conformity is only the tip of the normative iceberg. Norms emerge in society while “immerging”

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 12/1/11 “Normative Multi-Agent Systems”. Normative systems are systems in the behavior of which norms play a role and which need normative concepts in order to be described or specified. A normative multi-agent system combines models for normative systems (dealing for example with obligations, permissions and prohibitions) with models for multi-agent systems. Norms have been proposed in multi-agent systems and computer science to deal with issues of coordination, security, electronic commerce and institutions, agent organization. However, due to the lack of a unified theory, many multi-agent system researchers are presently developing their own ad hoc concepts and applications. The aim of this Dagstuhl Seminar was to formulate a collective appraisal of the current perspectives in the field and the most promising venues for future activity.

More and more transactions, whether in business or related to leisure activities, are mediated automatically by computers and computer networks, and this trend is having a significant impact on the conception and design of new computer applications. The next generation of these applications will be based on software agents to which increasingly complex tasks can be delegated, and which interact with each other in sophisticated ways so as to forge agreements in the interest of their human users. The wide variety of technologies supporting this vision is the subject of this volume. It summarises the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action project on Agreement Technologies (AT), during which approximately 200 researchers from 25 European countries, along with eight institutions from non-COST countries, cooperated as part of a number of working groups.

Introduction to the special issue: simulation, norms and laws.

La discussione sulla natura e genesi degli universali linguistici haaccompagnato nei secoli il dibattito filosofico ed è stata rilanciatanegli ultimi anni dall'idea chomskiana di grammatica generativa edalla posizione revisionista della seconda generazione cognitiva. L'intento del presente contributo è capire se sia possibile in questoquadro elaborare una teoria delle strutture del linguaggio come universali tuttavia empiriche. Parlare di universalità empirica puòapparire una contraddizione in termini. E' evidente che si tratta inquesto caso di una universalità statistica: la constatazione che alcunitratti sono comuni, in forme diverse, alla grammatica di tutte lelingue naturali. Questo indurrebbe comunque a chiedersi se queitratti non siano in qualche modo radicati nella costituzione bio-cognitiva degli umani. Quesito, anch'esso antico, a cui le semantichedi orientamento naturalista sembrerebbero dare una risposta positiva.