Customer Reviews

Foundations Of Decision-Making Agents: Logic, Probability and Modality

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A typical formal model of decision-making includes three essential elements: actions, outcomes, and utilities. This book departs from the standard formalization of a decision problem by including within decision theory an agent selecting an alternative to maximize truth in addition to an agent selecting an action to optimize resulting utility. To me, this is an unproductive and confusing broadening of the scope of decision theory. Truth-maximizing agents are usually studied under logic, epistemology, evidence theory, knowledge representation & reasoning (KRR), etc., not decision theory.

I agree that truth-maximizing analyses support the generation of a decision problem, which is then addressed using the techniques of decision theory. This book would be far more intelligible to an experienced decision theorist if the author took a standard model of decision-making 'off the shelf' and then integrated his work in KRR into this model. I'm afraid that this would require a major reworking of the book's content.

It's interesting to note that there are no books on decision theory listed in the references, and only one or two papers. This may help explain how the accidental or intentional broadening of the scope of decision theory took place. I hope that this is rectified in a future edition of this book - I hate giving books poor reviews.