The Epistemological Foundations of Artificial Agents

A situated agent is one which operates within an environment. In most cases, the environment in which the agent exists will be more complex than the agent itself. This means that an agent, human or artificial, which wishes to carry out non-trivial operations in its environment must use techniques which allow an unbounded world to be represented within a cognitively bounded agent. We present a brief description of some important theories within the fields of epistemology and metaphysics. We then discuss ways in which philosophical problems of scepticism are related to the problems faced by knowledge representation. We suggest that some of the methods that philosophers have developed to address the problems of epistemology may be relevant to the problems of representing knowledge within artificial agents.