Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Theories of rational tiehavior embodied in cognitive models of problem solving, planning, and plan interpretation typically presuppose that the planning agent is given a priori one or more goals to pursue. Thereupon, rational behavior consists of planning and carrying out a sequence of ax;tions in order to achieve the most important active goals. This paper argues that a complete cognitive model must necessarily incorporate ihe process of acquiring goals whether in reaction to perceptions of external events, in response to internal physiological or psychological states, or by other less direct means. An initial categorization is made of various mechanisms that can give rise to goals in an individual planner.