This paper presents a short survey of recent developments in stit theories, with an emphasis on combinations of stit and deontic logic, and those of stit and epistemic logic.

There is little work of a systematic nature in ethical theory or deontic logic on aretaic notions such as praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, despite their centrality to common-sense morality. Without more work, there is little hope of filling the even larger gap of attempting to develop frameworks integrating such aretaic concepts with deontic concepts of common-sense morality, such as what is obligatory, permissible, impermissible, or supererogatory. It is also clear in the case of aretaic concepts that agency is central to such (...) appraisal, so some agential notions must be integrated with aretaic concepts as well. The current paper takes the first step in a larger project aimed at the closure of these gaps. Here I sketch a simple framework for the aretaic appraisal of an agent's performance, layered on top of a simple framework for agency and predetermination. In Part I, I develop the framework for agency, ability, and inevitability, combining elements of work by Brown, Elgesem, Carmo, Santos, and Jones. In Part II, drawing on work by Chisholm and Sosa on intrinsic preferability, I sketch and explore a framework for defining aretaic superiority, praiseworthiness, blameworthiness, neutrality, and indifference, etc., retaining proper links to agency. (shrink)

I explore various ways of integrating the framework for predeterminism, agency, and ability in[P.McNamara, Nordic J. Philos. Logic 5 (2)(2000) 135] with a framework for obligations. However,the agential obligation operator explored here is defined in terms of a non-agential yet personal obligation operator and a non-deontic (and non-normal) agency operator. This is contrary to the main current trend, which assumes statements of personal obligation always take agential complements. Instead, I take the basic form to be an agent’s being obligated to (...) be such that p. I sketch some logics for agential obligation based on personal obligation and agency, first in a fairly familiar context that rules out conflicting personal obligations (and derivatively, conflicting agential obligations), and then in contexts that do allow for conflicts (of both sorts). (shrink)

In normative reasoning one typically refers to intervals of time across which norms are intended to hold, as well as to alternative possibilities representing hypothetical developments of a given scenario. Thus, deontic modalities are naturally intertwined with temporal and metaphysical ones. Furthermore, contemporary debates in philosophy suggest that a proper understanding of fundamental ethical principles, such as the Ought-Implies-Can thesis, requires a simultaneous analysis of these three families of concepts. In the present article we propose a general formal framework which (...) allows for fine-grained multimodal reasoning in the normative domain. We provide an axiomatization for a novel system of propositional logic encoding the way in which possibilities and norms arising from different sources change over intervals of time. The usefulness of our framework is illustrated by analysing an ancient and particularly challenging `cold case', the Paradox of the Court. (shrink)

Critical examination of Alchourrón and Bulygin’s set-theoretic definition of normative system shows that deductive closure is not an inevitable property. Following von Wright’s conjecture that axioms of standard deontic logic describe perfection-properties of a norm-set, a translation algorithm from the modal to the set-theoretic language is introduced. The translations reveal that the plausibility of metanormative principles rests on different grounds. Using a methodological approach that distinguishes the actor roles in a norm governed interaction, it has been shown that metanormative principles (...) are directed second-order obligations and, in particular, that the requirement related to deductive closure is directed to the norm-applier role rather than to the norm-giver role. The approach has been applied to the case of pure derogation yielding a new result, namely, that an independence property is a perfection-property of a norm-set in view of possible derogation. This paper in a polemical way touches upon several points raised by Kristan in his recent paper. (shrink)

Two parallelism hypotheses have been adopted and the third one on their relationship has been put forward. The illocutionary logic hypothesis states that the logic of linguistic commitments runs parallel to the logic of intentionality. The normative pragmatics hypothesis states that the logic of utterances runs parallel to the logic of linguistic commitments. According to the third stance or the logic projection hypothesis, the logic of utterances is the origin of all other logics used in describing psychological and social realities. (...) Consequently, the imperative logic or logic of utterances constitutes an independent but not self-sufficient research topic. The logic of utterances manifests itself in its meaning effects such as deontic and bouletic ones. It can be studied only in relation to deontic logics of the hearer’s obligation and the speaker’s linguistic commitments and in relation to logics of intentionality of the speaker’s expression and the hearer’s impression. Therefore, research in logic of imperative and other utterances must include investigation of relations between logics. (shrink)

Computational systems are traditionally approached from control-oriented perspectives; however, as soon as we move from centralized to decentralized computational infrastructures, direct control needs to be replaced by distributed coordination mechanisms that are on par with institutional constructs observable in human societies (contracts, agreements, enforcement mechanisms, etc.). This paper presents a formalization of Hohfeld's framework building upon a logic whose language includes primitive operators of ability and parametric deontic operators. The proposal is meant to highlight the fundamental interaction between deontic and (...) potestative concepts and contains proofs of soundness and completeness with respect to a class of relational models. (shrink)