The paper presents a logical framework for the representation of interactions between institutional agents, human agents and software agents. A case study is used to analyze how obligations on institutional agents are “propagated” to human and software agents, and how actions performed by these agents count as actions that satisfy the obligations imposed to institutional agents. It is shown that the relationship between the different kinds of obligations and actions can be represented in terms of the concept of “count as” (...) proposed by Searle, of role and of causality. The logical framework focus on those three concepts. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop a formalisation of the main ideas of the work of Van de Poel on responsibility. Using the basic concepts through which the meanings of responsibility are defined, we construct a logic which enables to express sentences like “individual i is accountable for φ”, “individual i is blameworthy for φ” and “individual i has the obligation to see to it that φ”. This formalization clarifies the definitions of responsibility given by Van de Poel and highlights their (...) differences and similarities. It also helps to assess the consistency of the formalisation of responsibility, not only by showing that definitions are not inconsistent, but also by providing a formal demonstration of the relation between three main meanings of responsibility. The formal account can be used to derive new properties of the concepts. With the help of the formalisation, we detect the occurrence of the problem of many hands by defining a logical framework for reasoning about collective and individual responsibility. This logic extends the Coalition Epistemic Dynamic Logic by adding a notion of group knowledge, agent ability and knowing how to its semantics. (shrink)