From Conditional Oughts to Qualitative Decision Theory

TL;DR

This paper develops a decision-theoretic framework for conditional ought statements, integrating causal relationships into epistemic states to enable qualitative planning and decision-making under uncertainty.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that combines conditional deontic logic with causal models to support qualitative decision theory and planning.

Findings

Causal relationships can be incorporated into epistemic states for decision analysis.

The framework allows analysis of action sequences and their consequences.

It facilitates the synthesis of plans and strategies under uncertainty.

Abstract

The primary theme of this investigation is a decision theoretic account of conditional ought statements (e.g., "You ought to do A, if C") that rectifies glaring deficiencies in classical deontic logic. The resulting account forms a sound basis for qualitative decision theory, thus providing a framework for qualitative planning under uncertainty. In particular, we show that adding causal relationships (in the form of a single graph) as part of an epistemic state is sufficient to facilitate the analysis of action sequences, their consequences, their interaction with observations, their expected utilities and, hence, the synthesis of plans and strategies under uncertainty.