A Logic-Based Analysis of Responsibility

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal logic framework, IEAUST, to analyze different modes of responsibility, integrating agency, epistemic, intentional, and deontic aspects within a unified modal language.

Contribution

It develops a novel logic-based framework, IEAUST, for modeling and characterizing various responsibility modes in deontic and epistemic contexts.

Findings

Formalizes responsibility modes using modal logic

Provides syntactic characterizations of responsibility components

Enables compositional analysis of complex responsibility modalities

Abstract

This paper presents a logic-based framework to analyze responsibility, which I refer to as intentional epistemic act-utilitarian stit theory (IEAUST). To be precise, IEAUST is used to model and syntactically characterize various modes of responsibility, where by 'modes of responsibility' I mean instances of Broersen's three categories of responsibility (causal, informational, and motivational responsibility), cast against the background of particular deontic contexts. IEAUST is obtained by integrating a modal language to express the following components of responsibility on stit models: agency, epistemic notions, intentionality, and different senses of obligation. With such a language, I characterize the components of responsibility using particular formulas. Then, adopting a compositional approach -- where complex modalities are built out of more basic ones -- these characterizations of the components are used to formalize the aforementioned modes of responsibility.