Ten problems of deontic logic and normative reasoning in computer science

  • Authors:

  • Jan Broersen;Leendert van der Torre

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Utrecht, The Netherlands;University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

  • Venue:
  • ESSLLI'10 Proceedings of the 2010 conference on ESSLLI 2010, and ESSLLI 2011 conference on Lectures on Logic and Computation
  • Year:
  • 2010

  • Deontic BPMN

    DEXA'11 Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Database and expert systems applications - Volume Part II

  • Logics for security and privacy

    DBSec'12 Proceedings of the 26th Annual IFIP WG 11.3 conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy

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Abstract

This tutorial presents and discusses ten problems of deontic logic and normative reasoning in computer science. Five of the problems have been taken or derived from a list of ten philosophical problems in deontic logic recently discussed by Hansen, Pigozzi and van der Torre. In what sense are obligations different from norms? How to reason about contrary-to-duty norms? How do norms change? How to relate various kinds of permissions? What is the role of constitutive norms? Hansen et al. discuss their ten philosophical problems from the viewpoint of input/output logic as developed by Makinson & van der Torre, and they argue that norms, not ideality, should take the central position in deontic semantics, and that a semantics for norms explicitly represented in the object language by using, e.g., input/output logic normative rules, provides a helpful tool for analyzing, clarifying and solving the problems of deontic logic. However, for applications in computer science and artificial intelligence we have to reconcile the input-output logic representation of norms with representations for agency, informational and motivational modalities (beliefs, intentions), time, actions and decision- and game-theoretic concepts. This leads to five more questions. What is the role of time in deontic reasoning? What is the role of action in deontic reasoning? How can we use norms to influence, solve, or control games? How do we resolve the general problem of norm compliance? How do norms interact with informational modalities such as beliefs and knowledge, and motivational modalities such as intentions and desires?