The Kanger-Lindahl theory of normative positions attempts to use a combination of deontic logic (the logic of obligation and permission) and a logic of action/agency to give a formal account of obligations, duties, rights, and other complex normative concepts. This paper presents a generalisation and further development of this theory, together with methods for its automation and application to practical examples. The resulting theory is intended to be applied in the representation and analysis of laws, regulations, and contracts, in the specification of aspects of computer systems, in multi-agent systems, and as a contribution to the formal theory of organisations. Particular attention is paid to representations at varying levels of detail and the relationships that hold between them. The last part presents Norman-G, an automated support system intended to facilitate application of the theory to the analysis of practical problems, with a small example to illustrate its use.

Cooperation logics have recently begun to attract attention within the multi-agent systems community. Using a cooperation logic, it is possible to represent and reason about the strategic powers of agents and coalitions of agents in game-like multi-agent systems. These powers are generally assumed to be implicitly defined within the structure of the environment, and their origin is rarely discussed. In this paper, we study a cooperation logic in which agents are each assumed to control a set of propositional variables---the powers of agents and coalitions then derive from the allocation of propositions to agents. The basic modal constructs in this Coalition Logic of Propositional Control (CL-PC) allow us to express the fact that a group of agents can cooperate to bring about a certain state of affairs. After motivating and introducing CL-PC, we provide a complete axiom system for the logic, investigate the issue of characterising control in CL-PC with respect to the underlying power structures of the logic, and formally investigate the relationship between CL-PC and Pauly's Coalition Logic. We then show that the model checking and satisfiability problems for CL-PC are both PSPACE-complete, and conclude by discussing our results and how CL-PC sits in relation to other logics of cooperation.

. In this paper we propose the deontic logic dus, that formalizes reasoning about prescriptive obligations in update semantics. In dus the definition of logical validity of obligations is not based on truth values but on action dynamics. You know the meaning of a normative sentence if you know the change it brings about in the ideality relation of anyone the news conveyed by the norm applies to. 1 The logic of norms One of the first topics discussed in the development of deontic logic was the question whether norms have truth values. For example, Von Wright (1981, 1998) was hesitant to call deontic formulas `logical truths,' because "it seems to be a matter of extralogical decision when we shall say that `there are' or `are not' such and such norms." Alchourr'on and Bulygin discussed the possibility of a logic of norms, which they distinguish from the logic of normative propositions. "One such issue is the problem of the possibility of a logic of norms. Some authors think that there ...

Deontic logic, the logic of obligations and permissions, is plagued by several paradoxes that have to be understood before deontic logic can be used as a knowledge representation language. In this paper we extend the temporal analysis of Chisholm's paradox using a deontic logic that combines temporal and preferential notions. 0 Introduction Deontic logic is a modal logic in which Op is read as `p ought to be (done).' Deontic logic has traditionally been used by philosophers to analyze the structure of the normative use of language. In the eighties deontic logic had a revival, when it was discovered by computer scientists that this logic can be used for the formal speciøcation and validation of a wide variety of topics in computer science (for an overview and further references see (Wieringa & Meyer 1993)). For example, deontic logic can be used to formally specify soft constraints in planning and scheduling problems as norms. The advantage is that norms can be violated without creati...

The purpose of this paper is to explore a new deontic operator for representing what an agent ought to do; the operator is cast against the background of a modal treatment of action developed by Nuel Belnap and Michael Perloff, which itself relies on Arthur Prior's indeterministic tense logic. The analysis developed here of what an agent ought to do is based on a dominance ordering adapted from the decision theoretic study of choice under uncertainty to the present account of action. It is shown that this analysis gives rise to a normal deontic operator, and that the result is superior to an analysis that identifies what an agent ought to do with what it ought to be that the agent does. i Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Branching time 2 3 Agency 5 4 Oughts in branching time 12 5 Ought to do: the Meinong/Chisholm analysis 19 6 Ought to do: a different analysis 21 7 Hints at a general theory 29 A Proofs of propositions 35 ii 1 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to define and exp...

Abstract. The act of delegating a task from one agent to another can be carried out through the performance of one or more imperative communication acts. In this paper, the semantics of such imperatives are specified using a language of actions and states. The logical system that is developed then supports a notion of responsibility. An agent may not only be issued an imperative to directly carry out an event, or achieve some state, but also to be responsible for an event being carried out or state achieved- and these latter commitments might then be serviced through a subsequent act of delegation. The model thus clearly distinguishes between different classes of responsibility and different forms of delegation, and it is shown how this sound theoretical foundation can then be applied in specifying the semantics of imperatives in agent communication languages. 1

The theory of normative positions attempts to apply a combination of deontic logic and a logic of action/agency to the formalisation of the `Hohfeldian concepts' (duty, right, power, privilege, etc.) and other complex normative relations between agents. This paper is concerned with the practical applicability of the theory to such tasks as formalising the content of an existing set of regulations, designing a new set of regulations, or rening aspects of a computer system specication, with particular attention to the usefulness of the action component as a representational device. Points are made by reference to a simple example concerning rules in a car park. The second part of the paper covers three simple extensions: the representation of `permitted to bring about', a treatment of interpersonal control relations, and the ability to distinguish between being permitted to bring about a new state of aairs and being permitted to sustain a state of aairs that already exists...

In this article we propose contextual deontic logic. Contextual obligations are written as O(ffjfinfl), and are to be read as `ff should be the case if fi is the case, unless fl is the case'. The unless clause is analogous to the justification in Reiter's default rules. We show how contextual obligations can be used to solve certain aspects of contrary-to-duty paradoxes of dyadic deontic logic.

This paper investigates the semantic treatment of conditional obligation,

Abstract. This paper studies the notion of ability and its relation with the notion of action in a multi-agent context. It introduces the distinction between two notions respectively called “theoretical ability ” and “ability”. The main contribution of this paper is a model of these notions in the Situation Calculus. 1