Doing and refraining from refraining (Q1337507): Difference between revisions

In N. Belnap and M. Perloff's local logic of agency, the stit (``see to it that'') theory, an important problem is the refraining/refraining conjecture: that doing is equivalent to refraining from refraining from doing. This conjecture holds in a semantic structure if the structure contains no ``busy choice sequence'' (a sequence of infinitely many choices for an agent in a finite time); see \textit{N. Belnap}: ``Backwards and forwards in the modal logic of agency'' [Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51, 777-807 (1991)]. It is known that the conjecture fails in some structures which have busy choice sequences. In this paper, the author shows that in every structure containing a busy choice sequence, refraining from refraining from doing neither implies, nor is implied by, doing.