A formal characterisation of Hamblin's action-state semantics (Q2642475)

The authors exploit Hamblin's action-state semantics to create a modal logic based on a ternary accessibility relation which, together with a tense logic, ``captures intuitions of the Hamblinian model of imperatives''. The introduction refers to motivations of the paper, in particular to analyze imperatives, distinguishing between bringing about states of affairs and executing actions, including tense logic. Section 2 clarifies informally some basic notions of action-state semantics: possible worlds as series of states connected by events, extensional and `wholehearted' satisfaction of imperatives, history, strategy, partial \(i\)-strategy. Section 3 contains axioms of a model of action and time. State formulae and event formulae are distinguished and axiom schemata are adduced for both kinds of formulae (modality \(S\), modality \(T\)). A Priorian tense logic is decribed and axioms plus some theorems of delegation are presented. Section 4 defines semantics of the model for \(S\) and \(T\): Binary accessibility (temporal) relations are defined in terms of the ternary accessibility relation which connects state \(x\) with state \(z\) by way of (event) \(y\). Section 5 characterizes Hamblin's model and defines valid H(amblin)-worlds, H-history, extensional satisfaction of imperatives, strategy (plus the set of all possible strategies at \(t\)) and partial \(i\)-strategy, so that the `wholehearted' satisfaction can be defined. Section 6 is a thorough and obviously nearly exhausting overview of related work, containing many useful comparisons and evaluations. Conclusions are summarized in Section 7. A rich list of references follows.