A logical analysis of the relationship between commitment and obligation
The purpose of this paper is to construct a propositional logic that is sufficiently expressive to represent the relationship between commitment (to a goal) and obligation (to carry out a specific action). The basic idea is that when an agent commits itself to a goal, this action can modify the preferences that hold between possible worlds. These in turn modify the preferences between the consequences of possible actions, which finally determine which actions are obligatory. To express this idea formally, the author takes as his starting point a version of dynamic logic that is equipped with a `sanction' constant serving to define obligation (J. J.-C. Meyer's \(\text{PD}_e \text{L})\). This is extended by adding a preference connective (which forms propositions out of pairs of actions). In turn, this is extended with two unary operators of `commitment' and `fulfilment' (both forming actions out of propositions). A semantics is given for the whole by combining semantic constructions for the components, and the relationship between commitment and obligation is studied in the light of this semantics. There is no attempt at axiomatization. Finally, the author discusses in some detail the relationship between his construction and various other ways in the literature of modelling the notion of commitment.
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