Reasoning about actions and obligations in first-order logic (Q1922829)

The author describes a new way of representing theories about the deontic status of actions in terms of the standard two-sorted first-order extensional predicate calculus. His approach is somewhat similar to the approach adopted by \textit{H. Reichenbach} in \S 48 of the latter's: Elements of symbolic logic (1947; Zbl 0034.00301). It is shown that Davidson's critique of Reichenbach's proposals (as formulated in Davidson's well-known ``The logical form of action sentences'' [in: \textit{D. Davidson}, Essays on actions and events, 105-122, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1967)]) does not apply to the new approach. Some of the formal theories about the deontic status of actions resulting from the author's approach are easy to implement in Prolog; one prototype implementation is briefly described.