Action negation and alternative reductions for dynamic deontic logics (Q598547)

This paper, which outlines the main ideas of the author's doctoral thesis [Modal action logics for reasoning about reactive systems, Faculteit der Exacte Wetenschappen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2003)], concerns the construction of deontic logics of actions (as contrasted with propositions), on the basis of dynamic logic. The paper's main contribution is in that basis, on the idea of the negation of an action. After considering and discarding two accounts in the literature (due to Mayer and to Wansing), the author proposes to take the negation of an action (understood as a relation between states) to be (roughly) the complement of that action with respect to the largest action obtainable from elementary ones under operations that correspond to connectives in the dynamic logic itself. The concept of action negation is thus relativized: it depends not only on the action negated and on the set of all states, but also on the choice of elementary actions and on the array of action connectives that are available in the syntax of the dynamic logic. Deontic logics (of actions) are then constructed on top of this dynamic logic. The author opts for constructions that yield the controversial principle of free-choice permission. However, the components are modular: the account of action negation in dynamic logic does not depend on the favoured deontic superstructure, nor determine it.