This colloquium talk is planned as an in-person event. Registration is only required for non-CEU members.
ABSTRACT
In this presentation, I will discuss some fundamental challenges in designing a formal system to represent agency and normative reasoning. I will start with the distinction between a representation of what ought to be the case and a representation of what an agent ought to do, illustrated via traditional approaches taken from the literature. I will then move to the analysis of a specific formal framework which relies on the following ideas: (i) at any circumstance of evaluation, an agent is assigned a behaviour; (ii) an agent's behaviour is subsequently evaluated in terms of the types of actions instantiated; (iii) types of actions are assigned a normative value. The framework at issue is interpreted via non-deterministic models of time having the shape of trees that branch towards the future. In the final part of the presentation, I will discuss applications of this framework in a broader context of normative reasoning, as well as open problems.
Interested in receiving updates about the events of the Department of Philosophy? Sign-up to its mailing list here.