After successful completion of the course, students are able to understand and explain the

• motivations, such as the notorious deontic paradoxes,
• formalisms (traditional modal and alternative norm based approaches),
• applications (in ethical and legal reasoning, linguistics, multiagent systems)
• computational aspects.

The lecturer of this course will be Leendert (Leon) van der Torre / University of Luxembourg.

Course description

The deontic logic community is an interdisciplinary research eld with a biannual conference since 1991. Interest in deontic logic in artificial intelligence and
computer science has strongly increased lately due to the need to address legal and ethical aspects of new technologies.
A typical deontic logic course is a mix of four components, which can each be handled in more or less detail depending on the interests and background of
the audience:

• 1. motivations, such as the notorious deontic paradoxes,
• 2. formalisms (traditional modal and alternative norm based approaches),
• 3. applications (in ethical and legal reasoning, linguistics, multiagent systems)
• 4. computational aspects.

 

The lectures will be interactive presentations and in class exercises.

The structure will be as follows:

1. standard deontic logic and the search for a new standard (1): paradoxes, actions 2. standard deontic logic and the search for a new standard (2): nonmonotonic logic 3. unconstrained input/output logic 4. constrained input/output logic 5. formal argumentation and deontic logic 6. permission in input/output logic 7. rights and actions 8. common framework for standard deontic logic and input/output logic

This is a visiting professor course of the Vienna PhD School of Informatics.

Information to be announced as soon as possible.

Please register in TISS.

Recommended literature:

We wrote a textbook in 2018 which I use for my course on deontic logic at the master in computer science, which focuses on the logical aspects of the formalisms that are discussed in the course. It is freely available online:
https://www.collegepublications.co.uk/TLR/?00001

In addition, the handbook of deontic logic in computer science (first volume 2018, second volume 2020) will be used for background reading and the source for the paradoxes and applications in law and ethics.
https://collegepublications.co.uk/handbooks/?00001
Concerning the computational aspects, we can use Isabelle/HOL and an article that is to appear in AI Journal: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.10187

All material is open access. Additional material can be supplied in case of specific interests.

This course is complementary to the one of Guido Governatori (guest lecture from the past year), but that course is not a prerequisite for the one here.

A general knowledge of (propositional) logic will be necessary, and a general knowledge of modal logic will be an advantage, but not strictly necessary.