Core Logic, ILLC / Universiteit van Amsterdam

Temporal Logic and the Logic of Agency

8 December 2004

Thomas Muller

Philosophisches Seminar, LFB III

Lennestr. 39
53113 Bonn, Germany

currently: Wolfson College, University of Oxford

[email protected]
http://www.philosophie.uni-bonn.de/tmueller
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Outline

Temporal Logic

* Arthur Prior and the development of (tense) logic after 1950

* Tensed vs tenseless talk
* Hybrid logic
* Semantics for the future tense

Logic of Agency

* Review of branching time

* Agents and choices
* Seeing to it that
* Some further developments
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Arthur Prior

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Arthur Prior

1914 born in Masterton, New Zealand

1946 Lecturer, Canterbury University College, NZ
1956 John Locke Lectures, Oxford; initiated British Logic Colloquium
1958 Professor in Manchester
1960 Editor, The Journal of Symbolic Logic
1966 Fellow and Tutor, Balliol College, Oxford
1969 died in Trondheim, Norway

Main works:
1957 Time and Modality
1967 Past, Present and Future
1968 Papers on Time and Tense (new ed., 2003)
1971 Objects of Thought (ed. P.T. Geach and A.J.P. Kenny)
1977 Worlds, Times and Selves (ed. K. Fine)

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Arthur Prior and the development of (tense) logic

Technical developments in logic:

* among the first explicitly semantic approaches to modal logic

* among the earliest expressiveness results (Hans Kamp)

* earliest developments towards hybrid logic

Other fields:

* Philosophy of language: phenomenology of essential indexicality

* Metaphysics: logical analysis of the problem of futura contingentia

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Prior on logic and natural language

* Foundational problem: How do we know what the logical connectives mean?

* Priors argument (The runabout inference-ticket): Giving introduction- and elimination-

rules alone cannot give the meaning of a connective

* Logic as a certain (formal) way of studying natural language / the world:

* Logic is about the real world;

* No fixed boundary between logic and other sciences

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Time and tense in natural language

(1) Socrates is sitting.

* English (and other Indo-European languages): tensed language

* natural language sentences are complete without dates

* ancient and medieval discussion: propositions are complete without dates

* 20th century (Frege, Russell): explicit dates needed, or token-reflexive analysis:

(2) Socrates is* sitting at t. (is* a tenseless copula)

(3) Socrates is* sitting while this sentence is uttered.

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Essential indexicality

* Many uses of indexicals like I, now, and (maybe) here cannot be eliminated

* Famous example (John Perry, 1979): The sugar trail in the supermarket

* Indexicals are vital for explaining actions and emotions

* Names can be mis-applied, I cannot

* Prior (1959): Tense is essentially indexical

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Priors thank goodness argument:
The essential indexicality of tense

[. . . ] half the time I personally have forgotten what the date is, and have
to look it up or ask somebody when I need it for writing cheques, etc.;
yet even in this perpetual dateless haze one somehow communicates,
one makes oneself understood, and with time-references too. One says,
e.g. Thank goodness thats over!, and not only is this, when said, quite
clear without any date appended, but it says something which it is im-
possible that any use of a tenseless copula with a date should convey.
It certainly doesnt mean the same as, e.g. Thank goodness the date of
the conclusion of that thing is Friday, June 15, 1954, even if it be said
then. (Nor, for that matter, does it mean Thank goodness the conclu-
sion of that thing is contemporaneous with this utterance. Why should
anyone thank goodness for that?)

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Formalising the tenses

* Tense is essential take atomic sentences to be tensed

* Introduce (modal) operators F (future) and P (past)

* Iterability argument for use of operators

* P and F are weak operators;

* duals G (always going to be) and H (has always been)

* Prior considers propositional and quantified languages

* Problems of contingently existing individuals; modal system Q

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Priors syntax: Polish notation

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Semantics for modal logics

* use a modal object language, what about the semantics?

* models: time-flow as a binary relation (earlier than/later than)

* language of the earlier-later-relation: U -calculus (m < m0 etc.)

* tension: if the tenses are basic, the formalism should reflect this
* the models cannot be more fundamental than the tense operators

* Prior on the status of models: handy diagrams

* no metalanguage

* aim: interpreting the U -calculus within tense logic

* expressiveness: irreflexivity (easy in U -calculus, no tense-logical analogue)

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Hybrid logic I: Standard translation

* Modal logic as a fragment of first order logic: mimic the semantic clauses

M, w |= p iff wP
M, w |= iff M, w 6|=
M, w |= iff M, w |= and M, w |=
M, w |= hRi iff there is w0 s.t. R(w, w0) and M, w0 |=

via standard translation:

STx(p) = P (x)
STx() = STx()
STx( ) = STx() STx()
STx(hRi) = y (R(x, y) STy ())

* Other direction?
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Hybrid logic II: Prior on world-states

* W p (p is the world state): W p p and (W p q) (p q)

* (The world is everything that is the case, Wittgenstein, TLP 1)

* sorted language: ordinary propositional variables (p, q, r, . . .) and world-variables

(a, b, c, . . .); for world-variables, have a and (a p) (a p)

* p holds at a as (a p), a is earlier than b as (b P a)

* need for a modality (somewhere in the model) and  (everywhere)

* linear models: p P p F p; branching time: p P p F p P F p
* generally, not definable (generated submodels!)

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Hybrid logic III: Modern hybrid logic

* sorted language: propositional variables p, q, r, . . .; nominals i, j, k, . . .

* semantics for nominals: true at exactly one node

* introduce various binders for nominals (, , , ) and logical modalities ()

* hierarchy of languages w.r.t. expressive power: ;

* strongest hybrid language recaptures first-order expressivity:

HT (v1 = v2) = x.(v1 v2)

HT (P (v1)) = x.(v1 p)
HT (R(v1, v2)) = x.(v1 hRiv2)
HT (y ) = y. HT ()
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Semantics for the future tense I: Paying ones gambling debts

* We assert future-tensed statements in the face of indeterminism

* Betting as a prime example: The coin will show heads

* If the sentence was true (or false) at the time of utterance, then the world must
be deterministic, contrary to assumption ( logical determinism)

* If the sentence was neither true nor false, then why should I pay my gambling
debts? After all, neither I nor my opponent said something true.

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Semantics for the future tense II: Branching time

* Metaphysical question about the nature of time

* Descriptive metaphysics (Strawson): Focus on actual conceptual scheme;

* use natural language and the way we act as guidelines

Overwhelming support for clear distinction between open future/fixed past

* (Revisionary metaphysics might urge to revise our attitude (Spinoza, Russell))

* Formally, tree-like structure of time:

* no backward branching: x, y, z ((x z y z) (x y y < x))

* historical connection: x, y z (z x z y)
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Semantics for the future tense III: Occam vs Peirce

* F for it will be the case that , evaluate at moment m

* semantics for F analogous to alethic modal logic: basic tense logic Kt

* m |= F iff there is m0 > m s.t. m0 |=

* this semantic definition does not reflect our use of it will be that

* histories: maximal chains; H(m) the set of histories through m

* moving along histories backward and forward is unproblematic (linear order)

* Peircean: m |= F iff in every h H(m) there is m0 > m s.t. m0 |=

* Occamist: relative to h: m, h |= F iff there is m0 > m, m0 h, s.t. m0, h |=

* Prior-Thomason semantics for F : Occamist

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Semantics for the future tense IV: Stand-alone sentences

* Take Occamist approach seriously. Assertion problem:

* Context of utterance supplies moment of evaluation m

* Context of utterance does not supply history of evaluation h

Sentence F cannot be evaluated in given context, no truth value

* Solution: Later moment m0 singles out set of histories through m;

* at m0 the previous assertion will then be vindicated (or not)

* Assertions about the future share the pragmatics of betting

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 BREAK

visit the branching space-times conference website at

http://confer.uj.edu.pl/branching

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Recap: branching time

* Tree-like partial ordering of moments hT, <i

* no backward branching: x, y, z ((x z y z) (x y y < x))

* historical connection: x, y z (z x z y)

* histories h: maximal linear subsets of T

* historical modalities quantifying over h: P oss (possible) and Sett (settled)

* undividedness at m (for h, h0 H(m), m not maximal):

h m h0 iff there is m0 h h0 s.t. m < m0

* m an equivalence relation; partition m: elementary possibilities at m

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Agents and choices in a branching framework

* partition m describes natures indeterminism

* m is an indeterministic point iff m has more than one element

* descriptive metaphysics: sometimes we are in control of natures indeterminism

* formally: Agents a set of labels for agents

* for Agents; partition Choice

m describes s choices at m

* Choice
m(h) H(m) ; = means that has no choice

* no choice between undivided histories:

(h0 Choice 00 0 00
m(h) h m h ) h Choicem(h)
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Multiple agents and independent choices

* agents choices at m are simultaneous, so should be independent

for any function fm that maps Agents to elements of Choice

m,

Agent fm() 6=
T

* strong constraint on Choicem

* implausible if, e.g., two agents can manipulate the same object

* spatial separation as a precondition for independence

* branching time not a theory of space

need to use branching space-times as a formal basis for agency

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Seeing to it that I: Stit normal form

* many natural language expressions are agentive for some ; contrast

(4) Ishmael sailed over the seven seas (agentive)

(5) Ishmael sailed over the side of the Pequod (not agentive)

* some operators need agentive complements, e.g., imperatives, deontic notions

* normal form for agentives: sees to it that ([stit : ])

* thesis: is agentive for iff it can be paraphrased as sees to it that

* stit as a family of agent-indexed modal operators; allow nesting

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Seeing to it that II: Semantics

* various stit operators in the literature

* consider dstit, the deliberative stit: current choice secures outcome

* two conditions: (i) positive: secure outcome, (ii) negative: non-trivial

m, h |= dstit : iff

(i) for all h0 Choice 0

m(h), we have m, h |=
(ii) there is h00 H(m) for which m, h00 6|=

* nobody sees to it that 2 + 2 = 4

* usually, will be of the form F for contingent

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Seeing to it that III: Refraining

* refraining both an action (refrainings are attributed to agents; one can be prai-
sed or blamed for refrainings) and a non-action (after all, refraining means not
acting)

* negated stit is inappropriate

* von Wright: refraining = ability plus negation of action

[ ref : ] as [ stit : ] P oss : [ stit : ]

* for dstit, equivalent to nested stit:

[ ref : ] as [ stit : [ stit : ]]

* refraining from refraining equivalent to acting

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Further developments I:
Doxastic logic within the logic of agency (Wansing 2001)

* Doxastic interpretation:  as believes that (KD45)

*  a normal modal operator: belief closed under logical consequence

* but belief is not closed under logical consequence!

* view belief acquisition as an action

* believes that : at some past moment, acquired the belief that , and she
hasnt given up that belief since

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Further developments II:
Rich deontic logic (Brown 2004)

* Deontic interpretation:  as it is obligatory that

* various problems (paradoxes of standard deontic logic), e.g.

* Rosss paradox: If ` A B, then ` A B,

* so if I ought to mail your letter, I ought to mail it or burn it

* problems of conflicting and contrary-to-duty obligations;

* problems of dynamical nature of obligations

* employ stit models, distinguish logical from causal consequences of actions

* personalize obligations
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Literature

Carlos Areces, Hybrid Logic Website. URL = http://hylo.loria.fr

Nuel Belnap, Branching space-time. Synthese 92:385-434 (1992). Conference

Nuel Belnap, Michael Perloff, and Ming Xu, Facing the Future. Oxford 2001.

Johan van Benthem, The Logic of Time. Dordrecht 21991.

Patrick Blackburn, Nominal Tense Logic, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic,
34:5683 (1993).

Patrick Blackburn, Representation, Reasoning, and Relational Structures: A Hy-

brid Logic Manifesto, Logic Journal of the IGPL 8:339365 (2000).
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Mark A. Brown, Rich Deontic Logic: A Preliminary Study. Journal of Applied Lo-
gic 2:1937 (2004).

Jack Copeland, Logic and Reality. Essays on the Legacy of Arthur Prior. Oxford
1996.

Jack Copeland, The Genesis of Possible World Semantics. Journal of Philoso-

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Dov Gabbay et al., Temporal Logic. Mathematical Foundations and Computatio-

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Robert Goldblatt, Mathematical Modal Logic: A View of Its Evolution. Journal of

Applied Logic 1:309392 (2003).

Per Hasle and Peter hrstrm, WWW-site for Prior studies.

URL= http://www.kommunikation.aau.dk/prior
Peter hrstrm and Per Hasle, Temporal Logic. Dordrecht 1995.

John Perry, The Problem of the Essential Indexical. Nous,

13:321 (1979).

Arthur N. Prior, Time and Modality. Oxford 1957.

Arthur N. Prior, Thank Goodness Thats Over. Philosophy 34:1217 (1959).

Arthur N. Prior, The Runabout Inference-Ticket. Analysis 21:3839 (1960).

Arthur N. Prior, Past, Present and Future. Oxford 1967.

Heinrich Wansing, A Reduction of Doxastic Logic to Action Logic. Erkenntnis

53:267283 (2000).