Attributing Distributed Responsibility in Stit Logic

Abstract

One important function of logics of agency (Stit Logic, ATL, CL, Dynamic Logic) is to assess the validity of arguments whereby responsibility is attributed to, or denied by, individuals and groups. Indeed, the vocabulary and computational properties of such logic allow us to express and reason on what agents did, or what empowered them to do (either following a strategy as in ATL or not). It is clear that this kind of reasoning is indispensable when we want to attribute or distribute responsibility to agents, as when we want to ascertain that some agents were not responsible of the events into account: if the group constituted by two persons did not or even could not for some reasons blow a hospital, then they should not be charged for blowing the hospital. Agency and the formal framework for it then appear to be important for the implementation of a rigourous reasoning on responsibility in (or of) groups.