Abstract
Agency can be construed as both the manner in which autonomous individuals embark on particular courses of action (or inaction), and the relationship between such agents and the outcomes of the courses of action on which they embark. A promising strategy for understanding both senses of agency consists in the combination of a modal logic of agency and branching time semantics. Such is the strategy behind stit theory, the theory of agentive action developed by Nuel Belnap and others. However, stit theoretic evaluations of the agentive relationship between agents and outcomes that are uncertain—due to either the presence of indeterminism, or the possible intervention of other agents—yield counterintuitive results. This paper develops a pair of alternative operators (the “act” operators) for modeling agency with respect to uncertain outcomes. Unlike the stit-theoretic model, the act-theoretic model of agency with respect to a particular state of affairs does not require that the state of affairs be realized in every possible history. If the state of affairs in fact obtains in the actual history, and its obtaining was dependent on the agent’s pursuing a particular course of action, then the agent is deemed agentive under act theory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anscombe G.E.M. (1957). Intention. Oxford, Blackwell
Ȧqvist L. (1974). A new approach to the logical theory of actions and causality. In Stenlund S.(ed) Logical theory and semantic analysis. Dordrecht, D. Reidel
Ȧqvist L., Mullock P. (1989). Causing harm. Berlin, New York, de Gruyter
Belnap N. (1991). Before refraining: Concepts for agency. Erkenntnis 34, 137–169
Belnap N., Perloff M. (1989). Seeing to it that: A canonical form for agentives. In Kyburg H.E., Jr., et al. (eds) Knowledge representation and defeasible reasoning. Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers
Belnap N., Perloff M. (1992). The way of the agent. Studia Logica 51, 463–484
Belnap N., Perloff M., Xu M. (2001). Facing the future—Agents and choices in our indeterministic world. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Chellas B. (1992). Time and modality in the logic of agency. Studia Logica 51, 485–517
Davidson D. (1983). Essays on actions and events. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Hilpinen R. (1997). On action and agency. In Ejerhed E., Lindström S.(eds) Logic, action and cognition. Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers
Hornsby J. (1980). Actions. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul
Kanger S. (1972). Law and logic. Theoria 38, 105–132
Nagel T. (1979). Moral luck. In Statman D.(ed) Moral luck. Albany, State University of New York Press
Pörn I. (1974). Some basic concepts of action. In Stenlund S.(eds) Logical theory and semantic analysis. Dordrecht, D. Reidel
Prior A.N. (1967). Past, present and future. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Thomason R.M. (1970). Indeterminist time and truth-value gaps. Theoria 36, 265–281
Thomason R.M. (1984). Combinations of tense and modality. In: Gabbay D., Guenthner F.(eds) Handbook of philosophical logic II. Dordrecht, Reidel, pp. 135–165
von Wright G.H. (1963). Norm and action. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul
Walker M.U. (1985). Moral luck and the virtues of impure agency. Journal of Value Inquiry 19, 319–325
Williams B. (1981). Moral luck. In Williams B.(ed) Moral luck. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Huffer, B. Actions and outcomes: two aspects of agency. Synthese 157, 241–265 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9107-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9107-z