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Need to Know: Questions and the Paradox of Epistemic Obligation

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Deontic Logic in Computer Science (DEON 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 5076))

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Abstract

Åqvist’s paradox of epistemic obligation can be solved, if we use knowledge-wh instead of knowledge-that in specifications of the ‘need to know’: the knowledge which an agent in a certain organisational role is required to have. Knowledge-wh is knowledge of an answer to a question, which depends on the context. We show how knowledge-wh can be formalised in a logic of questions, which is combined with standard deontic logic to represent epistemic obligations. We demonstrate that under the new interpretation, the paradox can no longer be derived. The resulting logic is useful for representation of access control policies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam,  

    Joris Hulstijn

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  1. Joris Hulstijn
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Ron van der Meyden Leendert van der Torre

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Hulstijn, J. (2008). Need to Know: Questions and the Paradox of Epistemic Obligation. In: van der Meyden, R., van der Torre, L. (eds) Deontic Logic in Computer Science. DEON 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 5076. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70525-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70525-3_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-70524-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-70525-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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