A computational framework for institutional agency

It is shown how standard defeasible logic can be extended to represent concepts of counts-as link and those of attempt and of personal and direct action to realise states of affairs, and how the resulting system preserves some basic properties commonly attributed to them.

Abstract

This paper provides a computational framework, based on Defeasible Logic, to capture some aspects of institutional agency. Our background is Kanger-Lindahl-Porn account of organised
\n interaction, which describes this interaction within a multi-modal
\n logical setting. This work focuses in particular on the notions of
\n counts-as link and on those of attempt and of personal and direct
\n action to realise states of affairs. We show how standard Defeasible Logic can be extended to represent these concepts: the resulting system preserves some basic properties commonly attributed to them. In addition, the framework enjoys nice computational properties, as it turns out that the extension of any theory can be computed in time linear to the size of the theory itself.