Ability and Responsibility in General Action Logic

In the last two decades logicians from different backgrounds have focused on the characterization of the notions of ability and responsibility. In the present paper I build on these lines of research and develop a system of modal logic of action which involves elements from both dynamic action logic and stit logic. The main advantage of the present system lies in the possibility of analysing the fact that an agent brings about a certain state of affairs in two distinct components: the fact that the agent performs a specific basic action and the fact that a state of affairs is a consequence of the performed action. This kind of analysis allows us to introduce a novel account of the notions of epistemic ability and knowingly doing and a comprehensive conceptual framework for classifying different levels of responsibility.