A Logical Study of Moral Responsibility

Area of Science:

• Moral Philosophy
• Logic
• Decision Theory

Background:

• Understanding moral responsibility is complex, especially in situations with multiple actors and potential outcomes.
• Existing frameworks often struggle to capture the nuances of agency and the necessity of alternative possibilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a formal logical framework for analyzing the structure of moral responsibility.
• To identify and disambiguate key criteria for moral responsibility.
• To explore the logical relationships between these criteria, particularly in interdependent decision contexts.

Main Methods:

• Development of a formal logical language to define criteria for moral responsibility.
• Incorporation of an agency condition and a negative condition of alternative possibility.
• Utilizing responsibility games for semantic analysis in interdependent decision contexts.

Main Results:

• Identification and disambiguation of seven plausible criteria for moral responsibility.
• Classification of the logical relations between these seven distinct criteria.
• Demonstration that the seven criteria can logically reduce to three under specific circumstances.

Conclusions:

• The proposed logical framework provides a rigorous method for studying moral responsibility.
• The framework clarifies the distinctness and potential interrelations of various responsibility criteria.
• This work offers new insights into the logical structure of moral responsibility in complex scenarios.