Conditional obligation and positive permission for agents in time

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantic treatment of conditional obligation, explicit permission (often called positive permission), and prohibition based on models with agents and branched time. In such models branches (rather than moments) are taken as basic, and the branching provides a way to represent the indeterminism which is normally presupposed by talk of free will, responsibility, action and ability. Careful treatment of the relation between ability and responsibility avoids many common problems with accounts of conditional obligation. Recognition of the generality often involved in conditional obligations makes possible a sensitive way of expressing some kinds of general prohibitions, which in turn makes it possible to account for the special role of explicit permission.