Action negation and alternative reductions for dynamic deontic logics

Abstract Dynamic deontic logics reduce normative assertions about explicit complex actions to standard dynamic logic assertions about the relation between complex actions and violation conditions. We address two general, but related problems in this field. The first is to find a formalization of the notion of ‘action negation’ that (1) has an intuitive interpretation as an action forming combinator and (2) does not impose restrictions on the use of other relevant action combinators such as sequence and iteration, and (3) has a meaningful interpretation in the normative context. The second problem we address concerns the reduction from deontic assertions to dynamic logic assertions. Our first point is that we want this reduction to obey the free-choice semantics for norms. For ought-to-be deontic logics it is generally accepted that the free-choice semantics is counter-intuitive. But for dynamic deontic logics we actually consider it a viable, if not, the better alternative. Our second concern with the reduction is that we want it to be more liberal than the ones that were proposed before in the literature. For instance, Meyer's reduction does not leave room for action whose normative status is neither permitted nor forbidden. We test the logics we define in this paper against a set of minimal logic requirements.