FIVE STEPS TO RESPONSIBILITY - DOI: 10.12818/P.0304-2340.2013v63p125

Abstract

Responsibility has entered the academic discourse of logicians hardly more than few decades ago.
I suggest a logical concept of responsibility which employs ideas both from a number of theories
belonging to different branches of logic as well from other academic areas. As a comment to this concept, I suggest five steps narrative scenario in order to show how the logical dimension of responsibility emerges from diverse tendencies in logic and other sciences. Here are the five steps briefly stated:
Step 1. Developing modal formalisms capable of evaluative analysis of situations (deontic, epistemic and etc.).
Step 2. Drawing a conceptual borderline between normal and non-normal (weak) logical systems.
Step 3. Using different kinds of models.
Step 4. Agent- and action- friendly turn in logic.
Step 5. Creating formalisms for modeling different types of agency.
An idea advocated here within 5-Steps route to responsibility is that this concept is a complex causal and evaluative (axiological) relation. A logical account may be given for causal and normative aspects of this relation. Unfolding the responsibility back and forth through 5 Steps will result in different concepts. The technicalities are minimized for the sake of keeping the philosophical scope of the paper. For the same reason I also refrain from discussing legal and juridical ramifications of the issue.

KEYWORDS: Responsibility. Agency. Deontic Logic. Norms.