A Formal Characterisation of Hamblin's Action-State Semantics

Abstract

Hamblin's Action-State Semantics provides a sound philosophical foundation for understanding the character of the imperative. Taking this as our inspiration, in this paper we present a logic of action, which we call , that captures the clear ontological distinction between being responsible for the achievement of a state of affairs and being responsible for the performance of an action. We argue that a relativised modal logic of type RT founded upon a ternary relation over possible worlds integrated with a basic tense logic captures intuitions of the Hamblinian model of imperatives. The logic implements a direct mapping of each of Hamblin's key concepts: strategies, partial strategies and wholehearted satisfaction. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]