A Functional Program for Agents, Actions, and Deontic Specifications

We outline elements of the Abstract Contract Calculator, a prototype language implemented in Haskell (a declarative programming language) in which we simulate agents executing abstract actions relative to deontic specifications. The deontic specifications are prohibition, permission, and obligation. The concepts of deontic specifications are derived from Standard Deontic Logic and Dynamic Deontic Logic. The concepts of abstract actions are derived from Dynamic Logic. The logics are declarative, while the implementation is operational. In contrast to other implementations, we have articulated and productive violation and fulfillment markers. Our actions are given with explicit action preconditions and postconditions, and we have deontic specification of complex actions. We implement inference in the Contrary-to-Duty Obligations case, which has been a central problem in Deontic Logic. We also distinguish Contrary-to-Duty Obligations from obligations on sequences, which has not previously been accounted for in the literature. The language can be used to express a range of alternative notions of actions and deontic specification. We use it to to model and simulate multi-agent systems in which the behavior of an agent is guided by deontic specifications on