---
title: "Permissions and Obligations"
authors:
  - "L. Thorne McCarty"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/69"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/0069.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1983
pages: "287-293"
track: "Knowledge Representation"
keywords:
---

# Permissions and Obligations

L. Thorne McCarty

*Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 287-293.

## Abstract

This article describes a formal semantics for the deonti c concepts the concepts of per m i ssi on and obi igation -- which arises naturall y from the representations used in art ificial intelligence systems. Instead of treating deontic logic as a branc h of modal logic , with the standard possible wo r lds semantics. w e first develop a language for describing act i ons, and we define the concepts of permiss ion and obligation in te r ms of these action descriptions . Using our semantic defin itions, we then derive a number of intuitively plausible inferences . and we show generally that the paradoxes which are so frequently associated with deont ic logic do not arise in our system.