Ethical decision making under the weak completion semantics

Abstract

The weak completion semantics is a novel computational theory based on logic programs. It is extended to deal with equalities, which is a prerequisite to represent and reason about actions and causality as in the fluent calculus. This is discussed in the context of ethical decision making. In order to decide questions about the moral permissibility of actions, counterfactuals need to be considered. Somewhat surprisingly, this can be straightforwardly done in the extended approach