Reasoning with prioritized imperatives: where are we?
John F. Horty,
University of Maryland

I begin by motivating the idea of deontic logic as founded on a system of prioritized imperatives. I then consider several proposals for drawing conclusions about what an agent subject to these various imperatives actually ought to do. For ease of comparison, these proposals will be reformulated in a common notation and from a common point of view. Unfortunately, none of these proposals is adequate; problems will be illustrated. I then present a new proposal, which resolves the old problems, but leads to new difficulties of its own. Various criteria of evaluation will be discussed. The overall goal of the talk is to map out the current state of our understanding in this area.