Action theory is the object of growing attention in a variety of
scientific disciplines and this is the first volume to offer a synthetic
view of the range of approaches possible in the topic. The volume
focuses on the nexus of formal action theory with a startlingly diverse
set of subjects, which range from logic, linguistics, artificial
intelligence and automata theory to jurisprudence, deontology and
economics. It covers semantic, mathematical and logical aspects of
action, showing how the problem of action breaks the boundaries of
traditional branches of logic located in syntactics and semantics and
now lies on lies on the borderline between logical pragmatics and
praxeology.
The chapters here focus on specialized tasks in formal action theory,
beginning with a thorough description and formalization of the language
of action and moving through material on the differing models of action
theory to focus on probabilistic models, the relations of formal action
theory to deontic logic and its key applications in algorithmic and
programming theory. The coverage thus fills a notable lacuna in the
literary corpus and offers solid formal underpinning in cognitive
science by approaching the problem of cognition as a composite action of
mind.