The many faces of counts-as: A formal analysis of constitutive rules

✍ Scribed by Davide Grossi; John-Jules Ch. Meyer; Frank Dignum

• Book ID: 104020178
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 327 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1570-8683
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jal.2007.06.008

✦ Synopsis

The paper proposes a logical systematization of the notion of counts-as which is grounded on a very simple intuition about what counts-as statements actually mean, i.e., forms of classification. Moving from this analytical thesis the paper disentangles three semantically different readings of statements of the type "X counts as Y in context c", from the weaker notion of contextual classification to the stronger notion of constitutive rule. These many ways in which counts-as can be said are formally addressed by making use of modal logic techniques. The resulting framework allows for a formal characterization of all the involved notions and their reciprocal logical relationships.