On the Semantics of Actual Causality in Situation Calculus Concurrent Game Structures

Mohammad Hossein Karimian, Shakil M. Khan, Yves Lespérance

Abstract: Key to the formalization of rationality is the study of actual causation. Halpern and Pearl’s pioneering work on causal models is based on structural-equations models, which assumes an overly simplistic model of action and change. Although much recent work within action-theoretic frameworks has appeared to deal with this, all of these accounts share a common and strong limitation, that the scenario or history of actions in these are assumed to be linear sequences of actions or traces. To deal with this, in this paper we study causation in a synchronous game-theoretic framework that allows concurrent moves by multiple agents. Our framework is based on situation calculus concurrent game structures. We show that our formalization has some interesting properties and handles the issues associated with preemption and over-determination well.