A Mini-Guide to Logic in Action

TLDR: In this article, it was shown that asking questions and giving answers are just as much logical core activities as drawing conclusions, and that the natural dynamic counterpart of static epistemic logic is the theory of arbitrary individual or social learning mechanisms.

Abstract: Classical logic is about propositions which we can know or believe, and unchanging inferential relationships between them. But inference is first and foremost an activity, for which propositions are merely the input, and the result. In recent years, there has been a growing awareness that various activities of reasoning, evaluation, belief revision, or communication, are themselves typical themes for logical investigation, and that their dynamic structure can be studied explicitly by logical means. 1 For instance, it seems strange to study only the statics of what it means to 'know' a proposition, when knowledge usually results from basic actions of learning that we perform all the time, such as asking a question and getting an answer. Indeed, asking questions and giving answers are just as much logical core activities as drawing conclusions! This line can be extended: the natural dynamic counterpart of static epistemic logic is the theory of arbitrary individual or social learning mechanisms. Similar trajectories from static to dynamic arise when we look at inference in such stages, first as a zero-agent mathematical relationship between static propositions, then as a one-agent activity of drawing conclusions, and finally as a many-agent interactive process of argumentation. This broadening of perspective, sometimes called the 'Dynamic Turn', started around 1980 with work on interpretation procedures for natural language, as well as belief revision in artificial intelligence. But how should logic incorporate actions as first-class citizens into its scope? Plausible formal frameworks to this effect come from the philosophy of action, temporal