A Logic for Desire Based on Causal Inference

Abstract Reasoning about desire plays a significant role in logic, artificial intelligence and philosophy, etc. In this paper, we propose an interpretation of desire that takes into account causal inference. To formalize this idea, we build a desire-causality model by combing the betterness model in preference logic and the causal model in the logic for causal reasoning. We then develop a logic for desire based on this semantics, and an axiomatization for our formal system is given.