Prolegomenon to norms in branching space–times

Earlier (collaborative) work postulated that agency is essentially indeterministic, and finds a home in “branching times” (BT). BT is built on world-wide but momentary events called “moments” structured by an indeterministic causal ordering. The notion of a “history” is defined as a suitable chain of moments; histories branch one from another at moments. Other earlier work, the essential points of which are summarized in Section 2, led to “branching space–times” (BST). BT moments are replaced in BST by local “point events,” and “histories” are redefined more realistically as a family of suitable space–time-like structures that branch from one another at point events. In BST one finds that “transitions” from initial events to outcome events—each properly defined—play a fundamental role as originating causes (causae causantes) and effects. This spatio-temporal-causal story provides, in Section 3, an objective foundation for an indeterministic theory of agents and choices amid BST (BSTAC), the key concepts of which are “life event,” “life history,” and “person,” the latter essentially involving alternate possibilities, some of which arise from free choices. Section 4 works out a concept of “choice point,” leading to a BST account of “agent α sees to outcome O,” which is more sophisticated than the stit concept of earlier work. Many-agent cooperation is considered in Section 5, with hints concerning message sending and receiving. A theory of norms in BST (BSTACN) that builds on the foregoing, and also on earlier work, is briefly adumbrated in Section 6.