A Simpler Solution to the Paradoxes of Deontic Logic

Abstract

Some of deontic logic's stickiest problems are revealed by the socalled paradoxes of deontic logic. None of these is, strictly speaking, a paradox-no one purports to derive a contradiction from a bunch of seemingly uncontroversial premises.' Instead, the general form is this: some system of deontic logic has been proposed. A critic then describes a possible situation and produces a set of ordinary language sentences. The sentences would presumably be true if the situation were to occur. The critic next indicates the systematic representations of these sentences. He points out that the systematic representations do not have the logical features of the ordinary language sentences they are intended to represent. In the most typical case, the problem is that the original set of sentences is consistent, whereas the representations are inconsistent. Other differences could be as important. A defender of the system must then either (i) show that the originals do not have the logical features that were claimed for them; or (ii) show that there is some other way to represent the sentences within the system, and that this other representation preserves the logical features of the originals; or (iii) admit that there is no adequate way to represent the originals within the system.