Exploiting the normative aspect of preference: A deontic logic without actions

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to clear the following charge leveled against preference logics: preference logics rest upon the mistaken belief that concept construction can satisfactorily be carried out in isolation from theory construction (J. Mullen, Metaphilosophy 10(1979)247–255). We construct a logic of preference that is fundamental in the sense that it does notcommit itself to any allegedlyobvious or intuitive — and in actuality,theory specific — preference principles. A unique feature of our construction is that preference orderings are placed upon possible worlds. While this has been done before in the work of S.O. Hansson and N. Rescher, among others, we do not derive a binary preference relation — from these orders — that acts on individual propositions. Instead, we provide the syntactic means to impose the preference orderings among worlds. Thus, unlike Hansson, we do not need to assumea priori that our preference orderings be transitive. Such properties can be axiomatized. The close connections between preferences and obligations, in particular their normative nature, then allow us to derive a deontic logic that is free of the paradoxes of standard deontic logic. It is interesting to note here that this work arose in an attempt to provide a logical characterization of document description and layout Layout directives can be succinctly represented as preference criteria.