Abstract

The year 1957 saw the publication of two ground-breaking contributions to deontic logic, Stig Kanger’s ‘New Foundations for Ethical Theory’ (Kanger 1957/71)1 and Jaakko Hintikka’s ‘Quantifiers in Deontic Logic’ (Hintikka 1957).2 Superficially the papers look very different, but they contain many significant similarities: 1. Both papers contain a semantic analysis of the basic normative concepts the obligatory, the permitted, and the prohibited (or the concepts of ought, may, and may not). The semantical theories proposed by Kanger and Hintikka are closely related to, or variants of, the possible worlds semantics for modal concepts. 2. Kanger and Hintikka discuss the applicability of the concepts of truth and consequence to normative discourse, that is, to imperatives, norms, and normative statements. 3. Both authors analyze the role of quantifiers in deontic logic and the interplay of quantifiers and deontic operators. 4. The concepts and results of deontic logic are applied to conceptual problems in ethics and the philosophy of law. 5. In these papers, Kanger and Hintikka discuss the importance of the representation of actions and agency in deontic logic and, more generally, the role of actions and action descriptions in normative discourse. In the present paper I shall briefly discuss Kanger’s contributions to these topics.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Similar Papers

Paper Title
Journal
Date
Author
Peter Aczel. Quantifiers, games and inductive definitions. Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 1–14. - Kit Fine. Some connections between elementary and modal logic. Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 15–31. - Bengt Hansson and Peter Gärdenfors. Filtations and the finite frame property in Boolean semantics. Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 32–39. - Jaakko Hintikka and Veikko Rantala. Systematizing definability theory. Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 40–62. - Herman Ruge Jervell. Conservative endextensions and the quantifier ‘there exist uncountably many.’Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 63–80. - Per Martin-Löf. About models for intuitionistic type theories and the notion of definitional equality. Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 81–109. - Henrik Sahlqvist. Completeness and correspondence in the first and second order semantics for modal logic. Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 110–143. - Arto Salomaa. On some decidability problems concerning developmental languages. Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium, edited by Stig Kanger, Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 82, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam and Oxford, and American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 144–153.
S. K. Thomason
Journal of Symbolic Logic | VOL. 43
S. K. ThomasonS. K. Thomason
01 Jun 1978
The intuitive background of normative legal discourse and its formalization
CarlosE. Alchourr�n
Journal of Philosophical Logic | VOL. 1
CarlosE. Alchourr�nCarlosE. Alchourr�n
01 Aug 1972
Deontic Relevant Logic: A Strong Relevant Logic Approach to Removing Paradoxes from Deontic Logic
Jingde Cheng ... Takahiro Tagawa
-
Jingde Cheng, et. al.Jingde Cheng ... Takahiro Tagawa
18 Aug 2002
`Ought' and Extensionality
Lou Goble
Noûs | VOL. 30
Lou GobleLou Goble
01 Sep 1996
View more papers