Free Choice Permission Research Articles

Consistency and permission in deontic justification logic

Abstract Different notions of the consistency of obligations collapse in standard deontic logic. In justification logics, which feature explicit reasons for obligations, the situation is different. Their strength depends on a constant specification and on the available set of operations for combining different reasons. We present different consistency principles in justification logic and compare their logical strength. We propose a novel semantics for which justification logics with the explicit version of axiom D, $\textbf {jd}$, are complete for arbitrary constant specifications. Consistency is sometimes formulated in terms of permission. We therefore study permission in the context of justification logic, introducing a notion of free-choice permission for the first time. We then discuss the philosophical implications with regard to some deontic paradoxes.

Tableaux for some deontic logics with the explicit permission operator

In this paper we present a tableau system for deontic logics with the operator of explicit permission. By means of this system the decidability of the considered logics can be proved. We will sketch how these logics are semantically defined by means of relating semantics and how they provide a simple solution to the free choice permission problem. In short, these logics employ relating implication and a certain propositional constant. These two are in turn used to define deontic operators similarly as in Andersonian-Kangerian reduction, which uses different intensional implications and constants.

Free choice permission, legitimization and relating semantics

Abstract In this paper, we apply relating semantics to the widely discussed problem of free choice between permitted actions or situations in normative systems. Leaving aside contexts in which the free choice principle is obviously unacceptable (weak permission understood as an absence of prohibition) or uncontroversially valid (strong permission within systems with a closed repertoire of actions or situations), we concentrate on free choice for explicit permissions. In order to construct a formal representation of explicit permissions, we introduce a special constant, $\texttt {permit}$, which is analogous to the constant $\texttt {violation}$ used in the Andersonian–Kangerian approach to deontic logic with respect to prohibition and obligation. Consequently, we define a permission operator on the basis of the $\texttt {permit}$ constant and a relation of legitimization. The general idea is that $P \varphi $ is true if and only if $\texttt {permit}$ is true, which means that a permission is actually issued and $\varphi $ is legitimized by $\texttt {permit}$. The intuitive notion of legitimization is formally represented by an operator of relating implication: a non-classical implication that is semantically defined by adding a constraint to the classical meaning of implication to the effect that arguments are related by a special relation. The properties of this relation are based on an informal, intuitive meaning of legitimization and determine the properties of the permission operator. We show that the resulting permission operator possesses the free choice property and avoids certain unwanted consequences that follow from alternative approaches.

Logic of defeasible permission and its dynamics

Abstract This paper develops a deontic logic for defeasible permission and studies norm change in various updated semantics. When one grants that $\varphi $ or $\psi $ is permitted, normally, it goes together with the conjunction of a permission of $\varphi $ and that of $\psi $. In the monotonic reasoning on this permission, a permission of $\varphi $ leads to a permission of $\varphi $ and $\psi $; however, if a prohibition of $\psi $ is introduced, we get into trouble. We face a paradox of free choice permission. Many solutions have been proposed, but a systematic account of handling norm change is still needed. This paper first introduces the notion of normality to develop a sound and complete deontic logic for defeasible permission, which can be used to analyse several notions in natural language and in game theory. Further, following Lewis’ idea of norm change, a systematic way to capture various dynamics for updating permission and obligation is proposed.

A TWO-DIMENSIONAL LOGIC FOR TWO PARADOXES OF DEONTIC MODALITY

AbstractIn this paper, we axiomatize the deontic logic in Fusco (2015), which uses a Stalnaker-inspired account of diagonal acceptance and a two-dimensional account of disjunction to treat Ross’s Paradox and the Puzzle of Free Choice Permission. On this account, disjunction-involving validities are a priori rather than necessary. We show how to axiomatize two-dimensional disjunction so that the introduction/elimination rules for boolean disjunction can be viewed as one-dimensional projections of more general two-dimensional rules. These completeness results help make explicit the restrictions Fusco’s account must place on free-choice inferences. They are also of independent interest, as they raise difficult questions about how to “lift” a Kripke frame for a one-dimensional modal logic into two dimensions.

Free choice and homogeneity

This paper develops a semantic solution to the puzzle of Free Choice permission. The paper begins with a battery of impossibility results showing that Free Choice is in tension with a variety of classical principles, including Disjunction Introduction and the Law of Excluded Middle. Most interestingly, Free Choice appears incompatible with a principle concerning the behavior of Free Choice under negation, Double Prohibition, which says that Mary can’t have soup or salad implies Mary can’t have soup and Mary can’t have salad. Alonso-Ovalle 2006 and others have appealed to Double Prohibition to motivate pragmatic accounts of Free Choice. Aher 2012, Aloni 2018, and others have developed semantic accounts of Free Choice that also explain Double Prohibition. This paper offers a new semantic analysis of Free Choice designed to handle the full range of impossibility results involved in Free Choice. The paper develops the hypothesis that Free Choice is a homogeneity effect. The claim possibly A or B is defined only when A and B are homogenous with respect to their modal status, either both possible or both impossible. Paired with a notion of entailment that is sensitive to definedness conditions, this theory validates Free Choice while retaining a wide variety of classical principles except for the transitivity of entailment. The homogeneity hypothesis is implemented in two different ways, homogeneous alternative semantics and homogeneous dynamic semantics, with interestingly different consequences. EARLY ACCESS

Deontic modals and hyperintensionality

Abstract In this paper I argue that deontic modals are hyperintensional, i.e. logically equivalent contents cannot be substituted in their scope. I give two arguments, one deductive and the other abductive. First, I show that the contrary thesis (that deontic modals are not hyperintensional) leads to falsity; second, I argue that a hyperintensional theory of deontic modals fares better than its rivals in terms of elegance, theoretical simplicity and explanatory power (e.g. Ross’s paradox, the Gentle Murderer, The Good Samaritan, Free Choice Permission and the Miners’ Paradox disappear). I then propose a philosophical analysis of this thesis and outline some consequences. In Section 1 I introduce and define deontic modality and hyperintensionality. In Section 2 I give a reductio for the hyperintensionality of deontic modals. If the argument is sound, a useful corollary is that deontic modals are also non-intensional, and therefore possible-world semantics accounts are illfitted for them. I then show how the main result can be strengthened or weakened by varying the definition of logical validity. In Section 3 I give an abductive argument for the hyperintensionality of deontic modals, arguing that with a single move we are able to solve many paradoxes and puzzles traditionally troubling deontic logic. I present a version of a hyperintensional deontic logic in an appendix, which I prove is sound and complete with respect to a version of truthmaker semantics.

Supercover Semantics for Deontic Action Logic

The semantics for a deontic action logic based on Boolean algebra is extended with an interpretation of action expressions in terms of sets of alternative actions, intended as a way to model choice. This results in a non-classical interpretation of action expressions, while sentences not in the scope of deontic operators are kept classical. A deontic structure based on Simons’ supercover semantics is used to interpret permission and obligation. It is argued that these constructions provide ways to handle various problems related to free choice permission. The main result is a sound and complete axiomatization of the semantics.

Expressing Permission

This paper proposes a semantics for free choice permission that explains both the non-classical behavior of modals and disjunction in sentences used to grant permission, and their classical behavior under negation. It also explains why permissions can expire when new information comes in and why free choice arises even when modals scope under disjunction. On the proposed approach, deontic modals update preference orderings, and connectives operate on these updates rather than propositions. The success of this approach stems from its capacity to capture the difference between expressing the preferences that give rise to permissions and conveying propositions about those preferences.

Free choice permission and the counterfactuals of pragmatics

This paper addresses a little puzzle with a surprisingly long pedigree and a surprisingly large wake: the puzzle of Free Choice Permission. I begin by presenting a popular sketch of a pragmatic solution to the puzzle, due to Kratzer and Shimoyama (Proceedings of the third Tokyo conference on psycholinguistics, 2002), which has received a good deal of discussion, endorsement and elaboration in recent work (Aloni and van Rooij, Proccedings of the KNAW Academy Colloquium: Cognitive foundations of interpretation, 2004; Alonso-Ovalle, Ph.D. thesis, 2006; Chierchia, Linguist Inq 37(4):535–590, 2006; Fox, in: Sauerland and Stateva (eds.) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, 2007; Geurts, Mind Lang 24:51–79, 2009; von Fintel, Central APA session on Deontic Modals, 2012). I then explain why the general form of the Kratzer and Shimoyama explanation is not extensionally adequate. This leaves us with two possibilities with regard to the original solution-sketch; either the suggested pragmatic route fails, or it succeeds in a particularly strange way: Free Choice permission is rendered a kind pragmatic illusion on the part of both speakers and hearers. Finally, I discuss some ramifications.

Processing inferences at the semantics/pragmatics frontier: Disjunctions and free choice

Linguistic inferences have traditionally been studied and categorized in several categories, such as entailments, implicatures or presuppositions. This typology is mostly based on traditional linguistic means, such as introspective judgments about phrases occurring in different constructions, in different conversational contexts. More recently, the processing properties of these inferences have also been studied (see, e.g., recent work showing that scalar implicatures is a costly phenomenon). Our focus is on free choice permission, a phenomenon by which conjunctive inferences are unexpectedly added to disjunctive sentences. For instance, a sentence such as “Mary is allowed to eat an ice-cream or a cake” is normally understood as granting permission both for eating an ice-cream and for eating a cake. We provide data from four processing studies, which show that, contrary to arguments coming from the theoretical literature, free choice inferences are different from scalar implicatures.

Deontic contexts and the interpretation of disjunction in legal discourse

AbstractThis study investigates the interpretation of or in legal texts, focusing on two puzzles: “inclusive/exclusive” or and “free choice permission”. The study first examines various examples of or in American court cases described by Solan and the “and/or” rule that he describes. It then turns to occurrences of or in a different legal domain, that of the World Trade Organization, giving a brief introduction to the WTO dispute mechanism and its principles of interpretation before examining these occurrences of or. The study then introduces the inquisitive semantics framework as a way to account for these occurrences, offering an analysis of the inclusive/exclusive or and free choice or puzzles and of the interaction of or with obligation, permission, and negation more generally.

Free choice permission as resource-sensitive reasoning

Free choice permission is a long-standing puzzle in deontic logic and in natural language semantics. It involves what appears to be a conjunctive use of "or": from "You may eat an apple or a pear", we can infer that "You may eat an apple" and that "You may eat a pear" -- though not that "You may eat an apple and a pear". Following Lokhorst (1997), I argue that because permission is a limited resource, a resource-sensitive logic such as Girard's Linear Logic is better suited to modeling permission talk than, say, classical logic. A resource-sensitive approach enables the semantics to track not only that permission has been granted and what sort of permission it is (i.e., permission to eat apples versus permission to eat pears), but also how much permission has been granted, i.e., whether there is enough permission to eat two pieces of fruit or only one. The account here is primarily semantic (as opposed to pragmatic), with no special modes of composition or special pragmatic rules. The paper includes an introduction to Linear Logic. doi:10.3765/sp.3.10 BibTeX info

A Pragmatic Solution for the Paradox of Free Choice Permission

In this paper, a pragmatic approach to the phenomenon of free choice permission is proposed. Free choice permission is explained as due to taking the speaker (i) to obey certain Gricean maxims of conversation and (ii) to be competent on the deontic options, i.e. to know the valid obligations and permissions. The approach differs from other pragmatic approaches to free choice permission in giving a formally precise description of the class of inferences that can be derived based on these two assumptions. This formalization builds on work of Halpern and Moses (1984) on the concept of ‘only knowing’, generalized by Hoek et al., (1999, 2000), and Zimmermann’s (2000) approach to competence.

Free Choice Permission is Strong Permission

Free choice permission, a crucial test case concerning the semantics/ pragmatics boundary, usually receives a pragmatic treatment. But its pragmatic features follow from its semantics. We observe that free choice inferences are defeasible, and defend a semantics of free choice permission as strong permission expressed in terms of a modal conditional in a nonmonotonic logic.

Free choice and contextually permitted actions

We present a solution to the paradox of free choice permission by introducing strong and weak permission in a deontic logic of action. It is shown how counterintuitive consequences of strong permission can be avoided by limiting the contexts in which an action can be performed. This is done by introducing the only operator, which allows us to say that only is performed (and nothing else), and by introducing contextual interpretation of action terms

Theor of free choice permission

I argue that the conjunctive distribution of permissibility over ‘or’, which is a puzzling feature of free-choice permission is just one instance of a more general class of conjunctive occurrences of the word, and that these conjunctive uses are more directly explicable by the consideration that ‘or’ is a descendant of ‘oper’ than by reference to the disjunctive occurrences which logicalist prejudices may tempt us to regard as semantically more fundamental. I offer an account of how the disjunctive uses of ‘or’ may have come about through an intermediate discourse-adverbial use of ‘or’, drawing a parallel with ‘but’, which, etymologically, is disjunctive rather than conjunctive and whose conjunctive uses seem to represent just such a discourse-adverbial application.

Actors, actions, and initiative in normative system specification

The logic of norms, called deontic logic, has been used to specify normative constraints for information systems. For example, one can specify in deontic logic the constraints that a book borrowed from a library should be returned within three weeks, and that if it is not returned, the library should send a reminder. Thus, the notion of obligation to perform an action arises naturally in system specification. Intuitively, deontic logic presupposes the concept of anactor who undertakes actions and is responsible for fulfilling obligations. However, the concept of an actor has not been formalized until now in deontic logic. We present a formalization in dynamic logic, which allows us to express the actor who initiates actions or choices. This is then combined with a formalization, presented earlier, of deontic logic in dynamic logic, which allows us to specify obligations, permissions, and prohibitions to perform an action. The addition of actors allows us to expresswho has the responsibility to perform an action. In addition to the application of the concept of an actor in deontic logic, we discuss two other applications of actors. First, we show how to generalize an approach taken up by De Nicola and Hennessy, who eliminate from CCS in favor of internal and external choice. We show that our generalization allows a more accurate specification of system behavior than is possible without it. Second, we show that actors can be used to resolve a long-standing paradox of deontic logic, called the paradox of free-choice permission. Towards the end of the paper, we discuss whether the concept of an actor can be combined with that of an object to formalize the concept of active objects.

IV—Free Choice Permission

Journal Article IV—Free Choice Permission Get access Hans Kamp Hans Kamp Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 57–74, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/74.1.57 Published: 17 July 2015