Some Suggestions for Deontic Logicians

Normative Multi-agent …, 2007

Logique et Analyse

Ratio Juris, 2002

A recent series of papers, sparked off by a note by Robert Walter (1996), has rekindled the debate over the possibility of creating a logic of normative concepts. The debate correctly centres on ways in which Jørgensen’s dilemma might be resolved (Jørgensen 1937–8), since a means of resolving that dilemma is the only apparently available way in which to establish that a logic of norms is possible. Two separate questions require answers: (i) what is the correct way in which to regard Jørgensen’s dilemma; and (ii) how should one face that dilemma? I shall argue that traditional responses to the first question are inadequate, and I shall then try to expose as flawed two recent attempts to resolve the dilemma. Finally, I shall relate my conclusions in the earlier part of the paper to the wider question of whether a logic of normative concepts is, after all, a possibility.

1981

Proceedings of the 16th edition of the International Conference on Articial Intelligence and Law, 2017

IOS Press eBooks, 2021

In this paper, we examine a solution to Jørgensen's dilemma advanced by Hilpinen in several papers. According to Hilpinen, the distinction between two ways of using normative sentences is a distinction between two kinds of utterances of normative propositions. An authoritative utterance of a deontic sentence 'creates' a norm and, at the same time, it makes such a norm true in a certain community. In other words, the contents of norms are true propositions. However, the same proposition can also be descriptively uttered in order to provide information about the normative status of certain actions or states of affairs. Therefore, Hilpinen claims that there would be no difference between the logic of norms (directives) and the logic of normative statements to the extent that normative and assertoric utterances of a given deontic sentence have the same content: a normative proposition. Contrary to Hilpinen, we claim that it is necessary to make a clear distinction between the content of norms and a description of norms. Following Alchourrón and Bulygin, we show that a logic of norms cannot be isomorphic with a logic of propositions about norms. However, contrary to Alchourrón and Bulygin, we emphasize that a logic of propositions about norms should not assume that normative sets include all logical consequences.