Deontic Logic and Language Games
(Vladimir Svoboda, Institute of Philosophy / Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, CZ)
The founding father of deontic logic G.H. von Wright noted in the early 90s that this branch of logic that originated, in its modern version, in early fifties “has remained something of a problem child in the family of logical theories”. Unfortunately, the realm of logical theories subsumed under the term "deontic logic" has kept its somewhat problematic reputation up to the new millennium.
In my presentation I want to argue that searching for a remedy we should pay special attention to proper parceling out of the realm of deontic studies. Then I propose a parceling which makes use of David Lewis’ conception of scorekeeping in normative language games and distinguishes six distinctive areas of deontic logic. These areas differ a) in their focus on different kinds of moves in the language game, b) in their conceiving the language game either as static or as dynamic, c) in their explanatory ambitions. I suggest that if we carefully distinguish the different kinds of perspectives and problems then our logical theories can provide a more adequate analysis of different kinds of normative situations and some of the paradoxes that have vexed deontic logic for a long time can be easily (dis)solved.
Click for slides.
In my presentation I want to argue that searching for a remedy we should pay special attention to proper parceling out of the realm of deontic studies. Then I propose a parceling which makes use of David Lewis’ conception of scorekeeping in normative language games and distinguishes six distinctive areas of deontic logic. These areas differ a) in their focus on different kinds of moves in the language game, b) in their conceiving the language game either as static or as dynamic, c) in their explanatory ambitions. I suggest that if we carefully distinguish the different kinds of perspectives and problems then our logical theories can provide a more adequate analysis of different kinds of normative situations and some of the paradoxes that have vexed deontic logic for a long time can be easily (dis)solved.
Click for slides.