Supererogation in deontic logic: Metatheory for DWE and some close neighbours (Q1378431)

This paper continues work begun in the second author's doctoral thesis [The deontic quaddecagon, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Dissertation]. The purpose is to provide a formal account of the notion of supererogation, i.e. the notion that ``it is beyond the call of duty that \(\alpha\)'', familiar from moral philosophy. This is done in terms of a possible worlds semantics. Roughly speaking, ``it is supererogatory that \(\alpha\)'' is evaluated as true at a world \(w\), iff there are worlds \(u\) and \(u'\) that are both acceptable (from the standpoint of \(w)\), with \(\alpha\) true at \(u\), but false at \(u'\) and at all worlds at least as bad (from the point of view of \(w)\) as \(u'\). A dual notion of ``it is suboptimally permissible that \(\alpha\)'' is evaluated by a similar rule but with ``good'' in place of ``bad''. The intuitive motivation for this analysis is discussed in a companion paper [\textit{P. McNamara}, ``Doing well enough: toward a logic for common-sense morality'', Stud. Logica 57, 167-192 (1996; Zbl 0873.03024)]. The present paper focuses on formulating an axiomatisation for the account, and establishing its completeness. Reviewer's comments: There is an oversight on page 403 in the derived evaluation clause for the operator of supererogation: the conjunct \(y\leq_wx\) is not derivable unless we make additional assumptions on the relation \(\leq_w\) over the set of worlds accessible from \(w\) -- e.g. connectivity, which is not done until section 8. Likewise in the evaluation clause for permissible suboptimality. Both clauses also have a misleading typo: the last satisfaction sign should in each case be negated. The same typo also appears in the clause for the indifference operator higher on the same page. The first author has indicated to the reviewer that these matters do not affect the completeness proof.