Preference-based deontic logic (PDL) (Q912086)

Standard systems of deontic logic in the tradition of von Wright notoriously tend to give rise to ``paradoxes''. It is relatively easy to avoid these by simply dropping or weakening enough axioms, but as the author observes, it is more difficult to give weaker systems a ``credible semantic basis''. The author seeks to fill the gap, proposing a semantics that gives rise to a very weak deontic logic and apparently avoiding the usual paradoxes. It is based on a system of preference logic, under which actions of a given agent are graded as better or worse. The deontic logic is generated from the underlying preference logic by adding an operator of prohibition constrained by an interesting condition of ``negativity'' - roughly speaking, that any action worse than a prohibited action is prohibited. The author observes that this condition has strong intuitive appeal, unlike its ``opposite'', that any action better than an obligatory one is also obligatory. Accompanying the negativity condition is just one other constraint, which may be paraphrased roughly as saying that at least one course of action should not be prohibited. Obligation is then defined from prohibition in a familiar way, and its properties studied.