A logic of good, should, and would. I (Q912087)

This paper explores the logical behaviour of the sentential operator ``it is good that...'', with particular interest in its relation to notions such as obligation of ordinary deontic logic. Part I, here reviewed, discusses the issues fairly informally, in order to motivate and sketch a formal theory scheduled to appear later in the same journal. The author takes the view that the locution ``it is good that...'' presupposes a comparison of some alternatives as better or worse than others, so that its logic rests on a preference logic. He also suggests that the notion of obligation can be defined explicitly from the preference logic, putting Op to be true in the actual world iff ``all available p-alternatives to the actual world are better than all available (not-p) alternatives''. Much of the paper is devoted to a discursive but clear study of the properties that Op, so defined, enjoys. They are sufficiently weak, the author contends, to avoid many of the ``paradoxes'' of standard deontic logics. Reviewer's comments: The definition of obligation proposed by the author is clearly central to his enterprise. He remarks laconically that it is similar to one proposed by \textit{Frank Jackson} [``On the semantics and logic of obligation'', Mind 94, 177-196 (1985)], but does not comment on the similarity or the differences. Nor does he discuss the tenability of the first universal quantifier in the definition, which renders the notion so strict that it is difficult to see how it can ever be exemplified in practice. For example, I may have an obligation to wake someone up at 7 a.m., without all available ways of doing so being better than all available ways of failing to do it.