Abstract
Deontic concepts like ought, right, obligation, forbidden, and permissible have benefited from the philosophically exciting work in the semantics of modal concepts done by Kanger1, Hintikka2, Kripke3, Montague4 and others. Their semantics illuminates both the topic and the contribution of the standard axiomatic approach to deontic logic: the topic is what philosophers used to call the Ought-to-be. On the other hand, the nonstandard approach represented by early axiomatic deontic systems of ours deals with the Ought-to-do. Thus, rather than competing with the standard approach to deontic logic, our non-standard approach complements it. This can, however, be seen only by providing our nonstandard approach with a minimum of semantical foundations. This is precisely what this essay attempts to do. We shall also provide a rationale for our non-standard semantical system by formulating some proto-philosophical data that both guide the development of the system and serve as tests of adequacy for it. In fact, our concern is primarily philosophical, not technical.
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References
Stig Kanger, Provability in Logic, Almquist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1957; ‘A Note on Quantification and Modalities’ and ‘On the Characterization of Modalities’, both in Theoria 23 (1957).
Jaakko Hintikka, ‘Modality and Quantification’, Theoria 27 (1961), and The Modes of Modality’, Acta Philosophica Fennica 16 (1963).
Saul Kripke, ‘A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic’, The Journal of Symbolic Logic 24 (1959), and ‘Semantical Analysis of Modal Logic I’, Zeitschrift für mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 9 (1963).
Richard Montague, ‘Logical Necessity, Physical Necessity, Ethics, and Quantifiers’, Inquiry 3 (1960).
J. Barkley Rosser, Logic for Mathematicians, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1953, Chapter IV, pp. 55–76.
For a detailed examination of the overall connections between imperatives and deontic statements see H.-N. Castañeda’s ‘Imperatives, Decisions and Oughts’ in Morality and the Language of Conduct (ed. by H.-N. Castañeda and G. Nakhnikian), Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Mich., 1963; paperback edition, 1967.
On conflicts of duties and prima facie oughts see H.-N. Castañeda’s ‘Imperatives, Oughts and Moral Oughts’, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 44 (1966).
For a discussion of proposals to solve the Good Samaritan paradox, see H.-N. Castañeda, ‘Acts, the Logic of Obligation, and Deontic Calculi’, Philosophical Studies 19 (1968); W. Sellars, ‘Reflections on Contrary-to-Duty Imperatives’, Noûs 1 (1967); L. Åqvist, ‘Good Samaritans, Contrary-to-Duty Imperatives, and Epistemic Obligations’, Noûs 1 (1967); and L. Powers, ‘Some Deontic Logicians’, Noûs 1 (1967).
H.-N. Castañeda, ‘Actions, Imperatives, and Obligations’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67 (1967–1968) 45 ff.
See W. V. Quine, Methods of Logic, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, revised edition, 1959, pp. 107–117.
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© 1972 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
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Castañeda, HN. (1972). On the Semantics of the Ought-To-Do. In: Davidson, D., Harman, G. (eds) Semantics of Natural Language. Synthese Library, vol 40. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2557-7_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2557-7_21
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