[lit-ideas] Re: Hartiana
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 16:17:43 +0100
I tried to post this in the other thread but I am not sure if it went
through. (Btw it's not a good idea to put words like "anal" in the subject
line, as it might cause the mail server to identify it as spam.)
The comments was:
Yeah, if philosophy is a language game as the Wittgensteins tell us, where
do people win or lose in it ? One might possibly think that they lose when
their arguments are refuted, but one hardly hears of any significant
philosopher being refuted on a matter of any importance. Possibly the
Wittgensteins might want to consult game theory to tell us what kind of
game it is that goes on forever without anyone visibly winning or losing.
O.K.
On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> My last post today!
>
> P. H. Nowell-Smith was a genial member of J. L. Austin's Saturday Mornings'
> Play Group. In his "The Logical Basis of Ethics" he is using ethics so
> genially that he was bound to interest Hart, who was into jurisprudence,
> rather, but which Nowell-Smith read as "legal philosophy". Nowell-Smith
> KNEW of
> Hart's separability thesis ('morality and legality are separable, which
> does not mean they are separated), and he invited Hart to consider the
> 'logical basis'. The trend became a fashion, and soon R. M. Hare got an
> interest
> too. With the advent of Grice and his conversational implicature talk, the
> scenarios became more sophisticated, and the Play Group had J. O. Urmson
> to
> provide the extra alleged counter-example. That was fun!
>
> Once McEvoy dismissed epistemic logic from a Popperian point of view, and I
> would think Popper would dismiss deontic logic. It fascinated R. M. Hare,
> if not especially H. L. A. Hart. Recall that Hare was Hart's junior, and
> that may have something to do with it. "O" is sometimes rendered by
> "ought",
> but it's best to render it by "obligation" (if you're feeling Roman). And
> deontic logic allows us to FORMALISE what, say, Hart's conceptual analysis
> yields about oblige-obligate.
>
> The five normative statuses of the Traditional Scheme are:
>
> it is [legally] obligatory that (OB)
> it is permissible that (PE)
> it is impermissible that (IM)
> it is omissible that (OM)
> it is optional that (OP)
>
> The first three are familiar.
>
> But the fourth is widely ignored.
>
> The fifth has regularly been conflated with “it is a matter of indifference
> that p” (by being defined in terms of one of the first three), which is
> not really part of the traditional scheme.
>
> Typically, one of the first two is taken as basic, and the others defined
> in terms of it, but any of the first four can play the same sort of
> purported defining role.
>
> The most prevalent approach is to take the first as basic, and define the
> rest as follows:
>
> PEp ↔ ~OB~p
> IMp ↔ OB~p
> OMp ↔ ~OBp
> OPp ↔ (~OBp &~OB~p).
>
> These assert that something is legally permissible iff (if and only if)
> its negation is not legally obligatory.
>
> This is held as analytically true, but not thereby 'vacuous' and 'circular'
> (McEvoy's qualifications in a different context, vide Hart's rule of
> recognition). something is impermissible iff its negation is obligatory,
> omissible iff it is not obligatory, and optional iff neither it nor its
> negation
> is obligatory.
>
> Call this “The Traditional Definitional Scheme (TDS)”.
>
> If one began with OB alone and considered the formulas on the right of the
> equivalences above, one could easily be led to consider them as at least
> candidate defining conditions for those on the left.
>
> Although not uncontestable, they are natural, and this scheme is still
> widely employed by anyone following Hart.
>
> Now consider:
>
> If OBp then p (if it is obligatory that p, then p is true).
> If p then PEp (if p is true, then it is permissible).
>
> These propositions are transparently false, for obligations can be violated
> (as Hart well knew -- hence his need to instruct his Oxonian undergraduate
> students on that with his "The concept of law") and impermissible things
> do hold.
>
> Hart and Hartians are only interested in deontic logics that contain
> classical propositional calculus (PC).
>
> So let's assume we add THAT as the FIRST ingredient in specifying any
> deontic logic, so that, for example,
>
> OBp → ~~OBp
>
> can be derived in any system to be considered.
>
> it is obviously desirable to have
>
> OBp → ~PE~p
>
> as a THEOREM.
>
> After all, this well-formed formula merely expresses one half of the
> equivalence between what would have been definiens and definiendum had we
> chosen
> the alternate scheme of definition in which “PE” was taken as basic
> instead of “OB”.
>
> However,
>
> OBp → ~PE~p
>
> is not thus far derivable.
>
> For
>
> OBp → ~PE~p
>
> is definitionally equivalent to
>
> OBp → ~~OB~~p
>
> which reduces by PC to
>
> OBp → OB~~p
>
> but the latter formula is not tautological. So we cannot complete the
> proof.
>
> So tautology or analyticity becomes the STANDARD for the construction of
> the system, rather than a term of abuse!
>
> What we need what is perhaps the most fundamental and least controversial
> rule of inference in deontic logic, and the one characteristic of
> “classical
> modal logics”:
>
> OB-RE:
>
> If p ↔ q is a theorem, so is OBp ↔ OBq.
>
> It is now easy to prove the equivalences corresponding to the alternative
> definitional schemes.
>
> For example, since
>
> ⊢ p ↔ ~~p
>
> by OB-RE, we get
>
> ⊢ OBp ↔ OB~~p
>
> i.e.,
>
> ⊢ OBp ↔ ~~OB~~p
>
> which generates
>
> ⊢ OBp ↔ ~PE~p
>
> A deontic system, such as Hart's must contain a thesis asserting that a
> logical contradiction (conventionally denoted by “⊥”) is always omissible:
>
> OD: ~OB⊥
>
> So, for example, OD implies that it is a logical truth that it is not
> obligatory that my taxes are paid and not paid.
>
> A principle of a legal system like Hart's is that obligations cannot
> conflict:
>
> NC:
>
> ~(OBp & OB~p).
>
> One paradox of deontic logic that has cross-references with Hart, Hare, and
> Grice is Ross's Paradox (Ross 1941) -- Ross being a member of what Hart
> calls Scandinavian realism (O. K. may reflect on this -ism).
>
> Consider:
>
> (1) It is obligatory that the letter is mailed.
> (2) It is obligatory that the letter is mailed or the letter is burned.
>
> In "Practical Inferences", R. M. Hare (recall he was White's professor of
> Moral Philosophy, while Hart chaired the Oxford chair of Jurisprudence)
> quotes H. P. Grice to the effect that the use of 'or' in (2) triggers the
> wrong
> conversational implicature -- and so Ross's paradox dissolves once this
> type of cancellable implication is brought to play a role.
>
> One good thing that J. L. Austin's Saturday Morning Play Group that Hart
> (being albeit Austin's senior) would occasionally attend, was J. O. Urmson.
> He was there to provide the right counter-example.
>
> When Grice provided his analysis of 'mean', Urmson brought in the example
> of a torture (Grice turned that into bribery): the recognition of the
> intention on the utterer, by the addressee, cannot be 'obliged', it has
> to be
> based on a reason, not merely CAUSED or forced otherwise.
>
> It is not surprising that Urmson also provided counterexamples to Hart's
> and Hare's legal and moral systems.
>
> One of Urmson's puzzles concerns Indifference versus Optionality:
>
> Consider:
>
> 1) It is optional that you attend the meeting, but not a matter of
> indifference that you do so.
>
> This seems to describe something quite familiar: optional matters that are
> nonetheless not matters of indifference.
>
> But when deontic logicians and ethicists gave an operator label for the
> condition
>
> ~OBp & ~OB~p
>
> it was almost invariably “It is indifferent that p”, “INp”. But then it
> would seem to follow from the theorem
>
> OBp ∨ (~OBp & ~OB~p) ∨ IMp
>
> that
>
> (~OBp & ~IMp) → INp
>
> that is, everything that is neither obligatory nor prohibited is a matter
> of indifference. But many actions, including some heroic actions, are
> neither obligatory nor prohibited, yet they are hardly matters of
> indifference.
> We might put this by saying that SDL can represent optionality, but not
> indifference, despite the fact that the latter concept has been a
> purported
> target for representation since nearly its beginning.
>
> Not satisfied with offering that to Hare and Hart, Urmson felt there was
> another problem: supererogation.
>
> Some things are beyond the call of duty or supererogatory (e.g.,
> volunteering for a costly or risky good endeavor where others are equally
> qualified
> and no one person is obligated). Some deontic systems have no capacity to
> represent this concept, which calls for a substantial increase in
> expressive
> and logical resources. Hare and Hart were forever grateful to Urmson, as
> was Grice.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
> Alchourron, C. Philosophical Foundations of Deontic Logic and the Logic of
> Defeasible Conditionals.” In Meyer & Wieringa.
> ––– Detachment and Defeasibility in Deontic Logic. Studia Logica, 57.
> Alchourron, C. and Eugenio Bulygin. Normative Systems. Vienna, New York:
> Springer-Verlag.
> Alchourron, C. E. and Eugenio Bulygin, In Hilpinen.
> Alchourron, C. E. and David Makinson, In Hilpinen.
> Baker, G. P. Defeasibility and meaning. In Hart's festschrift.
> Baker, G. P. Alternative mind-styles, in P. G. R. I. C. E., ed.
> Grandy/Warner.
> Grice, H. P. Aspects of reason. Clarendon Press.
> Grice, H. P. Desirability, probability, and mood operators. Unpublication.
> The Grice Papers. Bancroft Library.
> Hare, R. M. Practical Inferences. London: Macmillan.
> Hare, R. M. Some subatomic particles of logic, Mind, repr. On the tropic,
> the clistic, the neustic, and the phrastic.
> Hart, H. L. A. The concept of law. Clarendon..
> Hintikka, Jaakko. In Grandy/Warner, P. G. R. I. C. E. -- Philosophical
> grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends. Clarendon.
> Kamp, H. Free Choice Permission.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
> 74.
> Nowell Smith, P. H. and E. J. Lemmon. Escapism: The Logical Basis of
> Ethics.” Mind, 69.
> Ross, A. Imperatives and Logic. Theoria, 7.
> Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. Ought Conversationally Implies Can.
> Philosophical Review.
> Urmson, J.O. Saints and Heroes. In Melden, Essays in Moral Philosophy.
> Seattle: University of Washington Press.
>
>
>
>
>
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