Temporal logics are quite successful in terms of expressiveness and applications in computer science, so I thought I’d take a look at some other modal logics—in particular deontic logic that deal with obligations, rules, and deontological ethics.
It seems like an obvious approach, as we want to have “is”-statements, “ought”-statements, and statements relating what “is” with what “ought” to be.
What I found was rather disastrous, far worse than with neat and unambiguous temporal logics. Low expressiveness, ambiguous interpretations, far too many paradoxes that seem to be more about failing to specify underlying logic correctly than about actual problems, and no convergence on a single deontic logic than works.
After reading all this, I made a few quick attempts at defining logic of obligations, just to be sure it’s not some sort of collective insanity, but they all ran into very similar problems extremely quickly.
Now I’m in no way deontologically inclined, but if I were it would really bother me. If it’s really impossible to formally express obligations, this kind of ethics is built on extremely flimsy basis. Consequentialism has plenty of problems in practice, but at least in hypothetical scenarios it’s very easy to model correctly. Deontic logic seems to lack even that.
Is there any kind of deontic logic that works well that I missed? I’m not talking about solving FAI, constructing universal rules of morality or anything like it—just about a language that expresses exactly the kind of obligations we want, and which works well in simple hypothetical worlds.
A question about modal logics.
Temporal logics are quite successful in terms of expressiveness and applications in computer science, so I thought I’d take a look at some other modal logics—in particular deontic logic that deal with obligations, rules, and deontological ethics.
It seems like an obvious approach, as we want to have “is”-statements, “ought”-statements, and statements relating what “is” with what “ought” to be.
What I found was rather disastrous, far worse than with neat and unambiguous temporal logics. Low expressiveness, ambiguous interpretations, far too many paradoxes that seem to be more about failing to specify underlying logic correctly than about actual problems, and no convergence on a single deontic logic than works.
After reading all this, I made a few quick attempts at defining logic of obligations, just to be sure it’s not some sort of collective insanity, but they all ran into very similar problems extremely quickly.
Now I’m in no way deontologically inclined, but if I were it would really bother me. If it’s really impossible to formally express obligations, this kind of ethics is built on extremely flimsy basis. Consequentialism has plenty of problems in practice, but at least in hypothetical scenarios it’s very easy to model correctly. Deontic logic seems to lack even that.
Is there any kind of deontic logic that works well that I missed? I’m not talking about solving FAI, constructing universal rules of morality or anything like it—just about a language that expresses exactly the kind of obligations we want, and which works well in simple hypothetical worlds.