Topics in Logic - A

Deontic Logic

We use deontic logic to model our intuitions concerning prescriptive concepts, such as prohibition, permission, and obligation, and to provide appropriate formal frameworks for analyzing deontic problems, conceiving deontic procedures, and assessing existing deontic systems. At the beginning of this century we have witnessed an impressive revival of interest in this field, related both to the exploration of new formal tools for studying the deontic aspects of ideal and ordinary communities of agents and to the application of these tools to classical deontic problems. The present course aims to provide a general introduction to the basic concepts related to deontic logic and action theory and to develop systems of logic where these concepts are studied both from a semantic and from an axiomatic point of view. We will start with reviewing a standard possible world semantics for the notions of obligation and permission. Then, we will go on by highlighting the limits of this kind of semantics for modeling the way in which the actions of ordinary agents are regulated by norms. This will lead us to study a rich family of modal systems and to become familiar with a wide range of tools and techniques in intensional and hyperintentional logic.

The course is divided into three parts.

1. Part I is devoted to study deontic logics of states.

   (ought-to-be logic, sein-sollen logic).

2. Part II is devoted to study deontic logics of states.

   (ought-to-do logic, tun-sollen logic).

3. Part III is devoted to study logics of both states and actions.

Prerequisite: propositional logic; introductory modal logic.

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In presence

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