Philosophical Perspectives 34 (1):117-133 (2020)
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Abstract |
Moral obligation and permissibility are usually thought to be interdefinable. Following the pattern of the duality definitions of necessity and possibility, we have that something’s being permissible could be defined as its not being obligatory to not do it. And that something’s being obligatory could be defined as its not being permissible to not do it. In this paper, I argue that neither direction of this alleged interdefinability works. Roughly, the problem is that a claim that some act is obligatory or permissible entails that there is a moral law, whereas a negative claim that some act is not obligatory or not permissible does not. Nevertheless, one direction of the interdefinability can potentially be salvaged. I argue that, if we do not require the conceptual possibility of moral dilemmas, then there is a way to plausibly define obligation in terms of permissibility. I conclude that permissibility is the only feasible deontic primitive.
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Keywords | obligation permissibility interdefinability Moral Error Theory deontic logic |
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DOI | 10.1111/phpe.12137 |
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References found in this work BETA
Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic.Saul A. Kripke - 1963 - Acta Philosophica Fennica 16:83-94.
Unbelievable Errors: An Error Theory About All Normative Judgments.Bart Streumer - 2017 - Oxford University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Utilitarianism Without Moral Aggregation.Johan E. Gustafsson - 2021 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (4):256-269.
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