Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Semantic analyses for dyadic deontic logic
- 2 A problem about permission
- 3 Reply to McMichael
- 4 Why ain'cha rich?
- 5 Desire as belief
- 6 Desire as belief II
- 7 Dispositional theories of value
- 8 The trap's dilemma
- 9 Evil for freedom's sake?
- 10 Do we believe in penal substitution?
- 11 Convention: Reply to Jamieson
- 12 Meaning without use: Reply to Hawthorne
- 13 Illusory innocence?
- 14 Mill and Milquetoast
- 15 Academic appointments: Why ignore the advantage of being right?
- 16 Devil's bargains and the real world
- 17 Buy like a MADman, use like a NUT
- 18 The punishment that leaves something to chance
- 19 Scriven on human unpredictability (with Jane S. Richardson)
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Semantic analyses for dyadic deontic logic
- 2 A problem about permission
- 3 Reply to McMichael
- 4 Why ain'cha rich?
- 5 Desire as belief
- 6 Desire as belief II
- 7 Dispositional theories of value
- 8 The trap's dilemma
- 9 Evil for freedom's sake?
- 10 Do we believe in penal substitution?
- 11 Convention: Reply to Jamieson
- 12 Meaning without use: Reply to Hawthorne
- 13 Illusory innocence?
- 14 Mill and Milquetoast
- 15 Academic appointments: Why ignore the advantage of being right?
- 16 Devil's bargains and the real world
- 17 Buy like a MADman, use like a NUT
- 18 The punishment that leaves something to chance
- 19 Scriven on human unpredictability (with Jane S. Richardson)
- Index
Summary
This collection reprints all my previously published papers in ethics and social philosophy, except for those that were previously reprinted in another collection, Philosophical Papers. I have taken the opportunity to correct typographical errors and editorial alterations. But I have left the philosophical content as it originally was, rather than trying to rewrite the papers as I would write them today.
The first three papers deal with the deontic logic of obligation and permission. Such a system of logic, in which operators of obligation and permission are taken to be dual modal operators analogous to operators of necessity and possibility, can be extended to what is obligatory or permissible given some condition. ‘Semantic Analyses for Dyadic Deontic Logic’ surveys a number of published treatments of conditional obligation and permission with a view to separating substantive differences – different degrees of generality, as it turns out – from mere differences between equivalent styles of bookkeeping.
The deontic logic of permission (whether conditional or unconditional) ignores the performative character of permission. By saying that something is or isn't permitted (unconditionally or conditionally) we can make it so. But there's a complication. If I say that some of the courses of action in which so-and-so happens are permissible, saying so makes it so. But which of those courses of action do I thereby bring into permissibility? ‘A Problem about Permission’ surveys various possible answers.
In ‘Reply to McMichael’, I insist that deontic logic, conditional or otherwise, characterizes only the formalities of moral thinking.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy , pp. 1 - 4Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999