IMPERATIVES IN DEONTICAL LOGIC

The first part of the article stresses the need of taking deontic logic as a structured discipline devoted a) to the analysis of prescriptive language (the logic of imperatives), b) to the analysis of language used for describing of relations of demanding, i.e. relations which typically come into existence as a result of the use of prescriptive language (logic of deontic propositions). In the second pan a semantic conception of the logic of imperatives based on the concept of obeying an imperative is outlined. Central to this conception is a criterion of logical consequence based on the idea that an imperative is entailed by a set of imperatives if it is impossible to disobey it unless at least one imperative from the set is disobeyed. It is argued that this criterion must be amended in several respects to serve as a basis of an intuitively acceptable logic of imperatives. A matrix method of testing correctness of inferences of the logic of imperatives is described. The method can be enriched to also cover inferences, the premises of which consist both of imperatives and of classical propositions.