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SORITES, ISSN 1135-1349

Issue #05. May 1996. Pp. 18-34.

«Deontics between Semantics and Ontology»

Copyright (C) by SORITES and Carlos Alarcón Cabrera

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Deontics between Semantics and Ontology

Carlos Alarcón Cabrera

Section 1.

The term «Deontics», with its current meaning, constitutes a remarkable contribution to the Philosophy of Normative Language by Amedeo G. Conte. Going back to Aristotle, Conte defines «Deontics» as «theory of `Sollen' qua `Sollen»', as «theory of `ought' qua `ought»'. The same way Metaphysics, as «theory of `Sein' insofar as `Sein»', studies Sein in its «constitutive onticity», Deontics studies Sollen in its «constitutive deonticity».<11>Foot note 2_1

Unlike the term «Deontics», the expression «Deontic Logic» was first used before, with its current meaning, by Georg H. von Wright (1951) when he mentioned the deontic modal concepts (what is obligatory, what is permitted, what is forbidden) together with the alethic modal concepts (necessity, possibility, contingency -- concepts which are studied in modal logic), the existential modal concepts (universality, existentiality, emptiness -- concepts which are studied in the theory of quantifiers) and the epistemic modal concepts (what is verified, what is undecided, what is falsified).<12>Foot note 2_2

As an adjective, the term «Deontic» became more common in the philosophical lexicon. As Tecla Mazzarese points out, it was particularly used both in a pragmatic sense and a semantic sense: a) Pragmatically, as a synonym for «directive», «preceptive», «prescriptive», «normative», as opposed to «descriptive», «declarative», «assertive»; b) Semantically, in the sense of «concerning ought», to designate what constitutes the scope of ought or what describes the scope of ought.<13>Foot note 2_3

As a noun, «Deontics» concerns the formal systems of deontic calculus from the point of view of their theoretical-philosophical foundations, in virtue of which Deontic Logic analyzes technical problems peculiar to those calculi.

In this paper I will focus on five of Amedeo G. Conte's main contributions to the Philosophy of Normative Language:

In section 2, on the distinction between «categorical constitutivity» and «hypothetical constitutivity».

In section 3, on the typology of the concept of validity.

In section 4, on the notion of «pragmatic ambivalence» of deontic utterances.

In section 5, on the conception of repeal as an act of rejection.

In section 6, on the reinterpretation of the «Is-ought question».

Section 2.

2.1. In Contian Deontics, the Philosophy of constitutive rules plays an essential role. These rules have been defined by Conte as the «prius» of what they deal with in the threefold sense of being (eidetic) conditions of conceivability, (alethic) conditions of possibility and (noetic) conditions of perceptibility for what they deal with. Constitutive rules deal with neither chronologically preexistent nor with ontologically independent acts, situations or entities, but they do constitute by themselves the activity they deal with and, in it, their praxis.<14>Foot note 2_4

The distinction between «categorical constitutivity» and «hypothetical constitutivity» is parallel to the distinction between the notions of «constitutive rule» and «hypothetic-constitutive rule», a distinction which Conte expresses in ontological terms and semiotic terms:<15>Foot note 2_5

a) In ontological terms, constitutive rules are conditions for the activities with which they deal: «X counts as Y», «X has the value of Y»; hypothetic-constitutive rules pose conditions for an act or circumstance to have a particular value: «X must be N to count as Y», «X must be N to have the value of Y». Thirdly, technical rules neither are a condition nor pose conditions, but they presuppose conditions: they prescribe behaviours under the subjective condition of pursuing an aim and insofar as these behaviours are an objective condition of obtaining the aim which is being pursued.

b) From a semiotic point of view, constitutive rules determine the connotation of those terms which designate the praxis that the rules constitute. Hypothetic-constitutive rules do not determine, but they presuppose the connotation of those terms which designate the praxis that the rules constitute; that is, hypothetic-constitutive rules establish the denotation of these terms by posing conditions of validity for the entities designated by them.

2.2. In «Deontic Logic and the Theory of Conditions» (1968), von Wright does not consider deontic logic an inmediately analogue to modal logic, but a fragment of the Logic of Sufficient and Necessary Conditions, so that saying that something ought to be amounts to asserting that something is a necessary condition of something else.<16>Foot note 2_6

In this system of conditional logic, the notion of necessary condition is explained like this: «the truth of the proposition that p is a necessary condition of the truth of the proposition that q». Its formal representation may be one of the following:

[1] Nc (p,q)

[2] N (q -> q)

In fact, saying that «p» is a necessary condition of «q» means that if «~p», then «~q», or, likewise, that if «q», then necessarily «p». In terms of necessary condition, deontic operator O can be defined:

[3] Op = Nc (p, I)

That something ought to be the case means that the thing in question is a necessary condition of a certain thing (proposition, state of affairs) I, which is presupposed in that context. I is not a variable but a propositional constant.

Moreover, the notion of sufficient condition can be explained like this: «the truth of the proposition that p is a sufficient condition of the truth of the proposition that q». Its formal representation can be one of the following:

[4] Sc (p, q)

[5] N (p -> q)

In fact, saying that «p» is a sufficient condition of «q» means that if «~q», then «~p», or, likewise, that if «p» then necessarily «q». Sc (p, q) is equivalent with Sc (~q, ~p), with Nc (q, p) and with Nc (~p, ~q). In terms of sufficient condition, deontic operator P can be defined:

[6] Pp = Sc (p, I)

That something may be the case means that the thing in question is a sufficient condition of a certain thing I which is presupposed in that context.<17>Foot note 2_7

2.3. Neither the deontic category of constitutive rules nor the deontic category of hypothetic-constitutive rules is homogeneous from a conditional point of view. In an impressive essay, Giampaolo M. Azzoni made the Contian classification of constitutive rules and hypothetic-constitutive rules explicit by taking the type of condition into consideration:<18>Foot note 2_8

a) (Constitutive) rules which are a necessary condition for what they rule (eidetic-constitutive rules).

b) (Constitutive) rules which are a sufficient condition for what they rule (thetic-constitutive rules).

c) (Constitutive) rules which are a necessary and sufficient condition for what they rule (noetic-constitutive rules).

d) (Hypothetic-constitutive) rules which pose necessary conditions for what they rule (anankastic-constitutive rules).

e) (Hypothetic-constitutive) rules which pose sufficient conditions for what they rule (metathetic-constitutive rules).

f) (Hypothetic-constitutive) rules which pose necessary and sufficient conditions for what they rule (nomic-constitutive rules).

2.4. In «Norms, Truth and Logic» (1983), von Wright distinguishs between «technical ought» («must») and «deontic ought» («ought»). The technical Ought expresses that something has to be done in order for something else to be attained. That is, the technical Ought is usually elliptic, when explicitly referring to an end which will not be attained if what «must be» -- in a technical sense -- «is» not. The deontic Ought is what arises directly from a norm; it is categorical, it is not a means, but an end in itself.<19>Foot note 2_9

The distinction between «must» and «ought» is taken up again in «On Conditional Obligation» (1994): in the same way it is necessary to differentiate the norm which pronounces a certain state of affairs obligatory, from the statement of practical necessity concerning what the agent to whom the norm is addressed has to do in order to satisfy his obligation, it is essential to distinguish the deontic Ought («ought») relative to the state which the norm pronounces obligatory, from the technical Ought («must») relative to what the agent has to do in order to satisfy his obligation.<20>Foot note 2_10

2.5. Anankastic-constitutive rules stand out because they exemplify the anankastic «Deon», as opposed to the deontic «Déon» («Déon», neuter participle of the Greek impersonal verb «Deî», is, when nominalized, the term Aristotle used when referring to normative necessity).

This opposition is basic to Deontics because, according to Conte, it goes deeply into a crucial question related to the foundation of Deontic Logic: the difference between «non-normative» necessity (and those non-normative modal concepts of possibility, impossibility and contingency) and «normative» necessity (and those normative modal concepts of prohibition, permission and indifference): anankastic Deon is an example of non-deontic normative necessity, of adeontic «Deon».<21>Foot note 2_11

The relevance of the distinction between deontic «Deon» and (adeontic) anankastic «Deon» is shown in the fact that, as Conte stresses, deontic indifference has no anankastic counterpart, since anankastic indifference is self-contradictory. What is more, in the same way the mere existence of a formal theory relative to anapophantic entities proves that logic goes beyond apophantic language, the mere possibility of a formal theory relative to adeontic rules (for example, anankastic-constitutive rules) proves that deontics goes beyond deontic language.<22>Foot note 2_12

Section 3.

3.1. In «Minima deontica» (1988), Conte sketched out the «deontic triangle of validity», whose three apexes represented syntactic deontic validity, semantic deontic validity and pragmatic deontic validity. To some extent, he answered this way the question he himself had posed in «Studio per una teoria della validità» (1970) eighteen years before: Of what thing can the validity which is precisely the object of the theory of validity be predicated?. At that time, Conte simply developed a tetrachotomy of the term «norm» parallel to the distinction, peculiar to the theory of speech acts, among four meanings of the term «proposition»:

as «sentence» («enunciato linguistico», «Satz»), as «utterance» («enunciazione d'un enunciato», «Äusserung»), as «proposition» in its strict sense («ciò che un enunciato esprime, ... proposizione `strictu sensu'»), and as the state of things with which the sentence deals.

The tetrachotomy of «norm» was the following:<23>Foot note 2_13

a) «norm» as a deontic sentence («behaviour B is obligatory», «behaviour B is forbidden», «behaviour B is permitted»).

b) «norm» as act of deontic utterance of a deontic sentence.

c) «norm» as deontic proposition expressed by a deontic sentence.

d) «norm» as deontic status, as extralinguistic fact with which a deontic sentence deals (an obligation, a prohibition, a permission).

In «Minima deontica», Conte develops this conceptual delimitation regarding the problem of validity.

3.2. Syntactic validity, predicable of deontic status, is the validity «relative to the constitutive rules about validity, to the constitutive rules of a legal order which (conditioning the validity of deontic status in and by the legal order) determine the syntax of validity of that legal order».<24>Foot note 2_14 Syntactic validity is therefore relative a) to a legal order (since it is validity in and by a legal order); b) within the legal order, «to the noetic-constitutive rule called Basic Norm (Grundnorm)».<25>Foot note 2_15

Syntactic validity can be «thetic» or «athetic», depending on whether the deontic status of which they are predicated are produced or not, respectively, by valid deontic acts. For Azzoni, syntactic thetic validity, as opposed to athetic syntactic validity, is relative, in a legal order, not only to the Basic Norm, but also to the hypothetic-constitutive rules about the validity of «norm-positing acts» («atti di normazione»).<26>Foot note 2_16

Semantic validity, predicable of deontic sentences, depends on the correspondence between a deontic sentence and a deontic status. The syntactic validity of a deontic status is a sufficient condition for the semantic validity of the corresponding deontic sentence. The deontic sentence «Smoking is forbidden in the university» is semantically valid if it is true that smoking is forbidden in the university; that is, if the deontic status «Smoking is forbidden in the university» is syntactically valid.<27>Foot note 2_17

The concepts of «thetic semantic validity» and «athetic semantic validity» reflect the theoretical controversy which confronts iuspositivism with iusnaturalism: the thetic semantic validity of a deontic sentence depends on how it corresponds with a deontic status (thetically) constituted in a legal order and by a legal order. The athetic semantic validity of a deontic sentence depends on how it corresponds, in Kalinowski's words, with «deontic reality».<28>Foot note 2_18

However, the expression «semantic validity» is, according to Conte, posterior to the concept of «semantic validity». In «In margine all'ultimo Kelsen» (1967), Conte referred to the applicability of logical principles to the validity of «prescriptive propositions» as truth (to use a later expression, to the (semantic) validity of norms as deontic sentences). He began with the following hypothesis: «Prescriptive propositions can be either true or false, since they are either true or false (ab esse ad posse valet consequentia); they are either true or false, since they are true (a disjunction is true if one of its terms is true); they are true because they are necessarily true».<29>Foot note 2_19

Ten years later, in «Aspetti della semantica del linguaggio deontico» (1977), Conte rejected the incompatibility between truth and performativity of a deontic sentence. The fact that the performative utterance of a sentence is neither true nor false, but valid or invalid, does not mean that the sentence that is performatively uttered can be neither true nor false. On the contrary, a performative sentence is true precisely insofar as it is used in a performative way, insofar as the one who utters it, when uttering it performatively, does what he/she says: «the performativity of the utterance is a necessary and sufficient condition for the truth of the sentence».<30>Foot note 2_20

Pragmatic validity, predicable of deontic acts, either depends on the conditions of validity (thetically) posed in a legal order by hypothetic-constitutive rules («thetic» or «praxeonomical» pragmatic validity), or on the (athetic) conditions inherent in the concept of deontic acts, in their intrinsic constitution («athetic» or «praxeological» pragmatic validity).<31>Foot note 2_21

For Conte, the pragmatic validity of a deontic act is a sufficient condition but not a necessary condition for the syntactic validity of the produced deontic status. Conte points out explicitly that «the pragmatic validity (in and by a legal order S) of the thetic utterance of a deontic sentence is a sufficient condition for the syntactic validity (in and by a legal order S) of the deontic status of which the deontic act is thésis. The syntactic validity (in and by S) of the deontic status is, likewise, a sufficient condition for the semantic validity (in and by S) of the deontic sentence».<32>Foot note 2_22

Section 4.

A deontic sentence is pragmatically ambivalent because it is subject to heterogeneous utterances: it is deontically uttered if it is a prescriptive deontic sentence (if it is a deontic sentence «in suppositione deontica»), or it is adeontically uttered if it is a descriptive deontic sentence (if it is a deontic sentence «in suppositione adeontica»).<33>Foot note 2_23 Classic examples of deontic sentences «in suppositione adeontica» are, for Conte, the Kelsenian «Sollsätze», apophantic sentences on «Sollen».<34>Foot note 2_24

Conte explains that his thesis of the pragmatic ambivalence of deontic sentences (deontic utterance of a deontic sentence vs. adeontic utterance of a deontic sentence) does not imply the thesis of the semantic ambiguity (depending on whether it is uttered by a lawmaker or a sociologist) of adeontic sentences of the kind «Action A is punished with sanction S». Both the lawmaker and the sociologist can utter, for example, the sentence «Manslaughter is punished with twenty years imprisonment», and in neither case the sentence would be semantically ambiguous. In the first case, the lawmaker constitutes a rule, assuming as thesis the relation between manslaughter and the punishment of twenty years imprisonment, prescribing that sanction for that act. In the second case, the sociologist verifies a regularity, analizes the relation between the norm which punishes manslaughter with twenty years imprisonment and the social reality describing a situation.<35>Foot note 2_25

Different from the thesis of the pragmatic ambivalence of deontic sentences (deontic utterance of a deontic sentence vs. adeontic utterance of a deontic sentence) is the thesis of the adeonticity of descriptive sentences of the kind «The norm `Manslaughter is punished with twenty years imprisonment' is (deontically) valid». From the adeontic character of sentences such as the one mentioned, Conte draws an important conclusion: if Deontic Logic is conceived as logic of deontic sentences, it cannot be a logic of adeontic descriptive sentences about (deontic) validity.<36>Foot note 2_26

Section 5.

Conte explains the conception of repeal from a perspective that is not strictly normativist, taking as a basis Alchourrón and Bulygin's theses, Sobre la existencia de las normas jurídicas (1979): Sentences of the kind «Norm n is repealed», when performatively uttered, are not norms, they are «verbal expressions of acts of rejection», «thetic acts of invalidation of deontic status».<37>Foot note 2_27

As opposed to «rhetic» performative verbs, which mean the execution of a linguistic act which as such does not act on the truth of the sentence (that is, of a «rhetic» linguistic act which is a «rhˆsis»; for example, communicating, commenting, replying, ...), thetic performative verbs mean a position of truth, a «thesis», by means of a linguistic act, of the truth of a sentence.<38>Foot note 2_28 «To repeal» is a «factitive» thetic verb which means the position of nontruth, in a convention and by a convention, of a sentence that is supposed to be true.<39>Foot note 2_29

The deontic validity which supresses a repealing act is syntactic validity. As Conte points out, «obiectum affectum» of repeal is the syntactic validity of a deontic status in a legal order; «obiectum effectum» of repeal is its syntactic invalidity.<40>Foot note 2_30 The deontic validity predicated of a repealing act is «thetic» or «praxeonomical» pragmatic validity, a validity conditioned by the hypothetic-constitutive rules which (thetically) pose the conditions of validity of a repealing act in a legal order and by a legal order.<41>Foot note 2_31

Insofar as it provokes a transition from the syntactic validity of a deontic status to its syntactic invalidity, every repealing act has, following Conte, a «diacronicità costitutiva». Thus, the diachronic phenomenon of repeal requires, regarding the general theory of legal order, to go beyond the tridimensional Kelsenian model. It requires for dynamic normative systems a tetradimensional model, a space-time model.<42>Foot note 2_32

Section 6.

As regards relations between what is deontic and what is adeontic, there is a triple risk of naturalistic fallacy. In Conte's words, there may be a «noetic» naturalistic fallacy relative to concepts, a «dianoetic» naturalistic fallacy relative to sentences, and an axiological naturalistic fallacy relative to the truth of sentences:<43>Foot note 2_33

a) Defining a deontic concept by means of adeontic concepts is a «noetic» naturalistic fallacy.<44>Foot note 2_34

b) Deriving a deontic sentence from adeontic sentences is a «dianoetic» naturalistic fallacy.<45>Foot note 2_35 The fact that a norm is dianoetic or inferentially valid does not imply that such norm is deontically valid in the legal order in which the norms from which it derives (the norms in respect of which it is dianoetically valid) are deontically valid. The deontic validity of a norm is not relative to those norms on which its dianoetic validity depends, but to the constitutive rules which, in and by a legal order, condition such deontic validity.<46>Foot note 2_36

c) Deriving a deontic truth of a deontic sentence from its adeontic truth is an axiological naturalistic fallacy.<47>Foot note 2_37 Referring to those divisionist contradictions about the rejection of an «ought-sentence», incompatible with a supossedly necessary transcultural law, Conte had already denied, in «Su Carcaterra» (1976),<48>Foot note 2_38 an absolute nonexistence of logical relations between «is-sentences» and «ought-sentences», although that did not mean to refute those divisionist arguments, but to repose them in linguistic terms (not as division between two worlds, the world of «is» and the world of «ought», but as division of two moods of language: the truth (the deontic truth) of «ought-sentences» and the validity (the adeontic truth) of «ought sentences»).

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Carlos Alarcón Cabrera

University of Seville (SPAIN)