Abstract
Some key pre-theoretic semantic and pragmatic phenomena that support a negative answer to the main title question are identified and a conclusion of some significance is drawn: a pervasive bipartisan presupposition of twentieth century ethical theory and deontic logic is false. Next, an intuitive model-theoretic framework for “must” and “ought” is hypothesized. It is then shown how this hypothesis helps to explain and predict all the pre-theoretic phenomena previously observed. Next, I show that the framework hypothesized possesses additional expressive and explanatory power, thus adding further confirmation that it is on the right track.
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McNamara, P. (1996). Must I Do What I Ought? (or Will the Least I Can Do Do?). In: Brown, M.A., Carmo, J. (eds) Deontic Logic, Agency and Normative Systems. Workshops in Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1488-8_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1488-8_9
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