A short critique of the current form of Deontic Logic, focusing on the work of Ernst Mally, followed by an argument for the integration of some central aspects of Paraconsistent Logic to the already existing systems of Deontic Logic.
Abstract This paper briefly introduces the reader to the history and current state of Deontic Logic, a formal system that attempts to formalize moral judgment by exploiting the apparent similarity between the modal operators of alethic logic, necessity and possibility and two basic concepts of morality, obligation and permissibility. The paper lays out the basic structure of Deontic Logic and critiques it through examples that show that certain conclusions reached by applications of the logic are contradictory. It then shows that integration of paraconsistency into the logic will lessen the currently catastrophic effect of these contradictions.
From the Paper "Most non-classical logics, supplemental or rival, have been proposed as improvements on classical logic, or are based on systems which were created to this end. Even those which claim completely different universes of discourse than classical logic, such as the epistemic, deontic, or tense systems, are generally founded on principles of a system which is in some way rival (in the informal sense) to classical logic (in their case, alethic modal logic). But, rarely, a proposed system (and its manner of departure from classical logic) seems more intuitively applicable as a correction to another proposed non-classical system than to classical logic itself. Such is the situation present in the relationship between Deontic logic, the system of formalized ethical judgement, and Paraconsistent logic, the system of turbulent belief-sets."
