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Von Wright’s Legacy : On Metanormative Interpretation of Deontic Logic within Social Pragmatics

Georg Henrik von Wright, one of the founders of deontic logic, in his last papers, notably in “Deontic Logic: A Personal View” from 1999, opened paths that lead to the reinterpretation of axioms of deontic logic as metanormative principles (“normative demands on normative systems”) addressing the norm-giver. The outline of the approach needs to be worked out in detail and the aim of this contribution is to present the two possible ways of doing so and evaluate their interpretative accuracy. Firstly, the set-theoretic approach of Alchourron and Bulygin naturally extends to meta-normative interpretation within a translation scheme which interprets deontic axioms as descriptions of “perfection properties” of norm-sets, i.e., sets containing the propositional contents of obligation-norms. The analysis reveals that perfection properties are relative to the perspectives of the norm-giver and the norm-recipient. It is a second-order obligation (demand of rationality, von Wright) placed upon the norm-giver to create a consistent norm-set. On the other hand, the “perfection property” of deductive closure shows how the norm-recipient ought to treat a norm-set, it is not the property the norm-giver ought to achieve. The translation of deontic axioms as descriptions of desirable properties of norm-sets does not achieve full interpretative accuracy since Von Wright does not accept the thesis that the range of the permissible is fully determined once the range of the obligatory has been delineated. This negative claim, which can be defended on the grounds other then interpretative accuracy, leads to the second way of filling in the details of Von Wrights outline. Besides the perfection properties of the norm-set, the metanormative reading must be extended to properties of its counter-set (the set of that which is either optional or forbidden), which, as a matter of fact, may overlap with the norm-set. For example, extending the translation schema to properties of counter-sets it can be shown that the property corresponding to the consistency of a norm-set is the completeness of its counter-set. This parallelism of desirable properties becomes theoretically important for understanding the situation when the norm-recipient is subordinated to an inconsistent normative system, i.e., a system where either the norm-set is inconsistent or the norm-set overlaps with the counter set. The role of norm-recipient does not include the power to change an inconsistent normative system and thus the norm-recipient remains subordinated to it. So, it seems that the second-order norm or demand of rationality is in force, which requires a change to an inconsistency tolerant logic, while retaining the perfection properties of the two sets. Von Wright’s outline of metanormative reinterpretation of deontic logic opens a new theoretical perspective that shows the essential role of social pragmatics for a logically oriented theory of normative systems.

deontic logic; logical pragmatics; Georg Henrik von Wright

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