Organizing Team: Bailey Fernandez, Stefan Forster, Eva Hiljkema, Alina Jacobs, Yara Katnik, Veronika Lassl, Gabriel Levc, Irmena Tsankova (Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy)
Schedule:
| 15:30 – 16:15 | Simon Vonlanthen (Ruhr University Bochum) |
| 16:15 – 16:20 | Break |
| 16:20 – 17:05 | Matteo Pascucci (Central European University) |
| 17:05 – 17:25 | Break |
| 17:25 – 18:10 | Josephine Dik (Technical University of Vienna) |
| 18:10 – 18:15 | Break |
| 18:15 – 19:00 | Felix Danowski (University of Vienna) |
Workshop Description
Deontic logic(s) or logic(s) of normativity aim to capture our normative discourse involving obligation, permission, and related conceptions in formal terms. Although the first formulation of what would become Standard Deontic Logic was presented over seventy years ago (von Wright 1951, “Deontic Logic”), its application in AI Ethics and in the automation of legal reasoning have made the field increasingly salient in logic and computer science. There is a basic philosophical presupposition on which the formal project of deontic logic(s) rests, namely that of the normativity of logic(s) for reasoning. Any attempt to develop logic(s) in order to investigate aspects of our practical, legal, and moral discourses assumes that formal calculi capture how one ought to engage in normative discourse, if one is to do so at all. This workshop aims to, on the one hand, thematize the conceptual dependence of logic(s) of normativity on the normativity of logic(s) and, on the other, explore concrete suggestions of how formal calculi can be employed in order to assist our engagement with normative discourse.
To address this question, our workshop brings together both logicians and philosophers affiliated with Viennese institutions. The opening and concluding talks will address the normativity of logic(s) from a philosophical perspective. Simon Vonlanthen ́s presentation defends the view that the logical consequence relation can be found in natural language on a use theory of meaning, while Felix Danowski examines the uses and limits of logical formalization in addressing the Frege-Geach problem in noncognitivist metaethics. The other two presentations will handle the logic(s) of normativity from the logician´s point of view. Matteo Pascucci´s discusses challenges in formalizing the normative notion of responsibility, while Josephine Dik’s examines how the paradigm of formalizing the Sanskrit philosophical school of Mīmāṁsā foregoes the interdefinability of deontic operators and thereby resolves central paradoxes of permission found in Standard Deontic Logic.
Abstract of the talks
Simon Vonlanthen (Ruhr University Bochum)
Title: Natural Language and Formal Logic
The precise relationship between natural languages and formal logic has many epistemological and methodological ramifications. This holds true for logic, philosophy, linguistics and beyond, as witnessed, for example, by the ubiquity of natural language examples in formal logic research, or the reliance on logical tools in semantics. In a recent paper, Michael Glanzberg (2015, Logical Consequence and Natural Language) has argued that natural language contains neither a logical consequence relation nor logical constants. In this part of the workshop, we will investigate and scrutinize Glanzberg’s arguments. This will result in an overview of popular conceptions of both linguistic meaning and logicality. In particular, we shall consider use-theoretic accounts for both and contrast them to Glanzberg’s truth-conditional and model-theoretic approach. At the end, we will discuss some of the implications of the relationship between natural language and logic, both from Glanzberg’s as well as alternative and more general perspectives.
Matteo Pascucci (Central European University)
Title: Responsibility in Logic
Normative reasoning is known to be an intricate area of reasoning which relies on a variety of concepts. Some of these concepts, like obligation, permission and prohibition, are relatively simple to define. By contrast, the normative concept of responsibility presents many definitional challenges, given that it involves, among other things, ingredients from the temporal domain, the causal domain and the epistemic domain. These difficulties become even bigger when one wants to offer a formal analysis of responsibility: it is not by chance that this concept has received much less attention in logic than basic deontic concepts. In the present work, I will engage with the task of formally specifying some criteria for responsibility ascription, with an eye on recent developments of philosophical accounts of responsibility due to the emergence of AI Ethics.
Josephine Dik (Technical University of Vienna)
Title: Mīmāṁsā on ‘Better-Not’ Permissions
The notion of permission is of crucial importance in several settings, from law and ethics to artificial intelligence and normative reasoning. Since the introduction of Standard Deontic Logic (SDL), the interdefinability of the deontic operators (obligations, prohibitions and permissions) has often been taken for granted by the deontic logic community. Yet, permission has proven to be a complex topic with various nuances that require careful treatment and can lead to unwanted consequences if the interdefinability is kept. By contrast, the Sanskrit philosophical school of Mīmāṁsā refuted such interdefinability and defined deontic concepts independently of each other. In this presentation, I will discuss the questions arising within SDL and the notion of permission in Mīmāṁsā and its formalization, and will demonstrate that the central paradoxes of permission do not occur in the Mīmāṁsā paradigm. Additionally, I will present current work inspired by Mīmāṁsā definitions.
Felix Danowski (University of Vienna)
Title: What, if Anything, Does the Frege-Geach Problem Have to Do with Logic?
Non-Cognitivism claims that moral judgments are non-descriptive conative mental states, akin to desires rather than beliefs. This view encounters the Frege-Geach Problem, which questions whether conative mental states can maintain appropriate inferential relations, parallel to those between non-moral judgments and natural language patterns of embedding. This talk examines the role that formal logic, and formalizations in general, are supposed to play in addressing the issue. I’ll focus on two paradigmatic cases. Firstly, I argue, following Dreier, Schroeder, and Gibbard, that purely formal Frege-Geach solutions are inadequate. These solutions fail because formalizations cannot impose structure not inherent in the subject matter. This point is well exemplified by Dreier’s “hiyo”-challenge. Secondly, I explore Mark van Roojen’s argument that the specific normative significance of inferential relations between judgments provide a test criterion for potential Frege-Geach-solutions. In this context, logical formalizations can aid the Frege-Geach debate by coherently tracking inferential properties, thus offering a case study on the limitations and utility of formal methods in inquiry.
SOPhiA 2026 