Abstract
It is argued that claims about personal obligation (of the form “s ought to ϕ”) cannot be reduced to claims about impersonal obligation (of the form “it ought to be the case that p”). The most common attempts at such a reduction are shown to have unacceptable implications in cases involving a plurality of agents. It is then argued that similar problems will face any attempt to reduce personal obligation to impersonal obligation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, A. (1962). Logic, norms and roles. Ratio, 4, 32–49.
Åqvist, L. (1967). Good Samaritans, contrary-to-duty imperatives, and epistemic obligations. Noûs, 1, 361–379.
Belnap, N., Perloff, M., & Xu, M. (2001). Facing the future: Agents and choices in our indeterminist world. New York: Oxford University Press.
Broome J (203) Reasoning Unpublished lectures given at Brown University and the University of Stockholm
Danielsson, S. (2000). What shall we do with deontic logic? Theoria, 66, 97–114.
Danielsson, S. (2005). Taking ross’s paradox seriously: a note on the original problems of deontic logic. Theoria, 71, 20–28.
Casteneda, H. (1981). The paradoxes of deontic logic: The simplest solution to all of them in one fell swoop. In Hilpinen (pp. 37–85).
Chisholm, R. (1964). The ethics of requirement. American Philosophical Quarterly, 1, 147–153.
Føllesdal, D., & Hilpinen, R. (1971). Deontic logic: an introduction. In Hilpinen (pp. 1–35).
Hansson, B. (1969). An analysis of some deontic logics. Noûs, 3, 373–398.
Hilpinen, R. (2001). Deontic logic. In Goble (pp. 159–182).
Horty, J. (1996). Agency and obligation. Synthese, 108, 269–307.
Horty, J. (2001). Agency and deontic logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, A., & Sergot, M. (1996). A formal characterization of institutionalized power. Journal of the IGPL, 4, 429–445.
Jackson, F., & Pargetter, R. (1986). Oughts, options and actualism. The Philosophical Review, 95, 233–255.
Kanger, S. (1957/1971). New foundations for ethical theory. Reprinted in Hilpinen (pp. 36–58).
Krogh, C., & Herrestad, H. (1996). Getting personal: Some notes on the relationship between personal and impersonal obligation. In Brown & Carmo (pp. 134–153).
Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Meinong, A. (1917/1972). On emotional presentation, tr. M. L. S. Kalsi. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Parfit, D. (1999). Experiences, subjects, and conceptual schemes. Philosophical Topics, 26, 217–70.
Paske, G. (1990). Genuine moral dilemmas and the containment of incoherence. Journal of Value Inquiry, 24, 315–323.
Ross, A. (1941). Imperatives and logic. Theoria, 7, 53–71.
Ross, J. (2009). Conditional Analyses of Personal Obligation. http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~jacobmro/ppr/conditional-ross.pdf
Santos, F., & Carmo, J. (1996). Indirect action, influence and responsibility. In Brown & Carmo (pp. 194–215).
Schroeder, M. (2010). Oughts, agents and actions.
Williams, B. (1981). Ought and moral obligation. In his Moral Luck (pp. 114–123). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Zimmerman, J. (1996). The concept of moral obligation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ross, J. The Irreducibility of Personal Obligation. J Philos Logic 39, 307–323 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-010-9125-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-010-9125-7