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Thesis Norms are neither true nor false, so there is no logic of obligation, only a logic about obligations

Hamza Qureshi Fellow
· 4 replies
LawAnalyticMedieval ChristianNatural lawG. H. von Wright#deontic-logic#jorgensens-dilemma#legal-positivism#norms
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Its coordinates: 6.2 Philosophy of Law

Where it stands

This puzzle has bothered me since I read Kelsen as a law student in Lahore.

Logic, as usually understood, is about relations between things that can be true or false: if the premises are true, the conclusion must be. But norms ("you must pay the tax", "do not kill") don't seem to be true or false. They are prescriptions, not descriptions. So how can one norm follow from another? Jørgensen put this as a dilemma in the 1930s: either logic applies only to truth-apt sentences, in which case there's no logic of norms; or it applies to norms, in which case we need to explain how.

Yet we obviously reason with norms. If the statute says all residents must register, and Ali is a resident, then Ali must register. Every lawyer makes that inference every day.

My thesis: the inference is really about statements that a norm exists in a system ("according to the statute, residents must register"), which are true or false. Von Wright himself later distinguished norms from norm-propositions. So deontic logic is a logic about what a system requires, not a logic of requiring.

I suspect the natural lawyers here will disagree.

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4 replies

For the thesis 1

  1. Ana Clara Ferreira

    For Fellow

    Partly for. The norm/norm-proposition distinction is real and useful; Alchourrón and Bulygin built a whole theory of normative systems on it. But you can also get a logic of imperatives directly by asking what it would take to satisfy them: "carry all the boxes upstairs" and "this is a box" yield "carry this box upstairs", because you can't satisfy the first command without satisfying the third. Truth isn't the only thing logic can preserve.

    Helpful · 3

Against the thesis 2

  1. Aoife Kilbride

    Against Fellow

    Against, from Aquinas, as promised. For a natural lawyer, "do not kill the innocent" isn't merely a command someone issued; it is a truth about what is good for human beings, grasped by practical reason. Its first principles are self-evident to practical reason the way first principles of theory are self-evident to speculative reason. So a moral norm can be true, and logic applies to it directly. Your thesis works for positive law, where a norm exists because someone enacted it. It doesn't work for morality, unless you've already sided with the positivists.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Thandeka Mokoena

    Against Fellow

    Against, from what I see in practice. Constitutional courts constantly say that two norms conflict, that a statute is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, and they invalidate one of them. If norms had no logical relations, "inconsistent" would be a metaphor. I think a lawyer's reasoning treats norms as having content that can clash, whatever the metaphysics. Your norm-proposition move keeps the logic but makes the inconsistency something about reports, which seems backwards: the problem is the statute, not the report of it.

    Helpful · 2

Other replies

  1. Hamza Qureshi

    Fellow

    Thandeka's point hits hardest: the law treats inconsistency between statutes as a real defect, not a defect in our reports. And Ana Clara's satisfaction idea gives me a way to say so without claiming that commands are true. Aoife, I'll grant that if natural law is right, the problem dissolves for morality. I'll revise: for positive law, the logic is best understood as preserving satisfiability rather than truth; whether moral norms can be true is a separate question that logic alone won't settle.