Normative Conflicts. Some formal Solutions

JAVIER LEGRIS; SILVIA LERNER

BUENOS AIRES

Workshop; LOGIC WORKSHOP IN BUENOS AIRES - A TRIBUTE TO HORACIO ARLÓ-COSTA; 2012

SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE ANALISIS FILOSOFICO (SADAF)

Normative conflicts arise above all in ethical and legal issues. Nevertheless they are alsoquite frequent in other institutional contexts like internal codes or directions in publicorganisms, firms and companies. Thus, they have a broad influence in social andeveryday life. In the framework of deontic logic, these conflicts are expressed asinconsistencies in the system. In the proper case of Standard Deontic Logic,normative conflicts lead to a classical inconsistency, and also to the trivialization ofthe system. Now, the following can be argued:? (a) The existence of normative conflicts does mean necessarily a logicalinconsistency in the underlying normative system.? (b) Acting in accordance with one horn of a conflict does not imply its definite solution.In this paper, the treatments of normative conflicts in different deontic systems arediscussed, including both conservative and radical perspectives. On one side, someof them suppose the elimination or weakening of deontic principles.The goals of these perspectives include the avoidance of (i) contradiction or (ii) ?deonticexplosion? from a normative conflict. From the point of view of non monotonicsystems, on the other side, inconsistent deontic principles can coexist, while it ispossible to construct diverse extensions of the principles that are consistent. In thepaper pros and cons of these different approaches are evaluated.