Relative necessity

Abstract

This paper was suggested by some work of Alan Ross Anderson on deontic logic. Anderson proposed in [1] that the various deontic modalities (‘it is obligatory that’, ‘it is forbidden that’, ‘it is permitted that’, etc.) should be defined in terms of the ordinary alethic modalities (‘it is necessary that’, ‘it is possible that’, etc.). The definition I shall consider is not in fact Anderson's own, though it is closely related to it. His definition, as set out in [1], involves the idea of an (unspecified) penalty or sanction. A forbidden action is defined as one whose commission entails the application of the sanction; an obligatory action is one whose omission entails the application of the sanction.