The Exploding ‘Ought’
The Exploding ‘Ought’

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I wish to discuss so-called principles of inheritance and the familiar claim that it leads to deontic paradoxes. By combining two such paradoxes it will be shown that inheritance amounts to a principle of explosion: supposing that in the actual world there is at least one thing that one ought to do, almost anything is something one ought to do. I will then attempt to qualify the principle of inheritance so as to avoid this and other paradoxical results.

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