What Can(not) Deontic Logic Do for Computer Law

What Can (not) Deontic Logic Do for Computer Law

By Alessandro Pizzo*

Introduction

Since 1951 Deontic Logic, founded by Georg Henrik von Wright[1], a finnish logician and philosopher, Wittgenstein’s scholar, showed its particular attitude to serve many branches of philosophical research, from the logic to the law[2].

Despite it actually the things are not so and the reason is simple: deontic logic only captures our normative intuitions, moral underlying structure of our language[3], but nothing more. And the reason of this is clear. In fact, deontic logic was born as a particular logical treatment of non – assertoric propositions, an result by recent logical neopositivism[4]. There exists a tension between formal theory and the language[5], notably practical language. But this doesn’t prevent to formalize normative uses of the language.

It seems to me that it’s a useful tool for analyzing the normative uses of moral language, what we use to express normative sentences or commands, forbids and so on … Perhaps the same normative stances that we use in law.

So, I wish to describe in this paper what can deontic logic do for a particular branch of law: computer applications to it. At all, I think about the deontic logic as a tool for computer law, even if there are many difficulties that must be considered before to go beyond.

Computer Law

Since 1949 Information Technology had a great influence on Law, not only on the study of Law, but on the Law’s applications too. In fact, it appeared immediately how it’s important to upgrade the Law to new developments of human history.

Loevinger first proposed to use a new term, Jurimetric, for this new field of Law, today well known as Computer Law[6]. Probably, he thought of computers as possible tools for teaching law (i.e. law’s learning) or to solve some tasks (i.e. records of cases).


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(immagine tratta da: http://lifeinlegacy.com/2004/0508/LoevingerLee.jpg)

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* Alessandro Pizzo is Ph.D. in Philosophy at University of Palermo. He writes on your personal blog: http://alessandropizzo.blogspot.com.

[1] Cfr. S. O. Hansson, Ideal Worlds – Wishful Thinking in Deontic Logic, “Studia Logica”, 82, 2006, p. 329.

[2] Cfr. A. Artosi, , Il paradosso di Chisholm. Un’indagine sulla logica del pensiero normativo, Clueb, Bologna, 2000, p. 7.

[3] Cfr. N. Rescher, Topics in Philosophical Logic, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1967, p. 231. The author suggests to face the difficulties in deontic logic as an attempt to account for gap between forma language and moral reality.

[4] Cfr. N. Rescher, The Logic of Commands, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966, p. vi. I suggest to consider Jørgensen’s dilemma as a particular form of this public debate: are the norms true or false?

[5] Cfr. S. O. Hansson, Formalization in Philosophy, “The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic”, 2, 2000, p. 163. According to the author, the philosophy always formalize even when it doesn’t seem. Single concepts are reality’s formalizations yet. It seems to me that’s a correct perspective, even if I have some reservation about it.

[6] This field is named ‘Informatica giuridica’ in Italian tongue.