Deontic Reasoning Across Contexts

Abstract

Contrastivism about `ought' holds that `ought' claims are relativized, at least implicitly, to sets of mutually exclusive but not necessarily jointly exhaustive alternatives. This kind of theory can solve puzzles that face other linguistic theories of `ought', via the rejection or severe restriction of principles that let us make inferences between`ought' claims. By rejecting or restricting these principles, however, the contrastivist takes on a burden of recapturing acceptable inferences that these principles let us make. This paper investigates the extent to which a contrastivist can do this.