You May Read the Title or the Entire Thesis: A Solution to the Free Choice Permission Paradox with Truthmaker Semantics

Abstract

The main topic of this thesis is free choice permission. Consider the following sentences: 1) You may have coffee or tea. 2) You may have coffee and you may have tea. Intuitively, the second sentence then follows from the first: if you may have coffee or tea, then you may have coffee, and you may have tea. This reasoning is what characterizes the principle of free choice permission. Unfortunately, existing systems of deontic logic cannot deal with this principle, giving rise to the free choice permission paradox. The first aim of this thesis is to understand and formalize free choice permission and its associated paradox. The second aim is then to provide a solution. To introduce the principle of free choice permission, linguistic and logical concepts of permission are discussed to support the idea that these concepts should correspond. It is then shown how allowing free choice permission in existing systems of deontic logic leads to trouble for multiple reasons. By developing a new system of deontic logic, based on the logical framework of truthmaker semantics, a solution to the free choice permission paradox is proposed and discussed.