Obligations as Social Constructs

In this paper we formalize sanction-based obligations in the context of Searle’s notion of construction of social reality. In particular, we define obligations using a counts as conditional, Anderson’s reduction to alethic modal logic and Boella and Lesmo’s normative agent. Our analysis presents an alternative criticism to the weakening rule, which has already been criticized in the philosophical literature for its role in the Ross paradox and the Forrester paradox, and the analysis presents a criticism to the generally accepted conjunction rule. Moreover, we show a possible application of these results in a qualitative decision theory. Finally, our analysis also contributes to philosophical discussions such as the distinction between violations and sanctions in Anderson’s reduction, and between implicit and explicit normative systems.