Norms as ascriptions of violations: An analysis in modal logic

The paper proposes a formal analysis of a theory of norms resulting from pulling together Andersonʼs reduction, the analysis of counts-as, and a novel approach to the formal representation of language granularity in modal logic. We refer to such theory as the ascriptive view of norms. Concretely, the paper proposes a new formal definition of counts-as statements which is used as a basis for a new reduction of the deontic notion of obligation. The formal properties of these new notions are thoroughly investigated and put in perspective with related work. Finally, they are also applied to provide novel formal analyses of standard benchmark problems in deontic logic such as Chisholmʼs paradox and Jørgensenʼs dilemma.