Are people deontic reasoners?

Answer 1

when it comes to deontic reasoning people do not reason about all obligations in the same way i.e. the domain of the obligation that one is reasoning about (e.g., social vs. nonsocial actions) influences ones reasoning about obligation. For example, are obligations a matter of social agreement? It can be argued that the answer you give should be influenced by the specific obligation you consider.

Consider, for example, an obligation to pay ones taxes. What makes this obligatory? If everyone agreed it was acceptable not to pay ones taxes, then we'd probably say it would no longer be obligatory to pay them. But what about the obligation to not harm others? If everyone agreed it was ok to harm others, would it no longer be obligatory to avoid harming others?

Its possible to say that moral norms like this aren't simply a matter of social consensus that can be overturned by social agreement.

Then there are nonmoral norms, such as precautionary rules (e.g., look both ways before you cross the street) and how these differ from (nonmoral) social norms (e.g. only citizens may vote in the election).

I don't think there is one answer to this question. As it is dependent on the question we are trying to reason.

Answer 2

I've gone cross-eyed trying to figure out what deontic reasoning means in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic#Standard_deontic_logic
i'm gonna have to keep track of what your answerers(?) come up with.
thanks for the brain tweak.