Reasoning With and About Normative Conflicts

Abstract

Normative reasoning is inherently conflict sensitive. Over the past decades, many conflict-resolution mechanisms have been developed. However, most of the proposed formal systems do not model interactions between the different conflict types we encounter in normative reasoning. In this work, we define a Deontic Conflict Calculus (DCC) to explicitly reason with and about contrary-to-duty, specificity, dilemmas, and their interaction. DCC generates arguments that represent normative conflicts in terms of argumentative attacks, naturally giving rise to various kinds of obligations; e.g., ideal and sub-ideal obligations. We study properties of conflict types and their interactions. Last, we argue how DCC-instantiated argumentation frameworks relate to preference models of subideality, a semantic approach prevalent in deontic logic.