The challenges of formalizing norm conflicts

Abstract

Normative conflicts are critical in ethical and legal arguments. But, Standard Deontic Logic (SDL) can not tolerate them and in sntandard deontic logics normative conflicts lead to contradictions. In this paper we review Deontic Logic literature and introduce two major approaches facing to narmative conflicts. One of them is accepting the existence of normative conflicts and trying to build Conflict Tolerant Deontic Logics, and the other is separating the obligations to Prima Fcie obligations and Actual obligations and rejecting any actual normative conflict, which necessitates formalizing two kinds of obligations (prima facie obligations and actual obligations) and the relation of them. Then we introduce Prioritized Adaptive Logics, which are useful in both approaches. In the last part of the paper, we search normative conflict arguments in 'osul al fiqh', which is the logic of Islamic legal system, and formalize some aspects of 'vajib', the Islamic obligation, in a prioritized adaptive logic format.