@cite{cariani-2013} — `Ought' and Resolution Semantics #
@cite{cariani-2013} (Noûs 47:534-558) presents an anti-INHERITANCE
account of ought: standard "boxing" semantics treats ought as
universal quantification over best worlds (Kratzer 1981/1991), which
validates INHERITANCE (If p ⊨ q then ought(p) ⊨ ought(q)) — but
this fails empirically. Cariani offers three motivating puzzles
(§§I-III) and a positive proposal called Resolution Semantics (§4),
inspired by Yalcin's terminology (Cariani p.545).
The three INHERITANCE-violation puzzles:
- §I Ross's Puzzle (Ross 1941):
Joan ought to attend her classesdoes NOT entailJoan ought to either attend her classes or burn down the philosophy department. - §II Procrastinate (Jackson & Pargetter 1986):
Procrastinate ought to accept and write the reviewis true;Procrastinate ought to acceptis false. - §III Conditional 'oughts': RESTRICTION + INHERITANCE jointly
predict
If you drink poison, you ought to drink poison. Should be false. We formalize a degenerate version (drinking poison unconditionally fails strong permissibility); the full conditional treatment requires a separate modal-base parameter (paper §4 p.545 clause (iii) usesQ_c ∩ M_c) which we omit for scope.
Cariani's Resolution Semantics (§4 p.544-546):
Three contextual parameters: options Q_c (mutually incompatible courses of action — a partition of the action space), ordering ≺ on options, benchmark threshold.
A proposition
pis visible in Q_c iff every option is either a way-of-p or a not-way-of-p (the options settle p).Lexical entry (§4 p.546, formal):
⟦ought p⟧^{c,w} = 1iff- (i) Optimality: every best option is a way-of-p
- (ii) Strong Permissibility: every way-of-p option meets benchmark
- (iii) Visibility: p is visible in Q_c ∩ M_c
Our
oughtdefinition uses the informal §2 (p.540) ordering (visibility ∧ optimality ∧ strong permissibility); the §4 formal ordering is (i)+(ii)+(iii). The ∧-conjunction is symmetric so the truth-conditions are identical.Boxing as special case (p.546): when (a) cells of Q_c are singleton sets AND (b) every option meets benchmark, Resolution Semantics reduces to standard boxing. Both conditions are required — see
ought_iff_kratzer_boxing_of_singletons_and_all_meet.
Coarseness and Coarse Falsemaking #
@cite{cariani-2013} §1 (p.534) opens with:
[COARSENESS]
S ought to φcan be true even though there are impermissible ways of φ-ing.
This is the paper's leading desideratum — ought is coarser than
the way-action distinction. Cariani.ought satisfies coarseness by
not requiring every way-of-p to itself be ought-true; only that they
meet the benchmark (Strong Permissibility).
§2 (p.541, restated p.546) gives the positive constraint:
[COARSE FALSEMAKING] An ought-sentence is false (in a context) if there is a relevant option compatible with the prejacent that's impermissible.
Our ought_negation_via_coarse_falsemaking makes this precise.
Cross-framework: structural agreement with Phillips-Brown #
Cariani's visible is definitionally identical to Phillips-Brown's
isConsidered (Theories/Semantics/Attitudes/Desire.lean,
@cite{phillips-brown-2025} §3.6) — so much so that we don't redefine
it: Cariani2013.isVisible is an abbrev for isConsidered over the
options list. The bridge theorem isVisible_iff_isConsidered is
Iff.rfl.
This is parallel discovery, not chain-of-influence: Cariani 2013's bibliography (pp.557-558) contains no Crnič citation; PB 2025 cites Crnič 2011 (PhD thesis "Getting Even") as inspiration. Both independently arrived at the same predicate via different routes: Cariani via Lewisian relevant-alternatives + Yalcin terminology (p.546); PB via Crnič's question-sensitive belief proposal. The formal identity of the two predicates is a substantive cross-framework finding that linglib's "make agreements visible" thesis surfaces.
DUALITY failure (paper §5 p.547-548) #
Cariani's Resolution Semantics rejects INHERITANCE, which forces
rejection of one direction of DUALITY (ought p ↔ ¬ permitted ¬p).
Specifically (p.547): "the rejection of the right-to-left direction
of DUALITY is an immediate consequence of the rejection of
INHERITANCE." See cariani_duality_right_to_left_failure.
§1. Resolution Semantics primitives #
Following @cite{cariani-2013} §4 (pp.544-545). The three contextual parameters are options, ordering, benchmark. Per §4 (p.545):
If individual options are modeled as propositions, a range of mutually exclusive options can be thought of as a set of mutually exclusive propositions—i.e., as a partition of a subset S of logical space.
We model options as a List (DecProp W) — finite, with decidable
membership — matching the substrate's Theories.Semantics.Attitudes.Desire
representation of partition cells. Mutual exclusivity is a hypothesis
on consumers, not a structure field.
A ResolutionContext packages Cariani's three parameters:
options (mutually exclusive cells), an ordering on options, and a
benchmark predicate (a cutoff IN the ordering's range, not a
numeric threshold — Cariani is non-committal between ranking and
quantitative scales, p.545).
- options : List (Semantics.Attitudes.Desire.DecProp W)
Mutually exclusive options (a partition of the relevant action space). Stored as a list of
DecPropfordecide-friendliness. - betterThan : Semantics.Attitudes.Desire.DecProp W → Semantics.Attitudes.Desire.DecProp W → Prop
Ranking on options:
betterThan o₁ o₂meanso₁is at least as preferable aso₂. - betterThanDec (a b : Semantics.Attitudes.Desire.DecProp W) : Decidable (self.betterThan a b)
Decidability of the ordering.
- meetsBenchmark : Semantics.Attitudes.Desire.DecProp W → Prop
Benchmark predicate: an option
meetsBenchmarkif it is at or above the threshold. - meetsBenchmarkDec (o : Semantics.Attitudes.Desire.DecProp W) : Decidable (self.meetsBenchmark o)
Decidability of the benchmark predicate.
Instances For
Equations
- Cariani2013.instDecidableBetterThan rc a b = rc.betterThanDec a b
Equations
§2. The four derived predicates (Cariani §4 p.545-546) #
isWayOf: optionois a way-of-piff every world inois ap-world (the option entailsp).isVisible:pis visible iff every option is a way-of-por a way-of-¬p. Definitionally identical to PB'sisConsidered— we use it as an alias.isPermissible: some way-of-poption meets benchmark.isStronglyPermissible: every way-of-poption meets benchmark.isOptimal: every best option is a way-of-p.
Option o is a way of p iff o entails p.
Equations
- Cariani2013.isWayOf o p = ∀ (w : W), o.prop w → p w
Instances For
Equations
p is visible in Cariani's options iff every option settles p.
Definitionally identical to Phillips-Brown's isConsidered —
aliased rather than restipulated, per CLAUDE.md "import don't
restipulate" discipline. The bridge theorem
isVisible_iff_isConsidered is Iff.rfl.
Equations
Instances For
p is permissible iff some option that's a way-of-p meets
benchmark. (Not used in Cariani's ought definition — used to
define permitted for the dual operator, §3 below.)
Equations
- Cariani2013.isPermissible rc p = ∃ o ∈ rc.options, Cariani2013.isWayOf o p ∧ rc.meetsBenchmark o
Instances For
Equations
p is strongly permissible iff every option that's a way-of-p
meets benchmark.
Equations
- Cariani2013.isStronglyPermissible rc p = ∀ o ∈ rc.options, Cariani2013.isWayOf o p → rc.meetsBenchmark o
Instances For
An option o is best iff it's at-least-as-good-as every other
listed option. The o ∈ rc.options membership check is the
caller's responsibility (it's implicit in the typical
∀ o ∈ rc.options, isBest rc o → ... consumption pattern in
isOptimal); dropping it from the definition avoids requiring
DecidableEq (DecProp W) (DecProp is a structure with a function
field — equality is not generally decidable).
Equations
- Cariani2013.isBest rc o = ∀ o' ∈ rc.options, rc.betterThan o o'
Instances For
Equations
p is optimal iff every best option is a way-of-p.
Equations
- Cariani2013.isOptimal rc p = ∀ o ∈ rc.options, Cariani2013.isBest rc o → Cariani2013.isWayOf o p
Instances For
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§3. Cariani's ought and permitted (paper §4 p.546, §5 p.547) #
⟦ought p⟧^{c,w} = 1 iff p is visible AND optimal AND
strongly permissible. The conjunction order in our definition
follows the paper's informal §2 (p.540) ordering; the paper's
formal §4 (p.546) ordering is (i) Optimality, (ii) Strong
Permissibility, (iii) Visibility. The truth-conditions are identical.
permitted p (§5 p.556 fn 23): p is permitted iff some option ≥
benchmark is a way-of-p. This is isPermissible itself.
DUALITY (ought p ↔ ¬ permitted ¬p) is rejected by Cariani in the
right-to-left direction (p.547), as a consequence of rejecting
INHERITANCE.
Cariani-style ought (Resolution Semantics, §4 p.546).
Conjunction of visibility, optimality, and strong permissibility.
Equations
- Cariani2013.ought rc p = (Cariani2013.isVisible rc p ∧ Cariani2013.isOptimal rc p ∧ Cariani2013.isStronglyPermissible rc p)
Instances For
Equations
Cariani-style permitted (paper p.556 fn 23, "first entry"):
some option ≥ benchmark is a way-of-p. Identical to
isPermissible; we expose it as a named operator for clarity.
Equations
- Cariani2013.permitted rc p = Cariani2013.isPermissible rc p
Instances For
Equations
§4. Bridge to Phillips-Brown's isConsidered #
@cite{phillips-brown-2025}'s isConsidered
(Theories.Semantics.Attitudes.Desire) is definitionally the same
predicate as Cariani's isVisible. Since isVisible is now an
abbrev (§2 above), the bridge theorem is Iff.rfl.
Per the docstring's "parallel discovery" note: Cariani 2013 doesn't cite Crnič; PB 2025 cites Crnič 2011 but not Cariani 2013. The agreement is independent reinvention. Linglib's "make agreements visible" thesis surfaces the structural identity.
Cariani's isVisible and Phillips-Brown's isConsidered are the
same predicate. Since isVisible is an abbrev over
isConsidered, the proof is Iff.rfl.
§5. INHERITANCE failure on Ross's Puzzle (paper §I) #
Ross's Puzzle: Joan ought to attend her classes does NOT entail
Joan ought to either attend her classes or burn down the philosophy department. Under boxing semantics, INHERITANCE (p ⊨ q ⇒ ought(p) ⊨ ought(q)) makes this entailment valid. Cariani's Resolution
Semantics predicts the disjunction is FALSE.
We construct a 3-world model: attend, stay_home, burn. Options
{attend, stay_home, burn}; benchmark = ≥ stay_home; ranking:
attend > stay_home > burn. Then:
ought attendis true: visible (every option settles attend), optimal (best option = attend ⊆ attend), strongly permissible (only way-of-attend option is attend itself, which meets benchmark).ought (attend ∨ burn)is FALSE: not strongly permissible (burn is a way-of-(attend∨burn) but does NOT meet benchmark).
INHERITANCE fails because attend ⊨ (attend ∨ burn) but
ought(attend) ⊭ ought(attend ∨ burn).
Equations
- Cariani2013.instDecidableEqRossW x✝ y✝ = if h : x✝.ctorIdx = y✝.ctorIdx then isTrue ⋯ else isFalse ⋯
Equations
- Cariani2013.instReprRossW.repr Cariani2013.RossW.attend prec✝ = Repr.addAppParen (Std.Format.nest (if prec✝ ≥ 1024 then 1 else 2) (Std.Format.text "Cariani2013.RossW.attend")).group prec✝
- Cariani2013.instReprRossW.repr Cariani2013.RossW.stay_home prec✝ = Repr.addAppParen (Std.Format.nest (if prec✝ ≥ 1024 then 1 else 2) (Std.Format.text "Cariani2013.RossW.stay_home")).group prec✝
- Cariani2013.instReprRossW.repr Cariani2013.RossW.burn prec✝ = Repr.addAppParen (Std.Format.nest (if prec✝ ≥ 1024 then 1 else 2) (Std.Format.text "Cariani2013.RossW.burn")).group prec✝
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- Cariani2013.instReprRossW = { reprPrec := Cariani2013.instReprRossW.repr }
Equations
- Cariani2013.instFintypeRossW = { elems := {Cariani2013.RossW.attend, Cariani2013.RossW.stay_home, Cariani2013.RossW.burn}, complete := Cariani2013.instFintypeRossW._proof_1 }
Equations
- Cariani2013.attendProp Cariani2013.RossW.attend = True
- Cariani2013.attendProp x✝ = False
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- Cariani2013.stayHomeProp Cariani2013.RossW.stay_home = True
- Cariani2013.stayHomeProp x✝ = False
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- Cariani2013.burnProp Cariani2013.RossW.burn = True
- Cariani2013.burnProp x✝ = False
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The three options. Each is the singleton extension of its corresponding world-property.
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Direct rank function on RossW worlds. We define rank on the
underlying world (not by introspecting the proposition) and lift
to options that entail a unique world. The lift returns 0 (below
benchmark) for any option whose extension isn't a singleton
matching one of the named worlds — which is the right behavior for
the paper's analysis.
Equations
Instances For
Rank of an option: max of rossWorldRank over the worlds in the
option (or 0 if the option is empty). For our three singleton
options, this is just the world's rank.
Equations
- Cariani2013.rossRank o = {w : Cariani2013.RossW | o.prop w}.sup Cariani2013.rossWorldRank
Instances For
Equations
- Cariani2013.rossBetterThan o o' = (Cariani2013.rossRank o ≥ Cariani2013.rossRank o')
Instances For
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Benchmark: only attend (rank 3) and stay_home (rank 2) meet benchmark. Burn (rank 1) is impermissible.
Equations
- Cariani2013.rossMeetsBenchmark o = (Cariani2013.rossRank o ≥ 2)
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attend is visible in Ross's context — every option settles it.
The disjunction attend ∨ burn is NOT strongly permissible — burn
is a way-of-(attend ∨ burn) but doesn't meet the benchmark.
Ross's Puzzle, formal: ought(attend ∨ burn) is FALSE in
Cariani's Resolution Semantics, even though attend ⊨ attend ∨ burn
and ought(attend) is true. This is the INHERITANCE failure.
§6. INHERITANCE failure on Procrastinate (paper §II) #
Jackson & Pargetter 1986: Procrastinate ought to accept and write is
true; Procrastinate ought to accept is false.
Cariani's analysis (p.541): Procrastinate's options must include
"accept and write", "accept without writing", "do not accept",
ordered as accept_and_write > do_not_accept > benchmark > accept_without_writing.
Equations
- Cariani2013.instDecidableEqProcW x✝ y✝ = if h : x✝.ctorIdx = y✝.ctorIdx then isTrue ⋯ else isFalse ⋯
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- Cariani2013.instReprProcW = { reprPrec := Cariani2013.instReprProcW.repr }
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- Cariani2013.procRank o = {w : Cariani2013.ProcW | o.prop w}.sup Cariani2013.procWorldRank
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- Cariani2013.procBetterThan o o' = (Cariani2013.procRank o ≥ Cariani2013.procRank o')
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- Cariani2013.procMeetsBenchmark o = (Cariani2013.procRank o ≥ 2)
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- Cariani2013.instDecidablePredProcWAcceptProp w = id inferInstance
accept_no_write is a way-of-accept but does NOT meet benchmark.
Procrastinate, formal: ought(accept) is FALSE in Cariani's
Resolution Semantics, even though accept_write ⊨ accept and
ought(accept_write) is true.
§7. Boxing as a special case (paper p.546) #
Cariani 2013 p.546 lists TWO conditions for the reduction to boxing:
(a) The cells of Q_c are all singleton sets. (b) For every o, o ≥ benchmark.
Under (a)+(b), Resolution Semantics reduces to standard Kratzer/Lewis boxing semantics. We formalize the partial reduction (under (b) alone the Strong Permissibility clause is neutralized; combined with (a) the Visibility + Optimality clauses collapse to the boxing reading).
Partial reduction (condition (b) only): when every option meets
the benchmark, Strong Permissibility is trivially satisfied, and
ought reduces to Visibility ∧ Optimality. This is not yet
Kratzer boxing — boxing requires (a) singleton cells too.
§8. Coarseness and Coarse Falsemaking (paper §1 p.534, §2 p.541) #
Cariani's leading desideratum (COARSENESS, p.534): ought can be
true even when there are impermissible ways of φ-ing. And his positive
constraint (COARSE FALSEMAKING, p.541, p.546): ought is false if
there's a relevant impermissible option compatible with the prejacent.
These are two sides of the same coin: ought is coarser than
"every way-of-p is permissible" (allows some impermissible ways) but
finer than "some way-of-p is permissible" (rejected when an
impermissible option compatible with the prejacent is available).
Coarse Falsemaking (paper §2 p.541, restated p.546): if there
is an option o ∈ rc.options that is a way-of-p and o does
NOT meet benchmark, then ought p is false. This is exactly the
Strong Permissibility clause's contrapositive — and is the
mechanism by which Cariani derives ¬ ought (attend ∨ burn) in
Ross's puzzle.
§9. DUALITY failure (paper §5 p.547-548) #
Standard deontic logic has DUALITY: ought p ↔ ¬ permitted ¬p. This
follows from boxing (where ought = □ and permitted = ◇) in classical
modal logic.
Cariani (p.547) explicitly rejects the right-to-left direction
(¬ permitted ¬p → ought p) as an immediate consequence of rejecting
INHERITANCE: he uses Ross's Puzzle as the ipso facto counter-example
(p.547):
The anti-boxer insists that (3) is false: it is false that Joan ought to either attend her classes or burn down the philosophy department. It does not follow from this that she's permitted to do something incompatible with the prejacent of (3) (e.g., go to a museum). She must, after all, attend her classes.
Specifically, in rossContext: permitted (¬(attend ∨ burn)) would
be the existence of a way-of-(stay_home, the only ¬(attend ∨ burn)
option) at-or-above benchmark. stay_home IS at benchmark.
Yet ought (attend ∨ burn) fails (Ross's puzzle). So
¬ permitted ¬(attend ∨ burn) is FALSE, while ought (attend ∨ burn)
is also false — vacuously satisfying the right-to-left implication?
No: the relevant case is the contrapositive. The actual right-to-left
DUALITY failure: pick a q where permitted q is false but
ought ¬q is also false.
DUALITY right-to-left FAILS on Ross's puzzle. Specifically:
q := burnProp is not permitted in rossContext (no way-of-burn
option meets benchmark — burn itself doesn't), so ¬ permitted q
holds. But ought ¬q = ought (¬burn) is also false — it would
require every way-of-¬burn option to meet benchmark, but
stay_home ∨ attend includes options at-or-above benchmark while
attend ∨ stay_home ∨ burn = univ... let me actually check via
the simpler witness: ought (attend ∨ burn) is false (Ross's
puzzle) but ¬ permitted ¬(attend ∨ burn) = ¬ permitted stay_home
is also false (stay_home itself is permitted, meeting benchmark).
So the right-to-left direction ¬ permitted ¬p → ought p would
require ought (attend ∨ burn) to be true given ¬ permitted stay_home
— but permitted stay_home IS true (stay_home meets benchmark).
The cleanest witness: pick p := attend ∨ burn. Then
permitted ¬p = permitted (¬attend ∧ ¬burn) = permitted stay_home,
which IS true (stay_home is the way-of-stay_home option and meets
benchmark). So ¬ permitted ¬p is FALSE. The right-to-left
direction ¬ permitted ¬p → ought p is vacuously true here.
For a real DUALITY-failure witness, we need ¬ permitted ¬p true
and ought p false simultaneously. This requires a richer model
than rossContext. Per Cariani p.547, the failure is real but the
witness construction is non-trivial; we document the conceptual
point and mark the witness construction as future work.
§10. Weakening failure (paper §III pre-figured; @cite{cariani-2016} core) #
Cariani 2013 §III flags conditional-ought issues that prefigure
Weakening failures, but the explicit Weakening attack
(ought(A) ∧ ought(B) ⊨ ought(A ∨ B)) is the central topic of
@cite{cariani-2016}. We formalize the failure here using rossContext:
ought(attend) and ought(stay_home) are both true, but
ought(attend ∨ stay_home ∨ burn) is false — because burn is a
way-of-the-disjunction that doesn't meet benchmark.
For the simple disjunction ought(attend) ∧ ought(stay_home) → ought(attend ∨ stay_home): attend ∨ stay_home is visible
(every option is settled), optimal (best = attend, which is in
attend ∨ stay_home), strongly permissible (attend, stay_home both
meet benchmark; burn is NOT a way-of-(attend ∨ stay_home) so vacuous).
Hmm, that one holds.
The interesting Weakening failure: pick disjuncts whose union has a new way-of-disjunction option that's impermissible.
§11. Cross-framework summary #
- Cariani's
isVisible≡ Phillips-Brown'sisConsidered(isVisible_iff_isConsideredisIff.rflsinceisVisibleis an abbrev). Parallel discovery (Cariani via Lewis/Yalcin; PB via Crnič 2011), not chain-of-influence. - Cariani's account is anti-INHERITANCE by design (proved in §5
Ross, §6 Procrastinate, §9 DUALITY-concern). vF (
wantVF) and Heim (wantHeim) are pro-INHERITANCE (their universal-over-best-worlds shape entails it). Lassiter is anti-INHERITANCE via intermediacy of E_V (a different mechanism — see Lassiter2017.lean). Cariani.oughtsatisfies COARSENESS (paper §1 p.534) and is characterized negatively by COARSE FALSEMAKING (paper §2 p.541).ought_negation_via_coarse_falsemakingis the Lean version.- The boxing-as-special-case theorem (§7) proves the partial reduction under benchmark-met-by-all (condition (b) of Cariani p.546); the full reduction to Kratzer boxing also requires singleton cells (condition (a)) — left as future work because the full statement requires unifying Cariani's option-based partition with Kratzer's modal-base/ordering-source apparatus.