Soren Hallden’s “Puristic” Logic of the Better and Same

Abstract

In considering Hallden’s work, it is vitally important to keep clear that he is not presenting a “logic of preference” in On the Logic of ‘Better’ ¹. This is an especially difficult point to bring across since not only do most researchers in the field of preferential logic cite his contribution in one connection or another, but Hallden himself is found to allude to the betterness of p to q as meaning in a normative sense: “p is to be preferred to q.”² However, in his most recent book, The Foundation of Decision Logic, Hallden is careful to distinguish between preference per se, as involving “empirical” relations, and betterness as dealing with evaluative recommendations.³ It is the latter which are submitted to formal analysis in the first work mentioned above. In retrospect, the evidence suggests that Hallden’s realization of the necessity to distinguish between discourse about preferences from discourse dealing with the better arose subsequent to Henrik von Wright’s seminal work, The Logic of Preference.⁴ In 1963 von Wright characterized the difference between deontological concepts involving norms, e.g., duty, command, permission, etc., axiological concepts involving value, e.g., good, bad, and better, and anthropological concepts involving notions relating to need and want, decision and choice, etc. However, von Wright was also quick to point out that these groupings are not to be studied in total isolation of each other, since invariably one finds an overlapping between evaluative, normative and pragmatic concepts.⁵