The transformational approach to imperative consequence Josh Parsons – 4 November 2012 1 Introduction Consider argument (A): (A1) Attack if the weather is fine! (A2) The weather is fine. Therefore (A3) Attack! (A) appears to be valid; indeed it appears to be an instance of modus ponens. Its first premise and its conclusion however, are in the imperative mood, and this poses a problem first raised by Jörgen Jörgensen (1937) – the problem of imperative consequence. An argument is usually said to be valid iff it is truth-preserving – iff it cannot be that all its premises are true and its conclusion false. But imperatives (it is normally thought) are not truth-apt. They are not in the business of saying how the world is, and therefore cannot either succeed or fail in doing so. The normal criterion of validity cannot be applied to arguments like (A); or if we insist on applying it, it says that (A) is trivially valid, since its premises cannot all be true. There is an inconsistent triad here: 1 (i) There are non-trivially valid arguments, such as (A), containing imperatives. (ii) Imperatives are not truth-apt. (iii) Validity is truth-preservation. The problem of imperative consequence consists in the fact that theses (i) through (iii) are inconsistent; but yet all three are attractive (for the reasons sketched above). A solution to the problem consists in the denial of one of the three theses; I describe solutions as belonging to type 1, type 2, or type 3, depending on which thesis they deny. For the purposes of this paper, I would like to focus on a certain variety of type 3 solution – a solution that offers a revised criterion of validity of a particular kind. More about that in a moment – first, a quick word about types 1 and 2. Type 1: It is beyond the scope of this paper to convince doubters that there are imperative arguments; the best I can offer here is the example of (A) as a prima facie case. Peter Vranas (2009) has elsewhere defended (i), and I refer interested readers to his excellent treatment. Type 2: It is likewise beyond the scope of this paper to establish that imperatives are not truth-apt. I have argued elsewhere myself (2012) that denying this proposition of the triad does not lead to a good criterion of imperative validity. In any case, most philosophers, in my experience, are already convinced that (ii) is true; type 2 solutions are not popular. It will be a premise of the present paper that (i) and (ii) are true, and that type 1 and 2 solutions, therefore, do not work. We should not forget about type 2 solutions, however, since my main argument is that a widespread and popular form of type 3 solution collapses into a type 2 solution. The way that could happen is this: a type 3 solution must offer some new criterion of validity (one that explains the appeal of truth-preservation, or includes it as a special case). If this is done incautiously, it could turn out that, under that criterion, every imperative is logically equivalent to 1 The formulation of the problem as an inconsistent triad I owe to Hannah Clark-Younger. The transformational approach to imperative consequence - 4 Nov 2012 - 1/6