Reason-based Deontic Logic

This paper introduces a system of deontic logic based on the idea that obligations are grounded on reasons. A reason-based deontic system is worth considering for at least three reasons: it may shed light on the way in which obligations are generated; it allows us to cope with conflicts between reasons while avoiding conflicts between obligations; finally, it may help us to assess the question as to whether standard deontic logic is appropriate to model basic deontic reasoning. The system I propose is developed in a framework that combines standard and neighborhood semantics and it is proved to be sufficiently powerful to represent ordinary deontic reasoning and to successfully address some significant problems in deontic logic.