Bohnert, Herbert Gaylord - The Semiotic Status of Commands

THE SEMIOTIC STATUS OF COMMANDS
HERBERT GAYLORD BOHNERT
THE PROBLEM
The large number of writers who have in recent years' attacked the problem
of the logical nature of commands appear generally in agreement in accepting
the distinction of common grammar between imperative and declarative sen-
tences as representing, albeit in no clear one-to-one manner, some real differ-
ence in the logical character of the two types of expression, and possibly in the
psychological sign-functioning mechanism itself. The crucial logical difference
adduced is that commands can apparently rot be classified as true or false.
One is then, however, confronted with the problem of interpreting arguments
involving imperatives which appear syllogistic in form, such as:
Keep your promises!
You promised to pay on Wednesday.
Pay on Wednesday!
To this end it is usually assumed that the specifically imperative element
of the command is never utilized in derivations, that it is only its referential
content, the act commanded (variously called by different writers "theme of
demand", "indicative factor", "logical element", "gerundive", etc.) that is
involved. Occasionally an indicative sentence about the state of the speaker
or hearer is offered as the translation. A number of different schemes of corre-
lating indicative sentences representing this referential content or psychological
state with the command, sometimes adding extra restrictive rules to derivations
involving such representative sentences, have been developed. These will be
discussed in the body of the paper. As for the imperative element, its presence
is frequently taken to place the expression in a class with, say, growls and
frowns, gestures evincing feelings but not referring to them, which in turn are
regarded as representative of an entirely different "dimension" of semiosis-the
"motivational" dimension. This notion is then sometimes extended by calling
all declarative sentences which are sufficiently motivational, such as value
statements, "disguised commands". Since commands are considered incapable
of being true or false, this leads to the conclusion that value statements, or at
least some of them, are outside the realm of science-a position which has
unfortunately been capitalized on, and abused by, many basically anti-scientific
philosophies and educational theories. The interpretation of statutory com-
mands, instructional commands, technological commands, commands such as
"Keep this car properly lubricated!" is also rather complicated by the "growl
theory" of imperatives, since it assumes an emotional state of the speaker of
the commands, or at very least a personal will that the command be obeyed,
which differs in some respects from the mere desire that a communication be
See bibliography.
302
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SEMIOTIC STATUS OF COMMANDS 303
taken account of, felt by the utterer of a purely declarative sentence. It as-
sumes, in other words, that for there to be an imperative, there must be an
imperator, in some different sense than a declarative sentence requires a declaror,
possibly that the imperator personally enforce or desire to enforce the command.
This is hard to believe with regard to the example given, which appears prac-
tically translatable into the declarative "Either this car is properly lubricated
or it won't run."
PROGRAM OF PAPER
The present paper will endeavor to render plausible quite different conclu-
sions from those sketched above, taking the cue offered by the above example.
First, by means of a rough empirical discussion, it will be argued that all sen-
tences are at least potentially motivational and that although motivational
situations causally give rise to the command form, the command need not say
or assume anything about the desires or fears of the hearer or the speaker;
that motivation by itself does not jeopardize truth value; that in a behavioral
sense commands function as, i.e. are, declarative sentences; that the imperative
factor can also play a role in derivation; that such derivations are genuine
derivations, (not merely pseudo-logical). The attendant psychological phe-
nomena that appear to set commands so apart from declarative sentences will
be "explained" by plausible socio-psychological hypotheses which will serve as
sketches of how real explanations might be sought. Second, a more formal
analysis will then abstract from the empirically "discovered" properties of
commands, and a simpler system of definitions through which to reduce im-
perative reasonings to declarative logic, and which will satisfy or dispel Ross'
criticisms of previous imperative logics will be offered. (The suggested system
may be acceptable as a sufficient interpretation of natural commands even if
not a necessary one, i.e. even if the empirical account given is rejected.) Finally,
the bearing of these conclusions upon certain ethical theories will be discussed.
MOTIVATION
First let us observe that most motivation of animals and men occurs without
the help of uttered signs at all. Living organisms are motivated ultimately by
situations and situations are designated by declarativesentences. They are moti-
vated characteristically (except for involuntary and reflex action) by situations
which promise or threaten to have physiological or psychological consequences
of greater or less desirability than those possible if the individual's behavior
causally intervenes. This suggests that all situations, and hence the sentences
designating them, are at least potentially motivational. Indeed why else do
we acquire knowledge? This description of motivation might be put more
formally and perhaps apparently rationalistically as:
A situation M motivates a behavior B of x only if x believes M and x
can derive from M with the help of other personally believed sentences
"PvB(x)", but not "P" alone, where P is some future situation of directly
unpleasant character.

304 HERBERT GAYLORD BOHNERT
This is of course a weakest form; x would be motivated even more strongly

by "-,P e B(x)" or "B(x):D-~P" and possibly other forms. If P is the non-
attainment of some desired end E, the disjunction becomes ""-EvB(x)" or
"EDB(x)", a frequent form of technological sentence, B being one of a chain
of necessary behaviors to the attainment of E. More fully developed, such a
statement should be made in the form of an equation or an inequality involving
degrees of motivation, degree of belief and the probabilities of the various
sentences and sub-sentences, in which form it would constitute a suggested
program for psychological research but would serve no better in the present
context than the crude qualitative statement given. Indeed, the predicates
used may be considered as defined as holding if the corresponding functions are
in sufficiently high ranges. As for the apparent rationalism of the phrase "can
derive with the help of other . . . sentences", it is not intended to imply that
explicit derivations are ever actually made in the course of being motivated,
but it is a reference to the essential fact that whenever one tries to communicate
one's reasons for a certain behavior he does make or try to make some such
derivation, thereby suggesting that some psychological process in some way
similar to such a derivation really did occur. It is a situation similar to that
discussed in H. Reichenbach's excellent treatment of epistemological logic as
being in the "context of justification" rather than in the "context of discovery".
Note that the one-way implication expressed in "only if" leaves open the prob-
ably desirable possibility of defining "motivates" in such a manner that M
motivates only if apprehension, recall, or realization of M itself is the actual
initiator of the motivated behavior. Also, it allows the postulation of other
conditions (physiological, for example) as also necessary to actual motivation.
PvB(x) will be called the motivating disjunction, M the motivator,B the appro-
priate reaction, and P the penalty. (Identical terminology will be applied to
the expressions designating these entities when no confusion can result. More-
over object and metalanguage will frequently be deliberately mixed in the fol-
lowing to avoid wordiness.) "You run or you burn" is the crucially moti-
vating consequence of "The house is on fire." If one knows additional premisses,
among which might be, for example, "My side of the house is expertly fire-
proofed", with the help of which one can derive "I neither run nor burn", no
direct motivation ensues; or, if, due to some other premiss, no such disjunction
is derivable without "I burn" being derivable independently, then again no
motivation (except of random, involuntary behavior) results. The sentence
"The house is on fire" is then simply a sentence of doom.
ORIGIN OF THE COMMAND FORM IN MOTIVATION SITUATIONS
In speech some very simple rules would seem to govern the utterance and
combination of utterance of the various members of the motivation sentence-
ensemble. In not very urgent situations in which the inference from motivator
to motivating disjunction is very apparent, the motivator will probably be
stated alone as a plain, indicative sentence; "Your shirt tail is hanging out"
As the connecting inference becomes more and more obscure or complicated

the appropriate reaction will increasingly tend to be mentioned, usually to-

gether with the motivator (unless the motivator is definitely apparent to the
hearer) connected to it by some metalinguistic or intensional term such as
"hence", "thus", "so", etc., designating an intervening derivation. The
penalty is usually not mentioned since mention of the appropriate reaction
usually makes clear what penalty would attend non-execution of the appro-
priate reaction. The connecting inference, however, connects the motivator
to the disjunction, not the motivator to the appropriate reaction alone, and
hence a grammatical form showing that half a disjunction is missing is required
for the expression of the appropriate reaction if the above intensional or
metalinguistic terms are to retain their normal meaning. It will be held that
the command form does indeed fulfill this function. Consider the following
examples. "Miss Seward will be there, so don't mention Matisse." Here a
number of inferences could presumably be drawn with the help of the motivator
so that the entire command is made to point out one particular one. The
penalty is presumed to be understood so only the appropriate reaction is men-
tioned. "Don't be too casual about using sulfa drugs because they frequently
have toxic effects." Here the penalty is just a "specification" of the motivator.
The appropriate reaction is obvious but the lack of urgency of the situation
permits it to be mentioned. It is a probable hypothesis that the truncated
form for the expression of the appropriate reaction has evolved due to the
conditions of urgency that frequently attend the use of imperatives. As urgency
increases the motivator will tend not to be mentioned at all and only the appro-
priate reaction will be uttered, in typical command form. Under conditions of
urgency all sentences tend to become as short as possible. E.g. "The house is on
fire!" becomes "Fire!", and without losing its functional quality of being true
or false, although like the parent sentence itself, it does not strictly designate
a proposition in the sense that independent of all verbal context it would be
confirmable as true or false. That is, it is an ellipsis. A command is here re-
garded as simply the more serious ellipsis of omitting the entire penalty clause
of the described class of disjunctions, again without sacrificing the truth rules
of a disjunction, which, however, remain, clear, of course, only if the penalty is
understood. "Run!", then is permitted to be considered true if the exhorted
one stays and burns, where the indicative, "You run" would be false.
The foregoing rules of utterance may be suggestively conveyed by saying
that as a monotone increasing function of the two arguments, urgency and
degree of uncertainty as to appropriate reaction, the behavior to be motivated
will first, for low values of the two arguments, tend not to be mentioned, then
will be mentioned along with the motivator, and finally, for high values of both
arguments, it will be mentioned alone, (especially since in urgent situations the
motivator is usually all too evident, or there is not enough time to call attention
to it, e.g. an approaching car). The precise psychological and logical formula-
tion of such a sentence presents, of course, vast difficulties.
Let us note that in the command "Run!", interpreted as "You run or you
burn", the penalty is inflicted by no person but by a condition of the hearer's

non-human environment. It would be equally motivational no matter who

uttered it, a child in the street for example, as long as the hearer took it seri-
ously, or even, in this case, since the consequence is obvious, if the motivator
alone were mentioned. There is no enforcing or spontaneously willing
imperator-a condition frequently mentioned as necessary to and characteristic
of all imperatives, as mentioned earlier. It is easily seen that this situation is
common to a great number of commands, technological commands, medical
commands, etc. Commands which are thus self-enforcing will be called im-
personal commands,the other type, personal commands. In personal commands,
and commands in which the enforcer is neither the non-human environment
nor the speaker but a social institution, namely, directives, laws, orders, it will
be noticed that motivator perceived by the hearer is generally identical with
the motivating disjunction itself. The "growl theory" would appear applica-
ble, if at all, only to personal commands and hence not be an adequate account
of commands in general. The "imperative element" is seen to be simply the
unspoken penalty, and to have no necessary connection with the imperator's
feelings. As such, it is obvious how the "imperative element" can play just as
important a role in imperative derivations as the "indicative factor". For
example:
Keep this car properly lubricated!
I will not lubricate this car.
Then the car will soon break down.
The apparently non-logical nature of this inference, which is, however, a
type very commonly occurring in daily life, arises from the fact that an ellipsis
is given as one of the premisses, namely the imperative, understood as "Either
this car is properly lubricated or it will soon break down". Of course, for an
ellipsis to appear in a derivation its missing parts must be presumed to be under-
stood.
FUNCTIONAL ISOMORPHISM OF COMMANDS AND CERTAIN DECLARATIVE
SENTENCES
Having presented a plausible account of how commands may functionally

have origin in declarative sentences, what sort of evidence must be presented
to confirm that behaviorally they are declarative sentences? It is submitted
that the empirical content of such a sentence be provisionally defined as equiva-
lent to the statement that there exists a set of grammatically declarative sen-
tences which can be put in one-to-one correspondence with commands andsuch
that the truth value attributed to the correlated declarative by any hearer,
x, is a significant argument in the function, Behavior of x. Just as if we were
studying a strange tribe, we would not feel that we understood their language
unless we could biuniquely correlate with their speech-forms English sentences
which, judging by the natives' behavior, corresponded also in truth rules. The
criteria involved in such analysis of behavior would, of course, be extremely
involved and would require a close general analysis of purposiveness in animal

behavior. Furthermore, the scientific confirmation of the above sentence

concerning commands, even when correctly formulated, would require a large
and difficult experimental undertaking. Under these difficult circumstances,
the author will be forced to rely on the reader's common-sense generalizations
concerning behavior and offer examples which must rely for their weight on
common-sense plausibility.
Consider the broadcast command "Shop at Mandel Brothers!" (an impersonal
command since the unpleasant alternative-missing all the presumed bargains,
excellence of goods, etc.-would not be inflicted by Mandel Brothers) and the
personal command, "Go to bed!" If from past experience, the respective
hearers attribute a high probability (in Carnap's sense of high confirmation)
to the sentences "I shall neither shop at Mandel's nor miss bargains", and "I
shall not go to bed and my father will not punish me" (assuming these to be the
understood unmentioned penalties), then the commands are disobeyed. As
suggested by the phrase "significant argument" in the above sentence pro-
visionally defining (behavioral) declarative sentence, the assertion is not in-
tended that obedience is a function of the believed truth value of the disjunc-
tion alone, or that obedience is the only type of behavior which is a function of
the believed truth value. The penalty may not be feared at all, or the desire
for an action requiring disobedience of the command may outweigh the dis-
pleasure of the penalty. That is, refraining from the appropriate reaction
may be the appropriate reaction in another command involving a greater
penalty. For example, the radio listener may deliberately miss bargains to
attend a movie, and martyrs may suffer torture and death for the hoped-for
ecstasies of salvation. Also, if one alternative be conducive to immediate
short-run happiness and the other to long-run happiness but with poorer im-
mediate prospects, the behavior will depend upon "morale", personal history,
etc. Moreover, a command may be disobeyed even when it is believed and the
penalty feared more than any competing value is desired if it is further believed
that the appropriate reaction and penalty have no causal relation to each other
(an example of this situation is given further on under Causal Relations). It
is asserted, however, that the believed truth value is an important argument in
the function, Total Behavior of x, one whose value must be determined if one
is to predict the measure of obedience or type of disobedience, and that such a
relation to prediction is sufficient for empirical meaningfulness, since, if fully
stated, it would constitute at least a unilateral reduction sentence (in the sense
given to this phrase in Carnap's Testability and Meaning).
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPERATIVENESS OF COMMANDS
It is frequently objected that translation into the grammatical form of declara-

tive sentences robs commands of their unique, psychologically imperative
character. Although in general true, this is only what must be expected in the
light of the suggested rule that a disjunction is truncated into a command
usually under conditions of urgency. Humans are, therefore, so conditioned
that a command has a tendency to bring about a quick response before much

speculation as to its truth can take place. Furthermore, the conditioning may
have proceeded to the point where the reaction to small commands is com-
pletely automatic and subconscious, with no question of truth appearing.
However, one may be confident that in such a case if one were to command
something a bit more onerous the hearer's reaction would quickly became again
a function of how he evaluated the coercive potentialities of the penalty implied
by the command. The truth of the objection, then, does not rob the command
of its truth value, if it is understood that no actual translation is proposed but
only an isomorphism as to truth-values pointed out. On the other hand, a
further example may show that such translation need not always lessen a com-
mand's imperative effect, and that such translation is frequently quite consciously
in mind when a command is made. In a recent war film a Nazi official was
pictured as bawling fierce commands at the population of a Norwegian mining
town to cease a slow-down strike in the mines. Finally, greeted by complete
impassivity, he declared in impressive, deliberate tones, "Either the strike
ceases or no one in this town will eat."
THE FORMAL PROPERTIES OF COMMANDS
It has been urged throughout the foregoing that commands might be regarded
as ellipses for declarative sentences, the sentence usually correlated being a
disjunction with various properties, many pragmatic, some semantic. It will
now be investigated which of these properties are the essential ones and whether
the disjunction is the only type of declarative sentence correlatable. A number
of more formal difficulties which have not yet been mentioned will then be seen
to arise and will be discussed.
EFFECTIVENESS
It has already been pointed out that psychological imperativeness due to

peremptoriness of the voice and the urgency suggested by the command form
itself are no more necessary to the definition of "command" than the aloof
persuasive power of a sentence of mathematics is to that of "sentence of mathe-
matics". Another type of psychological imperativeness, however,-that due
to the fact that the understood "penalty" is a penalty-is a little more basically
characteristic of the commands actually occurring. This is seen in the occa-
sionally suggested translation of commands as "If you desire p then you must
act so that q" (which is, of course, a total begging of the question since the word
"must" appears; the real command being the assertion that p causally requires
q, whether or not p is desired, the apparent conditionality of the command
lying in the belief that if the hearer desires p then he will be motivated by this
information). To require this type of imperativeness (i.e. that the penalty
shall actually be feared), which will here be called effectiveness,as part of the
definition makes a possible psychological theory of the effectiveness of com-
mands awkward since by definition all commands are effective. Certainly it
appears more convenient to regard an expression such as "Don't shoot!",
understood through context as "Either you don't shoot or I shall suffer", ad-

dressed to a seasoned triggerman, as a command even though an ineffective one.

Once we raise this restriction we of course open the door to commands whose
penalties are, say, "2 + 2 = 4", but certainly the assertion of a command on
such a basis is a subject for psychological investigation, not logical. Commands
certainly are made in real life in which the penalty is just as little feared. The
variations of request and appeal forms mirror varying strengths of underlying
penalties down to practically zero strength, many requiring strong hearer
sympathy or altruism to be effective at all. If the speaker does usually make
the assumption that the penalty is feared, this is only analogous to the fact
that the speaker of a declarative sentence usually assumes interest on the part
of the hearer, i.e. believes that the sentence is appropriate or relevant.
The fact that a penalty will be feared by some and not by others establishes
a relativity of commands entirely analogous-identical if value statements are
held to be commands-to the "relativity of values". In both cases the state-
ment of what the fears or interests of an individual are and which behaviorally
supersede which may be quite external to the logical content of the command
or value statement (though certainly not outside the province of science, e.g.
psychology).
APPROPRIATE REACTION
In all examples given up to now the alternative of the penalty has been a
behavior of the hearer, the cue for this being taken from the original statement
as to what type of situation motivates. This suggests quite a strong empirical
limitation to our formation rules for commands. However, this is quite un-
necessary since just as the motivator, perhaps a simple declarative sentence
such as "The house is on fire", can motivate, so a disjunction can motivate in
which the proposition commanded to be the case is within the power of the
hearer to effectuate, and the alternative, a future situation which he dislikes,
for example, "This table must be painted today!" understood as "Either the
table is painted today or the party will not be held." Such a command in which
the behavior of no particular person is mentioned will be called a fiat, otherwise
a directive, for it is just this distinction the author believes Hofstadter and
McKinsey to have had inexplicitly in mind when introducing these words.
Their example, "Let there be light!", is then here understood to be an inde-
terminate ellipsis lacking a clear truth value not because it is a command but
just for the same reason that "The house is on fire" printed alone on a page with
no context lacks it, i.e. insufficient information is given for the expression to
determinately designate a proposition. If it is understood as "Either there is
light or John will leave" where the particular individual and time index is
understood, it acquires perfectly clear truth rules. What God meant by the
command is for the theologian to explain, not the logician. A final example:
"Shine on, Harvest Moon!" interpreted from the song context as "Either the
moon continues to shine or 'I don't get no lovin'' " is, according to the termi-
nology here employed, an ineffective fiat even though the moon does in fact
continue to shine, (assuming "person" to mean "living organism"-otherwise

the probably trivial distinction between fiat and directive breaks down entirely,
since any natural phenomenon can be addressed as a person).
TEMPORAL RELATIONS
Another peculiarity of commands is that the implied time indices of both

members of the disjunction are usually future to the time of communication.
This is the case because the purpose of the commander is usually to motivate
the hearer, and motivation, according to the statement given in the earlier part
of this paper, requires these time relations. However, if, in reading ancient
history, we come across the expression, "Crush Carthage!" and if we understand
this to mean from context, "Either Carthage is crushed or the Roman Empire
will be eclipsed by Carthage", we certainly would want to call it a command
even though the time indices intended by the speaker are far in the past. We
simply may state as a matter of psychology that such commands do not moti-
vate. If it is held, then, that commands when rendered free of ellipsis designate
propositions in the sense that they are true or false for all time, then no specifica-
tion of necessary time relations can be made, and this again permits a large
number of anomalous commands like "Leave for New York yesterday!", the
restrictions against which, however, may be considered to be practical rather
than logical.
CAUSAL RELATIONS
Another word prominent in the description of motivation and in the dis-

cussion of many of the past examples is "causal". A technological command,
"B(x)!" meaning "-EvB(x)", say, is made and obeyed in the belief that its
transform, "EDB(x)" states that B(x) is a causally necessary condition for the
holding of the end E. A person may disobey the command, "Stop!", understood
through context as, "You stop or I shoot" even though he believes the dis-
junction quite true but believes also that he will be shot anyway, or, more
generally, that there is no causal relation at all between his stopping and being
shot. It was this situation which was intended to be covered in the description
of the motivation situation by the condition that x should not be able to (inde-
pendently) derive the penalty from his believed sentences. But what is pre-
cisely meant here by "derive" is difficult to say since there seem to be some
probability notions involved. Also, the author feels that it is really some
subset of the believed sentences that should be specified but is at a loss at present
to characterize it. The difficulty, however, is not peculiar to commands but
is a general logical problem. When one uses the words "If . . .then . .." in
English he usually means to assert a causal connection, in fact one frequently
repudiates a sentence of the type, "If A then B" without intending to assert
"~A.B" but rather that -A.B is possible. However, the interpretation is
not, it must be repeated, a problem of imperative logic. This point will be
returned to in the discussion of Ross' criticisms of the system of Hostadter and
McKinsey.

DISJUNCTIVE ELLIPSIS
We have, then, in order to include all expressions that we want to call com-
mands, reduced the definitional requirements to those of the disjunctive form
itself. That is, we have arrived at the point where we might try to define an
imperative operator as follows:
p!=pvq with the stipulation that q is understood.
What is the logical status, however, of the words in English following the formula?
Ellipses in- natural language are fleeting things. The same command can be
given in a number of different circumstances, each time with a different penalty
understood, just as "The house is on fire" can be uttered a hundred times in
the United States in one day, each time with a different house referred to.
Now every time "The house. . ." is used elliptically, we can imagine the sentence
as part of a sublanguage for which it is specified metalinguistically that "The
house" refers to a house defined by a definite description, i.e. by an expression
containing an iota operator. In any formal communication, such as a contract
or will, precise specifications serving this purpose are indeed given. Likewise,
therefore, to define "p!" we must consider it as part of a system of commands
all employing the same penalty or set of penalties so that in that sublanguage
we define,
p! =pvA,
"A" being an actually stated sentence of the object language. This procedure
is, in effect, followed in the statement of laws, where a penalty is specified for
a whole class of crimes, or in a statement of delegation of powers in an industrial
plant, for example, which may be regarded as the statement that all of a certain
officer's commands in such and such fields of activity have such and such penal-
ties behind them. The basic legal documents of any social institution may be
regarded as providing a very complex meaning-giving reference system for the
commands of its officers.
A further extension of the notion of a command has been implicit in much of
what has been said here, namely that the time, place and person names (or
whatever other type of zero level specification is used) may be replaced by
variables and a universal or existential command asserted, e.g. "No one must
steal!", "Keep (all of) your promises!", "Someone had better call the police!"
The disjunction form is, however, still characteristic of the matrix of these
generalized sentences in the minimal sense that although more complicated
molecular sentences may be understood their "normal form" contains at least
one disjunction.
THE SYSTEM OF HOFSTADTER AND MCKINSEY
If we restrict ourselves to one imperative reference system, i.e. a system in

which all commands are enforced by the same penalty, P, it is significant that
with our interDretation of commands as disjunctions, it is possible to give an

interpretation to the Hofstadter and McKinsey system which will render it

analytic, i.e. will make their language Ic identical with I, without involving the
triviality that Alf Ross charges this system with, and without requiring their
own satisfaction functional interpretation of it.
Let us treat P as a propositional constant and make the following definitions:
Definiendum Definiens
iS SVP
IS --S V P
+ V
S1 - S2 S1 : (S2 V P)
S1 > !S2 (SiV P).(S1 >)S2)
It may be easily shown that with this interpretation all primitive sentences
of I, become theorems of primitive sentences of I. The uneasiness one intuitively
feels in seeing, for example, !Si + !S2= !(SIvS2), comes, the author suspects,
from the fact that commands independently stated in natural situations usually
have different penalties, so that each operator appearing in the formula seems
to require a different reference system.
ALF ROSS' OBJECTIONS
The Triviality of the Hofstadter and McKinsey System. With the above
interpretation the operator, !, does indeed become superfluous as Ross suspected,
but not in the way he expected. To quote him: "According to that (Hofstadter
and McKinsey's) interpretation the imperative element has been completely
segregated. The logical element refers solely to the fulfillment of the
demand.... It is not strange that Hofstadter and McKinsey should arriveat
the result that S1 implies !S2or Ii, and that the special mark of the imperative !
is therefore, strictly speaking, superfluous." We have seen, however, that it is
not this fact which renders it superfluous for it is not the case, in general, that
!SilDS, since this is held to be equivalent to (S1vP)DS1. According to our
interpretation, moreover, the imperative element is not "segregated" and the
satisfaction-functional interpretation is not the important one, although of
course commands so interpreted will, in fact, be satisfaction-functional. The
fact that "The door is closed" implies "Close the door!" sounds strange is due
to the fact that such a derivation is hardly ever used, just as it is the case that
if one knows that the door is closed he does not announce the perfectly correct
inference "Either the door is closed or a unicorn is just outside."
Negation. Ross points out that there appear to be two types of negation
with respect to commands. "Close the door!" may be regarded as negated
by either "Don't close the door!" or "It is not your duty to close the door".
One is a contrary command; the other is the denial of the imperativeness of the
command. The first corresponds to !S or -SvP, whereas the second, inter-
pretable also as "Never mind closing the door", appears to be a descriptive,

pragmatic, metalinguistic rescindmentof the command, equivalent to the denial

of Russell's "-" sign, that is, the assertion that "SvP" is not asserted. Actually
with the present interpretation there are two other types of repudiation of a
command-the statement ",.P", that is, that there will be no punishment
whatever behavior is taken by the hearer, and --(SvP). The distinguishing
and interpretation of these types of negation present no logical difficulty. It is
sufficient to point out in any context which is meant.
Disjunction. Ross objects that from "Post this letter!" we should not be
able to derive "Post this letter or burn it!" as the Hofstadter and McKinsey
system allows. This seems to return us to the question of causality. When
we assert that the letter is either posted or x is reprimanded, we mean that
posting the letter is a causally necessary (perhaps also sufficient in this case)
condition for avoiding a reprimand. To add an alternative which has perhaps
no or negative causal relation to the avoidance of the reprimand appears to.
pervert imperative meaning, for when we deliberately assert a disjunctive
command, say, "Lubricate this car with / 3 or / 4 type oil!" we mean the whole
disjunction to be a causally necessary condition for the car's proper operation,
not merely one of its members. This objection can, however, be met by noticing
that just as people who know A seldom derive from it AvB, which has less logical
content than A, so a person who is informed of a disjunction in the command
form is not going to behave on less than the total information available by
deriving from it a sentence with an additional alternative and acting onthat.
Indeed, to derive such a super-membered command and then believe that the
additional alternatives have some possibility of replacing the given alternative
in some causal chain sufficient to the avoidance of the penalty would be to
derive much more than was logically contained in the original command.
Implication. Ross objects that in the Hofstadter and McKinsey system
one can construct the following derivation.
Love yourself!
Love your neighbor as yourself!
. Love your neighbor!
But, he states, the second premiss says to love your neighbor as you actually
love yourself, i.e. possibly not at all, and that hence the conclusion does not
follow. The author can only bluntly say that he feels the concluding command
to follow from the conjunction of the two preceding commands (i.e. admittedly
not from the second alone) and that it is provable in the penalty interpretation
of commands. Ross admits that similar examples occur in Rose Rand, Grelling,
J0rgenson, and Grue-Sorenson and that these authors appear to regard this
type of inference as a typical natural imperative inference.
ETHICAL COMMANDS
In view of the position, popular among logicians and empiricists, as to the

ungroundability of ethical commands and those value statements conceived

to be commands outlined in the earlier part of this paper, many will hesitate
to accept the position here put forward because it might seem to give cognitive
standing to these commands. However, if ethical commands are considered
to be categorical imperatives, the present interpretation offers just as little
comfort to the transcendental moralist as the more sweeping rejection on the
basis of their being commands, since from the present point of view they appear
to be simply uncritical hypostatizations of an incomplete language form. If
the penalty be given as "or you will be doing evil", it depends on the definition
of "evil" whether the command is to be regarded as metaphysical, L-true or
factual. It would seem no hardship to the empiricists to be thrown back, in
their judgments of ethical commands, upon their criteria for "nonsense" among
declaratives. On the other hand ethical imperatives may be interpreted as
impersonal commands, the penalty clause of which involves society primarily
and the individual only quite indirectly. For example, "Thou shalt not kill!"
might be translated, "Either society's survival value (and hence thy life ex-
pectancy, probable well-being, security, etc.) diminishes or thou dost not (un-
officially) kill." Since such a statement involves only the extremely long run
and is only statistically valid it would seem quite natural to call on God or the
police to enforce it (provide artificial penalties) since there would be too many
negative instances to make it self-enforcing. An alternative formulation might
be, "Either thou dot not kill or thou wilt suffer through emotional sympathy
(role-taking, conscience) with the killed, the bereaved, etc. or through social
reaction." Other formulations are, of course, possible also. It is not intended
to prejudice that issue at this point except as is required by the maintenance of
a non-metaphysical attitude.
The fact that moral imperatives can conflict and still seem individually valid
is probably due to the fact, if we resolve to interpret them empirically, that
every time this genuinely occurs, they involve different penalties, i.e. belong
to different reference systems, and hence may both be true in even the most
narrow causal interpretation simply because the ends involved (the avoidance
of the penalties) may be causally mutually exclusive.
Hofstadter and McKinsey speak about the correctnessof commands, apparently
some sort of ethical concept which they do not discuss fully. Possibly a com-
mand might be considered Correctp (correct with respect to P) if the making
of the command can be shown to be commanded by another true command with
penalty P, i.e. if making the command (with whatever penalty of its own) is a
causally necessary condition to the avoidance of P. The question of whether
a ranking of penalties (or ends, since many penalties would more conveniently
be defined as the non-attainment of positive ends) might show that one penalty
or end was stronger behaviorally than all others and so afford a very stable
reference system for the definition of "Correct" without subscript is not neces-
sary to prejudge for the sake of the first definition, although it may be somewhat
what Hofstadter and McKinsey had in mind.
Chicago, III.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Further references will be found in the articles mentioned below.
BUCHLER, J. "Value Statements", Analysis, vol. 4, April 1937.
CARNAP,R. "Testability and Meaning", Phil. of Sci., vols. 3 and 4, 1936-7.
FEIGL,H. "Logical Empiricism" in Twentieth Century Philosophy, Ed. D. Runes, New
York, 1943.
HOFSTADTER,A. ANDMCKINSEY,
J. C. C. "On the Logic of Imperatives", Phil. of Sci.,
vol. 6, 1939.
J0RGENSON,J. "Imperatives and Logic", Erkenntnis, Band 7, Heft 4.
KAPLAN, A. "Are Moral Judgments Assertions?", Phil. Review, 1942.
MORRIS, C. W. "Foundations of the Theory of Signs", International Encyclopedia of
Unified Science, vol. I, no. 2, Chicago, 1939.
Ross, A. "Imperatives and Logic", Theoria 7, 1941. Also Phil. of Sci., vol. 11, 1944.


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THE SEMIOTIC STATUS OF COMMANDS

HERBERT GAYLORD BOHNERT

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

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This is of course a weakest form; x would be motivated even more strongly

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

the appropriate reaction will increasingly tend to be mentioned, usually to-

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non-human environment. It would be equally motivational no matter who

Having presented a plausible account of how commands may functionally

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behavior. Furthermore, the scientific confirmation of the above sentence

It is frequently objected that translation into the grammatical form of declara-

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It has already been pointed out that psychological imperativeness due to

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dressed to a seasoned triggerman, as a command even though an ineffective one.

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

Another peculiarity of commands is that the implied time indices of both

Another word prominent in the description of motivation and in the dis-

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If we restrict ourselves to one imperative reference system, i.e. a system in

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

interpretation to the Hofstadter and McKinsey system which will render it

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

pragmatic, metalinguistic rescindmentof the command, equivalent to the denial

In view of the position, popular among logicians and empiricists, as to the

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

This content downloaded from 201.081.210.097 on September 05, 2016 14:24:44 PM

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