Noesis 187:9-19 (
2008)
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Abstract
Truth is undefined for imperative statements. However, if imperatives implicitly reference a fact, they can be rephrased as truth-valuable declaratives explicitly referencing that fact. But are there such facts? Kenny held that any imperative references a set of wishes held by its imperator. I extend his thesis by proposing that imperator wishes are facts implicitly referenced by imperatives and explicitly referencing them yields semantically isomorphic declaratives. I implement this thesis with modal operators for wants and cause with which declarative schemata are formed to automate translation of imperatives into semantically isomorphic declaratives called proxy-imperatives. The proxy-imperatives match imperative behavior and provide semantic validation of imperative arguments thereby integrating imperative reasoning into classic truth-valuable logic.