This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights articles
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This is because the deontic concepts of obligation and permission are De Morgan dual; a person is permitted to do all and only the things he is not obliged to refrain from, and obliged to do all and only the things he is not permitted to refrain from.
To a non-philosopher, it's hard to read this without Stalinesque overtones on "permitted"[by whom?] creeping into mind. My impulse here is s/permission/license/. 'License' being a word which, for me—as a non-specialist—has fewer overtones (and, in the view of an armchair linguist, impels less reflection about the unstated Soviet). — MaxEnt01:39, 12 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Checking a few online dictionaries, I can't find any suggestion that 'license' is any less connected to authority than 'permission', and the Wiktionary articles if anything say more about law and legality with regard to 'license' than they do 'permission' (which is only "usually" from a figure in authority in the first Wiktionary definition). To my ear "license" has more tones of allowed-by-a-legal-authority than just the "allowed" simpliciter that "permission" implies, too. (The latter of which is the intended meaning; the deontic concepts don't hinge on reference to any specific authority, just "allowed-ness" and "required-ness" in the abstract; "may" and "must" to use simpler words). In any case I don't see why you draw a connection to Stalin or the Soviets specifically rather than authoritarianism more generally? Is there some history of Stalin or the Soviets especially (ab)using the (English?) word "permitted" that I'm not aware of? --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:13, 12 May 2017 (UTC)Reply