This collection reprints all my previously published papers in ethics and social philosophy, except for those that were previously reprinted in another collection, Philosophical Papers. I have taken the opportunity to correct typographical errors and editorial alterations. But I have left the philosophical content as it originally was, rather than trying to rewrite the papers as I would write them today.

The first three papers deal with the deontic logic of obligation and permission. Such a system of logic, in which operators of obligation and permission are taken to be dual modal operators analogous to operators of necessity and possibility, can be extended to what is obligatory or permissible given some condition. ‘Semantic Analyses for Dyadic Deontic Logic’ surveys a number of published treatments of conditional obligation and permission with a view to separating substantive differences – different degrees of generality, as it turns out – from mere differences between equivalent styles of bookkeeping.

The deontic logic of permission (whether conditional or unconditional) ignores the performative character of permission. By saying that something is or isn't permitted (unconditionally or conditionally) we can make it so. But there's a complication. If I say that some of the courses of action in which so-and-so happens are permissible, saying so makes it so. But which of those courses of action do I thereby bring into permissibility? ‘A Problem about Permission’ surveys various possible answers.

In ‘Reply to McMichael’, I insist that deontic logic, conditional or otherwise, characterizes only the formalities of moral thinking.