Mīmāṃsā on ‘better-not’ Permissions

Abstract The traditional definition of permission as the dual of obligation oversimplifies its many applications, often yielding undesirable consequences. Recent literature recognizes the need to distinguish various types of permissions but often overlooks potential preferences associated with them. In contrast, the Sanskrit philosophical school of Mīmāṃsā refutes the interdefinability of deontic concepts, and asserts that permissions always refer to less desirable actions (‘better-not’ permissions), and are exceptions to prohibitions or negative obligations. This article analyzes the concept of Mīmāṃsā permission, compares it with contemporary theories and formalizes it while carefully preserving its essential characteristics. We transform Mīmāṃsā’s reasoning principles for permission into Hilbert axioms and introduce neighbourhood semantics, incorporating ceteris-paribus preferences. The resulting logic is evaluated against various paradoxes from contemporary deontic logic and applied to a scenario from Sanskrit jurisprudence.