ABSTRACT
It is important to distinguish rules from goals and from maxims, that is, rules-of-thumb employed in the interest of quickly or conveniently finding the way to reach goals. Assessing the role of quandaries is a somewhat separate project from determining the scope of rules. In the fundamental account of hyperdeontic logic, a quandary is said to be a situation in which every course of action is forbidden for an agent. In the most general descriptions of the new explanatory strategy, the need to resolve quandaries is often presented as the central explanatory mechanism. The resolution of quandaries as such is not likely to motivate people to take the risks required for changing society. Some of the dominant elite may be loyal to the most traditional rules, and find themselves in a quandary when new rules are introduced to defend old prerogatives.
