ABSTRACT
Imperatives are, in general, inconsistent if their conjunction amounts to requiring that to be done, the actual doing of which cannot be consistently described; the notion of contradictory imperatives is derivable from that of self-contradictory tasks, or performances. But imperatives, of course, are neither necessarily nor exclusively used in giving orders so that what is wrong with giving someone contradictory orders does not tell us in general what is wrong, or whether anything is, with issuing inconsistent imperatives. If there is to be such a thing as imperative logic, there has to be something for it to be the logic of. Presumably that would have to be imperative argument, or imperative inference. There is, however, also something which Cats dont eat fruit is, in English, a standard, conventional means of meaning namely, that cats dont eat fruit. The imperative mood has no determinate force, so that sentences in that mood have no determinate sense.
