ABSTRACT
The logical analysis of commands should take careful and explicit account of temporal considerations, and an adequate logic of commands will have to be developed in close conjunction with a logic of chronological propositions (a ‘tense logic’). The pivotal idea of validity in command inference should be construed (in the homogeneous case) in terms of the question of whether the conclusion command is tacitly or implicitly contained in the ‘set of instructions’ presented by the command premisses. The semantical theory of validity in command inference, although distinctive and in some ways sui generis, is not primitive and self-subsistent, but should be approached from the direction of assertoric logic via the bridging-link of statements of command termination (or command ‘satisfaction’ in some cognate sense). These considerations represent but a small step in the development of a comprehensive logical theory of commands that can deserve to meet with general acceptance.
