Prosaic possibilism

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 97, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 131-136

  Vorobej, M ^a  

^a MCMASTER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 52849135176     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1008349904432     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. See Michael J. Zimmerman, The Concept of Moral Obligation (Cambridge University Press, 1996) chapter six.
2. See Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter, "Oughts, Options, and Actualism", Philosophical Review 95 (1986) pp. 233-255.1 take the example of Procrastinate from this article.
3. Consult the numerous references cited in the two works mentioned above.
4. Roderick Chisholm, "Contrary-to-Duty Imperatives and Deontic Logic", Analysis 24 (1963) pp. 33-36.
5. "Conditional Obligation and Detachment", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (1986) pp. 11-26.
6. This ranking (structurally similar to the Procrastinate case) most effectively highlights the debate between actualists and possibilists, since it commits actualists to asserting that at T1 Smith has an obligation not to tell at T2 that he will help at T3.
7. Zimmerman endorses not only deontic detachment but also (what he calls) "necessity detachment" (p. 121). According to the latter rule, S has an unconditional obligation to do A whenever (i) S has an obligation to do A, on the condition that B is true, and (ii) S cannot make B not true. As I explain in (1986), necessity detachment follows as a special case from (RD).
8. This example is taken from Zimmerman, "Subsidiary Obligation", Philosophical Studies 50 (1986) p. 68. The counterexample which Zimmerman offers in (1996, p. 130) unfortunately is based upon a typographical error. Employing Zimmerman's nomenclature, (4.54) does not follow by (RD) from (4.18a), (4.52) and (4.53), since (4.53) fails to assert the requisite claim that the condition of the relevant conditional obligation is satisfied.
9. An analogous case, related to Chisholm's paradox, may be constructed as follows. Suppose that it is true at T1 that Smith will help at T3, that telling-andhelping and not-telling-and-not-helping are the two best outcomes, and that the remaining outcomes are equally bad. Then (2) and (3) are true on Zimmerman's semantics, (1) is false, and there is no obligation at T1 not to help at T3. (See (1996, pp. 118-119) for the relevant truth conditions.) An obligation at T1 to tell at T2 follows by (RD). Yet that final claim is not true on possibilist semantics.
10. Zimmerman (1996, p. 97). The obligation is remote because T1 is earlier than T3.
11. See Zimmerman (1996, p. 133) for his distinction between primary and subsidiary obligation.
12. This is transparent in Zimmerman's writings. For proof that some actualists too make this assumption, see Jackson and Pargetter (1986, p. 241).
13. Zimmerman articulates this possibilist worry in (1996, p. 193).
14. The second clause covers situations in which either S would act in a non-ideal manner, or there is no fact of the matter as to how S would act.
15. I thank Michael Zimmerman for some very helpful comments on a draft of this paper.