In defense of objectivism about moral obligation

Ethics

Volumn 121, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 88-115

  Graham, Peter A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 78649925037     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/656328     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. By 'the totality of a person's evidence at a time', here, I mean what internalists in epistemology would consider to be the totality of a person's evidence at that time. On this conception of evidence a person and her brain-in-a-vat-duplicate have exactly the same totality of evidence.
2. The '(or prior to)' qualification is added in order to accommodate subjectivists who deny the possibility of one's getting out of a future moral obligation by purposefully acting in ways so as to impoverish one's future evidential situation. Some subjectivists don't deny this possibility. The definition in the text is meant to cover both types of subjectivists.
3. With the notion of a person's doxastic situation (and a corresponding notion of her objective situation), it would be easy to define a property of being belief-subjective (and a corresponding property of being objective) exactly parallel to the definition of that of being evidence-subjective. Everything I say in the sequel about evidence-subjectivism holds mutatis mutandis for belief-subjectivism as well. Henry Sidgwick, for example, seems to endorse belief-subjectivism in Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1907).
4. Examples of evidence-subjectivism include H. A. Prichard, "Duty and Ignorance of Fact," in Moral Writings, ed. J. MacAdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 84-101;
5. W. D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939);
6. Frank Jackson, "Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection," Ethics 101 (1991): 461-82;
7. T. M. Scanlon, "Thomson on Self-Defense," in Fact and Value: Essays on Ethics and Metaphysics for Judith Jarvis Thomson, ed. Alex Byrne, Robert Stalnaker, and Ralph Wedgwood (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 199-213;
8. Michael Zimmerman, "Is Moral Obligation Objective or Subjective?" Utilitas 18 (2006): 329-61
9. and Living with Uncertainty: The Moral Significance of Ignorance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
10. Examples of objectivism include G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)
11. Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912);
12. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002);
13. Fred Feldman, Doing the Best We Can (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986);
14. Judith Thomson, "Imposing Risks," in Rights, Restitution, and Risk, ed. W. Parent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 173-91
15. The Realm ofRights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
16. According to this definition, of course, objectivism is consistent with belief-subjectivism. However, as I note in n. 3, everything I shall go on to say both against evidence- subjectivism and in favor of objectivism, understood as the denial of evidence-subjectivism,will hold mutatis mutandis with respect to belief-subjectivism and a corresponding notion of objectivism, understood as the denial of belief-subjectivism, as well. In the end, then, my arguments, taken all together, will constitute a defense of a narrower notion of objectivism, one understood as the denial of the disjunction of evidence-subjectivism and belief-subjectivism. I grant that this narrower notion of objectivism is, perhaps, the most natural one. But, as I say, my arguments, taken all together, do constitute a defense of this narrower notion. I choose, in the text, to construe objectivism as the denial of evidence- subjectivism merely for ease of exposition.
17. Though many subjectivists are committed to OIC, few discuss this commitment in connection with their subjectivism. Sidgwick, Ross (in Foundations of Ethics), and Zimmerman all commit themselves both to OIC and to subjectivism in their writings.
18. Even this is perhaps not quite right. Some subjectivists also probably hold that certain agents, such as children, don't have moral obligations at all, and so such subjectivists would probably prefer some further restricted version of ability-constrained-evidence-subjectivism. I thank an anonymous referee for pointing this out to me. Concerns similar to those I raise below in the text about the consistency of an ability-restriction with the standard intuitive motivation for subjectivism may well also bedevil any such further restrictions.
19. In Living with Uncertainty, however, Zimmerman explicitly denies that this is his motivation for the kind of subjectivism he favors.
20. Ross originally advocated objectivism in The Right and the Good but later came to endorse subjectivism in Foundations of Ethics.
21. Ross, The Right and the Good, 32.
22. This argument cannot be sidestepped by pointing out that your telling me that I'm morally obliged to turn on the light changes my evidential situation in such a way that 2 is no longer plausible. If we added to Promise that 1 have overwhelming, though, unbeknownst to me, misleading, evidence that you are an inveterate liar, both premise 1 and premise 2 would, nonetheless, still seem true.
23. Both in Zimmerman, "Is Moral Obligation Objective or Subjective?" 344-45
24. and in Living with Uncertainty, 32.
25. Just a small point about the dialectic before proceeding. In this and the following section, I will not be arguing for objectivism. Rather, I'll only be offering what I take to be a plausible reply to the subjectivist's arguments for subjectivism. So, in responding to the subjectivist's first argument, I'll appeal to what seem to be intuitive grounds for rejecting the kind of straightforward connection between moral obligation and blameworthiness upon which that argument implicitly relies. A subjectivist may deny these intuitive grounds. That's fine. My aim is not to convert the staunch subjectivist-that would be too much to hope for; my aim, rather, is merely to provide a coherent reply to the subjectivist's arguments that is intuitively plausible, the elements ofwhich can be motivated independent of the need to respond to those arguments.
26. It is true, strictly speaking, that the purported data to which subjectivists appeal in this Syringes-based argument (and also in the Doctor-based argument I discuss later) are consistent with objectivism as I've defined it. No matter; all plausible versions of objectivism deny these data, and most, if not all, objectivists would grant that were these purported data true, subjectivism would win the day.
27. It is, to be sure, not widely recognized that it is possible for there to be cases in which a person is blameworthy even though (she knows) she does not act wrongly. Zimmerman is one who does actually recognize it; see Michael Zimmerman, An Essay on Moral Responsibility (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988).
28. Or, more cautiously, not all subjectivists and objectivists seem to be arguing past each other.
29. Zimmerman was the first, as far as I know, to appeal in this way to the notion of the morally conscientious person in her deliberations about what to do as a way ofpinning down the sense of 'moral obligation' about which subjectivists and objectivists disagree. See "Is Moral Obligation Objective or Subjective?" 335
30. and Living with Uncertainty, 15.
31. This is my presentation of the case, but, in detail, it does not differ from that offered in "Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism," 462-64.
32. Donald Regan, as far as I can tell, was the first to employ a case with this kind of structure. See Donald Regan, Utilitarianism and Cooperation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 265 n. 1.
33. I have cast the objectivism/subjectivism debate as one over the nature of moral obligation, but, strictly speaking, all that Jackson claims is obvious is that Jill "ought" to prescribe B in Doctor. For the purposes of my discussion here, 1 interpret Jackson's 'ought' as the moral 'ought' associated with moral obligation. See Sec. V for a discussion of 'ought' and its relation to moral obligation.
34. Premise III is consistent with its being the case, as Sidgwick and other utilitarians have argued, that there may very well be utilitarian grounds for suppressing the truth of utilitarianism. It doesn't follow (at least not obviously) from the fact that people would perform actions more in accord with the principle of utility if they didn't believe it than if they did that if one did believe it one would thereby not be morally conscientious.
35. Though I find the objectivist reply to the subjectivist's argument that I go on to offer below quite plausible, I do not mean to suggest that it is the only plausible reply to the subjectivist's argument that an objectivist might give. There may be other (and, perhaps, even better) objectivist replies. I aim only to present, and tout the particular merits of, my own reply.
36. This conception of the morally conscientious person's concern with her moral obligations being two-faced I take to be similar, and somewhat analogous, to William James's contention that, as would-be knowers, our concern with truth is two-faced: "We must know the truth; and we must avoid error-these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment,they are two separable laws.
37. " William James, "The Will to Believe," in his Essays in Pragmatism (New York: Haffner, 1969), 113.
38. Mightn't someone be morally obliged to do more than one thing in a situation? Well, in one sense, of course, yes; but, in the most important sense, no. You might, for instance, be morally obliged to open the door and also to say "Hello." But, in such a case, given that temporally synchronic complex actions are actions (which they most certainly are), there is only one action, namely, the complex action of opening the door and saying "Hello," such that the performance of it is sufficient for your not acting morally wrongly.
39. Here I say that the morally conscientious person may be required in certain situations to make certain trade-offs among her two goals. One might think that in claiming that the morally conscientious person is required to do this I am here implicitly invoking another notion of obligation or requirement that a subjectivist might insist is the very notion she was ever claiming was subjective. This is not correct. The notion of requirement I am here invoking is merely that of conceptual necessity. I am claiming that, as a conceptual matter, one simply won't count as being morally conscientious if one does not make these kinds of trade-offs in these kinds of situations. This notion of requirement is in no way like that of a moral requirement. On this notion of requirement a rapist is required to commit rape-a person, as a matter of conceptual necessity, won't count as a rapist unless she commits rape, and so, a rapist, insofar as she is a rapist, is conceptually required to commit rape-but there is no notion of obligation, let alone moral obligation, according to which a rapist is obliged to commit rape.
40. Though II' and VI are incontrovertibly true in cases in which the morally con scientious person is choosing between options on which her own future voluntary actions have no bearing, they are subject to qualification with respect to cases in which the morally conscientious person has knowledge of her own potential future moral wrongdoing. I discuss such cases in Sec. VIII.
41. Throughout my discussion I have been presupposing that, in Doctor, Jill has but three options available to her: prescribe A, prescribe B, and prescribe C. I have presupposed, that is, that Jill does not, in addition, have yet other disjunctive options, such as prescribe-A-or-prescribe-C, prescribe-B-or- prescribe-C, etc. My claim that VI is true, however, may seem false on the supposition that Jill has not only the three nondisjunctive options I've assumed she has, but also, in addition, a host of other disjunctive options. This is because, one might argue, in Doctor, even though Jill is morally obliged to prescribe- A-or-prescribe-C-which, it might seem, follows from its being the case that she either has a moral obligation to prescribe A or has a moral obligation to prescribe C-and is in a position to know this, insofar as she is morally conscientious, she will nonetheless prescribe B. For the purposes of my discussion, however, I assume that we needn't worry about any complexities that may arise due to the postulation of disjunctive options. That is, I assume that the only options that the principles II' and VI quantify over are those of the normal nondisjunctive kind. I thank two anonymous referees for impressing upon me the need to restrict these principles so as to exclude disjunctive options.
42. Being morally conscientious is, of course, not only a matter of having the two goals that a morally conscientious person has, but also a matter of having the kind of preference ranking over them that a morally conscientious person has. It is also quite plausible, nor do I deny, that there is a range of different preference rankings over the goals of the morally conscientious person consistent with moral conscientiousness. All I claim is that there are some such preference rankings that are definitively inconsistent with moral conscientiousness. There being such a range does, of course, entail there being many cases in which, even though there is an option that is morally obligatory, there simply is no fact of the matter as to what a morally conscientious person would do in that case. But that is overwhelmingly plausible; there are many such cases.
43. Zimmerman explicitly acknowledges that subjectivists are committed to its being conceptually incoherent for a person to be morally obliged not to do something in virtue of its riskiness with respect to wrongdoing (Living with Uncertainty, 58). He does not, however, see, or feel the force of, the problem for subjectivism I suggest that this poses.
44. Nor can it be risky with respect to killing, obviously, for the amount of killing she does will be the same whether she kills Bloggs or Slade.
45. Surgeon also puts paid to the suggestion that the intuitive riskiness thought can be explained in terms of riskiness with respect to badness of outcomes (or loss of value). The state of affairs in which Jane chops up the one who has consented and the one in which she chops up the one who hasn't don't differ with respect to value and both are better in terms of value than that of her not chopping up either, but chopping up either of them is still intuitively risky. It is precisely the nonconsequentialist's point, after all, that if given the choice between sacrificing one who has rationally consented to being sacrificed in order to save five others and sacrificing one who hasn't so consented, one is morally obliged to sacrifice the one who has consented, if one sacrifices anyone at all, even though sacrificing either would lead to an equally good state of affairs. What's more, even if a nonconsequentialist were to hold that facts about consent were not only relevant to moral permissibility but also to the values of states of affairs, still other versions of Surgeon, ones no nonconsequentialist could view as involving a risk with respect to badness, would establish beyond a shadow of doubt that the intuitive riskiness is not a riskiness with respect to the badness of outcomes.
46. Here I am prescinding from questions of legal permissibility. Of course it might be legally impermissible to redistribute the organs of a villainous poisoner among his victims in order to save them. But doing so would surely not be morally impermissible.
47. A straightforward counterfactual translation certainly won't work. It won't do to say that what a person is objectively morally obliged to do in a situation just is what she would be subjectively morally obliged to do in that situation were her evidence completely in line with the facts in that situation. This is because the changes necessary to make the situation one in which the agent's evidence was in line with the facts might be such as to make it the case that she was no longer objectively morally obliged to do just what she was in the absence of those changes.
48. Special thanks to David Owens for encouraging me to think about cases like the one I discuss in the next section in connection with my account of moral conscientiousness.
49. A case of this form was originally discussed in the context of the actualism/ possibilism debate in Holly Goldman, "Dated Rightness and Moral Imperfection," Philosophical Review 85 (1976): 449-87.
50. Other cases with similar structures are discussed in Howard Sobel, "Utilitarianism and Past and Future Mistakes," Nous 10 (1976): 195-219;
51. Holly Goldman, "Doing the Best One Can," in Values and Morals, ed. Alvin Goldman and Jaegwon Kim (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978), 185-214;
52. Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter, "Oughts, Options, and Actualism," Philosophical Review 95 (1986): 233-55;
53. Lou Goble, "The Logic of Obligation, 'Better', and 'Worse'," Philosophical Studies 70 (1993): 133-63;
54. Michael Zimmerman, The Concept of Moral Obligation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
55. Goldman (in "Dated Rightness and Moral Imperfection"), Sobel, Jackson and Pargetter, and Goble uphold actualism. Goldman (in "Doing the Best One Can"), Feldman, and Zimmerman all uphold possibilism.
56. In the remainder of this and the following paragraph, I rehash fairly closely Zimmerman's discussion of some of the problems for actualism in The Concept of Moral Obligation, 191-92.
57. Some actualists, e.g., Jackson and Pargetter, are quite forthright and sanguine about having to deny AEMO.
58. This is the kind of case I had in mind when, in n. 24, I claimed that II' and VI are subject to qualification with respect to cases in which the morally conscientious person has knowledge of her own future potential wrongdoing.