Sunday, January 13, 2008

Deep Thoughts III

It is never wrong to do what is right.

4 comments:

Mike Almeida said...

Unless of course what is right is also what is wrong, as occurs in genuine moral dilemmas. Or, unless everything is wrong and also you ought to do some action or other, as happens in Utilitarian moral dilemmas. So it might not be a theorem that OA -> PA (or equivalently, OA -> ~FA).

Alexander R Pruss said...

If everything is wrong, then nothing is right.

If there were a genuine moral dilemma, that would be a case where no action is right.

Mike Almeida said...

If everything is wrong, then nothing is right.

Not so. It can be true that every particular option is wrong, so that,

1. (x)F(S does x)

And it can still be true that you ought to do some option or other.

2. O(Ex)(S does x)

This is because (2) does not entail that there is any particular action that you ought to do. So suppose your options are infinite and enumerated by the naturals {0, 1, 2, 3, ...}. It can be that for every option in the sequence, there is a better option, therefore you ought not to choose each particular option. It can also be true that any option in the sequence is better doing nothing at all. So you ought to choose some option or other, but there is no particular option that is permissible. M. Slote talks about these cases (but actually, they are due to Tim Williamson).

Alexander R Pruss said...

I think the difference is that you're taking "right" to mean "obligatory" while I'm taking it to mean "permissible". (Evidence for my reading: It is possible for there to be more than one right action.)