Exclusion of reasons and purity of heart

Patrick is an attractive man and a good philosopher. His colleague Jenny, who is married to someone else, now has two reasons to talk to Patrick. Here we don't, I think, want to say that the problematic reason is overridden or defeated. For if Jenny's practical reasoning in favor of talking to Patrick includes "Patrick is attractive, but I'm married to someone else," her practical reasoning takes Patrick's attractiveness in favor of talking with him, and that's unfaithful--there is at least a moral imperfection there, even if not a sin. (One can act or reason viciously without actually sinning.) Rather, the reason should be excluded in the Raz sense. Jenny has a second order reason not to let Patrick's attractiveness count even pro tanto or defeasibly in favor of spending time with him, just as when an army commander tells one to take yonder hill, one has a second order reason not to let personal inconvenience count even pro tanto or defeasibly in favor of staying put.

In practice, it's hard to really exclude reasons, we often do not know all our motives, and self-deceit is easy, which is why we have practices of self-recusal when one has strong excluded reasons. It is important enough in some cases not to risk acting on excluded reasons that one removes oneself from a position where one would be making a decision where the excluded reasons are relevant.

Another practice besides recusal is working on one's psychology so that the excluded reason in favor of an action count against the action. Thus, in the above example, that Patrick is attractive would start counting as a defeasible reason against talking with him for Jenny. When she does end up talking to him, it will perhaps no longer be partly because of his attractiveness, but despite it. Such a practice of overcompensation is not abstractly ideal--a morally perfect being would have no need for it. Moreover, in some cases the equivalent of recusal is more appropriate: a judge should not overcompensate for the fact that she'll benefit monetarily from a verdict by biasing herself against that verdict, but should recuse herself. But in some cases, overcompensation seems an appropriate solution.

However, human capabilities for self-deceit are enormous, and one cannot count on overcompensation to do the trick by itself. For it had better not be the case that Jenny is in fact consciously or unconsciously weighing three reasons in favor of talking to Patrick: the philosophical reason for talking with Patrick, the attractiveness reason in favor of talking with Patrick and the attractiveness reason against talking with Patrick, even if the third reason overcompensates for the second. For if she is acting on these three reasons, she is taking Patrick's attractiveness in favor of spending time with him. But perhaps a habit of overcompensation can give rise to genuine exclusion of the excluded reasons.