Supererogation and breakfast

Consider this plausible definition:

1. An action is supererogatory provided that it is good but not obligatory.

Now add this thesis:

2. We have no obligations to ourselves.

It now follows that we’re constantly doing supererogatory stuff. For instance, I just refrained from deliberately painfully burning my finger with a match. My refraining was good. But if I have no obligation to myself, it wasn’t obligatory. Hence, my refraining was supererogatory. This does not seem to be a plausible consequence.

Given the plausibility of (1), this yields some reason to deny (2). Painfully burning my finger with a match violates my obligations to myself.

But there may be other problems with (1) where allowing obligations to self will not solve the problem. I had breakfast this morning, which was good, but even if I do have obligations to self, having breakfast doesn’t seem to be one of them.

Perhaps, though, the breakfast case isn’t so damaging. The supererogation literature talks of very minor supererogatory acts, such as minor acts of politeness. Perhaps having breakfast is just one of the very minor supererogatory acts. If so, then we can save (1), as long as we reject (2) and allow for obligations to self.

The other move is to redefine (1) in a way that excludes benefits to self:

2. An action is supererogatory provided that it is good, and not just for oneself, but not obligatory.

Vagueness and moral obligation

It sure seems like there is vagueness in moral obligation. For instance, torture of the innocent is always wrong, making an innocent person’s life mildly unpleasant for a good cause is not always wrong, and in between we can run a Sorites sequence.

What view could a moral realist have about this? Here are four standard things that people say about a vague term “ϕ”.

1. Error theory: nothing is or could be ϕ; or maybe “ϕ” is nonsense.

2. Non-classical logic: there are cases where attributions of “ϕ” are neither true nor false.

3. Supervaluationism: there are a lot of decent candidates for the meaning of “ϕ”, and no one of them is the meaning.

4. Standard epistemicism: there are a lot of decent candidates for the meaning of “$”, and one of them is the meaning, but we don’t know which one, because we don’t know the true semantic theory and the details of our linguistic usage.

If “ϕ” is “moral obligation”, and we maintain moral realism, then (1) is out. I think (3) and (4) are only possible options if we have a watered-down moral realism. For on a robust moral realism, moral obligations really central to our lives, and nothing else could play the kind of central role in our lives that they do. On a robust moral realism, moral obligation is not one thing among many that just as well or almost as well fit our linguistic usage. Here is another way to put the point. On both (3) and (4), the question of what exact content “ϕ” has is a merely verbal question, like the question of how much hair someone can have and still be bald: we could decide to use “bald” differently, with no loss. But questions about moral obligation are not merely verbal in this way.

This means that given robust moral realism, of the standard views of vagueness all we have available is non-classical logic. But non-classical logic is just illogical (thumps table, hard)! :-)

So we need something else. If we deny (1)-(3), we have to say that ultimately “moral obligation” is sharp, but of course we can’t help but admit that there are Sorites sequences and we can’t tell where moral obligation begins and ends in them. But we cannot explain our ignorance in the semantic way of standard epistemicism. What we need is something like epistemicism, but where moral obligation facts are uniquely distinguished from other facts—they have this central overriding role in our lives—and yet there are moral facts that are likely beyond human ken. One might want to call this fifth view “non-standard epistemicism about vagueness” or “denial of vagueness”—whether we call it one or the other may just be a verbal question. :-)

In any case, I find it quite interesting that to save robust moral realism, we need either non-classical logic or something that we might call “denial of vagueness”.

A problem for non-command divine command theories

Some divine “command” theories do not ground obligations in commands as such, but in divine mental states, such as his willings, intentions or desires. It’s occurred to me that there is a down-side to such theories. Independently of accepting a divine command theory of any sort, I think the following is plausible (pace Murphy):

1. All humans have a duty to obey any commands from God.

But if obligations are grounded in divine mental states, there is the following possibility: God commands one to ϕ even though God does not will, intend or desire that one ϕ, and so I am not obligated to ϕ. The actuality of this possibility would not fit with (1). In fact, the case of the Sacrifice of Isaac appears precisely such: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but did not will, intend or desire for Abraham to do so. God only willed, intended and desired for Abraham to prepare to sacrifice Isaac.

In my previous post, I was happy with the corollary of the divine intention account of duty that Abraham did not have a duty to sacrifice Isaac. But given the plausibility of (1), I should not have been happy with that.

The command version of divine command theory obviously verifies (1). So do natural law theories on which obedience to God is a part of our nature (either explicitly or as a consequence of some more general duty).

A divine intentional promotion account of duty

In my previous post, I argued against divine desire versions of divine command theory. Reflecting on that post, I saw that there is a simple variant of divine desire that helps with some of the problems in that post. Instead of saying that we ought to do what God desires us to do, the divine command theorist can say that:

1. We have a duty to ϕ (respectively, not to ϕ) if and only if God is intentionally trying to get us to ϕ (respectively, not to ϕ).

On this picture, God doesn’t just “sit around” and wish for our actions: God intentionally promotes some of our actions and obstructs others. He does this in a multitude of ways: by commanding, by creating us with a human nature that inclines us towards some actions and against others, by inspiring us with his grace, and more generally by intentionally putting us in an environment that encourage or discourages certain actions. An advantage of this view is that it allows for divine commands to be constituted by a plausibly broad variety of divine actions.

One of the problems I raised in the previous post for divine desire theories of duty was the problem of conflicting divine desires. Even a perfectly rational being can have conflicting desires. It is perfectly rational to desire a medical procedure one knows to be painful while desiring not to have pain. Thus there is a serious possibility of conflicting desires on the part of God. This possibility is raised to the level of likelihood when we reflect on the fact that God is said to bring greater goods out of the evils we do, which makes for a likely conflict between God’s desire for these goods and God’s desire that we not perform the evils.

But while a perfectly rational being can have conflicting desires, it is plausible that a perfectly rational being does not have conflicting intentions. A perfectly rational being may desire A and not-A, but he won’t be intentionally promoting both. (Of course, a perfectly rational being may intentionally promote both A and B despite the fact that promoting A makes B less likely. But that doesn’t seem to raise particular difficulties for the intentional promotion account of duty, though I could be missing something.)

My second worry about divine desire theories was cases where our action goes against God’s desires but leads to God’s desires being on the whole better satisfied, such as when our succumbing to temptation keeps a large number of people untempted. I suggested that it is a loving thing to go against someone’s desires when doing so better promotes their desires on the whole. Here, I think there are subtle and difficult issues, but I think the same worry does not apply to the intentional promotion view. Suppose that Bob is intentionally trying to produce A and B. Alice, however, correctly judges that B is more important than A to Bob, and that intentionally acting directly against A will better get Bob what she wants. So she opposes Bob with respect to A in order to produce B. There are cases where this is perfectly appropriate. But I think these are all cases where Alice has a certain kind of superiority to Bob, say because she is Bob’s parent and hence has authority over him, or because she is much smarter than Bob. When Alice and Bob are equals, for Alice to intentionally act against A is not a proper act of love. It is either an act of enmity or at best an act of improper paternalism. (One might think something similar is true in the case of desires, but I doubt it. See the gift example in my previous post.) And this is much more so the case when Bob is Alice’s superior, as God is ours in every respect.

Love seeks union. To oppose oneself to one’s beloved’s intentions is innately contrary to that union. Sometimes love will make such opposition appropriate when the person we love is confused in some way (while love seeks union, union is only one of multiple aspects of love, and sometimes the other aspects may take precedence). But God is superior to us in every respect. Thus it seems plausible that love for God will never require us to oppose God’s intentions. But it may well require us to oppose some of God’s desires, because God’s desires themselves oppose one another, since an all-good being desires all goods, and the goods conflict (thus, God’s desire to exhibit forgiveness to creatures conflicts with God’s desire that creatures not do anything that needs to be forgiven).

Indeed, I think if we have a divine intentional promotion account of duty, there is hope that we may be able to ground moral duty in something virtue-theoretic, like Evans’ account that the virtue of gratitude calls on us to obey God—for it is fairly plausible that gratitude to a being superior in all respects calls on us to further that being’s intentions—or a love account.

Here are some interesting and nice corollaries of the view:

2. There are no true moral dilemmas, because God’s intentions do not conflict.

3. If to tempt someone is to try to get them to do the wrong thing, then God cannot tempt anyone (James 1:13), since if God were to try to get someone to do something, that would ipso facto be the right thing to do.

4. God cannot intentionally unconditionally predestine anyone to damnation. For he who intends the end intends the means, and the means to damnation is sin, and God cannot intend sin.

5. Abraham did not have a duty to sacrifice Isaac, but only a duty to prepare to sacrifice Isaac. For God has no intention that he sacrifice Isaac.

On the other hand, here is an uncomfortable consequence:

6. God cannot intentionally promote a supererogatory action. For any action intentionally promoted by God becomes not supererogatory but a duty.

Perhaps we can say that sometimes God’s promotion of an action doesn’t come with the intention that one do the action but that one be more likely to do it, and that’s what happens in the case of supererogation? If that subtle distinction works, then we can turn a disadvantage of the theory into a significant advantage—for being able to account for supererogation is a serious challenge to many theories of morality.

Finally what about God’s duties? We have two options. First, we could say that (1) is limited to creatures, and God has no duties. Second, we could say that (1) applies to God as well. In that case, every time God intentionally does anything, God is fulfilling his duty, since if God intentionally ϕs, God is thereby intentionally (and in a very strong way) promoting his ϕing. Neither option is appealing. Perhaps the first one is better. In any case, questions about divine duties are always going to be tricky for a divine command theory.

All that said, I don’t endorse the theory. I much prefer a love theory or a natural law theory.

Vagueness about moral obligation

There is a single normative property that is normatively above all others, that overrides all others: moral obligation.

I think the above intuition entails that there cannot be any non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation.

There are two main non-epistemic approaches to vagueness: deviant logic and supervaluationism. Deviant logic is logically unacceptable. :-) That leaves supervaluationism. But on supervaluationism, there would have to be many acceptable precisifications of our concept of moral obligation. Each such precisification would presumably be a normative property. But only a precisification that was normatively above all others could be an acceptable precisification of our concept of moral obligation. And there can only be one precisification above all others. So there can only be one acceptable precisification of moral obligation.

The above argument is too quick. The supervaluationist can say that in the claim “Moral obligation is above all other normative properties”, we have another candidates for vagueness: “above” (or “overrides”). Then we need to engage in coordinated precisification of “moral obligation”, as well as “above”. For each coordinated precisification, the aboveness claim will be true: “Moral obligation_i is above_i all other normative properties.”

I think, however, that once we allow for a variety of precisifications of “above”, we betray the intuition behind the aboveness thesis. That in some sense moral obligation is above personal convenience is not the bold and bracing intuition of the overridingness of morality. Thus, I think that if we are to be faithful to that intuition, we cannot allow for non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation.

And this, in turn, greatly limits how much non-epistemic vagueness there can be. For instance, if there is no vagueness about permissibility, then it cannot be vague whether something is a person, since vagueness about personhood leads to vagueness about moral obligations of respect. Indeed, it is not clear that there can be any non-epistemic vagueness if there is no non-epistemic vagueness about moral obligation. Suppose I promise to become bald, and I have a small amount of hair. Then I am non-bald if and only if I am obligated to remove some hair.

Defining supererogation

Sometimes supererogation is defined by a conjunction of a positive evaluation of performing the action and a denial of a negative evaluation of non-performance. For instance:

1. The action is good to do but not bad not to do.

2. The action is good to do but not wrong not to do.

3. The action is praiseworthy but omitting it is not blameworthy.

It seems to me that all such definitions fail in cases where there are two or more actions each of which satisfies one’s obligations.

Suppose a grenade has been thrown at a group of people that includes me. There is a heavy blanket nearby. Throwing the blanket on the grenade is unlikely to save lives but has some chance of doing so, while jumping on the grenade is much more likely to save multiple lives. I am obligated to do one of the two things (there is no time to do both, of course).

I throw the blanket on the grenade. In doing so, I do something good and praiseworthy. And omission of throwing the blanket is neither bad, nor wrong, nor blameworthy, since it is compatible with my jumping on the grenade. But clearly throwing the blanket on the grenade is not supererogatory!

One might object that we should be comparing the throwing of the blanket to not doing anything at all. And if we do that, then the action of throwing the blanket does not satisfy the definitions of supererogation: for it is good to throw the blanket, but bad not to do anything at all. However, if that’s how we read (1)–(3), then jumping on the grenade isn’t supererogatory either. For while it is good to jump on the grenade, to do nothing at all is bad, wrong and blameworthy.

It is clear what goes wrong here. In a case where two or more actions satisfy one’s obligations, it can’t be that all the actions are supererogatory. The supererogatory action must go above the call of duty. It seems we need a comparative element, such as:

4. Action A is better or more praiseworthy than some alternative that satisfies one’s obligations.

I think (4) is not good enough. For it misses the altruistic aspect of the supererogatory. Consider a case where I can choose to make some sacrifice for you to bestow some good on you, and I am morally required to make some minimal sacrifice s₀. However, there is a non-linear relationship between the degree of sacrifice and the good bestowed, such that the good bestowed increases asymptotically, approaching some value v, while the degree of sacrifice can increase without bound. Once the amount of sacrifice is increased too much, the action becomes bad: it becomes imprudent and contrary to one’s obligations to oneself. But as the amount of sacrifice is increased, presumably what eventually starts happening is that before the action becomes actually bad, it simply ceases to be praiseworthy.

Let s₁ indicate such a disproportionate degree of sacrifice: s₁ is not praiseworthy but neither is it blameworthy or contrary to one’s obligations. Then, s₀—the minimal amount of sacrifice—becomes supererogatory by (4). For s₀ is praiseworthy, since it is praiseworthy to make a morally required sacrifice, and hence it is more praiseworthy than s₁, since s₁ is not praiseworthy. But s₁ satisfies one’s obligations. So, the minimal degree of permissible sacrifice, s₀, satisfies the definition of the supererogatory. But that’s surely not right.

I don’t know how to fix (4).

A naive argument that ought implies can

It’s just occurred to me that there is a really quick argument for the ought-implies-can principle:

1. If you do the morally best you can in a situation S, you’ve done everything you ought in S.

2. You can always do the morally best you can.

3. So, you can always do what you ought.

I understand “the best” in the weak sense that if there is a tie for the best, then doing any tied action counts as doing the best.

There is one gap. While (2) is true for us in practice, it won’t be true in certain infinitary situations, such as Satan’s Apple. But we do not in fact find ourselves in such situations, so for us, ought does imply can.

Conscience and the deontic logic of attempts

When people talk of the value of obedience to conscience, it often makes it sound like there is some sort of a relationship to a mysterious faculty with a mysterious authority.

And that may all be true. But there is also a rather simple and deflationary but still, I think, useful way to think of obedience to conscience.

When I obey my conscience I am just trying to do what I ought thing. There is nothing particularly mysterious about what is right about that. If I ought to do A, I ought to try to do A. I ought to honor my parents. So, I also ought to try to honor them. Similarly, I ought to do what I ought, so I ought to try to do what I ought.

And with respect to the duty to try to do what I ought, it doesn’t matter that due to a mistake on my part I will be unable to do what I ought. That I have wrongly written down my mother’s phone number does not excuse me from trying to call her on her birthday. I ought to dial that number, because not dialing that number would be constitute a failure to try to call her, given my belief that it’s her number. Similarly, even if I am mistaken in thinking that I ought to do B, I still ought to do B, because a failure to do B would be constitutive of a failure to try to do what I ought, given my belief that B is what I ought to do.

(This is all a little less trivial when we realize that the duty to do one’s duty is actually a bit controversial. One might think that one only has first order duties, and lacks the second order duty to see to it that one fulfills the first order duties. But that would, I think, be mistaken. If I know that partaking of alcohol would cause me to neglect my first order duties, I thereby have a second order duty to avoid such partaking.)

Between subjective and objective obligation

I fear that a correct account of the moral life will require both objective and subjective obligations. That’s not too bad. But I’m also afraid that there may be a whole range of hybrid things that we will need to take into account.

Let’s start with clear examples of objective and subjective obligations. If Bob promised Alice to give her $10 but I misremember the promise and instead thinks he promised never to give her any more, then:

1. Bob is objectively required to give Alice $10.

2. Bob is subjectively required not to give Alice any money.

These cases come from a mistake about particular fact. There are also cases arising from mistakes about general facts. Helmut is a soldier in the Germany army in 1944 who knows the war is unjust but mistakenly believes that because he is a soldier, he is morally required to kill enemy combatants. Then:

3. Helmut is objectively required to refrain from shooting Allied combatants.

4. Helmut is subjectively required to kill Allied combatants.

But there are interesting cases of mistakes elsewhere in the reasoning that generate curious cases that aren’t neatly classified in the objective/subjective schema.

Consider moral principles about what one should subjectively do in cases of moral risk. For instance, suppose that Carl and his young daughter are stuck on a desert island for the next three months. The island is full of chickens. Carl believes it is 25% likely that chickens have the same rights as humans, and he needs to feed his daughter. His daughter has a mild allergy to the only other protein source on the island: her eyes will sting and her nose run for the next three months if she doesn’t live on chicken. Carl thus thinks that if chickens have the same rights as humans, he is forbidden from feeding chicken to his daughter; but if they don’t, then he is obligated to feed chicken to her.

Carl could now accept one of these two moral risk principles (obviously, these will be derivative from more general principles):

5. An action that has a 75% probability of being required, and a 25% chance of being forbidden, should always be done.

6. An action that has a 25% probability of being forbidden with a moral weight on par with the prohibition on multiple homicides and a 75% probability of being required with a moral weight on par with that of preventing one’s child’s mild allergic symptoms for three months should never be done.

Suppose that in fact chickens have very little in the way of rights. Then, probably:

7. Carl is objectively required to feed chicken to his daughter.

Suppose further that Carl’s evidence leads him to be sure that (5) is true, and hence he concludes that he is required to feed chicken to his daughter. Then:

8. Carl is subjectively required to feed chicken to his daughter.

This is a subjective requirement: it comes from what Carl thinks about the probabilities of rights, moral principles about what what to do in cases of risk, etc. It is independent of the objective obligation in (7), though in this example it agrees with it.

But suppose, as is very plausible, that (5) is false, and that (6) is the right moral principle here. (To see the point, suppose that he sees a large mammal in the woods that would suffice to feed his daughter for three months. If the chance that that mammal is a human being is 25%, that’s too high a risk to take.) Then Carl’s reasoning is mistaken. Instead, given his uncertainty:

9. Carl is required to to refrain from killing chickens.

But what kind of an obligation is (9)? Both (8) and (9) are independent of the objective facts about the rights of chickens and depend on Carl’s beliefs, so it sounds like it’s subjective like (8). But (8) has some additional subjectivity in it: (8) is based on Carl’s mistaken belief about what his obligations are in cases of mortal risk, while (9) is based on what Carl’s obligations (but of what sort?) “really are” in those cases.

It seems that (9) is some sort of a hybrid objective-subjective obligation.

And the kinds of hybrid obligations can be multiplied. For we could ask about what we should do when we are not sure which principle of deciding in circumstances of moral risk we should adopt. And we could be right or we could be wrong about that.

We could try to deny (9), and say that all we have are (7) and (8). But consider this familiar line of reasoning: Both Bob and Helmut are mistaken about their obligations; they are not mistaken about their subjective obligations; so, there must be some other kinds of obligations they are mistaken about, namely objective ones. Similarly, Carl is mistaken about something. He isn’t mistaken about his subjective obligation to feed chicken. Moreover, his mistake does not rest in a deviation between subjective and objective obligation, as in Bob’s and Helmut’s case, because in fact objectively Carl should feed chicken to his daughter, as in fact (I assume for the sake of the argument) chickens have no rights. So just as we needed to suppose an objective obligation that Bob and Helmut got wrong, we need a hybrid objective-subjective one that Carl got wrong.

Here’s another way to see the problem. Bob thinks he is objectively obligated to give no money to Alice and Helmut thinks he is objectively obligated to kill enemy soldiers. But when Carl applies (5), what does he come to think? He doesn’t come to think that he is objectively required to feed chicken to his daughter. He already thought that this was 75% likely, and (5) does not affect that judgment at all. It seems that just as Bob and Helmut have a belief about something other than mere subjective obligation, Carl does as well, but in his case that’s not objective obligation. So it seems Carl has to be judging, and doing so incorrectly, about some sort of a hybrid obligation.

This makes me really, really want an account of obligation that doesn’t involve two different kinds. But I don’t know a really good one.

Thick and thin obligations

Suppose that all fundamental thick moral obligation terms can be put in the logical form: "required by virtue v". Then we have a plausible and neat account of thin obligation in terms of thick obligation:

1. A is obligatory if and only if there is a virtue v such that A is required by v.

Can we define the thick terms via thin obligation? A promising start is:

2. A is required by virtue v if and only if facts about v explain why A is obligatory.

But this is only a start, since there are obvious counterexamples. Suppose I promise you to give you ten dollars if courage is a virtue. Then a fact about courage, namely that it is a virtue, explains why it is obligatory for me to give you ten dollars, but I am not required by justice, and not by courage, to give you ten dollars.

To make something like (2) work, we would need to specify the way in which facts about v explain why A is obligatory. It is implausible to suppose that this can be done without recourse to something circular, like saying that facts about v explain in a requirement-inducing way why A is obligatory.

This suggests that it is easier to account for thin obligation in terms of thick obligation. And this, in turn, suggests that it is better to take as our fundamental concept of obligation not "is obligated to" but "is obligated by ... to".

Supererogation

Supererogation is a difficult concept for me. But there has to be such a thing. If Jones has suffered two hundred weeks of torture to save the lives of two hundred strangers, and then declines the 201st week of torture to save the life of the 201st stranger, Jones does not do wrong. And if he were to accept the torture, he would be acting superegatorily (barring special circumstances).

I doubt the following account is in the end right, but I think it is surprisingly defensible (modulo perhaps some minor tweaks):

• An action is supererogatory if and only if it is permissible and less convenient than some available alternative permissible action.

I don't have a good account of what "convenient" means, but "convenience" is meant to convey what one sacrifices when one makes "self-sacrifices". Thus, it is more convenient to endure less pain rather than more; it is more convenient to do the easier rather than the harder thing; it is more convenient to save than to lose one's life (this is an understatement in ordinary English, but I am using "convenience" in a sort of technical sense). But convenience probably won't count some higher goods to self, such as the exercise of virtue, which are gained rather than lost in self-sacrifice. Thus, a self-sacrifice can count as inconvenient even if overall one benefits from it because of the value of the exercise of virtue.

The account above seems to be subject to simple counterexamples. Let's say it's permissible for me to go to the kitchen, and suppose there are two paths—an easier and a harder one. Then surely both paths are permissible, and the harder one is less convenient, but that doesn't make the less convenient one supererogatory!

To respond I note that it is wrong to pointlessly impose burdens on any person—including oneself. (Argument 1: We are to love all of the people that God loves, and love prohibits pointless imposition of burdens. But I am one of the people God loves. So I am not permitted to impose pointless burdens on myself. Argument 2: What is vicious is impermissible. But pointless imposition of burdens on myself is contrary to the virtues of prudence and hence vicious.) Thus if there is no benefit to anybody from taking the harder path, the harder path is not permissible, and hence is not supererogatory. But suppose that there is a benefit to someone from the harder path: maybe I become physically or morally stronger, or maybe someone else benefits in some way. Then as long as the harder path is permissible (if the benefit is too trivial as compared to the burden, it might not be), it does seem to be supererogatory.

I do suspect that this account of supererogation only stands a chance if we have duties to self, but that's not a weakness of it.

Some people doubt that there are any supererogatory actions. On the above account, it is quite plausible that there are. First, we need to note that surely there are cases where we choose between multiple permissible actions. And second we note that it is very likely that among such choices there are going to be cases where the permissible options are not all equally convenient. And then the less convenient ones will be supererogatory.

Note that if convenience is what is given up in self-sacrifice, then every supererogatory action involves self-sacrifice. Now, self-sacrifice is relative to some alternative that does not involve such a sacrifice. We might then rephrase our definition of supererogation as:

• An action is supererogatory if and only if it is permissible and it is a self-sacrifice relative to some permissible alternative.

Go back to my initial case of Jones. If Jones did undergo the 201st week of torture, he would be doing something permissible, but it would also be permissible for him not to undergo that torture. However, undergoing the torture is less convenient. Again, this sounds like an absurd understatement, but in our technical sense of "convenient", it's not. It sounds a lot better in the language of self-sacrifice: Jones' undergoing the torture is permissible and is a self-sacrifice relative to the alternative of not undergoing it.

I think the weakness of the account is it does not make clear why supererogation is particularly praiseworthy. Moreover, even if the account happens to be extensionally correct, I don't think it captures what it is that grounds supererogation.

Two items elsewhere

1. First Things online has a piece by Chris Tollefsen and me on lying.
2. I posted an argument against some divine command theories on prosblogion.

More remarks on the logic of commands and permissions

It's interesting that even invalid commands typically result in permissions.  I am a civilian and I successfully impersonate your commanding officer, point to my car, and say: "Blow up this car!"  You do so.  My command was invalid.  You blew up a civilian's vehicle without a valid order to do so.  Now, if it was another civilian's car than mine, you would be wronging that someone else, by blowing up a car without any valid order to do so.  Of course you wouldn't be culpable for the action, but it would still be something wrong, and the civilian might well seek compensation from the army.  But in the case where it is my car, you didn't even inculpably wrong the car's owner.  Why not?  Presumably because by issuing the order, I gave you permission.

So an invalid order can result in a permission.  Consider another case.  Your Department Cchair hands you her cellphone and tells you to phone me and humiliate me.  Suppose there is no sufficient justification for humiliating me.  That's an invalid order, since she can't validly command you to wrong me.  Suppose you do what you're told nonetheless.  You wrong me, then, and maybe even wrong your chair by making her be responsible for a bad outcome.  But you can't be accused of using her phone without her permission.

Notice, though, that in both of these two cases, the permission issued comes "labeled" with a different role than the putative order does.  The Department chair putatively orders you to use her cellphone as chair.  But she permits you to use her cellphone as a private individual (I assume it's her private phone).  As chair, she has no right to permit the use of any private individual's cellphone.  Likewise, I pretend to order you to blow up the car as your commanding officer, but the permission comes from me as a private individual--it can't come from me as your commanding officer because I am not your commanding officer.

So, typically, a command, valid or invalid, issued by an individual x under some role R results in permission by x in x's role as a private individual.  But not always, not even in the case of a valid order.  "The colonel has ordered you to blow up my private car.  I hereby, acting under protest, order you to blow up my private car."  In this case, I didn't give you permission as a private individual to blow up my private car, which has the normative consequence that I may be entitled to compensation from the service for the unpermitted destruction of my property.

This means that the issuing of permission as a private individual needs to be logically separated from giving an order under some other role R.  Normally, by giving an order in an official capacity I implicate private permission, but this implicature can be canceled, say by an "acting under protest" qualifier.

But now we have an interesting question: Likewise, normally by giving an order in role R, I also permit the commanded thing in role R.  Is the connection here just a matter of contingent implicature, so that (a) even if the order is invalid, the permission remains, and (b) the order can be validly given without the permission?

The answers to both questions are negative, I think.

First take (a).  The most obvious counterexample.  I impersonate a commanding officer and order you to shell an enemy installation.  I invalidly command as your commanding officer, but you do not thereby receive your commanding officer's permission, since I am not your commanding officer.  Maybe, though, (a) is true in the special case where the putatively commanding party actually fills the role?  I don't think so.  Suppose that as a an American sergeant I order my men to initiate war against Canada.  Do my men have sergeant permission to make war on Canada?  Certainly not: initiating a war exceeds the authority of a sergeant both in respect of command and in respect of permission, and there is no such thing as sergeant permission to make war on Canada--there may be such a thing as presidential permission to make war, but surely not sergeant permission.  So R-permission doesn't follow automatically from an invalid R-command.

Now take (b).  Can one give a valid order in role R without giving a permission in role R?  I think not.  I don't have a very precise argument, but the basic idea seems to be something like the following (adapting stuff I heard from Mark Murphy).  By attempting to give in role R an order to A, I am attempting to create a normative situation where you have reason in light of your authority connection with R to A.  Creating such a normative situation requires the wiping away of any relevantly R-connected reasons not to A that I can wipe away qua occupier of R.  Without that wiping away, there is no attempt to create the right kind of normative situation, and hence there is no valid order given.  Besides, I can't think of a counterexample to the claim that valid R-command entails valid R-permission.

So the relevant deontic statuses can be rather logically complex.  As CEO, I order you to build a bridge.  You seek all the relevant legally required permissions.  I didn't realize this when I gave the order, but the bridge is close enough to my house that vibration from the construction would endanger my china collection.  Suppose the law requires permission from all private individuals affected by vibration from construction and you failed to seek my permission.  Because I didn't know about the issue, you can't just presume on my private permission, but you do presume, and my china is destroyed.  Then you didn't wrong me qua CEO, but you did wrong me qua private citizen.

Suppose, however, that the law allows you to build as long as you get permission from nine tenths of the citizens affected by any particular kind of harmful effect.  You get permission from the other nine tenths of the relevant citizens, so you don't bother to ask me.  Assuming that I am validly under the authority of this law, and that the law is just, it may well be that you haven't wronged me.  But neither have I permitted the damage to my china.  So you're permitted vis-à-vis me-qua-private-individual to cause the vibration, but you do not have my permission as a private individual to cause the vibration--rather, the law gave you the permission.

Suppose that the vibration causes both property damage and health damage, and that the law requires everyone's permission in respect of health damage, but only nine-tenths' majority permission in respect of property damage.  Then by causing the vibration you (i) don't wrong me qua CEO; (ii) do something not permitted vis-à-vis me-qua-private-individual in respect of health damage; and (iii) have the relevant permissions vis-à-vis me-qua-private-individual in respect of property damage.

There are, no doubt, neater ways of spelling out these normative statuses.

"I am obliged to A at t"

Under the influence of my previous post, no doubt, I found myself wondering about ought and tense. Specifically, whether "I am obliged to A at t" (e.g., "I am obliged to teach at 9:30 am today") is a statement about two times—the present and t—or just a statement about t. On the one-time reading, "I am obliged to A at t" has the logical grammar of "At t, I will be obliged to A." On the two-time reading, the logical grammar is "Now, I am obliged to A at t.

The conclusion was that the two-time reading is correct. Here's an easy argument. The following is intelligible. You are not currently obliged to A tomorrow. But five minutes later you validly promise me to A tomorrow, and after you've made the promise, you are obliged to A tomorrow. Five minutes later, I release you from your promise. You are no longer obliged to A tomorrow. So you can change in respect of what you are obliged to do tomorrow. On the two-time reading, this makes perfect sense. At t₀, it is not yet the case that you're obliged to A at t₃; at t₁ you are obliged to A at t₃; then at t₂ you cease to have this obligation to A at t₃. But if the statement were solely about what happens at t₃, then there could not be any change in respect of it, since what happens at t₃ does not change in this back-and-forth way.[note 1] Moreover, that I am currently obliged to A tomorrow places constraints on what I may permissibly do today.

Self-identification

To identify myself in the relevant sense with some quality is to see that quality as embodying a particularly important feature of myself, as making others who have that feature be potential particularly salient role models for me, etc. This isn't any sort of attempt at an analysis of identification, but simply to hint at which sense of "identify with" I am using. In particular, to identify myself with Q involves existentially more than just identifying myself as having Q, and does not imply a weird claim that I believe I am identical with the Platonic entity Q.

I think I should identify myself with being a child of God, a Christian, a father, a husband, a son or daughter, and maybe a philosopher. I should not identify myself with being big-nosed or lazy or a Frenchman. The last sentence may seem a mix: Maybe I shouldn't identify myself with being a Frenchman, because I am not one. Maybe I shouldn't identify myself with being lazy, because although I am lazy, that is something to fight against rather than identify with. Perhaps I shouldn't identify myself with being big-nosed, because although I have a big nose, and that's nothing to fight against, it's still superficial.

Is there some general story we can tell about what qualities of myself I should identify myself with, a story that will help with the question: Should I identify myself with my ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc.? 

Clearly, the virtuous person identifies with having certain values, and there are certain things that no virtuous person would identify with.

Identifying oneself with a quality, even a quite innocent quality, can carry serious dangers. There is a danger of being guided by stereotypes rather than healthy role models. There is a danger of self-reduction--of not sufficiently seeing oneself in one's individuality (and, correlatively, not sufficiently seeing others in their individuality). There may be a self-curtailing of one's autonomy.

Here is a rough hypothesis. You should only identify with having Q when having Q places you under serious role-obligations whose fulfillment either requires this identification or at least is very difficult without such identification.

Since something that constricts one to fulfill one's serious duties does not objectionably curtail one's autonomy, the autonomy worry about qualities does not apply. Moreover, when the role involves serious role-obligations, the need for role models may outweigh the danger of stereotyping. When the physician identifies herself with being a physician, there is the danger she will rely on stereotypes of her profession, but more likely it will help her fulfill her serious obligations by looking to good role-models. Moreover, one's individuality is particularly importantly expressed in one's serious role-obligations.

The hypothesis fits with what I think about the cases. I think that being a child of God, a Christian, a father, a husband, a son or daughter, and maybe a philosopher each implies serious role-obligations, and the need to fulfill these calls for a self-identification. (My choice to put "father" and "husband" rather than "parent" and "spouse", and "son or daughter" rather than "son", is deliberate and obviously controversial. I am inclined to think the parental and spousal roles are gendered in a way in which filial roles are not, though I am not able to provide a full account. But my bigger points do not depend on this controversial claim.) But being big-nosed, lazy or a Frenchman does not provide me with role-obligations. Being a Frenchman doesn't provide me with role-obligations because I'm not a Frenchman. Being big-nosed is too superficial. Being lazy provides me with an obligation to cease to be lazy, but that is just a special case of a general obligation to be industrious.

An argument form in ethics

Consider the following argument form:

1. It would be good if A were forbidden (respectively, permitted).
2. Therefore, probably, A is forbidden (respectively, permitted).

For instance, it would be bad if one were forbidden to fail to fulfill (apparent) promises made under duress. For then people could place one under duress, and force one to promise to serve them for life, and one would be obliged to keep to that. So, probably, it is permitted to break such (apparent) promises. On the other hand, it would be good if one were obliged, ceteris paribus, to fulfill promises to self, since such promises would be a useful tool for self-mastery. Therefore, probably, one is obliged to keep such promises.

As a technical point, we probably want to boost the antecedent in (1) to say not just that A is forbidden (permitted) but that it is additionally known or at least believed to be such.

Consequentialists will be friendly to a version of the argument form, assuming that there is an inference to be made from something's being believed forbidden to its being less likely to be done.

The interesting question is whether there is anything non-consequentialists can make of this argument. I think divine command theorists can. A good legislator, makes prohibitions that are good for his subjects. So divine command theorists will accept this argument form, and this counts in favor of divine command theory.

Natural law theorists will have to accept the argument form when "good" is restricted to mean "good for the agent", because of the tight link between the right and the perfective of the agent. It takes a little bit more work for natural lawyers to accept the argument form when "good" is not restricted to the agent's own good. If the agents are people, some work can be done by the fact that flourishing in a flourishing community is one of the basic goods. But to get the argument form in all generality, one might need to add theism to natural law (and a sociological matter of fact, natural lawyers overwhelmingly seem to be theists)—for theism will give one reason to think that the natures of the existent beings are in some significant degree of harmony.

What about other non-consequentialist theories? Social contract ones will probably respect this argument form. Kantian ones? Here, things are much less clear. The historical Kant's theory is theistic or at least deistic, and Kantianism plus theism or deism does make this argument form plausible: it is likely that God would arrange things such in the Kingdom of Ends that acting well is connected with flourishing. But a non-theistic Kantianism might be unable to give us good reason to think the argument form is right. That is an argument against non-theistic Kantianism.

One worry. The argument form may suffer from some circularity. After all, as Socrates taught, it's bad to do what is forbidden, simply because it is forbidden. So in evaluating what is good in (1), one needs to avoid taking the mere fact of the action's being forbidden into account.

Utilitarianism's deceptive simplicity

What I have always found most attractive about utilitarianism is its elegant simplicity. What according to the utilitarian is the obligatory thing to do? That which maximizes the good. What is the good? The total welfare of all beings capable of having a welfare. Thus, facts about duty can either be fully characterized in terms of welfare (normative utilitarianism) or will reduce to facts about welfare (metaethical utilitarianism). Moreover, we might further give a full characterization of welfare as pleasure and the absence of pain or as the fulfillment of desire, thereby either fully characterizing facts about welfare in terms of prima facie non-normative facts, or maybe even reducing facts about welfare to these apparently non-normative facts. Thus, utilitarianism gives a characterization (necessary and sufficient conditions) for duty in terms of apparently non-normative facts, and maybe even reduces moral normativity to non-normative facts. This is a lovely theory, though false.

But this illusion of having given a description of all of obligation in non-normative terms is deceptive. There are two ways of putting the problem. One is to invoke uncertainty and the other is to invoke ubiquitous indeterminism (UI) and anti-Molinism (AM). I'll start with the second. According to anti-Molinism, there is no fact of the matter about what would result from a non-actual action when the action is connected to its consequences through an indeterministic chain of causes. Thus, if Frank doesn't take an aspirin, and if aspirin takings are connected indeterministically to headache reliefs, there is no fact of the matter about whether Frank's headache would be relieved by an aspirin. And according to ubiquitous indeterminism, all physical chains of causes are indeterministic. The most common interpretations of quantum mechanics give us reason to believe ubiquitous indeterminism, while libertarianism gives us reason to believe in practically ubiquitous indeterminism (because human beings might intervene in just about any chain of causes.

Of course, this means that given UI and AM, duty cannot simply be equated with the maximization of the good. A more complex formula is needed, and this, I think, introduces a significant degree of freedom into the theory—namely, how we handle the objective probabilities. This, in turn, makes the resulting theory significantly more complex and less elegant.

But, perhaps, it will be retorted that there is a canonical formula, namely maximizing the expected value of each action. This, however, is only of many formulae that could be chosen. Another is maximizing the worst possible outcome (maximin). Yet another is maximizing the best possible outcome (maximax). And there are lots of other formulae available. For instance, for any positive number p, we might say that we should maximize is E[|U|^p sgn U] (sgn x = 1 if x>0 and = -1 if x<0) or maybe E[(pi/2+arctan(U))], where U is utility.

But perhaps maximizing the expected value is the simplest of all plausible formula (maximax is implausible, and minimax is trivialized by the kind of ubiquitous indeterminism we have, which ensures that each action has basically the same set of possible utility outcomes, but with different probabilities). However, maximizing expected value leads to implausibilities even greater than in standard deterministic utilitarianism. It is implausible enough that one should kill one innocent person to save two or three innocent lives. But that one should kill one innocent person for a 51 percent chance of saving two innocent lives or for a 34 percent chance of saving three (which the expected value rule will imply in the case where the future happinesses of all the persons are equal) is quite implausible. Or suppose that there are a hundred people, each of whom is facing an independent 50 percent chance of death. By killing one innocent person, you can reduce the danger of death for each of these hundred people to 48.5 percent. Then, you should do that, according to expected value maximization utilitarianism.

Or let's try a different sort of example. Suppose action A has a 51 percent chance of doubling the total future happiness of the human race (assume this happiness is positive), and a 49 percent chance of painlessly destroying the whole of the human race. Then (at least on the hedonistic version—desire satisfaction would require some more careful considerations), according to expected value maximization utilitarianism, you should do A. But clearly A is an irresponsible action.

There may be ways of avoiding such paradoxes. But any way of avoiding such paradoxes will be far from the elegant simplicity of utilitarianism.

Exactly the same problems come up in a deterministic or Molinist case in situations of uncertainty (and we are always in situations of uncertainty). We need an action-guiding concept of obligation that works in such situations. Whether we call this "subjective obligation" or "obligation" simpliciter, it is needed. And to handle this, we will lose the elegant simplicity of utilitarianism. Consider for instance the following case. Suppose action A is 99% likely in light of the evidence to increase the happiness of the human race by two percent, and has a one percent chance of destroying the human race. Then, you might actually justifiedly believe, maybe even know, that A will increase the happiness of the human race, since 99% likelihood may be enough for belief. But plainly you shouldn't do A in this case. Hence a justified belief that an action would maximize utility, and maybe even knowledge, is not enough.