Thursday, August 18, 2022

Reasons and permissions

The fact that a large animal is attacking me would give me both permission and reason to kill the animal. On the basis of cases like that, one might hypothesize that permissions to ϕ come from particularly strong reasons to ϕ.

But there are cases where things are quite different. There is an inexpensive watch on a shelf beside me that I am permitted to destroy. What gives me that permission? It is that I own it. But the very thing that gives me permission, my ownership, also gives me a reason not to smash it. So sometimes the same feature of reality that makes ϕing permissible is also a reason against ϕing.

This is a bit odd. For if it were impermissible to destroy the watch, that would be a conclusive reason against the smashing. So it seems that my ownership moves me from having a conclusive reason against smashing to not having a conclusive reason against smashing. Yet it does that while at the same time being a reason not to smash. Interesting.

I suspect there may be an argument against utilitarianism somewhere in the vicinity.

2 comments:

Walter Van den Acker said...

Why would your ownership of the watch in and out of itself give you a reason not to smash it?
Maybe you bought the watch because it looked pretty to you, or maybe because it reminded you of your father. But in that case, the reasons why you bought the watch would be reasons not to destroy it, not your ownership as such.
You could also have bought the watch in order to destroy it, in which case your ownership would clearly not be reason not to destroy it.
The fact that the watch is inexpensive should not matter. If you are permitted to destroy that watch, you are equally permitted to destroy your Rolex.
But your Rolex might give you better reasons not to destroy it, not because of your ownership, but because of its value.

Nik Breiner said...

Interesting, Alex! What do you think of the following?

It's not the case that your owning the watch gives you reason not to smash it. Rather, your reason for not smashing it comes from the value-proposition of that action--i.e. the unsmashed watch has some value; the smashed watch doesn't, and that holds irrespective of ownership status.

Admittedly, owning the watch alters in two ways one's reasons not to smash it. First, as you note, it weakens it (cf. "my ownership moves me from having a conclusive reason against smashing to not having a conclusive reason against smashing.") Second, When the watch belongs to someone else, my (non-permission-related) reason not to smash it is that smashing it deprives *them* of something of value; when I own it, my reason not to smash it is that smashing it will deprive *me* of something of value. I assume though, that for this case, at least, this switch from an other-regarding reason to a self-regarding reason is not really a significant one. So the thing that gives me permission to ϕ with respect to O might alter the nature of my reasons for not ϕing, but I don't see it as giving one a reason against ϕing where one theretofore lacked such a reason.