Online research in philosophy

It seems that the debate between objective and subjective consequentialists might be resolved by appealing to the ought implies can principle. Howard-Snyder has suggested that if one does not know how to do something, cannot do it, and thus one cannot have an obligation to do it. I argue that this depends on an overly rich conception of ability, and that we need to look beyond the ought implies can principle to answer the question. Once we (...) do so, it appears that Prichard might have been at least partly right when he claimed that obligations are tryings. I go some way to defending a diluted version of Prichard's view. (shrink)

Undergraduate students of philosophy are often told that Kant is famous for teaching us that “ought implies can,” and furthermore that this principle implies that it makes no sense to tell someone that they ought to do something if they do not have the ability to execute the action in question. It is thus surprising to find that the words “ought implies can” do not appear conspicuously in popular English translations of Kant’s main moral (...) philosophical texts (such as the Groundwork, and Critique of Practical Reason). I argue that Kant’s writings do not clearly support it, and at points stand opposed to it. One may still attribute the formula “ought implies can” to Kant, but only at the cost of understanding this formula in a nonstandard manner. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the “Ought Implies Can” (OIC) principle, as it is employed in epistemology, particularly in the literature on epistemic norms, is open to counterexamples. I present a counterexample to OIC and discuss several objections to it. If this counterexample works, then it shows that it is possible that S ought to believe that p, even though S cannot believe that p. If this is correct, then OIC, considered from an epistemic point of (...) view, is false, since it is supposed to hold for any S and any p. (shrink)

In moral dilemmas, where circumstances prevent two or more equally justified prima facie ethical requirements from being fulfilled, it is often maintained that, since the agent cannot do both, conjoint obligation is overridden by Kant's principle that ought implies can, but that the agent nevertheless has a disjunctive obligation to perform one of the otherwise obligatory actions or the other. Against this commonly received view, it is demonstrated that although Kant's ought-can principle may avoid logical inconsistency, the (...) principle is incompatible with disjunctive obligation in standard deontic logic, and that it entails paradoxically that none of the conflicting dilemma actions will in fact occur. The principle appears to provide the only plausible safeguard against deontic antinomy, but cannot be admitted because of its collision with considered moral judgments. (shrink)

This essay argues against the commonly held view that "ought" implies "can" in the domain of morality. More specifically, I contest the notion that nobody should ever be held morally responsible for failing to avoid the infliction of any harm that he or she has not been able to avoid through all reasonably feasible precautions in the carrying out of some worthwhile activity. The article explicates the concept of a moral right in order to show why violations of (...) moral rights can occur even when no one has acted wrongfully in any fashion. In so doing, it will effectively be maintaining that strict liability (i.e., liability irrespective of the presence or absence of culpability) exists in morality as well as in law. When we take account of the distinction between exoneration and extenuation, we can see that scrupulously thorough precautions are never sufficient to constitute an excuse in morality. Having made that point with some extended examples, the article goes on to consider a number of possible objections - objections that lead into discussions of some basic distinctions within moral philosophy and some central principles within deontic logic. (shrink)

I argue that Fischer’s attempts to undermine the “Ought” Implies “Can” principle (OIC) fail. I argue both against his construal of the natural motivation for OIC and against his argument for the falsity of OIC. I also consider some attempts to salvage Fischer’s arguments and argue that they can work only if the true moral theory is motive determinative--i.e., it is such that, necessarily, any action performed from a motive which renders one of the blame emotions appropriate is (...) morally impermissible, no matter what other features it has. But, as motive-determinative moral theories are implausible, Fischer’s arguments are not salvageable. (shrink)

Most of the debate about drug testing in the workplace has focused on the right to privacy. Proponents of testing have had to tackle difficult questions concerning the nature, extent, and weight of the privacy rights of employees. This paper examines a different kind of argument — the claim that because corporations are responsible for harms committed by employees while under the influence of drugs, they are entitled to test for drug use. This argument has considerable intuitive appeal, because it (...) seems, at least at first glance, to bypass the issue of privacy rights altogether. The argument turns, not on rights, but on the nature and conditions of responsibility. We may therefore call it an ought implies can argument.In spite of its initial appeal, however, the argument does not succeed in circumventing the claims of privacy rights. Even responsibility for the actions of others does not entitle us to do anything at all to control their behavior; we must look to rights, among other things, to determine what sorts of controls are morally permissible. In addition, the argument rests on unjustified assumptions about the connection between drug testing and the prevention of drug-related harm. (shrink)

Since ought implies can, i.e., one cannot be obligated to do what one cannot do, the question of corporate responsibility cannot be discussed intelligibly without an inquiry into the range of corporate or managerial discretion. Hence, the moral relevance of a theory of the firm. Within classical or neo-classical economic theory, for instance, firms which act other than to maximize profit are eliminated. They cannot do otherwise, and thus either have no obligations at all or only the duty (...) to maximize profit. The thesis of the Managerial Revolution, if true, establishes only that management is free from direct stockholder control. By asserting that corporations have responsibilities to do other than maximize profit, philosophers assume a wide degree of managerial discretion, without considering recent developments in the theory of the firm which suggest that new incentives and constraints radically restrict managerial liberty in a capitalist society. (shrink)

Every kind of ‘ought’ implies some kind of ‘can’ – but there are many kinds of ‘ought’ and even more kinds of ‘can’. In this essay, I shall focus on a particular kind of ‘ought’ – specifically, on what I shall call the “rational ‘ought’”. On every occasion of use, this kind of ‘ought’ is focused on the situation of a particular agent at a particular time; but this kind of ‘ought’ is concerned, (...) not with how that agent acts at that time, but with what beliefs or intentions the agent has at the time, or with the sort of reasoning by means of which the agent at that time forms or revises those beliefs or intentions. (shrink)

The paper argues that applications of the principle that “ought” implies “can” (OIC) depend on normative considerations even if the link between “ought” and “can” is logical in nature. Thus, we should reject a common, “factualist” conception of OIC and endorse weak “normativism”. Even if we use OIC as the rule ““cannot” therefore “not ought””, applying OIC is not a mere matter of facts and logic, as factualists claim, but often draws on “proto-ideals” of moral agency.

The present paper aims to view three ways of thinking time by Emmanuel Levinas. We distinguish existential, historical, and eschatological time demonstrating how they are connected with his central notion of responsibility toward the Other. The following analysis reorders and interprets what Levinas has said in response of Martin Heidegger’s and Hegel’s position. The text does not make any other claims but aims to offer a possible reading and exegesis of Levinas’s philosophy and open a further discussion on these topics.

The aim of this article is twofold. First, it is argued that while the principle of ‘ought implies can’ is certainly plausible in some form, it is tempting to misconstrue it, and that this has happened in the way it has been taken up in some of the current literature. Second, Kant's understanding of the principle is considered. Here it is argued that these problematic conceptions put the principle to work in a way that Kant does not, so (...) that there is an important divergence here which can easily be overlooked. (shrink)

According to ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC), your obligation can never be to do what you cannot do. In a recent attack on OIC, Graham has argued that intuitions about justified intervention can help us determine whether the agent whose actions we use force to prevent would have acted permissibly or not. These intuitions, he suggests, cause trouble for the idea that you can be obligated to refrain from doing what you can refrain from doing. I offer a defense (...) of OIC and explain how non-consequentialists can accommodate his intuitions about his cases. (shrink)

It ought to be that the procrastinating professor accept the task of reviewing a book, and actually review the book, but given that he won't review it, he ought not to accept. That is a genuine moral obligation in light of less than perfect circumstances. I want to seriously entertain the possibility that a set of such obligations form something like a 'practical morality', that which we ought to do given that we're unlikely or unwilling to do (...) much of what ideal morality demands. If it is possible to give a coherent account of these kinds of obligations, then it is possible to entertain the idea that these obligations are in fact what morality demands. The conceptual truths about justice (good, right, fairness) that come from ideals are one thing; the actions that morality demands of people given their actual circumstances are quite another. In this paper I will ask about the kinds of facts that can be used to establish a more circumscribed set of obligations than we get from the orthodox view about moral obligation. (shrink)

Some recent defenses of the 'ought' implies 'can' (OIC) principle try to derive that principle from uncontroversial claims about reasons for action. Reasons for action, it's said, are reasons only for 'potential' actions, which are actions that an agent can perform. Given that 'ought' implies 'reasons', it seems we have our proof of OIC. In this paper, I argue that this latest strategy for defending OIC fails.

I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. (...) In the bulk of the paper I address six objections to OIC: three objections based on putative counterexamples, and three objections based on arguments to the effect that OIC conflicts with the is/ought thesis, the possibility of hard determinism, and the denial of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

I argue for a version of “ought” implies “can”. In particular, I argue that it is necessarily true that if an agent, S, ultima facie ought to do A at T’, then there is a time T* such that S can at T* do A at T’. In support of this principle, I have argued that without it, we cannot explain how it is that, in cases where agents cannot do the best thing, they often ought (...) to do some alternative action – such as get help or do the promised action later; nor can we explain the phenomenon of necessary enablers or the phenomenon of more stringent prima facie obligations overriding less stringent ones in cases where the agent cannot fulfill both. (shrink)

We tend to think every ought statement implies that an actual agent can comply. However, our uses of “ought” suggest that some ought statements fail to have this implication: it is possible that the actual agent ought to do something she has no chance of accomplishing even if she intends to do so. Rather they imply that if the agent and her circumstances were defect-free, she could and would perform the prescribed action. There are two (...) types of evaluation for ought statements. One type of evaluation addresses the question of what to do given the agent’s peculiar capacity and condition. The point of this evaluation is giving personalized action guidance, and so recommends only what the actual agent can do under the actual condition. Another type of evaluation addresses a different question, that of what to do as a type of agents. The point of this evaluation is the coordination of individuals by selecting a shared norm for them: the standard that prescribes all of them to perform the same action and classifies for all of them the same traits as defect. This is why it endorses the ought statements that some actual agents cannot comply with, but that a normal agent could and would do so under normal conditions. (shrink)

Cranston argued that scarcity makes universal welfare rights impossible. After showing that this argument cannot be avoided by denying scarcity, I consider four challenges to the argument which accept the possibility of conflicts between the duties implied by rights. The first denies the agglomeration principle; the second embraces conflicts of duties; the third affirms the violability of all rights-based duties; and the fourth denies that duties to compensate are overriding. I argue that all four challenges to the scarcity argument are (...) unsuccessful. I then discuss Eddy’s recent challenge, which makes welfare rights context dependent, but I argue that this also fails because it makes rights unknowable. I conclude that the scarcity argument, restated in the light of the discussion, shows that universal welfare rights, as ordinarily understood, are impossible and I explain the philosophical and practical significance of this conclusion. (shrink)

I argue that, because of scarcity, the right to life cannot imply an obligation on others to save the life of the right-holder, and that collectivising resources for health care not only ensures that resources are used inefficiently and inappropriately but also removes from people the authority to make decisions for themselves about matters of health, life and death.

William Alston’s argument against the deontological conception of epistemic justification is a classic—and much debated—piece of contemporary epistemology. At the heart of Alston’s argument, however, lies a very simple mistake which, surprisingly, appears to have gone unnoticed in the vast literature now devoted to the argument. After having shown why some of the standard responses to Alston’s argument don’t work, we elucidate the mistake and offer a hypothesis as to why it has escaped attention.

Ought Implies Kant defends Kantianism via a critical examination of consequentialism. The latter is shown to be untenable on epistemic grounds; meanwhile, the charge that Kantianism is really consequentialism in disguise is refuted. The book also presents a novel interpretation of Kantianism as according direct duties to other animals.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that 'ought' does not entail 'can', but instead conversationally implicates it. I argue that Sinnott-Armstrong is actually committed to a hybrid view about the relation between 'ought' and 'can'. I then give a tensed formulation of the view that 'ought' entails 'can' that deals with Sinnott-Armstrong's argument and that is more unified than Sinnott-Armstrong's view.

‘Ought’ is a very important and common word that everybody seems to know how to use perfectly well. But it has proven stubbornly resistant to definition and seems to have indefinitely many different senses. This emerges in a particularly clear and acute way from a puzzle that continues to vex philosophers, the Detaching problem. I first explore this problem, and how extant attempts to solve it either fail or have to indulge rampant proliferation of senses of ‘ought.’ I (...) then propose a unifying semantic analysis of ‘ought,’ explaining how it can accommodate the many different uses to which ‘ought’ is put, including not only the diverse normative ‘oughts,’ but also the nonnormative ‘ought.’ The central idea is that the nonnormative ‘ought’ is basic, and can be analyzed in terms of comparative probability. I analyze normative ‘oughts’ as teleological applications of the comparative probabilistic ‘ought’, and apply the analysis to the Detaching problem, showing how it offers a straightforward unifying solution. (shrink)

Virtue ethicists sometimes say that a right action is what a virtuous person would do, characteristically, in the circumstances. But some have objected recently that right action cannot be defined as what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances because there are circumstances in which a right action is possible but in which no virtuous person would be found. This objection moves from the premise that a given person ought to do an action that no virtuous person would (...) do, to the conclusion that the action is a right action. I demon-strate that virtue ethicists distinguish “ought” from “right” and reject the assumption that “ought” implies “right.” I then show how their rejection of that assumption blocks this “right but not virtuous” objection. I conclude by showing how the thesis that “ought” does not imply “right” can clarify a further dispute in virtue ethics regarding whether “ought” implies “can.”. (shrink)

“Nature knows best” is reconsidered from an ecological perspective which suggests that we ought to follow nature. The phrase “follow nature” has many meanings. In an absolute law-of-nature sense, persons invariably and necessarily act in accordance with natural laws, and thus cannot but follow nature. In an artifactual sense, all deliberate human conduct is viewed as unnatural, and thus it is impossible to follow nature. As a result, the answer to the question, whether we can and ought to (...) follow nature, must be sought in a relative sense according to which human conduct is sometimes more and sometimes less natural. Four specific relative senses are examined: a homeostatic sense, an imitative ethical sense, an axiological sense, and a tutorial sense. Nature can be followed in a homeostatic sense in which human conduct utilizes naturallaws for our well-being in a stable environment, but this following is nonmoral since the moral elements can be separated from it. Nature cannot be followed in an imitative ethical sense because nature itself is either amoral or, by some accounts, immoral. Guidance for inter-human ethical conduct, therefore, must be sought not in nature, but in human culture. Nevertheless, in an axiological sense, persons can and ought to follow nature by viewing it as an object of orienting interest and value. In this connection, three environments are distinguished for human well-being in whichwe can and ought to participate-the urban, the rural, and the wild. Finally, in a tutorial sense, persons can and ought to follow nature by letting it teach us son1ething of our human role, our place, and our appropriate character in the natural system as a whole. In this last sense, "following nature" is commended to anyone who seeks in his human conduct to maintain a good fit with the natural environment-a sense of following nature involving both efficiency and wisdom. (shrink)

“Nature knows best” is reconsidered from an ecological perspective which suggests that we ought to follow nature. The phrase “follow nature” has many meanings. In an absolute law-of-nature sense, persons invariably and necessarily act in accordance with natural laws, and thus cannot but follow nature. In an artifactual sense, all deliberate human conduct is viewed as unnatural, and thus it is impossible to follow nature. As a result, the answer to the question, whether we can and ought to (...) follow nature, must be sought in a relative sense according to which human conduct is sometimes more and sometimes less natural. Four specific relative senses are examined: a homeostatic sense, an imitative ethical sense, an axiological sense, and a tutorial sense. Nature can be followed in a homeostatic sense in which human conduct utilizes naturallaws for our well-being in a stable environment, but this following is nonmoral since the moral elements can be separated from it. Nature cannot be followed in an imitative ethical sense because nature itself is either amoral or, by some accounts, immoral. Guidance for inter-human ethical conduct, therefore, must be sought not in nature, but in human culture. Nevertheless, in an axiological sense, persons can and ought to follow nature by viewing it as an object of orienting interest and value. In this connection, three environments are distinguished for human well-being in whichwe can and ought to participate-the urban, the rural, and the wild. Finally, in a tutorial sense, persons can and ought to follow nature by letting it teach us son1ething of our human role, our place, and our appropriate character in the natural system as a whole. In this last sense, "following nature" is commended to anyone who seeks in his human conduct to maintain a good fit with the natural environment-a sense of following nature involving both efficiency and wisdom. (shrink)

Frances Howard-Snyder has argued that objective consequentialism violates the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In most situations, she claims, we cannot produce the best consequences available, although objective consequentialism says that we ought to do so. Here I try to show that Howard-Snyder's argument is unsound. The claim that we typically cannot produce the best consequences available is doubtful. And even if there is a sense of ‘producing the best consequences’ in which we cannot do (...) so, objective consequentialism does not entail that we ought, in this sense, to produce the best consequences. (shrink)

Does ?ought? imply ?can? for collectives' obligations? In this paper I want to establish two things. The first, what a collective obligation means for members of the collective. The second, how collective ability can be ascertained. I argue that there are four general kinds of obligation, which devolve from collectives to members in different ways, and I give an account of the distribution of obligation from collectives to members for each of these kinds. One implication of understanding collective obligation (...) and ability in the proposed way is that a group can be blameworthy for failing to realize its obligation even when no member of the group is blameworthy for failing to realize her obligation. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s views invite a modest, functionalist account of mental states and regularities, or more specifically a causal/computational, representational theory of the mind (CRTT). It is only by understandingWittgenstein’s remarks in the context of a theory like CRTT that his insights have any real force; and it is only by recognizing those insights that CRTT can begin to account for sensations and our thoughts about them. For instance, Wittgenstein’s (in)famous remark that “an inner process stands in need of outward criteria” (PI:§580), (...) so implausible read behaviorally, is entirely plausible if the “outward” is allowed to include computational facts about our brains. But what is especially penetrating about Wittgenstein’s discussion is his unique diagnosis of our puzzlement in this area, in particular, his suggestion that it is due to our captivation by “pictures” whose application to reality is left crucially under-specified. It is only by understanding. What sustains the naive picture is not a captivation by language, but, at least in part, our largely involuntary reactions to things that look and act like our conspecifics. We project a property into them correlative to that reaction in ourselves, and are, indeed, unwilling to project it into things that do not induce that reaction. (shrink)

A principle that many have found attractive is one that goes by the name “'Ought' Implies 'Can'.” According to this principle, one morally ought to do something only if one can do it. This essay has two goals: to show that the principle is false and to undermine the motivations that have been offered for it. Toward the end, a proposal about moral obligation according to which something like a restricted version of 'Ought' Implies 'Can' (...) is true is floated. Though no full-fledged argument for this proposal is offered, that it fits with a rather natural and intuitive picture of the structure of morality and seems to explain certain salient features of the debate over whether the principle is true, goes some way toward recommending it. (shrink)

I assess a series of arguments intended to show that 'ought' implies 'can'. Two are rooted in uses of 'ought' in contexts of deliberation and command. A third draws on the distinctive resources of deontic logic. I show that, in each case, the arguments leave scope for forms of infinite moral consciousness—forms of moral consciousness in which a moral obligation retains its authority even in the face of the conviction that the obligation is impossible to fulfil. In (...) this respect the paper sides with Martin Luther against Erasmus and Kant. (shrink)

: A familiar criticism of bioethics charges it with being more conceptual than practical—having little application to the "real world." In order to answer its critics and keep its feet on the ground, bioethics must utilize the social sciences more effectively. Empirical research can provide the bridge between conceiving a moral vision of a better world, and actually enacting it.

Abstract This article seeks to reconcile a fundamental normative tension that underlies most international reconstruction efforts in war-torn societies: on the one hand, substantial outside interference in the domestic affairs of such societies may seem desirable to secure political stability, set up inclusive governance structures, and protect basic human rights; on the other hand, such interference is inherently paternalistic—and thus problematic—since it limits the policy options and broader freedom of maneuver of domestic political actors. I argue that for paternalistic interference (...) in foreign countries to be justified, it needs to be strictly proportional to domestic impediments to self-government and basic rights protection. Based on this claim, I model different degrees of interference that are admissible at particular stages of the postwar reconstruction process. Extrapolating from John Rawls's Law of Peoples , I suggest that full-scale international trusteeship can be justified only so long as conditions on the ground remain "outlaw"—that is, so long as security remains volatile and basic rights, including the right to life, are systematically threatened. Once basic security has been reestablished, a lower degree of interference continues to be justified, until new domestic governance structures become entirely self-sustaining. During this second phase of postwar reconstruction, external actors ideally ought to share responsibility for law-enforcement and administration with domestic authorities, which implies in practice that domestic and international officials should jointly approve all major decisions. I discuss various approximations of such shared responsibility in recent international peace operations and speculate about how best to ensure a timely transition toward full domestic ownership. (shrink)

From the dictum ought implies can , it has been argued that no account of belief's normativity can avoid the unpalatable result that, for unbelievable propositions such as "It is raining and nobody believes that it is raining", one ought not to believe them even if true. In this article, I argue that this move only succeeds on a faulty assumption about the conjunction of doxastic "oughts.".

In this paper I look at three challenges to the very possibility of an ethics of belief and then show how they can be met. The first challenge, from Thomas Kelly, says that epistemic rationality is not (merely) a form of instrumental rationality. If this claim is true, then it will be difficult to develop an ethics of belief that does not run afoul of naturalism. The second challenge is the Non-Voluntarism Argument, which holds that because we cannot believe at (...) will and because ought implies can, there can be no ethics of belief. The third challenge comes from Richard Feldman, who claims that there is no such thing as ought all-things-considered. He says, for example, that moral oughts can be weighed against other moral oughts and that epistemic oughts can be compared to each other, but that there is no way to weigh moral oughts against epistemic oughts. If this is true, then norms about what one ought to believe are not nearly as important as one might have hoped or as philosophers have traditionally thought. In answering these three challenges, I try to show how and why the project of developing epistemic norms might be a promising avenue of research, despite claims to the contrary. (shrink)

Objective consequentialism is often criticized because it is impossible to know which of our actions will have the best consequences. Why exactly does this undermine objective consequentialism? I offer a new link between the claim that our knowledge of the future is limited and the rejection of objective consequentialism: that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and we cannot produce the best consequences available to us. I support this apparently paradoxical contention by way of an analogy. I cannot beat Karpov at (...) chess in spite of the fact that I can make each of many series of moves, at least one of which would beat him. I then respond to a series of objections. In the process I develop an account of the ‘can’ of ability. I conclude with some remarks about the bearing this attack has on subjective consequentialism. (shrink)

In Morals From Motives, Michael Slote defends an agent-based theory of right action according to which right acts are those that express virtuous motives like benevolence or care. Critics have claimed that Slote’s view— and agent-based views more generally— cannot account for several basic tenets of commonsense morality. In particular, the critics maintain that agent-based theories: (i) violate the deontic axiom that ought implies can , (ii) cannot allow for a person’s doing the right thing for the wrong (...) reason, and (iii) do not yield clear verdicts in a number of cases involving conflicting motives and motivational over-determination . In this paper I develop a new agent-based theory of right action designed to avoid the problems presented for Slote’s view. This view makes morally right action a matter of expressing an optimal balance of virtue over vice and commands agents in each situation to improve their degree of excellence to the greatest extent possible. (shrink)

This paper begins with the idea that we can learn a good deal about promising by examining the conditions and norms that govern promise- breaking. Sometimes promises are broken as a deliberate plan, other times they are broken because they are simply incompatible with other, more signifi cant moral norms, or because it becomes clear that they are impossible to keep. There are cases where people make promises that are actually incompatible with each other. Politicians, for example, often give such (...) incompatible promises, either intentionally, or by making too many commitments, some of which turn out to be incompatible. In making such promises, agents guarantee that at least one promise be broken. Is the agent who makes incompatible promises under any obli- gation? If ‘ought’ implies ‘can,’ and promises entail obligations, then it seems that one cannot, in fact, make promises one cannot keep. This paper explores the problem by drawing analogies between incompatible promises and other promises that cannot be kept. It suggests that we can deny ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ strictly speaking, but recognize that there is a practical limit on what the agent can be called on to do. On this view, even promises to do the impossible commit the agent. Similarly, politi- cians who promise too much are still obligated to do as promised. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum has claimed that it is possible for a moral agent to be confronted, through no fault of his own, with an irresolvable conflict between his moral duties; and cites Kant as someone who takes the opposing view. Kant did indeed take the view that conflict between duties was inconceivable, but Nussbaum has failed to grasp his main reason for doing so, namely the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. When that principle is properly understood it can be (...) seen that a Kantian account, or one drawing upon Kantian resources, can make more sense of our being confronted, seemingly, by incompatible duties than the account Nussbaum herself offers. (shrink)

Let the Guidance Constraint be the following norm for evaluating ethical theories: Other things being at least roughly equal, ethical theories are better to the extent that they provide adequate moral guidance. I offer an account of why ethical theories are subject to the Guidance Constraint, if indeed they are. We can explain central facts about adequate moral guidance, and their relevance to ethical theory, by appealing to certain forms of autonomy and fairness. This explanation is better than explanations that (...) feature versions of the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In closing, I address the objection that my account is questionable because it makes ethical theories subject not merely to purely theoretical but also to morally substantive norms. (Published Online August 21 2006). (shrink)

In A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics , Daniel Doviak develops a novel agent-based theory of right action that treats the rightness (or deontic status) of an action as a matter of the action’s net intrinsic virtue value (net-IVV)—that is, its balance of virtue over vice. This view is designed to accommodate three basic tenets of commonsense morality: (i) the maxim that “ought” implies “can,” (ii) the idea that a person can do the right thing for the (...) wrong reason, and (iii) the idea that a virtuous person can have “mixed motives.” In this paper, I argue that Doviak’s account makes an important contribution to agent-based virtue ethics, but it needs to be supplemented with a consequentialist account of the efficacy of well-motivated actions—that is, it should be transformed into a mixed (motives-consequences) account, while retaining its net-IVV calculus. This is because I believe that there are right-making properties external to an agent’s psychology which it is important to take into account, especially when an agent’s actions negatively affect other people. To incorporate this intuition, I add to Doviak’s net-IVV calculus a scale for outcomes . The result is a mixed view which accommodates tenets (ii) and (iii) above, but allows for (i) to fail in certain cases. I argue that, rather than being a defect, this allowance is an asset because our intuitions about ought-implies-can break down in cases where an agent is grossly misguided, and our theory should track these intuitions. (shrink)

According to Slote's ``agent-based'' virtue ethics, the rightness orwrongness of an act is determined by the motive it expresses. Thistheory has a problem with cases where an agent can do her duty onlyby expressing some vicious motive and thereby acting wrongly. In sucha situation, an agent can only act wrongly; hence, the theory seemsincompatible with the maxim that `ought' implies `can'. I argue thatSlote's attempt to circumvent this problem by appealing to compatibilism is inadequate. In a wide range (...) of psychologically realistic cases, an agent's effective choice will be between failingto do her duty and doing it from inferior motives. Then anythingshe can do will be wrong, according to the agent-based theory,contrary to the maxim Slote wishes to preserve. (shrink)

The two dogmas at issue are the Humean dogma that “‘is’ statements do not imply ‘ought’ statements” and the Kantian dogma that “‘ought’ statements imply ‘can’” statements. The extant literature concludes these logically contradict each other. On the contrary, it is argued here that while there is no derivable formal contradiction, the juxtaposition of the dogmas manifests a philosophical disagreement over how to understand the logic of prescriptions. This disagreement bears on how to understand current metaethical (...) debate between realists and non-realists about morality in a way not heretofore investigated. The conclusion is that realists have the resources to account for both dogmas, while non-realists, if they strictly adhere to the “is”/“ought” gap, cannot give an adequate account of why “ought” implies “can”. (shrink)

Most moral philosophers agree that if a moral agent is incapable of performing some act ф because of a physical incapacity, then they do not have a reason to ф. Most also claim that if an agent is incapable of ф-ing due to a psychological incapacity, brought about by, for example, an obsession or phobia, then this does not preclude them from having a reason to ф. This is because the ‘ought implies can’ principle is usually interpreted as (...) a claim about physical, rather than psychological, capacities. In this paper I argue for an opposing view: if we don’t have reasons to do things that we are physically incapable of doing, then neither do we have reasons to do things we are psychologically incapable of doing. I also argue that extending the ‘ought implies can’ principle to psychological capacities makes the principle more attractive. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne argues that belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition for faith, and he also argues that, while faith is voluntary, belief is involuntary. This essay is concerned with the tension arising from the involuntary aspect of faith, the Christian doctrine that human beings have an obligation to exercise faith, and the moral claim that people are only responsible for actions where they have the ability to do otherwise. Put more concisely, the problem concerns the coherence of the (...) following claims: (1) one cannot have faith, (2) one has an obligation to have faith, and (3) ought implies can. To solve this dilemma, I offer three solutions that I believe have the philosophical resources to demonstrate the consistency of these claims. Thus, I defend the claim that it is logically possible for a person to be culpable for an involuntary failure to have faith in God. (shrink)

Many readers have viewed William James's "The Will to Believe" as his most distinctive and resonating lecture. Yet for all the scholarly attention it has received, the complexities of the "pragmatic defence," and the issues it raises concerning evidential and pragmatic reasoning are still often misunderstood. In this paper I explicate a neglected "core" argument tied closely to James's thesis statement, and provide charts and other tools useful in presenting James' lecture in the philosophy classroom. This argument, based on the (...) Ought-Implies-Can principle, is useful for highlighting differences between James's pragmatist and Clifford's evidentialist perspective. I first reconstruct this implicit Ought-Implies-Can argument in modus tollens form, and follow this with a Chart intended to clarify various steps James takes in support of the crucial second premise. My purpose is primarily to explicate this neglected argument in a reconstructed, "bare-bones" fashion for classroom study and evaluation. (shrink)

What follows is a taxonomy of arguments that regresses of inferential justification are vicious. They fall out into four general classes: (A) conceptual arguments from incompleteness, (B) conceptual arguments from arbitrariness, (C) ought-implies-can arguments from human quantitative incapacities, and (D) ought-implies can arguments from human qualitative incapacities. They fail with a developed theory of “infinitism” consistent with valuational pluralism and modest epistemic foundationalism.