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Moral Obligation, Self-Interest and the Transitivity Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2016

ALFRED ARCHER
ALFRED ARCHER*
Affiliation:
University of Tilburgatmarcher@gmail.com
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Abstract

Is the relation ‘is a morally permissible alternative to’ transitive? The answer seems to be a straightforward yes. If Act B is a morally permissible alternative to Act A and Act C is a morally permissible alternative to B then how could C fail to be a morally permissible alternative to A? However, there are cases where this transitivity appears problematic. My aim in this article is to provide a solution to this problem. I will then investigate two ways in which we might justify rejecting the transitivity of the ‘is a permissible alternative to’ relation. Next, I will look at Dorsey's solution, which involves a reinterpretation of the intuitions used to generate the problem. I will argue that none of these solutions are fully satisfying, before going on to provide a novel solution to the problem and to argue that it avoids the problems facing the alternative solutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 441 - 464
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Dorsey, Dale, ‘The Supererogatory, and How to Accommodate It’, Utilitas 25 (2013), pp. 355 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–82.

2 Kamm, Frances M., ‘Supererogation and Obligation’, Journal of Philosophy, 82 (1985), pp. 118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–38, and Kamm, Frances M., Morality Mortality Volume 2: Rights, Duties and Status (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 12.

3 A similar point is made in Kamm, ‘Supererogation’, p. 136.

4 This is not to say that there are no moral reasons that support going to the exam but just that taking Jane to hospital is the morally better act of the two.

5 See Dancy, Jonathan, Moral Reasons (Oxford: 1993), p. 138 Google Scholar; Mellema, Gregory, Beyond the Call of Duty: Supererogation, Obligation and Offence (New York, 1991), p. 179 Google Scholar; and Portmore, Douglas, Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 5.

6 Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism, ch. 5.

7 E.g. Horgan, Terence and Timmons, Mark, ‘Untying a Knot from the Inside Out: Reflections on the “Paradox” of Supererogation’, Social Philosophy and Policy 27 (2010), pp. 29–63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elsewhere, I have also argued against the view that all acts of supererogation can be explained in this way. See Alfred Archer, ‘Supererogation, Sacrifice and the Limits of Duty’, Southern Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming). However, I do think that this will explain why some acts of supererogation are not obligatory.

8 Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, p. 366.

9 Kamm, Morality, p. 314.

10 Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, p. 366.

11 This issue is raised by Kamm, Morality, pp. 312–13. Kamm, though, says that it is the relation ‘may take precedence over’ that fails to be transitive.

12 This is the way the problem is raised in Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, p. 367. It is worth noting that Claim Four is necessary but not sufficient for transitivity. Even if we reject the claim that the ‘is a morally permissible alternative relation’ is transitive, then, we might still want to accept Claim Four. Thanks to Alexander Bird for helpful discussion here.

13 See Larry, Temkin, S., Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Rachels, Stuart, ‘Counterexamples to the Transitivity of Better Than’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1998), pp. 71–83 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ingmar Persson also denies the transitivity of the permissibility relation because he denies the transitivity of the betterness relation (though his reasons for denying this relation differ from Temkin's). See Persson, Ingmar, From Morality to the End of Reason: An Essay on Rights, Reasons, and Responsibility (Oxford, 2013), p. 39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Kamm, Morality, pp. 336–7 and Kamm, Frances M., Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm (Oxford, 2007), p. 31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Kamm, Morality, p. 336, and Kamm, Intricate Ethics, p. 31.

16 Kamm Morality, p. 336, and Kamm, Intricate Ethics, p. 31.

17 See Kamm, Intricate Ethics, pp. 14–15.

18 Dancy, Jonathan, Ethics without Principles (Oxford, 2004), pp. 73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–4. It is worth noting that Dancy's account of reasons offers additional resources for responding to this problem. In particular, his distinction between enticing and peremptory reasons might be thought to provide a possible solution to this problem. See Dancy, Jonathan, ‘Enticing Reasons’, Reason and Value: Themes From the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, ed. Wallace, R. Jay, Pettit, Philip, Scheffler, Samuel and Smith, Michael (Oxford 2006), pp. 91–118 Google Scholar. See §VI for a discussion of this distinction.

19 Dancy, Ethics, pp. 73–4.

20 A similar response is made by Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, p. 367 n. 16.

21 McKeever, Sean D. and Ridge, Mike, Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal (Oxford, 2006), p. 28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Elsewhere I argue that Dorsey's attempt to solve the Paradox of Supererogation fails. See Alfred Archer, ‘The Supererogatory and How Not to Accommodate It: A Reply to Dorsey’, Utilitas (forthcoming). For the purposes of this article, though, I only aim to show that Dorsey's solution to the Transitivity Problem fails.

23 Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, p. 371. Dorsey expands his discussion in his forthcoming book The Limits of Moral Authority (Oxford, 2016), but his criticism of Portmore and his own account remain in all important respects the same. For ease of reference I will focus on his published paper.

24 Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, pp. 372–3. See also Dorsey, Dale, ‘Weak Anti-Rationalism and the Demands of Morality’, Noûs 46 (2012), pp. 1–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, pp. 380–1.

26 Dorsey, ‘The Supererogatory’, p. 381. Cf. Heyd, David, Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 115 Google Scholar, 136, 137.

27 See Archer, Alfred, ‘Supererogation and Intentions of the Agent’, Philosophia 41 (2013), pp. 447 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–62, and Mellema, Beyond the Call of Duty, pp. 19–20.

28 Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism, p. 121. Compare Joshua Gert's criteria for rational requiring strength and rational justifying strength in Gert, Joshua, Brute Rationality: Normativity and Human Action (Cambridge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A related distinction is Dancy's distinction between peremptory and enticing reasons. According to Dancy, peremptory reasons are those that ‘are in the business of telling us what to do’ (‘Enticing Reasons’, p. 91). Enticing reasons, on the other hand, ‘are more to do with making an option attractive rather than demanded, required or right’ (Dancy, ‘Enticing Reasons’, p. 91). We might think that this distinction would also provide a solution to the Transitivity Problem. However, it seems plausible to think that all of the possible acts in the three cases are supported by peremptory reasons. Given that Dancy claims that requiring reasons will always defeat peremptory reasons (‘Enticing Reasons.’ p. 99), it doesn't look like this distinction will have sufficient resources to reconcile the four claims made in §I.

29 We might think that Portmore is implicitly committed to this view, as he claims that some moral reasons may possess no moral requiring force (Commonsense Consequentialism, p. 122 n. 6 and p. 135 n. 22).

30 It is worth noting that Portmore appears committed to the existence of this third moral role that reasons can play. In describing moral reasons as playing ‘at least two normative roles’, Portmore actually commits himself to the view that there are at least three different normative roles that such reasons play. This is because he has defined moral reasons as reasons that count for or against performing an act from the moral point of view. This role of counting for or against from the moral point of view must be distinct from a reason having moral requiring force, as Portmore accepts the possibility that a moral reason could have no moral requiring force. Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism, p. 122 n. 6 and p. 135 n. 22.

31 Horgan and Timmons, ‘Untying a Knot’, p. 54. This position is not identical to mine as their ‘merit-conferring role’ looks not only at the reasons favouring the act but also at the reasons on which the agent acted. I take this merit-conferring role to depend on the existence of a moral favouring role.

32 Horgan and Timmons, ‘Untying a Knot’, p. 47.

33 Horgan and Timmons, ‘Untying a Knot’, p. 48.

34 It is clear from Portmore's discussion that he views reasons as capable of playing a moral justifying and a moral requiring role at the same time. See Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism, pp. 121–3.

35 Dreier, Jamie, ‘Why Ethical Satisficing Makes Sense and Rational Satisficing Does Not’, Satisficing and Maximising, ed. Byron, Michael (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–54, at 149.

36 Singer, Peter, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 229 Google Scholar–43.

37 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis, 2001 Google Scholar; first published 1863), p. 59.

38 Kamm, Morality, p. 64.

39 Broome, John, ‘Normative Requirements’, Ratio 12 (1999), pp. 398–419 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 For arguments against this conception of reasons see Dancy, ‘Enticing Reasons’ and Little, Margaret Olivia, ‘In Defence of Non-Deontic Reasons’, Thinking about Reasons: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Jonathan Dancy, ed. Bakhurst, David, Hooker, Brad and Little, Margaret Olivia (Oxford, 2013), pp. 112 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–36.

41 Scanlon, T. M., What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA, 1998), p. 17 Google Scholar.

42 Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism, ch. 5.

43 Thanks to Mike Ridge for raising this objection.

44 Jonathan Way, ‘Reasons as Premises of Good Reasoning’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming). A similar view is defended in Setiya, Kieran, ‘What is a Reason to Act?’, Philosophical Studies 167 (2014), pp. 221 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–35.

45 See Way, ‘Reasons’ for a detailed account of how to give an account of the weight of reasons using this approach.

46 Thanks to audiences at the following events for helpful questions and discussion: the University of Bristol Departmental Seminar, the 2015 Society of Applied Philosophy Annual Conference at the University of Edinburgh, the 2015 Meetings in Ethics and Political Philosophy at the University of Minho, and the 2015 MANCEPT workshop on Duties of Beneficence. Special thanks to Dale Dorsey, Mike Ridge and an anonymous referee for this journal for written comments on a previous draft of this article.