Abstract
This paper considers a pair of mutually puzzling first-order intuitions: a case in which it seems both supererogatory for an agent to perform a specified act, and also seems as though were that act not performed, this would have been a failure of moral obligations. I argue that these intuitive reactions are difficult to dislodge and resist accommodation by standard accounts of supererogation. I then argue that this puzzle motivates a new form of supererogatory action: action that, though morally required, is responding to moral circumstances or facts that the ordinary upright agent would typically overlook.
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Notes
- 1.
Darwall (2006), 292.
- 2.
I say “in most cases” because, while many argue that the appropriateness of moral indignation waits on moral failure in all cases, I have argued that this is false (Dorsey, 2018). But the argument I offer to this end has no bearing on the case in question. The argument I offer suggests that when a person is engaged in a specific sort of norm-governed practice, even if this practice is not normatively weighty, this person can be subject to reactive attitudes such as indignation without also succumbing to normative error. But nothing like that seems to be occurring in this case; walking down a staircase in the middle of a train station does not seem to be the sort of norm-governed practice that can justify indignation without normative significance.
- 3.
See note 2.
- 4.
Thanks to David Heyd for this excellent suggestion.
- 5.
As a historical aside, Dreier’s view is clearly anticipated in the dual theories of virtue and justice proposed by Henry Home, Lord Kames as part of a criticism of the moral sense theorists, such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Cf. Kames and Home (1729), 31–33.
- 6.
Pace excellent criticisms by, e.g., Archer (2016).
- 7.
Absent, for instance, special practices in which one is engaged, cf. note 2.
- 8.
Schwartz (2000).
- 9.
Cf. most importantly Kahneman (2011).
- 10.
Csikszentmihalyi et al. (2014).
- 11.
Darley and Batson (1973).
- 12.
Cf. Schwartz (2000), 79–80.
- 13.
Of course, this is not to say that we cannot train ourselves over time, given exposure to moral facts or other sets of facts to may more attention to them. Surely this is possible. But whether in any particular case I am attuned to f will not be determined by the presence of f in that case—it will be because I either am, or am not, attuned to it.
- 14.
- 15.
Thanks once again to David Heyd for this response.
- 16.
I’d like to thank Brad Cokelet, David Heyd, Jason Raibley, and Nancy Snow for helpful comments on these ideas.
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Dorsey, D. (2023). The Staircase Scene: Supererogation and Moral Attunement. In: Heyd, D. (eds) Handbook of Supererogation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3633-5_6
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