Abstract
As standardly understood, for an act to be optional is for it to be permissible but not required. Supererogatory acts are commonly taken to be optional in this way. In “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost”, Claire Benn rejects this common view: she argues that optionality so understood—permissible but not required—cannot be the sort of optionality involved in supererogation. As an alternative, she offers a novel account of the optionality of supererogatory acts: the “comparative cost” account. In this paper, we rebut Benn’s objection to the common view that supererogation involves optionality as standardly understood. We also point out that her objection, if it worked, would equally undermine her own comparative cost proposal.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Of course, even if optionality is necessary for supererogation, it isn’t sufficient. Lots of actions are optional but not supererogatory (e.g., investing in bitcoin).
Throughout we (following Benn) use “required”, “duty”, “obligation”, “have to”, and the like as synonyms, and likewise for other clusters of related moral status terms like “wrong”, “forbidden”, “prohibited”, etc., or “permissible”, “okay”, and so on.
Claire Benn, “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost,” Philosophical Studies 175 (2018): 2399–2417.
This is our summary, not Benn’s.
In the first sentence of this passage, Benn seems to refer to the act token as required. But it isn’t required, as she herself immediately points out. We thus charitably interpret that first sentence as being about what makes the act token fulfill a requirement. Nevertheless, as we note in Sect. 4, Benn does seem to have fallen prey to the very confusion she herself here warns against, namely, the confusion of treating an act’s fulfilling a duty as tantamount to its being a duty.
This is Benn’s own formulation. See Ibid., 2402.
Ibid.
Ibid.
In deontic logic, there is a principle sometimes called “monotonicity” (see, e.g., Daniel Muñoz’s & Jack Spencer’s “Knowledge of Objective ‘Oughts’: Monotonicity and the New Miners Puzzle,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2021): 77–91) and sometimes “deontic inheritance” (see Douglas Portmore’s Opting for the Best: Oughts and Options, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) according to which, if you ought to do A, and doing A entails doing B, then you ought to do B. The mistake of treating duty-fulfillers as duties can be understood as assuming an inversion of that principle: that if you ought to do B, and doing A entails doing B, then you ought to do A (at least where doing A entails doing B because B is a type of which A is a token). Whatever the status of monotonicity—we take no position on it here—this inversion is clearly a non-starter. (We thank an anonymous referee for pointing out the link to monotonicity.)
A qualification is in order here. The relevant moral statuses cannot be taken as pro tanto but must be taken as all things considered. See footnote 12.
Importantly, the Best View allows that act tokens which fulfill duties can be duties, provided that they are the only way of fulfilling those duties. We suspect there are no such act tokens—none that are the sole way of fulfilling a duty. If that’s right then there are no required act tokens. Benn seems to agree, as she says “we always fulfil our obligations in ways that are not required” (2403). We do not insist on this point, however. Whether it’s so depends on deep issues about the individuation of act tokens and the alternatives open to agents at a time. Fortunately, we needn’t wade into those depths here. Doing so would be relevant only if problematic implications might be in the offing. But we see no prospect of that. The Best View tells us that whether there are required act tokens depends on a fact about which it is silent: whether any act token ever uniquely fulfills a duty. If so, the Best View entails that there are required act tokens; if not, it entails that there aren’t. And isn’t that exactly what should settle the matter?
It is pro tanto required, but as we mention in note 10 above, the sort of optionalitynon-duty at stake is all things considered. An act that would be required were it costless may be supererogatory given the cost. What’s crucial for optionalitynon-duty, then, is that the act not be the only token of any all things considered required type. (Note that these types will at least typically be more complex than the most salient pro tanto required types, since they’ll have to specify both the presence and absence of morally relevant factors.) We note that the same point applies to the part of the Best View which excludes being of any forbidden type. Acts of a pro tanto forbidden type can be optionalitynon-duty; e.g., failing to repay a $1 debt. What’s crucial for optionalitynon-duty is that an act not be of any all things considered forbidden type.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fileva, I., Tresan, J. The optionality of supererogatory acts is just what you think it is: a reply to Benn. Philos Stud 179, 2155–2166 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01756-4
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01756-4