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Notes
For ease of exposition, I will speak loosely of different “senses” of ‘ought’ even though on some contextualist views (e.g., Björnsson & Finlay 2010), it would be more accurate to speak of a single sense of ‘ought’ whose “semantic value” depends on the value of one or more parameters that may vary across different contexts. More on such contextualist views below.
This view is defended by Björnsson and Finlay (2010, pp. 15–16). This paper may be viewed as an updated defense and development of this aspect of Björnsson and Finlay’s position, a defense which takes into consideration a more recent and nuanced approach to characterizing the privileged ‘ought’ of deliberation.
Henceforth, when I speak of “rational deliberation,” it should be understood that I am speaking of rational and morally conscientious deliberation.
The example shares some essential features with the well-known “drug example” of Frank Jackson (1991, pp. 462–463). See also Regan (1980, p. 265, n. 1) and Parfit (2011, p. 159). A differentiating feature of the present example, though, is that given sufficient time and cognitive abilities, someone with Zoe’s evidence could ascertain what move is objectively optimal. This feature helps to illustrate why a proper “subjectivization” of the deliberative ‘ought’ needs to take into account not only limitations in evidence or information, but also limitations in cognitive resources and abilities.
Deliberative monism (as I call it) has been endorsed by Schroeder (2011), Zimmerman (2014), Lord (2015), Way and Whiting (2016), Kiesewetter (2017, Chap. 8), and Graham (2021). For a defense of deliberative pluralism, see (Sepielli, 2018). While I cannot elaborate here, it seems to me that Sepielli does not articulate good reasons for dismissing perspectivist accounts of the deliberative ‘ought,’ with the result that Sepielli’s defense of deliberative pluralism is not fully satisfactory.
My statement of the argument is an adaptation of the argument Kiesewetter gives in (2017, p. 197).
Zimmerman (2014, p. 24) gives a similar argument for the conclusion that there is a single ‘ought’ that has normative force and that guides deliberation.
Several philosophers do defend objectivism about the moral ‘ought’ (e.g., Bykvist, 2011; Graham, 2010, 2021; Thomson 1990, p. 233). To maintain this view with any plausibility, they must hold that the ‘ought’ of rational deliberation very often comes apart from the ‘ought’ of morality. On Graham’s (2021, 44–47) view, for example, Zoe’s deliberation in chess is concerned not with what she morally ‘ought’ to do, but with what she rationally ought to do given her concern as a morally conscientious person to minimize the extent of her moral wrongdoing. But for reasons I will not pursue here, I do not think that objectivism about the moral ‘ought’ is especially plausible.
Numerous philosophers defend a perspectivism about the moral ‘ought’ (e.g., Jackson 1991; Mason, 2013; Zimmerman, 2014). But for reasons that will become clear, a perspectivist account of the moral ‘ought’ does not straightforwardly support any particular account of the focal question(s) of moral deliberation.
Kiesewetter (2017, 200) raises a similar objection and other related worries for any view that which says that the deliberatively relevant considerations are those that satisfy some fixed standard of epistemic accessibility.
I should note that my use of ought fallibilism/ought infallibilism is not meant to correspond to the related but distinct thesis that Way and Whiting (2016) defend and which they call “ought infallibilism.” The infallibilism they defend says that “if you justifiably believe that you ought to φ, you ought to φ.”
While I have only considered two versions of naïve perspectivism, one that privileges the present moment and another that privileges the moment of decision, it is clear that there is no plausible version of naïve perspectivism that privileges some temporal stage that falls between these two extremes.
For Kiesewetter’s explanation and statement of sophisticated perspectivism, see his (2017, 215–19).
Using this terminology, future-looking perspectivism is equivalent to the view that S deliberatively ought to φ at future time t if and only if, when time t arrives, S will have an immediate obligation to φ.
Exactly how large the benefit stemming from tick removal must be in order for options (A) and (B) to both be permissible will partly depend on how to resolve the debate in ethics between “possibilists” and “actualists.” (For an overview of this debate, see (Timmerman & Cohen, 2020).) Possibilists will maintain that options (A) and (B) are both permissible for me if and only if the benefit stemming from tick removal is equal in magnitude to the additional “chess benefit” that would be gained by my choosing (B) and then following the best course of action that is possible for me (one where I resist temptations to distraction and maintain my deliberative focus). Actualists, on the other hand, will say that options (A) and (B) are both permissible if and only if the benefit stemming from tick removal is equal in magnitude to the additional chess benefit resulting from the course of action that I would actually follow were I to choose (B) (a course of action that involves succumbing to certain distractions). What is important, though, is that on both actualists and possibilists views, there will be some way of filling out the details of the case so that option (A) and option (B) are both permissible.
Of course, the evaluative standpoints that serve to focus the various stages of deliberation needn’t be explicitly or precisely characterized. Any attempt to precisely characterize the sense of ‘ought’ that applies at various deliberative stages would likely be artificially precise, providing at best a suitable way of modeling shifts in focus that may be instinctive and executed without full awareness.
Compare Kiesewetter’s (2017, 226) explanation as to why a deliberating subject should normally be glad to receive additional information from an advisor even when learning this information does not make it more likely that the deliberator will arrive at a correct answer to the question that deliberation (allegedly) aims to answer.
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Acknowledgements
For very helpful comments, I am grateful to James Fritz, Hille Paakkunainen, Jim Pryor, Kyle Sorkness, an anonymous referee, and participants in the 4th Annual Chapel Hill Normativity Workshop at the University of North Carolina.
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Pittard, J. The many ‘oughts’ of deliberation. Philos Stud 180, 2617–2637 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01973-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01973-z