Abstract
A common view of the relation between oughts and reasons is that you ought to do something if and only if that is what you have most reason to do. One challenge to this comes from what Jonathan Dancy calls ‘enticing reasons.’ Dancy argues that enticing reasons never contribute to oughts and that it is false that if the only reasons in play are enticing reasons then you ought to do what you have most reason to do. After explaining how enticing reasons supposedly work and why accepting them may appear attractive, I firstly show why we are not committed to accepting them into our conceptual framework and then argue that no reasons work in the way enticing reasons are claimed to. Thus we should reject the category of enticing reasons entirely.
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Notes
For some critical discussion of the notion, orthogonal to my own, see Greenspan 2005: 390ff.
Note that he also thinks that the conceptual structure of a reason is itself that of a relation (holding between facts, agents and actions) rather than, say, denoting some discrete non-relational normative item (see e.g. Dancy 2004b: 29). This idea, which concerns the internal or conceptual make-up of a reason (and upon which we agree), is distinct from the further claim that there are two sorts of reason relation (enticing and peremptory) differentiated by the conceptual relations in which they stand to other normative concepts. I shall follow Dancy in treating reasons as relations. But neither the general notion of an enticing reason, nor the critical discussion to follow, turns on these more specific views about the conceptual structure and/or ontology of reasons.
To my mind wisely, since although that may make for a sharper evaluative/deontic contrast, it would also rule out, by means of a structural claim about the relation between oughts and reasons, not only many utilitarian positions but many deontological ones too. Further argument would certainly be required to show that reasons from the evaluative side can never contribute to oughts. I shall therefore assume that enticing reasons are a subset of reasons from the evaluative side. There is a further dialectical reason why Dancy must hold that at least some reasons from the evaluative side can contribute to oughts. If no reasons from the evaluative side could ever contribute to oughts, it would follow by fiat that all such reasons were enticing. Absent some explanation, this presupposes the very issue at hand—namely whether there are any reasons that cannot so contribute.
Broome continues, “I recently advised a guest that he ought to try a mangosteen, on the grounds that mangosteens taste delicious. That they taste delicious would have to count for Dancy as an enticing reason. Nevertheless, I believe I spoke correctly. I did not think my guest was obliged to try a mangosteen; ‘obliged’ is more heavyweight. I did think he ought to try one, but I simultaneously thought it would be permissible for him not to. Dancy generously points out that ‘permissible’ can be used in a way that makes these thoughts consistent” (Broome 2004: 38–9).
Broome may deny that all oughts are a function of pro tanto reasons (he doubts that wide-scope oughts to do with requirements on combinations are); but he agrees that oughts admitting of a weighing explanation (those under consideration here) are. See Broome 2004: 36ff.
There may, depending on one’s views about morality and demandingness, be substantive issues concerning whether, given the way the world actually is, we ever are permitted to pursue actions lacking great (moral) importance. (Dancy of course allows that there are, by allowing that such actions are actions we can have most reason to perform.) But even if true, this does not affect the structural point to follow about the relevant conceptual connections.
We can therefore agree that you could be silly for failing to do what you take yourself to have most reason to do. How silly you are, as well as how criticisable in other ways, depends on the nature and gravity of the failure. There is a further oddity with Dancy’s suggestion, however. Although there may well be cases where you are permitted to be silly, given that Dancy here uses silliness as a category of criticism, it is not so clear why you would be criticisable for doing what you are permitted not to do; indeed, if you are criticisable, we may instead think that you are not as you ought to be. I thank an anonymous referee for this point.
Which oughts actually are heavyweight and lightweight will therefore depend on one’s substantive normative theory about which actions are most strongly favoured. Nonetheless, some examples may illustrate the idea: Perhaps you ought in the more heavyweight sense to attend the interview if not doing so would be extremely imprudent, whereas the ought is lighter the less imprudent your failure to attend becomes. Maybe honouring an important promise or helping someone in dire need is something you ought (heavyweight) to do, whereas keeping a trivial promise or helping someone who needs no help could be something you ought to do in a lighterweight sense. Or, when choosing between an intensely pleasurable activity and a significantly less pleasurable one, you ought (heavyweight) to take the more pleasurable course; while less significant pleasures you ought to pursue yield only lightweight oughts. In each case, how heavy or light the associated ought is depends on the importance of the action it favours, as reflected by the combined strength of the reasons generating it (plus, in some contexts, how strongly the alternatives are favoured). A good indicator for the seriousness of the ought is the strength and type of criticism merited by a failure to do as it specifies; I leave open the Euthyphronic (and other meta-normative) issues that raises.
The options are restricted merely for simplicity of exposition. The points to follow hold even if there are intermediate options less pleasurable than fing but more pleasurable than not fing, and less painful than ying but more painful than not ying. Such complications are addressed in the third objection.
I am not assuming, here or elsewhere, that one ought always to maximise pleasure (or the good) and minimise pain (or the bad)—claims which Dancy’s holism about reasons and particularism clearly deny (see Dancy 2004b: Parts I & II). The more modest assumption, acceptable to many consequentialists and deontologists (including Dancy), is that it can be the case that one ought to do so.
Dancy explicitly appeals to satisficing at 2004a: 95, 117. Note his following remark: “An enticing reason (or a set of enticing reasons) is sufficient if it makes its option worth doing. There may be more than one thing that is worth doing… An action that is worth doing… is one that stands above a certain absolute threshold; it is not a comparative matter” (Dancy 2004a: 95). Given his holism about reasons, which would allow that the presence of one option can affect whether other options fall above or below the threshold, I take it Dancy means that the threshold level itself is absolute (not comparative) even if an option’s falling above or below it can depend on how that option stands in relation to other options (which can be a comparative matter).
For example, it does not immediately follow from the claim that you cannot correctly or aptly judge yourself to have overwhelmingly most enticing reason that you cannot judge yourself to have overwhelmingly most enticing reason—which is that Enticers need. With respect to the asymmetry worry, one may think that, given only two painful options, you really ought to choose the least painful.
Dancy himself appeals to the idea of conversion in response to an objection from Raz (see Dancy 2004a: 94; Raz 1999: 101–2). It applies to situations in which a reason that Enticers regard as either initially enticing or enticing in isolation would no longer be enticing, due to the presence of, including its being combined with, other reasons. (It could be that one and the same reason, identified in terms of its content say, changes its normative status by standing in two different relations at two different times, firstly enticing and then peremptory. This is Dancy’s view. Alternatively, one might treat these as two different reasons. The argument to follow applies to both (and close variants).) Given his holism about reasons, one aspect of which holds that a reason favouring an action in one context may in a different context count against it or be no reason at all, it may seem a natural extension to think a reason or relation that is in one situation enticing could in another situation be peremptory (or neither). Indeed Dancy suggests that “there is no reason to deny that if you change the context by adding further reasons, the original enticer may be converted… without the possibility of such conversions doing anything to undermine the distinction between enticing and requiring” (Dancy 2004a: 94). Dancy’s response to Raz is to some extent ad hominen, depending in part on worries with the conceptual framework in which Raz locates enticing reasons. I shall be arguing, in a way consistent with holism, that countenancing such conversions does undermine the enticing/peremptory reason distinction.
A distinct, though related, claim—one which I think defensible though unlikely to persuade Enticers—is that when there is an action you ought to perform, the addition of a pleasure-based reason not only gives you more reason to perform the action but contributes to the ought by increasing its strength. One motivation for denying this is that such reasons do not serve as tie-breakers. For instance, if you have a moral obligation to [ϕ or γ], where there is equally good reason to ϕ as there is to γ and you can permissibly discharge the obligation by doing either, the addition of the further reason that ϕing would be more pleasurable (for the agent or recipient) does not make it the case you are now required to ϕ rather than γ. There are a number of responses one might make here. One may simply deny that the pleasure of ϕing gives you any (more) reason to ϕ in such a situation (perhaps it is silenced). Or, granting that it is reason-giving, we might say that indeed you ought to ϕ rather than γ—but that this is compatible with its remaining the case that (a) you have a moral obligation to [ϕ or γ], not a moral obligation to ϕ (since the pleasure-based reason is not the sort of reason that contributes to a moral obligation), and (b) you ought (and have most reason) to [ϕ or γ]. Again, this relies on distinguishing heavier and lighter senses of ought. A full justification for this approach is unfortunately too big a topic for here.
It is worth noting that the preceding critique of enticing reasons, which for sake of argument has presupposed a content-based evaluative/deontic distinction of the sort to which Dancy appeals, would not itself undermine the cogency of that distinction. For firstly, I have been treating enticing reasons as only a supposed subset of reasons from the evaluative side. Secondly, and even if enticing reasons were instead to be identified with all and only those reasons from the evaluative side (doubts about which were raised in Section 2), the evaluative and deontic spheres might be more easily distinguishable than the reasons that emerge from them. Nevertheless, some of the difficulties in making room for enticing reasons may be inherited from more general problems with neatly drawing the evaluative/deontic contrast as it applies specifically to reasons. The very possibility that some reasons from the evaluative side contribute to oughts already makes a clear-cut distinction awkward. But even putting that aside, given the arguments of the previous section that enticing reasons work much like other reasons from both the evaluative and deontic sides—they can be weaker and stronger, can be combined with other reasons, can favour actions of varying degrees of importance, and so on—the conceptual space for enticing reasons may seem slight. So while the failure to pick out a special class of enticing reasons need not undercut the evaluative-deontic distinction more generally, the vagaries of that distinction may impact on the prospects for enticing reasons.
I am grateful to those at the University of Leeds to whom I presented an early version of this paper—especially Matthew Kieran, Gerald Lang, Aaron Meskin, Georgia Testa and Roger White—for valued discussion and encouragement. I also thank two anonymous referees for useful comments.
References
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Robertson, S. Not So Enticing Reasons. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 11, 263–277 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-007-9091-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-007-9091-5