Morality, Fitting Attitudes, and Reasons for Action
Abstract: In this paper I argue that it is actually a conceptual truth that we have reason to be moral. I defend analyses of moral concepts in terms of the fittingness of moral emotions. I argue, for instance, that we can analyze an act's moral wrongness in terms of our having reason to feel obligated not to perform it. Moral emotions like feelings of obligation involve motivations to do certain things, so the fittingness of these emotions determines the rationality of the motivations they involve. I proceed to argue that having reason to perform an act is a matter of the act's satisfying a rational motive, or contributing to an end that it is fitting to be motivated to pursue. Because morality is a matter of fitting motives, and fitting motives determine rational acts, morality entails reasons for action. I use this strategy to explain why we have intrinsic reason to be moral, and indeed why we have conclusive reason not to do whatever is morally wrong.
Norm Descriptivism: An Account of Normative Guidance and Inquiry (with John Ku)
Abstract: Perhaps the most basic challenge we face when we try to understand judgments about normative reasons for action is that of explaining how they play two apparently conflicting roles: (1) unlike most descriptive beliefs, they are intimately associated with motivational states that lead us to action, but (2) like descriptive beliefs, we inquire into their truth and falsity when we deliberate. In this paper we explore what more exactly these two roles amount to, including both the kind of connection normative judgments have to motivation and the kind of inquiry we undertake when we deliberate about what to do. We present a view of judgments about an agent's reasons for action according to which they are descriptive beliefs about deep features of that agent's psychology - namely the prescriptions of the most fundamental principles that she accepts. We argue that this view offers us the best explanation of both the connection normative judgments have to motivation and what goes on in deliberative inquiry.
The Doctrine of Double Effect as an Objective Principle
Abstract: The Doctrine of Double Effect states roughly that there are stronger moral reasons against inflicting harm as a means to an end than there are against causing harm as a byproduct. On one reading this is a claim about reasons not to act with certain intentions, while on another it speaks against performing acts with a certain objective causal structure. While there are good reasons to prefer the objective reading, some have dismissed it as absurd. In this paper I defend the objective reading against this dismissal, which seems largely to depend upon the conflation of criteria of objective wrongness with other criteria. I present an objective formulation of the DDE according to which a harm's bringing about a particular good weakens the extent to which that good counts in favor of bringing about the harm. This solves several problems and captures an intuitive injunction against benefitting at others' expense.
Quinn's Interpretation of Double Effect: Problems and Prospects
Abstract: The Doctrine of Double Effect states roughly that it is harder to justify causing harm as a means to an end than causing harm as a byproduct. The Doctrine is invoked to explain why it is permissible to do things like divert a trolley from hitting five people to hitting one, but wrong to do things like push someone into the trolley's path to stop it from hitting five others. However, the actual harms one causes play no role in bringing about the good in either kind of case. To solve this problem, Warren Quinn proposed a version of the Doctrine according to which it is particularly hard to justify affecting someone as a means when this causes her harm. I present several counter-examples to Quinn's account. I examine some alterations of the account, but find it doubtful that any can capture our intuitions about cases and morally relevant factors.
Civic Republicanism and the Intrinsic Value of Equality
Abstract: According to Civic Republicanism, the mere fact that someone could arbitrarily interfere with one's life makes one unfree, even if it is known that such interference will never take place. While the view enjoys considerable intuitive support, it seems that we cannot assimilate the distinctive problems Republicanism identifies under our general concerns about the welfare of the unfree or our reasons to respect their autonomous control of their lives. I argue that the intuitions in favor of Republicanism support the intrinsic moral relevance of a third factor, namely the equality of agents' power over each other. I show how an interpretation of Civic Republican worries about arbitrary power as ultimately about unequal power best fits our intuitions and avoids problems faced by other attempts to explain the problematic form of arbitrariness. I also show how this version of Civic Republicanism can capture our intuitions about the importance of social equality that transcend our concerns about the just distribution of welfare and autonomy.
Norm Acceptance and Fitting Attitudes
Abstract: In this paper I offer a way to distinguish between the kinds of reasons for attitudes that contribute to the instantiation of ethical concepts and the kinds that do not, thus solving what Rabinowicz and Ronnow-Rasmussen call the 'wrong kind of reasons [WKR]' problem for analyses of ethical concepts in terms of fitting attitudes. Intuitively, judgments about ethical-fact-making reasons for an attitude can, whereas judgments about other kinds of reasons cannot, directly cause one to have the attitude. I argue, however, that in order to clarify and defend this intuitive distinction, we should ultimately analyze judgments about fitting attitudes in terms of the acceptance of norms for attitudes. I contend that the best such analysis understands judgments about an agent's reasons as judgments about the prescriptions of the system of norms she deeply accepts. I call this view 'Norm Descriptivism', and argue that it best explains how judgments about reasons both guide attitudes and can be determined to be true or false via a priori reflective-equilibrium methods.
Fitting Attitudes, Reasons for Action, and the Rejection of Consequentialism (with John Ku and David Plunkett)
Abstract: We argue that consequentialism may seem attractive, despite the well-known case intuitions against it, primarily due to the idea that it is clear how we have reason to bring about good states of affairs but entirely mysterious how we could have reason to do anything else. We show that a deep theoretical connection between good states of affairs and reasons to bring them about can indeed be vindicated by the conceptual connections between good states of affairs, fitting desires that they obtain, and reasons to act out of them. We argue, however, that the conceptual connection between fitting attitudes and reasons for action equally vindicates reasons to do things other than bring about the best states of affairs. The fittingness of motives other than desires for good states of affairs - some more intimately related to morality than such desires - undermines consequentialism whether as a theory of rationality or morality.