Abstract
Is the wrongness of an action a reason not to perform it? Of course it is, you may answer. That an action is wrong both explains and justifies not doing it. Yet, there are doubts. Thinking that wrongness is a reason is confused, so an argument by Jonathan Dancy. There can’t be such a reason if ‘ϕ-ing is wrong’ is verdictive, and an all things considered judgment about what (not) to do in a certain situation. Such judgments are based on all the relevant reasons for and against ϕ-ing. If that ϕ-ing is wrong, while being an all things considered verdict, would itself be a reason, it would upset the balance of reasons: it would be a further reason which has not yet been considered in reaching the verdict. Hence, the judgment wasn’t ‘all things considered' after all. I show that the argument against wrongness being a reason is unsuccessful, because its main assumption is false. Is main assumption is that a consideration which necessarily does not affect the balance of reasons is not a reason. I also argue that there can be no deontic buck-passing account.
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Notes
That is, the reason would be the resultant property that an action has if the verdict is true.
Similarly: “Judgements like [There is no greater reason not to do it] are verdictive; to assert [There is no greater reason not to do it] is to pass judgement on the balance of the reasons present in the case. If [There is no greater reason not to do it] was itself a further reason over and above those on which it passes judgement, we would be forced to reconsider the balance of reasons once we had asserted [There is no greater reason not to do it], in a way that would continue ad infinitum. Which is ridiculous. So [There is no greater reason not to do it] is not itself a favourer.” Dancy 2004:40.
I believe that it might have been Austin who introduced verdicts and verdictives into the philosophical discussion. His nuanced presentation brings out many subtleties of the ordinary use, which are not, however, relevant to our discussion. See J. L. Austin, 1975, 143-161. Foot, later, uses the term ‘verdict’ in a way very much akin to Dancy’s. See Foot 1978.
I am not interested in the actual history of making judgments here. It may of course happen that a person judges that p, and p is true, but she has no reasons or only insufficient reasons for her judgment. In short, I am not interested in how people may come to form beliefs, but in the truth conditions and the justification of certain kinds of judgments.
T. M. Scanlon alleges that there is a unified sense of ‘wrong’ which holds across its use in different areas: “I take it that the most general meaning of ‘wrong’ is something like ‘open to serious (decisive) objections.’” (2007:6) I am doubtful about this particular suggestion, because there can be serious objections to an action without it being wrong (an action may be cruel, hence open to a serious objection, but not wrong in the circumstances, perhaps because the alternatives would be even worse); that objections are ‘decisive’ on the hand amounts to saying that there is overall reason against the action. Thus as a unified meaning one could suggest that something is wrong if and only if there is overall reason against it. However, the suggestion does not seem to apply to some of the cases. The arithmetic example is a case in point where it would be mistaken to understand wrongness as related to reasons. After all, what is wrong is the result, not the action that led to it. Of course, Scanlon’s lose formulation may still apply: there is a (perhaps) decisive objection to ’7 + 4 = 12,’ namely that it is false. But understood in that way the remark becomes vacuous: there is nothing unifying to what makes an objection decisive.
Derek Parfit suggests that there are three senses of moral wrongness: wrongness in the belief-relative, the evidence-relative, and the fact-relative sense. My explanation captures only the third. I don’t think we need to be concerned with Parfit’s tripartite distinction here. But if he is right, there is further reason to doubt that there can be a unified account of wrongness that links it to reasons. Only in the third, fact-relative sense can wrongness be explained in terms of reasons. Cf. Parfit, On What Matters (2008), chapter 6.
On What Matters (forthcoming), chapter 6.
Philippa Foot (1978) introduces the term ‘verdictive’ for all-moral-reasons considered judgments, but argues that moral reasons may well at times be overridden.
For Dancy’s arguments for this view, see his Practical Reality, 2000b.
Scanlon discusses (and rejects) the possibility of a buck-passing account of wrongness. What would seem to count in favour, he says, is that the “specific reasons [why an action is wrong] seem sufficient in themselves, and it may seem that they make ‘it would be wrong’ redundant as a reason-provider.” (2007:6) He then sets out to show that ‘it would be wrong’ is sometimes not ‘redundant’ and therefore a reason, accepting that if other reasons are sufficient [for determining what the agent ought to do, I take it] wrongness would not be a reason. Thus, he too accepts Δ* or some such.
As with judgments, I am not interested in the actual psychology of reasoning. Thus, ‘reasoning’ should be understood as correct or valid reasoning.
Note that this account may well be at odds with Dancy’s claim in chapter 2 of Ethics Without Principles that all attempts of explaining the notion of a contributory reason in terms of its relation to the overall fail. It seems that his argument for verdicts not being reasons rests on a certain understanding of the relation between the contributory and the overall. Thus, it may be that in setting out his argument that verdicts aren’t reasons Dancy failed to fully absorbe his own lesson.
I am grateful to Simon Robertson for pressing this question.
As mentioned this conclusion depends somewhat on the sketched view of additivity which I did not defend. I reject (∆, amended) only because I think it doesn’t take us further, and it may be confusing. If the reader finds my view of additivity unconvincing, she may well proceed substituting (∆, amended) for ∆. I don’t think it makes a difference to my argument.
Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1998: 95ff; Dancy (2000a), ‘Should We Pass the Buck?’ is critical of Scanlon.
But, for the record, I have done so in my ‘Explaining Reasons: Where Does the Buck Stop?’ (2006)
“It is not clear what further work could be done by special reason-providing properties of goodness and value...”, Scanlon 1998: 97.
These are only necessary conditions. I don’t attempt a definition here because I believe that we have a good enough grip on the concept without it. For a more comprehensive discussion, focusing on determination, which brings out a number of difficulties that may arise with specification as well, see Funkhouser (2006).
I am grateful to Wlodek Rabinowicz for pointing out that (3) is not going to add anything to (1) and (2) if E is G&¬F . Hence the final subclause in (3). A different way of making the point may be to say that there is an independent E. But this may be misleading, because – as colour exclusion shows – the various properties that specify color may not be logically independent of one another. However, the relation of being colored to specific colors is a prime example of specification. Thus, ‘independent’ would have to be understood not as logically independent, but as not being G&¬F . For that reason the formulation above seemed clearer to me.
Overall goodness is different. It is not a specifiable property, because the first condition of specification does not apply to it. Something is good overall, if, given the combination of properties that it instantiates, it is a good thing of its kind. But it does not follow that everything which has the properties that make a certain thing overall good in a given case will ensure overall goodness in other cases. A film may be overall good because of the quality of its cinematography and acting, even if the story-telling is rather lame. But not every film (let alone everything) which is comparable with respect to its quality of photography and acting will be overall good - it may have further vices that outweigh its good qualities. ‘x is good overall’ is a verdict of the restricted variety: Given all the considerations that matter with regard to the question whether x is a good x the verdict is, yes, it is. But the judgment is based only on a comparison of various features of one option, and not on a comparison of all available options. Calling something overall good is like drawing an intermediate sum. As with other verdicts, as a sum, it cannot add to the sum on pain of distorting the result. Is being overall good a reason then? It surely is a property that ordinarily can be invoked as a reason. As with wrongness, any denial that it is a reason had better not turn on the fact that it does not affect the balance of reasons.
I take it that this understanding of reasons is fully compatible with Dancy’s realistic view that reasons are facts, but not committed to it. Thus, I am assuming that the concept of reasons that common-sense relies on is the very same that Dancy sets out to explain in his theory of reasons.
To borrow Williams’s example: That I believe that the liquid is gin explains why I drink it, but my belief is not a normative reason for drinking it, and in the case where the liquid is in fact petrol there is no normative reason for drinking it at all.
The LK-test is based on an idea of Frances Kamm’s, who (in a different context) suggested to me a roughly similar way of finding out whether something is a reason to me.
In calling this test the Limited-Knowledge-Test I do not assume that normally, or even ever, we act on the basis of complete knowledge. I call it the Limited-Knowledge-Test because it applies when the agent’s knowledge is limited in a particular way (as explained).
I insert this sub-clause because acting for a normative reason is not always justified, as for instance in cases of weakness of will, or, more generally, when the reason is defeated.
John Broome, “Reasons”, 2004, p. 36.
If the balance of reasons does not favor doing A, it needn’t be true that the balance of reasons favors not doing A. If there is a tie between the options, the balance of reasons would not favor doing A, yet it wouldn’t be true that the balance of reasons favors not doing A. Excluding ties, it follows though that if the balance of reasons does not favor A, but some other option B, the balance of reasons favors not doing A. That there is more reason for B is a reason against doing A.
I owe a debt of gratidute to Simon Robertson, Francesco Orsi, and, especially, to Joseph Raz and Wlodek Rabinowicz for their extremely helpful written comments on earlier drafts. I also had the good fortune to be able to present the paper in Leeds, Vienna, and Oxford, as well as at the annual conference of the British Society of Ethical Theory (BSET), 2008, in Edinburgh, and I would like to thank all those audiences for very valuable comments and discussions.
References
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Heuer, U. Wrongness and Reasons. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 13, 137–152 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9202-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9202-6