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Praise, objective rightness and extended action

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Abstract

There’s more to meriting praise than doing what’s objectively right. After all, one might do what’s objectively right as the result of a fluke or with malicious intent. While doing what’s objectively right is not enough to merit praise, it’s natural to think that some list of sufficient conditions can be assembled. The most common approach to such lists entails that, when one does what is objectively right with the appropriate epistemic state and/or motivation, one merits praise for one’s action. In other words, according to the most influential extant views, if one both does what’s right and meets certain additional criteria, one will not only succeed in doing what is morality required but will also succeed in deserving positive moral evaluation for what one has done. In this paper, I use the example of extended actions to show that drawing any sort of link between doing what’s objectively right and being worthy of praise is much more difficult than has been previously appreciated.

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Notes

  1. Others have referred to such actions as “diachronic” (McLennan 1990) and discussed them in terms of being “maximal” or “non-maximal” [Portmore (2017), Brown (2018)].

  2. For relevant discussion of the Professor Procrastinate case (in the context of the debate between actualists and possibilists), see Goldman (1976) and Jackson and Pargetter (1986), as well as Feldman (1986) and Zimmerman (1996). For an overview of the debate, see Timmerman and Cohen (2019).

  3. This follows from standard Lewisian semantics in which the unique closest world to the actual world is the actual world itself. This semantics validates the inference from P and Q to if P were the case Q would be the case [see, e.g. Lewis (1973)].

  4. For more on this point, see Markovits (2010, p. 230ff).

  5. For more on the distinction between objective and subjective rightness, see Graham (2020) and Smith (2010).

  6. Sliwa (2016, p. 394).

  7. Sliwa (2016, p. 401).

  8. To be clear, requiring that an agent know that her action right is not necessary to ensure that her right action is counterfactually robust. Instead, we might simply require that the traits that are manifest via the agent’s actions are themselves robust.

  9. Johnson King (2018, p. 18) raises a related critique.

  10. I thank an anonymous referee for encouraging me to consider this interpretation of Sliwa’s view.

  11. According to an even weaker version of the view, an agent might merit praise for performing an action when the action is motivated by both moral concern and the knowledge of what the right thing to do is. The most serious problem with this version, however, is that it commits us to considering agents praiseworthy even when they don’t do the right thing.

  12. Sliwa (2016, p. 401).

  13. Johnson King (2018, p. 16).

  14. Johnson King (2018, p. 18).

  15. Johnson King (2018, p. 18).

  16. Johnson King (2018, p. 6).

  17. ONE BRIDGE is thus similar to the case discussed by Johnson King of Finn’s daring rescue of Poe in Star Wars (p. 18). When Finn initiates his daring rescue mission, he does not know that he will succeed, but there’s simply no other way to save Poe. If Finn were in a TWO BRIDGES-type scenario, however, he would have a less risky option available that would also save Poe. In such a case, even if Finn succeeded in his daring rescue mission, we might not praise him if we judge that he ought to have played it safe instead. For further discussion, see Sridharan (2023).

  18. See, for instance, Arpaly (2003), Arpaly and Schroeder (2013), Markovits (2010). In talking about the importance of the match between one’s normative and motivating reasons, I am following the template put forward in Schroeder (2015), in which he discusses the importance of the match between one’s objective and subjections reasons for achieving knowledge.

  19. For further discussion of what I’m calling ‘infinitival’ reasons, see Hawthorne and Magidor (2018) and Grice (2001).

  20. Markovits (2010, p. 205).

  21. For similar reasons, it also faces problems with PARENT PICKUP.

  22. Arpaly (2015, p. 87).

  23. Markovits (2010, p. 228).

  24. Markovits (2010, p. 230).

  25. Markovits (2010, p. 219). As discussed in more detail below, one might wonder if Markovits would be better off speaking in terms of what an agent expects to be best, given her evidence. By instead speaking of what an agent has subjective reason to think is best, Markovits runs into familiar problems with cases in which what an agent ought to do, intuitively, is an action that she knows is not best [for discussion see, for instance, Kolodny and MacFarlane (2010)].

  26. For early discussion of this sort of closure principle, see Castaneda (1968) and Bergstrom (1968).

  27. As Markovits puts it, if an agent has “sufficient evidence for the belief that a particular act would be best,” the action may be “made right” by such evidence, even if that evidence is false or misleading. Markovits (2010, p. 219). In such a case, according to Markovits, the reason that might make Kira crossing the circuitous bridge right would be something like it appeared to her that she would not make it across the forking bridge, or even that she had a justified belief that this was the case (2010, p. 220).

  28. For related discussion, see Wedgwood (2009) and Ross (2012).

  29. Markovits (2010, p. 203).

  30. Arpaly (2003, p. 69).

  31. Johnson King (2018, p. 16).

  32. For discussion of such cases in the context of the actualism/possibilism debate, see Wedgwood (2009) and Ross (2012).

  33. For an objection to a Right Reasons view that is in the same spirit, see Sliwa (2016, pp. 398–99).

  34. For a related problem with this approach, see the discussion of the Lazy Lary case in Timmerson and Swenson (2019). In particular, in Lazy Lary, the best possible action includes a segment that the actualist will say the agent ought not perform, which is the same phenomenon we see with Kira in TWO BRIDGES.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the reviewers at Synthese for their extensive and probing comments. The paper has significantly improved as a result. I would also like to thank Jake Nebel and especially John Hawthorne for their consistent and continuous patience, encouragement and investment in this project.

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    Vishnu Sridharan

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Sridharan, V. Praise, objective rightness and extended action. Synthese 202, 195 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04414-w

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