Apparent Obligation

Abstract

I want to contrast three notions of obligation: prima facie obligation, actual obligation, and what I will call apparent obligation. By a prima facie obligation, I mean something that is binding other things being equal An example might be the obligation to keep a promise. Of course, we all recognize that the obligation to keep a promise or any other prima facie obligation might be overriden by some greater obligation, such as an obligation to prevent harm to a friend. By an actual obligation I will mean any obligation that is binding when all relevant circumstances are considered. So our actual obligations are our overriding obligations or our obligations all things considered. An obligation may be an actual obligation, of course, because it is a prima facie obligation and no greater obligation overrides it. A hard fact of our moral existence, though, is that we are often not aware of all morally relevant circumstances of our situation. Indeed, there may be situations in which we cannot know all morally relevant circumstances before deciding what we ought to do. In such a situation, we are expected to fulfill those obligations which bind us given all we know about morally relevant circumstances. These are what I call our apparent obligations.

Many of the ideas that went into this paper were presented at the last two meetings of the Society for Exact Philosophy (Calgary, Ontario, Canada — May 1995, and Johnson City, Tennessee, U.S.A. — October 1996). This material was also discussed frequently in a discussion group devoted to defeasible reasoning that has met at the Artificial Intelligence Center at the University of Georgia over the last year and a half. For their helpful comments and suggestions, I thank Vic Bancroft, David Billington, Daniel Bonevac, Charles Cross, David Goodman, Christopher Henderson, Zachary Hunter, Hong-Gee Kim, Michael Morreau, Henry Prakken, Frank Price, and Xiaochang Yu.