Agent-Basing,Consequences, and Realized Motives

According to agent-based approaches to virtue ethics, the rightness of an action is a function of the motives which prompted that action. If those motives were morally praiseworthy, then the action was right; if they were morally blameworthy, the action was wrong. Many critics find this approach problematically insensitive to an act’s consequences, and claim that agent-basing fails to preserve the intuitive distinction between agent- and act-evaluation. In this article I show how an agent-based account of right action can be made sensitive to an act’s consequences. According to the approach which I defend, an action is right just in case it realizes an agent’s morally praiseworthy motive. Conversely, an action is wrong just in case it realizes a morally blameworthy motive. Specifying act-evaluation in terms of the realization, rather than the expression, of an agent’s motives allows an agent-based approach to distinguish between agent- and act-evaluation. This is because an agent may act from a morally praiseworthy motive, but fail (either through bad luck or poor judgment) to realize that motive. Her action will therefore not have been the right one, despite its being the expression of morally praiseworthy motives.     

A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics

In Morals From Motives, Michael Slote defends an agent-based theory of right action according to which right acts are those that express virtuous motives like benevolence or care. Critics have claimed that Slote’s view— and agent-based views more generally— cannot account for several basic tenets of commonsense morality. In particular, the critics maintain that agent-based theories: (i) violate the deontic axiom that “ought” implies “can”, (ii) cannot allow for a person’s doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and (iii) do not yield clear verdicts in a number of cases involving “conflicting motives” and “motivational over-determination”. In this paper I develop a new agent-based theory of right action designed to avoid the problems presented for Slote’s view. This view makes morally right action a matter of expressing an optimal balance of virtue over vice and commands agents in each situation to improve their degree of excellence to the greatest extent possible.     

A New Mixed View of Virtue Ethics, Based on Daniel Doviak’s New Virtue Calculus

In A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics, Daniel Doviak develops a novel agent-based theory of right action that treats the rightness (or deontic status) of an action as a matter of the action’s net intrinsic virtue value (net-IVV)—that is, its balance of virtue over vice. This view is designed to accommodate three basic tenets of commonsense morality: (i) the maxim that “ought” implies “can,” (ii) the idea that a person can do the right thing for the wrong reason, and (iii) the idea that a virtuous person can have “mixed motives.” In this paper, I argue that Doviak’s account makes an important contribution to agent-based virtue ethics, but it needs to be supplemented with a consequentialist account of the efficacy of well-motivated actions—that is, it should be transformed into a mixed (motives-consequences) account, while retaining its net-IVV calculus. This is because I believe that there are right-making properties external to an agent’s psychology which it is important to take into account, especially when an agent’s actions negatively affect other people. To incorporate this intuition, I add to Doviak’s net-IVV calculus a scale for outcomes. The result is a mixed view which accommodates tenets (ii) and (iii) above, but allows for (i) to fail in certain cases. I argue that, rather than being a defect, this allowance is an asset because our intuitions about ought-implies-can break down in cases where an agent is grossly misguided, and our theory should track these intuitions.     

Qualified-agent virtue ethics

Abstract

Qualified-agent virtue ethics provides an account of right action in terms of the virtuous agent. It has become one of the most popular, but also most frequently criticized versions of virtue ethics. Many of the objections rest on the mistaken assumption that proponents of qualified-agent virtue ethics share the same view when it comes to fundamental questions about the meaning of the term ‘right action’ and the function of an account of right action. My aim in this paper is not to defend qualified-agent virtue ethics but to correct this misunderstanding, and this will hopefully leave us in a better position to evaluate it.     

DOING/ALLOWING AND THE DELIBERATIVE REQUIREMENT

Attempts to defend the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing harm directly have left many unconvinced. I give an indirect defence of the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing, focusing on the agent's duty to reason in a way that is responsive to possible harmful effects of their behaviour. Due to our cognitive limitations, we cannot be expected to take all harmful consequences of our behaviour into account. We are required to be responsive to harmful consequences that have some feature that makes it easy for us to become aware of them. I show that, under Jonathan Bennett's analysis of the doing/allowing distinction, harm that is incidentally done has such a feature, which is not shared by harm that is incidentally allowed. Any plausible analysis of the doing/allowing distinction will entail a similar asymmetry. It follows that, prima facie, an agent who incidentally does harm has violated a moral requirement (the deliberative requirement) which an agent who incidentally allows harm has not violated. 1     

Reasons in Action

Abstract

When an agent performs an action because she takes something as a reason to do so, does she take it as a normative reason for the action or as an explanatory reason? In Reasons Without Rationalism, Setiya criticizes the normative view and advances a version of the explanatory view. I defend a version of the normative view against Setiya's criticisms and show that Setiya's explanatory account has two major flaws: it raises questions that it cannot answer about the occurrence of one motivational ‘because’ within the scope of another; and it cannot accommodate the fact that, if an agent can φ for the reason that p, then she could take p as a reason to φ without φ-ing.     

How to Think About Virtue and Right

Abstract

Robert Johnson argues that virtue ethical accounts of right action fail because they cannot take account of the fact that there are things we ought to do precisely because we do not possess virtuous character traits. Self-improving actions are his paradigm case and it would indeed be a problem if virtue ethics could not make sense of the propriety of self-improvement. To solve this serious problem, I propose that virtue ethics ought to define right action in terms of the virtuous agent's reasons for action instead of defining right action in terms of the actions that the virtuous agent performs. I argue that this revised definition of right action makes sense of the Tightness of self-improving actions and that it can be given a genuinely virtue ethical interpretation.     

What is trustworthiness?

This paper develops a novel, bifocal account of trustworthiness according to which both trustworthiness simpliciter (as in ‘Ann is trustworthy’) and trustworthiness to phi (as in ‘Ann is trustworthy when it comes to keeping your secrets’) are analysed in terms of dispositions to fulfil one's obligations. We also offer a systematic account of the relation between the two types of trustworthiness, an account of degrees of trustworthiness and comparative trustworthiness, as well as a view of permissible trustworthiness attribution.     

Referential Intentions and Communicative Luck

Brian Loar [1976] observed that communicative success with singular terms requires more than correct referent assignment. For communicative success to be achieved, the audience must assign the right referent in the right way. Loar, and others since, took this to motivate Fregean accounts of the semantics of singular terms. Ray Buchanan [2014] has recently responded, maintaining that, although Loar is correct to claim that communicative success with singular terms requires more than correct referent assignment, this is compatible with direct reference approaches, as long as one also endorses an independently motivated Gricean view of communicative intentions. This paper argues that Buchanan's Gricean view cannot account for the full range of Loar cases. In doing so, it aims to explicate the structure of Loar's cases and thus to clarify the conditions that a theory must meet in order to adequately meet his challenge.     

Virtuous motives,moral luck,and assisted death

Abstract

In this paper I outline a motive-based virtue account of right action, according to which an action is right if it expresses or exhibits virtuous motive, and which defines virtue in terms of human flourishing. I indicate how this account allows us to deal with the problem of consequential luck. By applying this account to the question of whether it is ever morally right or acceptable to assist in someone’s death, I demonstrate how it also allows us to deal with the problem of circumstantial luck, which arises when an agent finds himself in a situation where he is forced to choose between two reprehensible acts.     

The Problem of Obligation,the Finite Rational Will,and Kantian Value Realism

Abstract

Robert Stern's Understanding Moral Obligation is a remarkable achievement, representing an original reading of Kant's contribution to modern moral philosophy and the legacy he bequeathed to his later-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century successors in the German tradition. On Stern's interpretation, it was not the threat to autonomy posed by value realism, but the threat to autonomy posed by the obligatory nature of morality that led Kant to develop his critical moral theory grounded in the concept of the self-legislating moral agent. Accordingly, Stern contends that Kant was a moral realist of sorts, holding certain substantive views that are best characterized as realist commitments about value. In this paper, I raise two central objections to Stern's reading of Kant. The first objection concerns what Stern identifies as Kant's solution to the problem of moral obligation. Whereas Stern sees the distinction between the infinite will and the finite will as resolving the problem of moral obligation, I argue that this distinction merely explains why moral obligations necessarily take the form of imperatives for us imperfect human beings, but does not solve the deeper problem concerning the obligatory nature of morality—why we should take moral norms to be supremely authoritative laws that override all other norms based on our non-moral interests. The second objection addresses Stern's claim that Kantian autonomy is compatible with value realism. Although this is an idea with which many contemporary readers will be sympathetic, I suggest that the textual evidence actually weighs in favor of constructivism.     

Proxy Agency in Collective Action

This paper gives an account of proxy agency in the context of collective action. It takes the case of a group announcing something by way of a spokesperson as an illustration. In proxy agency, it seems that one person or subgroup's doing something counts as orconstitutes or is recognized as (tantamount to) another person or group's doing something. Proxy agency is pervasive in institutional action. It has been taken to be a straightforward counterexample to an appealing deflationary view of collective action as a matter of all members of a group making a contribution to bringing about some event. I show that this is a mistake. I give a deflationary account of constitutive rules in terms of essentially collective action types. I then give an account of one form of constitutive agency in terms of constitutive rules. I next give an account of status functions—of which being a spokesperson is one—that also draws on the concept of a constitutive rule. I then show how these materials help us to see how proxy agency is an expression of the agency of all members of the group credited with doing something when the proxy acts.     

Logic as a Universal Medium or Logic as a Calculus? Husserl and the Presuppositions of “the Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth Century Philosophy”

This paper discusses Jean van Heijenoort's (1967) and Jaakko and Merrill B. Hintikka's (1986, 1997) distinction between logic as a universal language and logic as a calculus, and its applicability to Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Although it is argued that Husserl's phenomenology shares characteristics with both sides, his view of logic is closer to the model‐theoretical, logic‐as‐calculus view. However, Husserl's philosophy as transcendental philosophy is closer to the universalist view. This paper suggests that Husserl's position shows that holding a model‐theoretical view of logic does not necessarily imply a calculus view about the relations between language and the world. The situation calls for reflection about the distinction: It will be suggested that the applicability of the van Heijenoort and the Hintikkas distinction either has to be restricted to a particular philosopher's views about logic, in which case no implications about his or her more general philosophical views should be inferred from it; or the distinction turns into a question of whether our human predicament is inescapable or whether it is possible, presumably by means of model theory, to obtain neutral answers to philosophical questions. Thus the distinction ultimately turns into a question about the correct method for doing philosophy.     

Acting rightly: Three dimensions of moral conduct

Philosophical literature in normative ethics has tended to concentrate on (1) what we should do—what acts we should perform—or (2) virtues of character, understood as leading to the right deeds or (3), as most notable in Kant, the importance of motivation appraising agents and actions. All these elements—actions, virtues, and motives—are ethically significant. But there is a dimension of moral responsibility that should be given a place beside obligations to act, virtues of character, and appraisability of actions in relation to their motivation. It is the manner in which actions are performed. This can be right or wrong, an object of intention, and behavior for a reason; and it is important for assessing moral virtue. This paper explores manners of action, shows why they apparently do not reduce to kinds of actions, and proposes an account of their importance. The result is a wider conception of acting rightly than the common understanding on which it simply doing the right thing, a partial account of how acting rightly figures in the content of intention, and a sketch of the moral dimensions of the manners in which we act.     

Value in the guise of regret

Abstract

According to a widely accepted philosophical model, agent‐regret is practically significant and appropriate when the agent committed a mistake, or she faced a conflict of obligations. I argue that this account misunderstands moral phenomenology because it does not adequately characterize the object of agent‐regret. I suggest that the object of agent‐regret should be defined in terms of valuable unchosen alternatives supported by reasons. This model captures the phenomenological varieties of regret and explains its practical significance for the agent. My contention is that agent‐regret is a mode of valuing: a way in which the agent expresses and confers value.     

Three kinds of reliabilism

Abstract

The distinction between acting and suffering underlies any theory of agency. Among contemporary writers, Fred Dretske is one of the few who has attempted to explicate this distinction without restricting the notion of action to intentional action alone. Aristotle also developed a global account of agency, one which is deeper and more detailed than Dretske's, and it is to Aristotle's account (with some modifications) that the bulk of this paper is devoted. Dretske's sketchier theory faces at least two ground-level problems. It is shown in the course of the paper how these can be handled by the Aristotelian account, in a way which is friendly to Dretske's approach.     

KIERKEGAARD AND EVANS ON THE PROBLEM OF ABRAHAM

A significant challenge faces any ethic that endorses the view that divine commands are sufficient to impose moral obligations; in this paper, I focus on Kierkegaard's ethic, in particular. The challenge to be addressed is the “modernized” problem of Abraham, popularized especially by Fear and Trembling: the dilemma that an agent faces when a being claiming to be God issues a command to the agent that, by the agent's own lights, seems not to be the kind of command that a loving God would issue. Against a solution to this problem proposed by C. Stephen Evans in Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love, I argue that Kierkegaard regards this scenario as never actually resulting in a fully responsible agent's performance of some horrendous action on account of her non‐culpable misinterpretation of God's will and/or failure to discern correctly whether a perceived moral imperative truly is divine in origin.     

The most good you can do: a response to the commentaries

Anthony Skelton, Violetta Igneski and Tracy Isaacs share my view that our obligations to help people in extreme poverty go beyond what is conventionally accepted. Nevertheless, the other contributors argue that my view is too demanding, while noting some tensions between my different writings on this issue. I explain my position, drawing on Sidgwick’s distinction between what someone ought to do, and what we should praise or blame someone for doing or not doing. I also respond to the position that Skelton considers preferable to mine, drawing this time on an argument that Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and I have made in our recent book, The Point of View of the Universe. I also address Igneski’s concerns about gender inequality, and indicate my broad agreement with Isaacs’ suggestion that effective altruism could benefit from a more co-ordinated approach.     

Logical consequence: A defense of Tarski

In his classic 1936 essay “On the Concept of Logical Consequence”, Alfred Tarski used the notion of satisfaction to give a semantic characterization of the logical properties. Tarski is generally credited with introducing the model-theoretic characterization of the logical properties familiar to us today. However, in his book, The Concept of Logical Consequence, Etchemendy argues that Tarski's account is inadequate for quite a number of reasons, and is actually incompatible with the standard model-theoretic account. Many of his criticisms are meant to apply to the model-theoretic account as well. In this paper, I discuss the following four critical charges that Etchemendy makes against Tarski and his account of the logical properties:

1. Tarski's account of logical consequence diverges from the standard model-theoretic account at points where the latter account gets it right.
2. Tarski's account cannot be brought into line with the model-theoretic account, because the two are fundamentally incompatible.
3. There are simple counterexamples (enumerated by Etchemendy) which show that Tarski's account is wrong.
4. Tarski committed a modal fallacy when arguing that his account captures our pre-theoretical concept of logical consequence, and so obscured an essential weakness of the account.
5. Tarski's account depends on there being a distinction between the “logical terms” and the “non-logical terms” of a language, but (according to Etchemendy) there are very simple (even first-order) languages for which no such distinction can be made. Etchemendy's critique raises historical and philosophical questions about important foundational work. However, Etchemendy is mistaken about each of these central criticisms. In the course of justifying that claim, I give a sustained explication and defense of Tarski's account. Moreover, since I will argue that Tarski's account and the model-theoretic account really do come to the same thing, my subsequent defense of Tarski's account against Etchemendy's other attacks doubles as a defense against criticisms that would apply equally to the familiar model-theoretic account of the logical properties.

     

An Unsolved Problem for Slote's Agent-Based Virtue Ethics

According to Slote's ``agent-based' virtue ethics, the rightness orwrongness of an act is determined by the motive it expresses. Thistheory has a problem with cases where an agent can do her duty onlyby expressing some vicious motive and thereby acting wrongly. In sucha situation, an agent can only act wrongly; hence, the theory seemsincompatible with the maxim that `ought' implies `can'. I argue thatSlote's attempt to circumvent this problem by appealing to compatibilism is inadequate. In a wide range of psychologically realistic cases, an agent's effective choice will be between failingto do her duty and doing it from inferior motives. Then anythingshe can do will be wrong, according to the agent-based theory,contrary to the maxim Slote wishes to preserve.