In Progress
Name Redacted
It is sometimes thought that, while the reasons for which an agent acts can be relevant to blame, character, or moral worth, they cannot be relevant to the permissibility of an agent’s behavior. I argue this is false. I reach this answer by first considering the kind of agency we have over acting-for-certain-reasons. I argue we have the same kind of agency over an action-done-for-certain-reasons as we have over an “ordinary” action—an action identified independently of the reasons for which it is done. Although we cannot choose what we see as reasons, we nonetheless can choose to act-for-certain-reasons in the same way we can choose ordinary actions. Thus, acting-for-certain-reasons can be permissible and impermissible just like ordinary actions can be. It follows from this acknowledgement that facts about the reasons for which an agent acts can be relevant to the permissibility of her behavior just in the same way other facts about that action can be relevant. I arrive at this conclusion by considering an argument from T.M. Scanlon which, I believe, has often been misunderstood.
Name Redacted
I take up the claim, suggested by many, that a contractualist cannot or should not think that permissibility can turn on the reasons for which an agent acts. This is mistaken. Indeed, the contractualist has a very intuitive explanation as to why the reasons for which we act can change whether we act permissibly: Because we have interests not only in what happens to us, but also, at least at times, why they happen, we can be constrained in not only how we act but also the reasons for which we act.
Asymmetrical Contractualism: On Content and Motivation
I identify what I take to be the most important challenge to contractualism, which goes largely unnoticed. According to contractualism, the content of morality is given, very roughly, by the rules agents who are motivated to justify their conduct to others similarly motivated would self-legislate. However, the rules they would self-legislate do not, in turn, require such motivation: often (if not always), an agent can act permissibly even if she is not motivated to justify her conduct to others similarly motivated. This seems like an undesirable asymmetry. It is at least prima facie awkward for a moral theory to appeal to a special form of motivation to derive its content only for such motivation to drop out from its content. The contractualist owes us a story about how to explain away this awkwardness, a challenge that becomes even more difficult to meet because of the contractualist’s otherwise appealing ways of understanding the nature of punishment and blame.
Ability, Obligation, and Respect
Morally obligatory or prohibited action must be under an agent’s control in some robust sense. A familiar proposal understands this control requirement as a way of ensuring that avoiding wrongdoing must be available to any agent—that moral obligation must respect individual ability. It would be unfair or unjust, according to this proposal, to hold agents morally accountable for wrongdoing if they cannot do otherwise. But this proposal is unacceptable: an agent facing vicious or demeaning conduct can always demand to be treated better. It would be disrespectful to them to suggest that, because such conduct was inescapable, their treatment is morally permissible. I then consider a better way of understanding the control requirement which avoids this pitfall.