RIGHTEOUS VILLAINY: A DEFENSE OF OFFENCE
BY
ANTONIO J. RAMIREZ
B.A. UC SANTA CRUZ, 2001
M.A. BROWN UNIVERSITY 2005
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AT BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
MAY 2014
© Copyright 2009 by Antonio J. Ramirez
This dissertation by Antonio Ramirez is accepted in its present form
by the Department of Philosophy as satisfying the
dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Date: ___________
___________________________
Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Recommendation to the Graduate Council
Date: ___________
___________________________
Nomy Arpaly
Date: ___________
___________________________
James Dreier
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date: ___________
___________________________
Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School
iii
CURRICULUM VITAE
Antonio Jose Ramirez was born on May 2, 1979 in San Clemente, CA. He earned a
bachelor’s degree in philosophy at UC Santa Cruz in 2001, where he had been enrolled as a
UC Regents’ Scholar. He earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Brown University in
2005, where he was the Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning’s Graduate
Teaching Fellow for two years.
He has taught philosophy courses at the New Bedford, MA campus of the Clemente Course
in the Humanities, Brown University, Foothill College, and De Anza College. He is
currently a full-time instructor at De Anza College, where he serves as chair of the
philosophy department and Student Learning Outcomes Coordinator for the campus. In
2013 he received a Rouche Excellence Award from the League for Innovation in the
Community College.
He lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains with his wife, three children, an excellent dog, two
marvelous cats, and many guitars.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Felicia Nimue Ackerman for her encouragement and guidance. She
has been an excellent mentor and friend for the entirety of my long and unusual adventure in
completing this work.
I am also grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions of Nomy Arpaly, Nick
Baiamonte, Derek Bowman, Michael Byron, Jason D’Cruz, Jamie Dreier, David Gottesman,
Bart Kowalski, Randall Rose, and Shannon Walsh. They have each had some direct impact
on the content of this dissertation. In several cases, they also served as invaluable reminders
that the work was worth finishing.
The road to completion has not been without its share of obstacles, and these could not
have been surmounted without the love and support of my parents and brother. Their
ongoing examples of perseverance, honor and faith have kept me grounded during a long
investigation (both formal and otherwise) of villainy.
Finally, I would like it to be known to any and all who might read this that I have been
supported wholly, gracefully, and beautifully in this endeavor (and countless others) by my
wife and best friend. She has held my hand tightly at every crest and valley.
This work is dedicated to my children, and to Robert George Walsh.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
v
Introduction and Overview
1
Chapter One: Chisholm on Moral Offence
1.1 Introduction
7
1.2 Chisholm’s First Description
9
1.3 Chisholm’s Second Description
14
1.4 “EoR”: The Third Description
15
1.5 “IPPS”: The Fourth Description
21
1.6 First Objection: There Are No “Totally Offensive” Acts
25
1.7 Stocker: Logical Problems in Chisholm’s Descriptions of
28
Offence
1.8 Heyd’s Objections
37
1.9 Schumaker’s Remarks on Chisholm’s Behalf
43
Chapter Two: Four Recent Accounts of Offence
2.1 Introduction
47
2.2 Driver: An Examples-Based Approach
47
2.3 Mellema on Moral Offence
61
2.4 Mellema I: The Asymmetries Defense
62
2.5 Mellema II: The Virtue-Theory Based Account
71
2.6 Mellema III: The Ignorance-Based Account
84
2.7 Mellema IV: The Dilemma-Centered Account
97
2.8 Mellema, in Sum
103
2.9 Haji: Offence Without Blame
104
vi
2.10 McNamara: Returning to a Formal Framework
115
2.11 Conclusion
121
Chapter Three: In Defense of Offence
3.1 Introduction
123
3.2 Offence as a “Hybrid” Concept
124
3.3 Trianosky: On the Independence of Deontic and Aretaic Value
132
3.4 Three Accounts of Suberogatory Blame
141
3.5 Revisiting Previous Examples of Offence
160
3.6 A Final Case Study: Offence in Entertainment
172
3.7 Concluding Remarks
181
Bibliography
182
vii
Introduction and Overview
The word “supererogation” is unlikely to hold a place in the average nonphilosopher’s lexicon. The idea to which the word corresponds, however, is a common
theme in everyday discussions, observations, and fictions. Stories praising heroic actions
(where these actions are not morally required) are readily found in evening newscasts about
cats saved from trees by strangers, and idle banter between friends and acquaintances often
touches on “random acts of kindness”1—acts spoken of as deserving praise, despite lying
outside the scope of moral obligation. It is not terribly surprising, then, to find that
introductory ethics textbooks typically introduce supererogation as an important—if not
central—concept in moral philosophy.2 While the details of these definitions leave room for
further revision, one thing seems clear: Supererogation, in some form or other, is a staple of
both commonsense and academic moral thought.
The possibility of a contrasting concept, however, is much less widely recognized. In a
1964 article entitled “Supererogation and Offence: A Conceptual Scheme for Ethics”,
Roderick Chisholm poses an intriguing question about this possibility. After discussing the
1 Whether such “random acts” are as personally rewarding for their recipients as more targeted acts of kindness
is, of course, another matter entirely. See Felicia Nimue Ackerman’s poem entitled “Thursday’s Rose” (The
Providence Journal, April 21, 2011: B6) for an interesting perspective on this.
James Rachels’ widely used The Elements of Moral Philosophy describes supererogatory acts as those “that are
praiseworthy but not strictly required” (107), while Louis Pojman’s Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong
characterizes them as “not required by moral principles but contain[ing] enormous value” (268). A similar
definition can even be found in a recent Hollywood blockbuster: In the 2009 film Star Trek, the character
Spock is shown (presumably) describing supererogation as, "When an act is morally praiseworthy but not
morally obligatory."
2
1
intuitively plausible concept of supererogation, Chisholm wonders whether there might not
be an “opposite” category of moral evaluation. While of any given supererogatory act x we
might feel comfortable saying, “You ought to x, but you don’t have to x”, Chisholm asks if
we can ever coherently say, “You ought not to x, but you may x.” (5) Chisholm goes on to
argue that our classification of moral evaluations should include a category for acts that he
calls “offences,” comprised of “permissive ill-doing” (5).3 These actions are not morally
forbidden, but they are nevertheless morally blameworthy. The following variation on one
of Chisholm’s examples may help to illustrate the idea: 4
Perry Zoso5
Imagine that Mr. Perry Zoso has just finished eating a particularly large and satisfying lunch at his
favorite restaurant, the Deontic Diner. He is currently experiencing the sort of mild laziness and
post-gustatory euphoria that often accompanies the completion of such a meal. As his server drops
the check at his table, Perry looks around and notices that the restaurant has a rush of customers, and
that there is a long wait for seating. It occurs to Perry that the sooner he chooses to pay and vacate
his seat, the sooner another customer can take it and enjoy her lunch. Indeed, the turnover will
benefit more than just the next customer—the server will benefit via the opportunity to make another
tip, and the restaurant will benefit via the sale of another food order. It seems to Perry that he is
under no compulsion or obligation, moral or legal, to leave his seat now as opposed to, say, fifteen
minutes from now. After all, when leaving him the check, the server offered the standard salutation
of, “Take your time.” Still, having worked as a restaurant server himself, he knows perfectly well that
the server, restaurant, and waiting customers would much rather that he not take his time. “Not only
this,” he thinks, “but they will hold it against me if I leave in fifteen minutes rather than right now.”
Perry asks himself, “Will the server be justified in blaming me for taking an extra fifteen minutes
before paying my bill when it’s clear that I’m finished here?” He concludes that she will, as there will
be something blameworthy, or bad, about his waiting an extra fifteen minutes at the counter. Still, he
doesn’t think that it will be morally wrong to wait. As he digests his food over the next quarter hour
and pays his bill, Perry concludes that there was a sense in which he ought to have left sooner for the
next customer, but that he was not morally obligated to do so. He believes that he has done nothing
wrong.
While “offense” is the conventional American spelling, I will use “offence” throughout this work. Chisholm
uses the latter spelling to describe a distinct category of moral evaluation, and I will follow him in order to
avoid confusion with commonsense notions of offense/insult/etc.
3
Chisholm and Sosa suggest “taking too long in the restaurant when others are known to be waiting” as an
example of a moral offence. (326)
4
5 I recognize that the name I’ve chosen for this example may sound odd. I’ve chosen it as a mnemonic device:
Perry Zoso is a (perhaps not terribly clever) play on the Spanish word perezoso, meaning “lazy”. I hope that these
devices will not grate on the reader too heavily.
2
Chisholm’s suggestion has not been widely adopted in the subsequent ethical literature, and
the concept of moral offence remains largely unrecognized. Despite subsequent attempts to
further develop a coherent account of actions that are simultaneously morally blameworthy
and morally permissible,6 Chisholm’s category of “moral offence” has failed to find the place
in moral discourse that its purportedly opposite category enjoys.
I believe that there are at least three significant reasons for this, and that these must
be addressed by any serious account of moral offence. The first pertains to the coherence of
the concept itself. One might think, as David Heyd does, that the concept of moral offence
entails a sort of contradiction. Heyd dismisses the category as “artificially invented”, and
claims that “[b]y its nature, a moral system does not leave patently bad action as morally
permissible…The extremely good cannot be required, but the extremely bad (vicious) is the
prime target of prohibition.” (SEP) With respect to the example described above, Heyd
might argue that Perry is mistaken about at least one feature of his decision to stay at the
table. No action that is morally blameworthy, Heyd contends, could ever be morally
permissible—and thus Perry has either done nothing blameworthy, or has done something
morally forbidden.
Even if it can be shown that suberogation is conceptually coherent, it may be
thought that the concept fails to warrant significant attention. Here, opponents of the
category might argue that we do not need the concept in order to explain our intuitive
reactions to the acts within its purported scope.7 For any given example of suberogation
that might be offered, an alternative explanation for the intuitions it elicits may be given
using concepts and distinctions that are already recognized in contemporary moral discourse.
According to one explanation, it may be argued that Perry is in violation of the demands of
6
7
See Driver, Mellema 1991, Haji 2006, and others
Hallie Rose Liberto’s recent criticism of Julia Driver illustrates this sort of objection.
3
etiquette, but not of morality. We might instead say that Perry has a right to stay at the table,
but that he is somehow abusing his right in a morally objectionable way. On still another
view, it might be argued that Perry’s action is neither blameworthy nor morally forbidden—
if there is any cause for concern here, it is merely that his action betrays a poor character. If
these kinds of alternative explanations are satisfactory, then distinguishing offences from
other kinds of acts yields no advantage for applied moral philosophy. Chisholm’s category is
thus reduced to the sort of “difference which makes no difference” famously maligned by
William James (xiii).
A related problem arises when we look for cases of what Chiholm calls “villainous”
offences. Perhaps we do commit moral offences when we linger at restaurant tables—but
should we really care about these sorts of trivial “ill-doings”? As Heyd writes, “these are
uninteresting cases from a moral point of view as are their counterparts of small favors or
acts of politeness. Once we look for examples of morally vicious or villainous action that is
nevertheless permissible (which is the counterpart of a morally heroic action), we see there is
nothing there.” (SEP) If we attribute any moral blame to Perry’s action, it will be a relatively
small amount. If it cannot be shown that offences also include actions that generate much
stronger negative intuitions, then the concept might be (and to a large extent, has been)
dismissed as a marginal curiosity of deontic logic. Are there, then, any relevant moral issues
that the concept of suberogation can help us to better understand?
I believe each of these three obstacles can be overcome. Accordingly, this
dissertation has three primary aims. First, I shall argue that it is conceptually possible for an
act to be morally “bad” while not morally “wrong”. Doing this will involve a careful
discussion of what a moral offence is, as well as a thorough defense of the concept’s
coherence against Heyd and other objectors. Secondly, I will argue that the category of
4
offence can accommodate commonsense intuitions in cases where alternative distinctions—
such as the distinctions between perfect and imperfect duties, morality and etiquette, and
moral and amoral values—simply don’t work. Finally, I intend to show that Heyd is wrong
to deny the possibility of non-trivial moral offences. Just as supererogatory acts come in
different orders of magnitude with respect to their praiseworthiness—stock examples range
from holding a door for a stranger, to running into burning buildings to save non-familial
cats—offences can range from the “minor” to the “villainous”.8 I hope to show that
interesting examples of righteous villainy abound.
My project will be structured as follows: In the first chapter, I will provide a
thorough expository review of Chisholm’s original work on the concept of offence. I will
consider his different definitions of the concept in the light of Michael Stocker’s criticism. I
will argue that at least some of Chisholm’s definitions are logically coherent, but that they do
not address David Heyd’s later criticism adequately. In the second chapter I will examine
more recent accounts of the concept from Julia Driver, Gregory Mellema, Ishtiyaque Haji,
and Paul McNamara. While each author improves upon Chisholm’s account in some way, I
will argue that each subsequent account of offence suffers from an inadequate account of
moral blame. The third chapter will feature my own account of moral offence, where I will
argue that it is best understood as a hybrid category, requiring an independent assessment of
an act’s “rightness” or “wrongness”, on the one hand, and the degree to which an agent is
blameworthy or praiseworthy for performing it, on the other. Roughly, I will argue that
offence are those acts which are not forbidden (in terms of their deontic status), but for the
performance of which an agent will be blameworthy. If my account is successful, it will leave
8
These are Chisholm’s terms.
5
us with a category of moral evaluation that is not only internally coherent, but useful in
approaching difficult cases in applied moral philosophy.
6
CHAPTER ONE: CHISHOLM ON MORAL OFFENCE
1.1 Introduction
In the mid-1960s Roderick Chisholm published a series of three articles advancing a
set of basic concepts for deontic logic: “Supererogation and Offence: A Conceptual Scheme
for Ethics” (from here on abbreviated as “S&O”), “The Ethics of Requirement” (from here
on abbreviated as “EoR”), and “Intrinsic Preferability and the Problem of Supererogation”
(co-authored with Ernest Sosa, from here on abbreviated as “IPPS”). Each of these articles
addresses what he calls the “problem of supererogation”, frequently attributed to J. O.
Urmson (1958): If we accept the view that there are only three deontic categories—the
obligatory, the forbidden, and the indifferent—and that these three are not only collectively
exhaustive but mutually exclusive, then supererogatory acts become impossible. Since room
must be made for supererogation so as to accommodate our deep intuitions about heroic
actions (or so Urmson argues), by modus tollens we must conclude that three-fold deontic
schemes are deficient. But where Urmson is content simply to show that more categories
should be recognized, Chisholm takes on the challenge of identifying and describing these
categories. Among them, he argues, lies an idea that is never considered in Urmson’s
work—the possibility of “moral offences”. Such acts are not forbidden, Chisholm
maintains, but nevertheless should not be performed. These “permissive ill-doings” (“S&O”
5) are included in each of Chisholm’s efforts to describe conceptual schemes for moral
7
evaluation, and thus in each of his overarching attempts to solve the problem of
supererogation.
David Heyd and Michael Stocker have argued that offence should not be recognized
as a legitimate category of moral evaluation9. While I believe that their critiques do highlight
some serious problems with Chisholm’s project, I do not think that either author shows that
moral offences are impossible. On the contrary, despite the flaws in his particular account, I
believe that Chisholm succeeds in identifying a category of moral evaluation that can
“suggest answers, or throw light upon previous answers, to a number of difficult questions
of moral philosophy” (“EoR” 147). While the broad goal of my dissertation is to construct a
plausible account of moral offence, in this chapter I shall restrict my focus to Chisholm’s
work on the concept. I will construct an overview of Chisholm’s account(s) of moral
offence, along with the major objections that they face from Heyd and Stocker. I will then
argue that neither critic shows the concept of moral offence to be incoherent, but that they
do pose some difficult problems that require revisions to Chisholm’s version of the concept.
In assessing Chisholm’s work on moral offences, we must consider each of his three
articles separately. Chisholm explicitly acknowledges that his definitions of supererogation
and moral offence change between “S&O” and “EoR” (“EoR” 153), while Michael Stocker
argues that there actually two logically distinct sets of definitions within “S&O”. The
definitions change yet again in “IPPS”. I will defer to chronology and begin with the first set
of definitions found in “S&O”, considering each of Chisholm’s separate definitions (and its
particular problems) one at a time.
In his footnotes, Stocker indicates that John Rawls was also skeptical of moral offences (93-94), though Rawls
did not formally address offences in print.
9
8
1.2 Chisholm’s First Description
Chisholm’s first account of moral offence derives the concept from a single pair of
more primitive moral terms. He begins by observing that acts can be evaluated in terms of
both their performance and their nonperformance. We can imagine any given action being
either performed or not performed, and apply a distinct evaluation to each possibility. He
then suggests that we choose a pair of “mutually exclusive but not contradictory” (“S&O”
10) terms, such as “good” and “bad”, or “praiseworthy” and “blameworthy”, which can then
be applied to each of the actions just imagined. The procedure yields a series of nine
possible ordered pairings, categorized as follows:
1
2
3
4
Performance
Bad/Blameworthy
Bad/Blameworthy
7
8
Bad/Blameworthy
Neither
(Good/Praiseworthy) nor
(Bad/Blameworthy)
Neither
(Good/Praiseworthy) nor
(Bad/Blameworthy)
Neither
(Good/Praiseworthy) nor
(Bad/Blameworthy)
Good/Praiseworthy
Good/Praiseworthy
9
Good/Praiseworthy
5
6
Nonperformance
Bad/Blameworthy
Neither
(Good/Praiseworthy) nor
(Bad/Blameworthy)
Good/Praiseworthy
Bad/Blameworthy
Status
Totally offensive
Offence of
commission
Neither
(Good/Praiseworthy) nor
(Bad/Blameworthy)
(Good/Praiseworthy)
Totally indifferent
Bad/Blameworthy
Neither
(Good/Praiseworthy) nor
(Bad/Blameworthy)
Good/Praiseworthy
Obligatory
Supererogatory
commission
Forbidden
Offence of omission
Supererogatory
commission
Totally supererogatory
With nine possible two-place orderings for our contrary terms, Chisholm observes
that the resultant framework yields “512 possible moral systems, but most of these will be of
9
little interest” (“S&O”, 13). Here I take him to have in mind systems that acknowledge only,
for example, category [1]. The idea that all actions are “totally offensive” fails to match up
with any moral theory that will be taken seriously. Other systems, however, might be taken
more seriously. For example, “[a]ccording to certain nihilistic moralities, only the fifth
possibility—total indifference—is capable of being exemplified”, while “[a]ccording to
utilitarianism, in the strict sense of this term, the even-numbered lines are to be excluded,
since strict utilitarianism implies that, for any act, if its performance is better than its
nonperformance, its performance is obligatory, and if its nonperformance is better than its
performance, its performance is forbidden” (“S&O” 12-13).10 If this is correct, then the
table of classification might be used as a tool for evaluating moral theories themselves.
Chisholm contends that the “richest” moral systems will accommodate all nine of his
categories of moral evaluation, while “the poorest system would be one allowing none to be
exemplified” (“S&O” 9). In this way, we might say that strict utilitarianism is a “richer”
moral theory than nihilism.11
Chisholm’s acts that are “bad but not forbidden” (“S&O” 14) thus include two
categories from the total list of nine. An agent commits an offence either by performing a
10 Chisholm’s remarks here echo a problem identified by Urmson (1958). As explained by Hill and Cureton,
“Urmson’s challenge to utilitarianism was directed to the forms of ‘simple’ utilitarianism prominent at the time
of his essay, for example, the hedonistic utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham… [T]hese theories imply that there
cannot be heroic or saintly deeds that are good to do but ‘beyond duty,’ for these would be, strictly speaking,
not duty, not wrong, and yet not indifferent.” (2013) Effectively, Chisholm and Urmson appear take
possibility [6] (for example) to be incompatible with the “strictness” of classical utilitarianism. If we are morally
required to maximize utility in any given situation, then it seems impossible that we should ever exceed our
moral obligations. And if we do not deserve praise when we fail to meet our moral obligations, it follows that
there will be no instances in which we deserve praise, but have not done what is required of us. I will consider
this argument, and the compatibility of both supererogation and offence with utilitarianism, in greater detail in
my third chapter. While it may be possible to modify utilitarianism to avoid the “strictness problem” (by, for
example, defining obligation in terms of satisficing), I ultimately want to argue that the problem does not
threaten the possibility of offence.
11 Chisholm’s use of the word “richer” is, admittedly, a bit mysterious. It is not clear how “richness” relates to
truth. It sounds (to my ear, anyway) as though “richness” is a desirable property of a moral theory, such that
theory x’s being “richer” than theory y gives me a reason to prefer theory x to theory y. Chisholm does not
explicitly endorse such a claim, but I cannot imagine what else he might mean.
10
bad act whose nonperformance would be indifferent (neither good nor bad), or by refraining
from an act whose performance would be indifferent, where the forbearance itself is bad. I
believe that the Perry Zoso case described in my introduction constitutes an example of the
latter type of offence—an “offence of omission”. It would be neither good nor bad for
Perry to give up his seat at the Deontic Diner, but it is (at least according to Chisholm) bad
that he should refrain from giving up his seat.12 We might also ask for an example of an
“offence of commission”. Here is a candidate:
[S]uppose A knows concerning B, whom A dislikes, that the loss of B’s employment would result in
great tragedy for B and his family; that there is another man, C, who could do B’s work but no more
satisfactorily than B does it; and that B’s employer, even if he knew the foregoing, would replace B by
C if he thought that C were available. One might plausibly argue that, if A were deliberately to bring
the availability of C to the attention of B’s employer, his act would be permissible but at the same
time heinous and inhuman. (“S&O” 5)
While Chisholm does not explicitly describe this as an “offence of commission”, a moment’s
reflection reveals that he must think that it is. Let us name A “The Informer”. Chisholm
explicitly identifies the Informer’s act as “heinous”. This immediately eliminates the
possibility of interpreting the case as an “offence of omission”, per row 4 in table 1.
Chisholm cannot intend us to believe that refraining from telling the employer would be
praiseworthy or else (per row 3) the case would be one of a forbidden act. This means that
Chisholm either thinks that refraining from telling the employer would either be (a) bad or
(b) neither good nor bad. The former option strikes me as implausible, as I cannot see any
grounds for blaming such forbearance. This pushes us to interpret the Informer’s act as an
“offence of commission”.13
There are several reasons to doubt the plausibility of this example. As I will discuss later, a major problem
facing Chisholm’s account of offence is its reliance on examples that are too easily dismissed.
12
13 I have, of course, not considered the possibility that refraining from telling the employer would be good.
Chisholm cannot think this, because it would (per table 1) make telling the employer a forbidden act. Still, the
reader may have the intuition that the forbearance would in fact be good, and that Chisholm has simply failed
to identify an instance of moral offence here. I will have more to say about this in section 1.8.
11
There is a second point contained in the example of the Informer that I take to be
crucial to Chisholm’s view. Namely, he believes that offences “can be either trifling or
diabolical” (“S&O” 5), in much the same way that supererogatory acts can be either trifling
or heroic. While many classic examples of supererogation—such as Urmson’s famous case
of a soldier who falls on a grenade in order to save the lives of his comrades—double as
stock examples of heroism, the category (at least on Chisholm’s view) also includes nonheroic acts. If, for example, I notice that a student sitting in the seat behind me has
forgotten his pencil as a test is being distributed, and give him an extra pencil from my own
backpack, I have committed a non-heroic act that is nevertheless supererogatory. After all,
my performance of the act merits some praise—if only a little—and I could not be blamed
by anyone if I were to refrain from giving the pencil (or, as Chisholm might put it, it is good
that I should give the pencil, and it would not be bad to refrain from giving the pencil). If we
shift our attention to our previous examples of moral offence, we might say that Perry Zoso
commits a trifling offence, while the Informer commits a villainous one.
The difference between trifling and villainous offences at first seems to correspond
only to the degree to which the relevant act/forbearance is bad, but Chisholm hints that
there may be more to the distinction when he compares trifling offences to the Christian
concept of venial sins. 14 He explains that a venial sin is “a sin or misdeed which may be
pardoned, or as we might now say, excused” (“S&O” 6). The difference between trifling and
villainous offence thus may not be a simple of matter of degree—it may involve a more
Chisholm’s use of the mortal/venial distinction to illustrate his point here corresponds to other interesting
ties between theology and the problem of supererogation. It has been suggested by several authors (Heyd,
“Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory”; Mellema, “Supererogation, Obligation and Offence”; Hill and
Cureton) that the etymology of ‘supererogation’, along with disagreements about he possibility of supererogation,
are fundamentally rooted in theological disagreements between Catholic and Protestant traditions.
14
12
complicated distinction between excusable and inexcusable “permissible ill-doings”.15 It
should be noted that there are some conceptual problems with the way that Chisholm has
drawn (or, perhaps, suggested) the distinction here. For one thing, there seems to be an
important difference between “pardon” and “excuse”. I might excuse a misdeed on the
basis of diminished responsibility or mitigating circumstances, while it does not seem that
misdeeds can be pardoned in this way.16 For another, in at least some traditions mortal sins
can be forgiven.17 But even if Chisholm’s distinction between trifling and villainous offence
stands in need of clarification, I believe that the distinction is an important feature of
Chisholm’s view because it suggests that the degree to which an action is good or bad (or the
extent to which the act merits praise or blame) is effectively independent of its deontic
status. An action might merit either mild or significant blame, and still be morally
permissible. He lends further support to this interpretation when, in a critical remark on a
five-fold scheme of moral evaluation developed by Ernst Schwarz, he asserts that “[w]e do
not wish to say that trifling supererogation is more praiseworthy than the heroic
performance of one’s duty, or that what is trifling but forbidden is more blameworthy than a
diabolic of villainous offence” (“S&O” 8). The extent to which an action merits blame or
praise (i.e. whether the action is considered trifling, villainous or heroic) does not by itself
entail the action’s status as obligatory, supererogatory, offensive, or forbidden. It is rather
the fact that an action is at all good (praiseworthy) or bad (blameworthy), combined with the
15 It may be noticed that there does seem to be something that sounds immediately contradictory in the idea of
a permissible-but-inexcusable act. This observation might be used to support Heyd’s suggestion (discussed in
section 1.8) that villainous offences are less plausible than trivial ones.
16
I thank Felicia Nimue Ackerman for this point.
17 In Catholicism, mortal sins can be forgiven via the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The distinction between
mortal and venial sins, in this tradition, is not that the former cannot be forgiven, but rather that the former
(but not the latter) are sufficient grounds for damnation in the absence of forgiveness.
13
value assigned to its nonperformance, which determines its deontic status as an offence in
the first “S&O” account.
1.3 Chisholm’s Second Description
Up to this point, Chisholm divides his categories of evaluation according to a single
pair of contrary terms. To ensure the logical possibility of all nine classifications, Chisholm
stipulates that the contrary terms themselves must be interpreted so “that their application to
performance is logically independent of their application to nonperformance; that is to say,
‘It would be good to do A’ does not imply ‘It would be bad not to do A’, and ‘It would be
bad not to do A’ does not imply ‘It would be good not to do A’” (“S&O” 10). A different
characterization of offence emerges later in his discussion, however, when he suggests that
the nine moral categories identified in the table above could be realized by further reducing
our focus to a single moral concept:
A particular act which might be performed on a specific occasion is something which it is good to
perform provided that the situation which the act would bring about is one which ought to exist; the
act is something which it is bad to perform provided that the situation is one which ought not to
exist... The supererogatory is that which is good but not obligatory to do and the offensive that which is
bad but not forbidden. (“S&O” 14)
I believe that these remarks raise two important points.
First, Chisholm seems to think that the idea of “ought to be” is sufficient to capture
whatever we might have in mind when we speak of “good” or “bad”, of “praiseworthy” or
“blameworthy”, or of “right’ and ‘wrong”. If Chisholm means to say that “right”, “good”,
and “praiseworthy” are all somehow reducible to “ought to be”—i.e. that these terms can be
completely defined by appeal to “ought to be”—then a puzzle arises. To see the puzzle, we
14
should note that there is textual evidence to suggest that Chisholm does not think that
“good and bad" are equivalent in meaning to other pairs of contrary moral terms:
[B]y replacing our pair of contraries, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with other pairs, e.g. ‘meritorious’ and
‘demeritorious’, we could classify acts in still other ways (emphasis added) and multiply the number of
possible systems ad infinitum. (S&O 13)
If the table of moral classifications changes depending on whether we use “good and bad”
or “meritorious and demeritorious”, then “good” and “meritorious” must not mean the
same thing. If the two terms are somehow reducible to “ought to be”, then what is the
difference in the relationship between “ought to be” and “good”, on the one hand, and
“ought to be” and “meritorious”=8]; on the other? Secondly, it turns out that Chisholm’s
first definitions of supererogation and offence are not entirely consistent with the second
definitions. As Michael Stocker explains,
According to the first set [of definitions in “S&O”] there is no problem with the definition of
‘supererogation’. But there is a problem with that of ‘offence,’ and… it may not be possible that there
are offences… I believe both that these second definitions differ from the first and that according to
these second definitions it is logically impossible that there are either supererogatory acts or offences.
(88)
If Stocker is correct—and to a large extent I think that he is correct—then the two ways of
defining evaluative categories used in “S&O” yield different problems, and as such should be
treated separately. Stocker’s objections will be further explained and discussed in section 2.2.
1.4 “EoR”: The Third Description
Chisholm spends most of “S&O” arguing that 9 possible categories of moral
evaluation can be described by a pair of contrary terms, but suggests at the end of the article
that these categories should also be derivable from a single primitive moral term. By the
time of “EoR”, he appears to be more interested in this latter approach, as he begins with
the following:
15
By taking “p requires q” as our single ethical primitive and making use of the concept of an act, we can
define all of the fundamental concepts of ethics. We can reduce a number of perplexing terms—e.g.,
‘good,’ ‘obligatory,’ ‘prima facie duty,’ ‘commitment,’ ‘defeasibility,’ ‘overrides,’ ‘supererogatory,’
‘optional,’ ‘indifferent’—to a single term which is not, in fact, restricted to ethics. (Chisholm, “EoR”
147)
While his evaluative categories from “S&O” remain roughly intact, two notable differences
characterize the scheme in “EoR”. First, while he does not explicitly disavow them, he no
longer distinguishes total offences as special cases of actions that “are optional…[but] are
not morally indifferent” (“EoR” 153).18 Secondly, he indicates that “‘offence’ has a
somewhat different place [in the earlier scheme] than it does in the present one, but the
present one seems… clearly preferable” (153). He does not further explain why he prefers
the “present account” of moral offence; one must infer that he thinks it is resistant to
objections that threaten the older account.
As suggested above, the “EoR” account relies on defining all moral concepts via the
idea of requirements. Chisholm does not intend us to interpret “requires” as an ethical term,
even if colloquial English does sometimes tend to treat the word in this way. Chisholm’s
“requirement” is certainly related to commonsense notions of moral obligation—a key aim
of his article is in fact to describe this relationship—but the terms are not interchangeable.
Instead, his use of requirement is “not restricted to ethics”, and should instead be
understood in the sense that “the dominant seventh requires the chord of the tonic[, or that]
one color in the lower left calls for a complementary color in the upper right” (“EoR” 147).
He suggests that this sense of “requires” may correspond more naturally to the idea of
“fitting”, so that we would say that the chord of the tonic fits the dominant seventh. With
this single primitive term loosely described, Chisholm introduces his formal definitions:
18 As additional evidence, in “IPPS” Chisholm and Sosa explicitly state that “we now have seven moral or
deontic categories” (329). The two categories that are eliminated correspond to the first and ninth categories in
“S&O”.
16
Using propositional letters to stand for events or states of affairs, and taking “pRq”—“p requires
q”—as our primitive locution, we may formulate our first definition as follows:
“There is a requirement for q”
for: (Ep) [p & pRq]
We may read the definens as: “There is a possible state of affairs p such that p occurs and p requires
q.” (“EoR” 147)
After pointing out that requirements (as defined in this way) can conflict, Chisholm argues
that this should not compel us to accept the possibility of conflicting duties:
So far as duty or obligation is concerned, we may accept, if we choose, a “principle of permission”: If
it is a man’s duty or obligation to perform a certain act q, then it is not also his duty or obligation to
perform some other act which is incompatible with his performing q…[W]henever a man is subject to
conflicting requirements, then at least one of the requirements is overridden. For a requirement, unlike
a duty or obligation, in the strict sense of the latter terms, may be defeasible. (“EoR” 148)
Obligations, then, are constituted by what ought to be, which is in turn defined in terms of
requirements that have not been overridden:
(3) “Oq” for: (Ep)~(Es) [(p & pRq) & (s & ~((p & s)Rq))] (“EoR” 149)
A state of affairs ought to be, provided that it is required by a current state of affairs, and
that there is no other overriding requirement that currently obtains. To yield claims about
what we ought to do, and not merely about what ought to be, Chisholm next suggests that we
introduce the idea of an action, using the expression “‘Ap’ [to mean] ‘S brings it about that
p’…interpreting ‘bring it about’ both causally and intentionally” (“EoR” 150). With this in
place, he now defines what we ought to do as follows:
(4) “S ought to bring it about that p” for: OAq19
Our definiens may thus be read as “It ought to be that S bring it about that q” and hence also as
“There is a requirement that S bring it about that q, and this requirement has not been overridden,”
or, in terms only of our undefined locutions: “There occurs a state of affairs p such that p requires
that S bring it about that q, and there occurs no state of affairs r such that the joint state of affairs, q
and r, does not require that S bring it about that q.” (“EoR” 150)
19 Given that Chisholm appears to more specifically define obligations to act as (OAq), a definition of such
obligations in terms of requirements would presumably read:
“OAq” for: (Ep)~(Es) [(p & pRAq) & (s & ~((p & s)RAq))]
17
A distinction has thus been drawn between what ought to be, on the one hand, and what
ought to be done, on the other. It is worth noting here that while Chisholm does not offer a
formal definition for ‘obligatory’ in “EoR”, it is clear from a later definition that he takes the
expression (OAq) to also mean, “It is obligatory that S perform q”.20 Consequently,
Chisholm defines his terms so that it is logically coherent to assert that a given state of
affairs ought to be, but that it is simultaneously not the case that anyone ought to act so as to
bring it about. In other words, the fact that q ought to be does not itself entail that anyone is
obligated to bring q about, such that OAq thus remains consistent with the sort of “ought”
that implies “can”. This distinction between Oq and OAq plays a crucial role in his
definitions of both supererogation and offence.
Before introducing these definitions, one further concept is needed in order to
address to a problem facing the possibility of supererogatory/offensive acts. Chisholm
notes an apparent incompatibility between his definition of OAq and such remarks as, “You
may do x, even though you really ought not”. These remarks are, of course, supposed to
exemplify moral offences, and as such he wants to ensure that they are consistent with his
“ethics of requirement”. The concern here is that definition [4] above appears to be
particularly stringent, so that any act that I ought not to perform (O~Aq) would be either
wrong or indifferent. The existence of both supererogatory acts and moral offences, however,
would suggest that there is “an ‘ought to do’ and an ‘ought not to do’ which one may get out
of if one chooses” (“EoR” 152). To explain how this can be, Chisholm introduces the idea
of permissions:
Let us introduce the useful abbreviation “q is permitted”; i.e.,
20 See Chisholm’s remarks on his definition (6) for permissions, in which he states that “It is not permitted that S
do q (it is obligatory that S refrain from doing q)” becomes “~PAq,” or “O~Aq.”
(153)
18
“Pq” for: ~O~q
A situation or state of affairs q is permitted provided it is false that not-q ought to exist…“It is
permitted that S do q” now becomes : “PAq”; “It is permitted that S refrain from doing q (it is false
that S ought to do q)” becomes “P~Aq,” or “~OAq;21 and “It is not permitted that S do q (it is
obligatory that S refrain from doing q)” becomes “~PAq,” or “O~Aq.” (“EoR” 153)
By applying permissions to actions, we can coherently say that an agent is permitted to act so
as to bring about a state of affairs that ought not to exist (i.e. commit an offence), and
conversely to say that an agent is permitted to refrain from acting so as to bring about a state
of affairs that ought to exist (i.e. perform a supererogatory act). It is thus precisely the
distinction between Oq and OAq, in conjunction with the idea of permissions, which yields
the following definition of supererogation:
And now we may say that an act of supererogation—an act of non-obligatory well-doing—is an act
which need not be performed even though its object ought to exist.
“S’s doing q is supererogatory” for:
Oq & P~Aq & PAq
S’s doing q is supererogatory provided: q ought to exist; it is permitted that S not perform q; and it is
permitted that S perform q. (“EoR” 153)
In other words, I act in a supererogatory manner by bringing about a state of affairs that
ought to be, even though it is not the case that I ought to bring it about.
Here one might wonder whether Chisholm ignores the possibility of states of affairs
that are desirable, even though it is not the case that they ought to be.22 It seems desirable,
for example, that everyone should be born with the potential to be a great painter or flautist.
But it seems strange to say that these are states of affairs that ought to be. I can imagine
Chisholm explaining these possibilities in either of two ways. First, he might simply assert
that there are many types of value besides moral value, and that the sense in which we find
these states of affairs desirable is a non-moral one. It is perhaps desirable that everyone
21
Punctuation error in the original.
22
Felicia Nimue Ackerman helped me to see this worry.
19
should have painting ability from an aesthetic point of view, but not a moral point of view.
In this way, it is not the case that such a state of affairs ought to be, and there is nothing
supererogatory about bringing about a world where people have a greater potential for
excellence in painting or flute playing. Alternatively, he might grant that there is something
morally desirable these kinds of states of affairs, and maintain that they “ought to be” in the
sense relevant to his definition of supererogation. This response may be at odds with our
intuitions about the desirability of painting potential, but it is of course true that moral
theories will occasionally yield surprising conclusions. In either case, I am not sure that
these kinds of cases threaten Chisholm’s description of supererogation in terms of Oq and
OAq.
At the other end of the moral spectrum, Chisholm argues, I act in an offensive
manner by bringing about a state of affairs that ought not to be, but where it is not the case
that I ought not to bring it about:
And we may now distinguish, similarly, between saying that an action may be performed and saying
that its object ought not to exist. With this distinction we may define those offensive acts of
permissive ill-doing…:
“S’s doing q is offensive for:
O~q & PAq & P~Aq
S’s doing q is offensive provided: q ought not to exist; but it is permitted that S perform q, and also
permitted that S not perform q. (“EoR” 153)
On this definition, if doing q is offensive, then I am both permitted to perform it and to
refrain from performing it; my bringing q about is neither prohibited nor obligatory. This is
not, however, to say that offences are morally indifferent:
[A]n act is not morally indifferent unless the act itself is optional and its object is one such that it is
false that the object ought to exist and also false that the object ought not to exist; i.e.,
(10)
“S’s doing q is indifferent” for: Pq & P~q & PAq & P~Aq (“EoR”153)
Definition [8], if it is accepted, allows us to say that an offensive act is not morally obligatory
(which is to say that ~OAq), not forbidden (which is to say that ~OA~q), and not
20
indifferent (as the definition’s first conjunct (O~q) is incompatible with the assertion (Pq &
P~q) required for indifferent acts). Such acts are “permissible” because there is no
requirement for the agent to refrain from performing them (PAq), but remain instances of
“ill-doing” because they bring about states of affairs that ought not to be. We might, then,
say that definitions (7) and (8) describe supererogation and offence as what occurs when
‘oughts’ governing states of affairs come apart from ‘oughts’ governing individual actions.
In this way, Chisholm takes himself to have made room for a coherent account of
supererogation and offence. When we say “You may do x, even though you really ought
not”, we are not asserting a contradiction. Instead, what we really mean to say is “x ought
not to be, but it is not the case that you ought to refrain from doing x”.
We might thus read the “EoR” account of moral offence as an elaboration on the
second account in “S&O”. The second definition of offences in “S&O” states that offences
are “bad but not forbidden”, and that an “act is something which it is bad to perform
provided that the situation is one which ought not to exist” (“S&O” 14). The “EoR”
account, by introducing a separate definition for what one ought to bring about, more clearly
explains the difference between saying that an act is bad and saying that it is forbidden. If
Perry Zoso lingers too long at his restaurant table, then he brings about a state of affairs that
ought not to be (i.e. if we say that q is the state of affairs in which there are tables available
for waiting customers, then Oq, or ~O~q). In this sense, he’s doing something bad. But
because he is permitted to linger at the table (~OAq), his lingering is not forbidden.
1.5 “IPPS”: The Fourth Description
21
Co-authored with Ernest Sosa, “IPPS” features yet another description of moral
offence. Chisholm and Sosa remain interested in solving “problem of supererogation”—the
problem of explaining how an act can be coherently described as “neither obligatory, nor
forbidden, nor morally indifferent” (325-326). To do this, the basic framework of “S&O” is
again employed—sans the categories of totally supererogatory and totally offensive acts—to
yield seven deontic categories. Two of these involve moral offences:
(i)
G(Mp) and B(~Mp); i.e., p is such that its intentional performance is morally good and its
intentional nonperformance morally bad. This corresponds to the proposed definition of
obligatory, above. In other words, if p is such that it would be morally good for S intentionally
to make p happen and morally bad for S intentionally to refrain from making p happen, then
it is obligatory for S to make p happen. We call attention to the fact that, although
“intentionally” appears in the antecedent, it does not appear in the consequent.
(ii)
G(Mp) and N(~Mp); i.e., p is such that its intentional performance is morally good and its
intentional nonperformance is morally neutral. If p satisfies these conditions, then it would
be supererogatory for S to make p happen. This also corresponds to the definition proposed
above.
(iii)
N(Mp) and B(~Mp); i.e., p is such that its intentional performance is morally neutral and its
intentional nonperformance is morally bad. Thus its nonperformance would be offensive.
(iv)
N(Mp) and G(~Mp); i.e. p is such that its intentional performance is morally neutral and its
intentional nonperformance is morally good. Hence the nonperformance of p would be
supererogatory.
(v)
B(Mp) and N(~Mp); i.e., p is such that its intentional performance is morally bad and its
intentional nonperformance is morally neutral. Performance of p would thus be offensive but
not forbidden.
(vi)
B(Mp) and G(~Mp); i.e., p is such that its intentional performance is morally bad and its
intentional nonperformance morally good. Performance of p would thus be wrong or
forbidden. (Chisholm and Sosa 329-330)
This scheme once again describes offences (along with other deontic categories) by
appealing to a pair of contrary terms, which are then applied to both the performance and
nonperformance of a given act. The scheme differs from the others discussed so far in that
Chisholm and Sosa do not further reduce “good” and “bad” to the concept of “ought to
be”. Instead, they argue that the seven deontic categories can be derived from the primitive
concept of “intrinsic preferability”.
22
This difference is not, I believe, superficial. Intrinsic preferability is described in
much greater detail in “IPPS” than either the concept of “ought to be” in “S&O” or the
concept of “requirement” in “EOR”, but there is sufficient textual evidence to suggest that
these concepts do not overlap neatly. Whereas “requirement” is described as a relation
between two states of affairs where one calls for another, “intrinsic preferability” is defined
via a series of comparative relations between states of affairs:
D 1:
D 2:
D 3:
D 4:
D 5:
“p has the same intrinsic value as q” (or “pSq”) for
“~(pPq) & ~(qPp)”.
“p is intrinsically indifferent” (or “Ip”) for
“~(pP~p) & ~(~pPp)”.
“p is intrinsically neutral” (or “Np”) for “(Eq) (Iq & pSq)”.
“p is intrinsically good” (or “Gp”) for “(Eq) (Iq & pPq)”.
“p is intrinsically bad” (or “Bp”) for “(Eq) (Iq & qPp)”. (Chisholm and Sosa 323)23
These definitions are connected to the seven deontic categories advanced in “IPPS” by one
final piece of notation, “Mp”, which is to be read as “S intentionally makes p happen” (328).
I take Mp to mean the same thing as the expression Ap in “EoR”, where we are told to
interpret “‘bring it about’ both causally and intentionally” (150). A key difference between
the “IPPS” approach and the approach taken in “EoR”, then, is the absence of a separate
notation to distinguish between a state of affairs and the act that brings this state of affairs
about. In “EoR” the expression (OAq) would read, “S ought to act so as to bring about q”.
This expression is logically independent from the assertion (Oq) that q ought to be. The
“IPPS” definitions, on the other hand, do not directly involve such distinctions. Instead,
The reading of “pP~q” would then be: “The circumstances C under which S finds himself at t are
such that it would be morally preferable for S under C at t, intentionally to make p happen than it
would be for hum, under C at t, intentionally to refrain from making q happen.” It should be
observed that the negative expression, “~q”, so interpreted (“S intentionally refrains from making q
happen”), refers not merely to an omission, but to the intentional commission of an omission. (Chisholm
and Sosa 328)
Chisholm and Sosa argue that these definitions are superior to alternative definitions because they allow us
(among other things) to avoid committing ourselves to the view that states of affairs that are intrinsically better
than their negations are necessarily intrinsically good themselves. They think we can imagine states of affairs
that are better than their negations, but that are themselves intrinsically neutral: “[T]here being no unhappy
unicorns is intrinsically better than there being unhappy unicorns, but it is not a state of affairs that is
intrinsically good.” (323)
23
23
The expression (pP~q) does not appear to distinguish between saying that that p is better
than ~q, on the one hand, and saying that S’s intentionally bringing p about is better than her
intentionally refraining from bringing about q, on the other. Even if we take the inclusion of
the notation Mp as an attempt to introduce the idea of action (in the way that Ap is used to
capture action in “EoR”), there is still a clear difference between the definitions of moral
offence in “EoR” and “IPPS”. The latter definition says nothing about the value of a state
of affairs independent of the act that brings it about, while the former definition explicitly
states that an offence is partially characterized as a state of affairs that ought not to be.
The “IPPS” definitions do, however, afford Chisholm and Sosa an opportunity to
shed further light on the difference between trifling and villainous offences mentioned in
“S&O”. Because the deontic status of a given act is not a matter of how much better or
worse it is than alternatives, but rather a matter of the conjoined intrinsic preferability of its
performance and nonperformance, it becomes possible to suggest that some offences are
worse than some forbidden acts:
What is heroic is preferable morally to what is trifling, and what is villainous is worse than what is
trifling. But some acts of supererogation are heroic and others (granting a small favour, for example)
are trifling; some acts of obligation are trifling and others (the attempt of a lifeguard to save a
drowning man) are heroic; some acts that are merely offensive are trifling and others (informing the
authorities about the questionable political background of one’s competitor) may be villainous; and
some acts that are wrong or forbidden are villainous and others (the failure to make good for a
borrowed postage stamp) are trifling. (Chisholm and Sosa 331)
If we accept these as genuine examples of moral offence,24 then it reasonable to suggest that
some villainous offences might be worse than some forbidden acts (in the sense that the
state of affairs brought about by a forbidden act may be comparatively preferable to the state
24 It should be noted here (and will be further discussed later in the chapter) that Chisholm’s critics do not think
that we should accept these as examples of offence.
24
of affairs brought about by some act of villainy), some obligatory acts might be better than
some supererogatory acts, and so on.
I have described four different ways in which Chisholm attempts to define moral
offences,25 and have attempted to highlight the differences among them. Despite these
differences, they share one clear feature in common: Chisholm believes that they are
coherent accounts of a moral concept that deserves as much recognition as the obligatory,
the forbidden, and the supererogatory. I will now turn my attention to a series of objections
to these definitions. I will begin by developing an argument of my own against the
possibility of “totally offensive” acts, and then proceed to discuss objections that face the
remaining types of moral offence found in Chisholm’s work. Some of these objections, such
as the ones raised by Michael Stocker, will focus on potential logical problems within
Chisholm’s definitions. Others, such as the ones raised by David Heyd, will highlight more
intuitive problems surrounding Chisholm’s examples of offensive acts.
1.6 First Objection: There Are No “Totally Offensive” Acts
I will begin by discussing the categories of totally supererogatory and totally
offensive acts (categories 1 and 9, respectively) from “S&O”. While these categories are by
no means central to Chisholm’s views on moral offence—he abandons them, after all, in his
later writing on deontic logic—they are nevertheless a part of his views, and as such merit
some attention here. If nothing else, I think it is worth trying to determine why offensive
acts are absent from his later work—an absence that is never explained by Chisholm
25 One may notice that there is a sense in which these effectively collapse into two broad strategies for defining
offences, as the first definitions in “S&O” correspond in some obvious ways to the “IPPS” definitions, and the
second “S&O” definitions correspond closely to the “EoR” definitions.
25
himself.26 I believe that there are two good reasons for rejecting the possibility of total
offences. As it happens, these two reasons correspond to two objections that apply more
broadly to all offences.
Even within the text of “S&O”, Chisholm appears to be unsure about totally
offensive acts, as he writes that “for some of us, it seems plausible to suppose that all of
these categories, with the possible exceptions of the first and last, are capable of being
exemplified” (13). Still, he seems committed to recognizing them as possible, and attempts
to illustrate them with the following example:
If promise-keeping is always good, and if it is possible to promise a tautological act (e.g. ‘I promise
either to go or not to go’), then it is possible to find an act (in this instance, my going) which is totally
supererogatory. And if promise-breaking is always bad, and if it is possible to promise a contradiction
(e.g. ‘I promise to go now and not to go now’), then it is possible to find an act (again, my going)
which would be totally offensive. (Chisholm, “S&O” 12)
I think that it is very difficult to make sense of either of these examples.27 For one thing, it is
hardly clear that promise-keeping is always good. If I promise to do something morally
hideous, then it might turn out to be good to break my promise.28 But even if we restrict
ourselves to kind of promise-keeping that is good, problems arise here. Let us first consider
his proposed “totally supererogatory” act. Suppose that I promise my wife that I will either
work on my dissertation this afternoon or not work on my dissertation this afternoon. If
promise-keeping is indeed always good to do, then I will do good either by working on my
dissertation or by doing anything else. According to Chisholm’s definitions, however, a
totally supererogatory act is not merely an act whose performance is good, but whose
nonperformance is also good. The problem, as I see it, is that nonperformance is not
Curiously, Michael Stocker also writes that “[i]t is clear that there are very view total offences” (91) without
explaining why we should think this.
26
27 David Heyd dismisses the examples as “highly abstract” (123), but does not explain why this should
constitute a refutation of the examples.
28
I think Felicia Nimue Ackerman for pointing this out.
26
possible in this case. Chisholm might mean that by going to the guitar store (instead of
working on my dissertation) I am doing something that constitutes a “nonperformance” that
is nevertheless “good”. But if this is what he means, then his assessment is inaccurate, since
my going to the guitar store is not an instance of nonperformance with respect to my
promise. Nonperformance would involve failing to keep my promise. It is of course
logically impossible, however, that I should fail to keep a tautological promise. Failing to
keep a promise of this sort would involve a violation of the law of the excluded middle. If
we cannot even make sense of the “nonperformance” of keeping such a promise, how can
we describe it as “good”? The same difficulty faces his example of a total offence. It is
logically impossible that I should ever keep (or fail to break) a “contradictory promise”. If we
cannot make sense of my failing to break such a promise, how can we describe the failure as
“bad”?
To show that Chisholm’s proposed example of a totally offensive act fails is not, of
course, to show that the entire category of totally offensive acts fails. But if this is the best
example he can muster, it furthers suspicion that “total offence”, at best, names an empty set
of actions. This may partially explain why the category is not mentioned in his subsequent
articles on deontic logic. A further reason for the category’s absence may stem from a
logical incompatibility between total offence and the conceptual schemes developed in
Chisholm’s later work. In “IPPE”, we might expect to see total offences described like this:
B(Mp) and B(~Mp); i.e., p is such that its intentional performance is morally bad and its intentional
nonperformance is also morally bad.
No such category appears in the article, and I do not think that this is accidental. The
category is incompatible with a theorem that underlies Chisholm and Sosa’s conceptual
scheme:
27
[G]oodness, badness and neutrality are exclusive and exhaustive; what is good is preferable to what is
neutral; what is neutral is preferable to what is bad; whatever is preferable to what is good is itself
good; whatever what is bad is preferable to is itself bad; nothing that is good has a negation that is good; and
nothing that is bad has a negation that is bad. (324, emphasis added)
This is incompatible with the possibility of our ever simultaneously asserting that B(Mp) and
B(~Mp). Per the above, if Mp is bad (i.e. if it is bad that I should intentionally bring it about
that p), then ~Mp is not bad. In other words, there can be no totally offensive acts in the
“IPPE” scheme.
It would seem, then, that Chisholm is right to drop total offences from his later
accounts of moral evaluation. He is unable to offer a compelling example of such offences,
and the category is logically inconsistent with theorems that he adopts in “IPPE”. In a
sense, these two problems correspond to broader objections facing his account of moral
offence simpliciter. Some commentators have maintained that there are simply no compelling
examples of offensive acts (total or otherwise), while other objections suggest logical
inconsistencies between moral offences and the rest of Chisholm’s conceptual schemes for
ethics. I shall focus on this latter worry first, and now turn my attention to objections
developed by Michael Stocker.
1.7 Stocker: Logical Problems in Chisholm’s Descriptions of Offence
Stocker argues “that on none of [Chisholm’s] definitions of ‘offence’ is it clear that
there are such acts; and, in fact, on one or two of these definitions, it is logically impossible
that there be such acts” (87). In this section I will try to show that Stocker fails to reveal
logical contradictions in Chisholm’s definitions, with the exception of the second “S&O”
definitions, which are shown to be inconsistent. The “EoR” definitions survive Stocker’s
criticism, and key points from “IPPS” refute his charges against the first “S&O” definitions.
28
29
Despite this, I think that Stocker does successfully anticipate more difficult objections from
later critics. He develops his critique via a series of formal proofs, in an effort to show that
Chisholm’s definitions entail logical contradictions. The proofs employ the following
notation:
‘Sb’ for ‘act b is supererogatory’
‘Db’ for ‘act b is obligatory’
‘Gb’ for ‘act b is good to do’
‘Bb’ for ‘act b is bad to do’
‘~b’ for ‘not b’ (as in not doing b)
‘Wb’ for ‘act b is offensive’
‘Fb’ for ‘act b is forbidden’ (Stocker 88)
Stocker’s objections are leveled against Chisholm’s definitions in the order that they are
described in the first section of this chapter. I will address the objections in corresponding
order.
With respect to Chisholm’s first definitions in “S&O”, Stocker finds no problem for
supererogation. He argues that offences do encounter problems in this set of definitions,
however, and supports his view with the following formal proof:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
11)
12)
“The supererogatory is that which is good but not obligatory to do…” [S&O, p. 14]
“The obligatory is that which it is good to do but bad not to do…” [ibid.]
Sb = Gb & ~Db [1]
Sb = Gb & ~(Gb &B~b) [3,2]
Sb = Gb & ~B~b [4]
“…the offensive [is] that which is bad but not forbidden.” [S&O, p. 14]
“…the forbidden is that which is obligatory not to do” [ibid.]
Wb = Bb & ~Fb [6]
Fb = D~b [7]30
Wb = Bb & ~D~b [9,8]31
Wb = Bb & ~(G~b & Bb) [~~b = b, 10, 2]
Wb = Bb & ~G~b [11] (Stocker 88)
29 In fairness to Stocker, while his criticism was published after IPPS, it was received by Philosophical Studies in
1966, prior to the publication of IPPS.
I should note here that the original text actually reads: “Fb = O~b” I have corrected (what I assume to be)
the error in this line. There are a few similar typos in Stocker’s article, and I have tried to correct/interpret
them in keeping with the principle of charity. I call attention to this only to note that I may be misinterpreting
Stocker’s intended derivations, which might of course raise problems for my critical assessment of these
derivations.
30
31
Strictly, Stocker should arrive at “Wb = Bb & ~(D~b)” here.
29
Line [12], according to Stocker, gives us reason to doubt the existence of moral offences. I
remain uncertain as to why Stocker thinks this, but will do my best to reconstruct his
objection. He writes that [12], while not logically inconsistent on its own, nevertheless
conflicts with deep intuitions, “[f]or it would seem that if an act is not good not to do, then
it should not be good to do any act that precludes it. But most bad acts are such that there
are good acts that preclude them” (Stocker 89). Suppose that I promise my son that I will
play baseball with him today at 4PM, and let us call the keeping of this promise (b), and
consequently the breaking of this promise (~b). It would not be good, let us assume, for me
to break my promise (~G~b). And this fact, Stocker argues, entails further judgments. He
suggests that we should accept the more general view that no act that precludes my keeping
my promise to my son can be called good:
Using ‘Rxy’ for ‘act x (done at t) makes it impossible to do act y (at t)’, we might say:
(13) ~G~bà~(Ex)(Rxb&Gx) (Stocker 89)32
It would not be good, for example, for to me to go grocery shopping at 3:55PM, provided
that this would preclude my keeping my promise to my son. Line [13] does not directly
follow from the “S&O” definitions, but Stocker seems to think that it is intuitively plausible,
and that it shows that [12] is “inconsistent” (89).
I do not, however, see why we should call [12] inconsistent. There is, after all, no
logical contradiction between [12] and [13]. Stocker explains himself by asserting that “if b is
bad to do, ~b must be good to do” (89). This, if true, would reveal a contradiction in line
[12], provided that we read its second conjunct (~G~b) as equivalent to (~Bb). But
Chisholm rejects the idea that (~Bbßà~G~b) when he says that some acts/states of
affairs (such as the nonperformance of an “offence of commission”) are neither good nor bad.
I should note here that the original text actually reads: ~G~xà~(Ex)(Rxb&Gx). Again, I have tried to ‘fix’
his proof.
32
30
To say that (Bb), on this view, is not necessarily to say that (G~b). Line [12] in Stocker’s
proof only faces the charge of inconsistency if we ignore the possibility that some acts might
be neutral—a possibility that is explicitly built into Chisholm’s framework. Returning to the
example in the previous paragraph, saying that it would not be good for me to go grocery
shopping at 3:55 need not amount to saying that it would be bad for me to go shopping. We
might say that my breaking of my promise is bad, but that my shopping is neutral.
This does not exhaust Stocker’s objections to the first “S&O” definitions, however.
Stocker does grant that Chisholm recognizes the possibility of neutral acts (which makes his
assertion of (BbàG~b) all the more strange), but seems to think that a problem arises when
we interpret (Gb) as saying that act b is “comparatively” good:
Consider a case where if one does act b one will bring about that there is no unhappy Greek.
According to Chisholm, this should be neutral. But now consider the same case where if one does
not do b—if one does ~b—one will bring it about that there is an unhappy Greek. Here, it seems to
me, we should say that it is good to do act b. And the reason it is good—or, as I shall call it,
comparatively good—is that it is not so bad to do as its alternative act (i.e., what would be done if it were
not done) and its alternative act is bad to do. Any act will be comparatively good to do if it meets these
conditions. (States of affairs and nonhuman acts can also be comparatively good.)
Now I want to say that comparatively good acts are not optional. That is, it is a duty to do, forbidden
and wrong not to do, them. Thus it would be a duty to do act b in the above case. The general moral
principle behind this is: If doing act b will bring about a bad state of affairs, and if not doing b will
bring about a less bad state of affairs, it is one’s duty to not do b. Thus it is this sense, this
comparative sense, of ‘good’ that must be used in the definition of ‘duty’. (Stocker 89)
I think that Stocker is right to suggest that Chisholm’s “S&O” definitions benefit from
thinking about comparative value—as seen in IPPE, Chisholm ultimately does use the idea
of comparative value (more specifically, of “intrinsic preferability”) to flesh out his account
of moral evaluation—but that he still has not revealed any inconsistency in moral offences. I
can imagine Chisholm offering at least two distinct replies to Stocker’s argument here, either
of which is sufficient to avoid the charge of inconsistency.
First, Chisholm might simply reject Stocker’s principle, according to which “If doing
act b will bring about a bad state of affairs, and if not doing b will bring about a less bad
31
state of affairs, it is one’s duty to not do b.” Let us call this principle SP (for “Stocker’s
Principle”). If the principle were true, then it might well raise problems for moral offences.
After all, it seems to suggest that if an act p is intrinsically bad:
(I)
Eq((~(qP~q) & ~(~qPq)) & qPp33
and ~p is preferable to p:
(II) ~pPp
then it is obligatory to do ~p:
(III) Eq((~(~qPq) & ~(qP~q))& ~pPq) & Eq((~(~qPq) & ~(qP~q)) &
qP~~p))34
SP suggests that refraining from a bad act is never morally optional, which is at odds with
the idea of moral offences, i.e. bad acts that we are not obligated to refrain from performing.
But there is no reason to expect Chisholm to endorse SP. It is certainly not logically
required by his deontic framework: If we take “pPq” to express the predicate relation “p is
preferable to q”, then a countermodel can be constructed in which (I) and (II) are true, but
(III) is false. This occurs, for example, in a two-member universe in which:
~Pq~q = True
~P~qq = True
Pqp = True
P~pp = True
~P~pq = False
Thus, Chisholm’s definitions do not entail SP, and he can avoid the charge of inconsistency
by simply rejecting the principle.
Here I am using the notation of “IPPS”, which defines the intrinsically indifferent (“Ip”) as “~(pP~p) &
~(~pPp)”, and the intrinsically bad (“Bp”) as “(Eq) (Iq & qPp)”. I have replaced “Ip” in the text above with its
expanded definition. My aim here is to show that once we express Chisholm’s terms in terms of the
‘preferability’ relation, there are no logical inconsistencies in the idea of moral offence.
33
34
The left conjunct expresses that G~p, and the right conjunct expresses that B~~p
32
Secondly, Chisholm might grant SP, and still resist Stocker’s argument by reminding
us that in the “IPPS” system of comparative value,
[W]e cannot define an intrinsically bad state of affairs as one such that its negation is intrinsically better
than it. For there being no happy unicorns is a state of affairs such that its negation is intrinsically
better than it, but it is not a state of affairs that is intrinsically bad. (323)
Relating these remarks to Stocker’s example, it may be the case that b is preferable to ~b
(because it is better that there are happy Greeks/unicorns than that there are no happy
Greeks/unicorns), but this need not entail that ~b is bad, or that I have a duty to bring b
about. Similarly, it may be that ~b is less bad than b, but this need not entail that I have a
duty to do ~b. It appears, then, that Stocker has not shown that the first “S&O” definitions
(and by extension, the “IPPE” definitions) yield any logical contradiction, even if they are
supplemented with the claim that “if an act is not good not to do, then it should not be good
to do any act that precludes it” (Stocker 89).
I am more impressed by Stocker’s criticism of Chisholm’s second “S&O”
definitions, which do reveal serious logical concerns. While examining these definitions, in
which all evaluative categories (including moral offences) are reduced to the idea of what
“ought to be”, Stocker notices a possible ambiguity in the suggestion that an “act is
something which it is bad to perform provided that the situation is one which ought not to
exist” (Chisholm, “S&O” 14). Here it is not clear whether Chisholm intends “bad” to
reduce to O~b or to ~Ob. On either interpretation, Stocker argues, offences become
incoherent:
(14) “A particular act which might be performed on a specific occasion is something which
it is good to perform provided that the situation which the act would bring about is one
that ought to exist; the at is something which it is bad to perform provided that the
situation is one which ought not to exist.” [S&O, p. 14]
(15) Gb = Ob [14]
(16) Bb = O~b [14, first interpretation]
(17) Db = Ob & O~~b [16,15,2]
(18) Db = Ob [17, ~~b=b]
(19) Sb = Ob & ~Ob [18,15,4]
33
But (19) is inconsistent. Thus on this definition there can be no supererogatory acts.
(20) Fb = O~b [18,7]
(21) Wb = O~b & ~O~b [20,16,11]
But (21) is inconsistent. Thus on this definition there can be no offences.
(22)
(23)
(24)
(25)
(26)
(27)
(28)
Bb = ~Ob [14, second interpretation]
Db = Ob & ~O~b [22,15,2]
Sb = Ob & ~(Ob & ~O~b) [23,15,3]
Sb = Ob & O~b [24]
Fb = O~b & ~Ob [23,22, ~~b = b, 9]
Wb = ~Ob & ~(O~b & ~Ob) [26,22,10]
Wb = ~Ob & ~O~b [27]
If the argument to show that (12) is inconsistent is correct, (28) is also inconsistent. But even if that
argument is not correct, (28) is in bad straits. For all that (12) required of an offence was that it be
not good not to do it. But (28) requires not only this but also that it be bad not to do the offensive
act. Thus (28) requires that all offences be total offences. And it is clear that there are very few total
offences. (Stocker 91)
As I have tried to explain above, I do not think that Stocker successfully argues that [12] is
inconsistent. But I do agree with his reading of line [28], according to which offences would
be restricted to those actions which are both bad to perform and bad to refrain from
performing. Since, as I have argued, there cannot be total offences, line [28] leaves no room
for actual moral offences. It would seem, then, that Chisholm’s first attempt to describe of
moral offences in terms of what “ought to be” fails.
This problem disappears, however, when we turn our attention to the “EoR”
account of moral offence. I believe that that the “EoR” definitions, to the extent that they
distinguish between descriptions of what ought to be and descriptions of what ought to be
done, can avoid the contradictions that Stocker reveals in the second “S&O” definitions.
Stocker argues then this distinction does little to save the logical consistency of either
supererogation or moral offences, but I believe that his criticism involves an error with
respect to the details of Chisholm’s deontic system in “EoR”. To see this, let us first
consider Stocker’s criticism of the “EoR” definition of supererogation:
In this article Chisholm uses these additional symbols:
34
‘Ab’ for ‘S brings it about that b’
‘OAb’ for ‘S ought to bring it about that b’
‘PAb’ for ‘S’s doing (an act that brings it about that) b is permitted’
I shall use
‘SAb’ for ‘S’s doing (an act that brings it about that) b is supererogatory’
‘WAb’ for ‘S’s doing (an act that brings it about that) b is offensive’
(29) “In terms of the ‘ought to be’ of course, we may define one of the fundamental senses
of the term ‘good.’ For ‘it is, or would be, good that p’ becomes ‘it ought to be that p.’
Similarly, ‘it is, or would be, bad that p’ becomes ‘it ought to be that not-p.’” [ER, p.
149]
(30) PAb = ~O~Ab [ER, p. 153]
(31) SAb = Ob & P~Ab & PAb [ibid.]
(32) SAbàP~Ab [31]
(33) P~Ab = ~OAb [30, ~~Ab = Ab]
(34) SAbà~OAb [33,32]
But ‘~OAb means ‘it is false that S’s bringing about b is good.’ (Cf. (29) and meaning of ‘Ab.’) But if
S’s doing act b (or an act that brings it about that situation b) is indeed supererogatory, S’s doing act b
(or an act that brings it about that situation b) must be good. Therefore, there is a contradiction in
this definition of ‘supererogation.’ (Stocker 24)
I see no problem in the deductions that Stocker draws from lines [29-34], and suspect that
Chisholm would agree with them. I do not, however, see how line [34] reveals any
“contradiction”. Chisholm’s “EoR” definition of supererogation does not, in fact, include
(OAb) as one of its conjuncts. Rather, it asserts that (Ob). Since there is no contradiction in
the claim that (Ob & ~OAb), Stocker has shown no contradiction in the “EoR” definition of
supererogation. Stocker tries to reveal a contradiction by saying that “if S’s doing act b (or an
act that brings it about that situation b) is indeed supererogatory, S’s doing act b (or an act
that brings it about that situation b) must be good” (24), but this is not a claim to which
Chisholm is committed. Rather, Chisholm argues that an act is supererogatory when it
brings about a state of affairs that is good, but denies that the performance of the act is itself
good. This is not to say that the performance of the act is bad, but instead to say that the
performance is optional.
Stocker makes a similar mistake in his assessment of the “EoR” definition of moral
offence:
35
(35) WAb = O~b & PAb & P~Ab [ER, p. 153]
(36) WAbàPAb [35]
(37) PAb = ~O~Ab [ER, p. 153]
(37) WAbà ~O~Ab [36,30]
But ‘~O~Ab’ means ‘it is not bad that S bring it about that b.’ (Cf. (29) and meaning of
‘~Ab.’) But if S’s doing act b (or an act that brings about situation b) is indeed offensive, S’s
doing b (or an act that brings about situation b) must be bad. Therefore, there is a
contradiction in this definition of ‘offence.’ (Stocker 24)
Again, I believe that Stocker has correctly arrived at line [37], but I do not believe that this
line reveals any contradiction. The “EoR” definition of moral offence does not include
(O~Ab) as one of its conjuncts, but instead asserts that (O~b). Since there is no
contradiction in the claim that (O~b & ~O~Ab), Stocker has shown no contradiction in the
“EoR” definition of moral offence. The “EoR” definitions never require that “if S’s doing
act b (or an act that brings about situation b) is indeed offensive, S’s doing b (or an act that
brings about situation b) must be bad” (Stocker 24). Instead, they maintain that a moral
offence involves an act that brings about a bad state of affairs, where the act itself is neither
good nor bad, but optional.
As I see it, then, Stocker’s article only raises logical worries for the ways in which
Chisholm reduces moral offences to the concept of “ought to be” in “S&O”. But Chisholm
ultimately expands each of the S&O definitions in ways that escape the charge of logical
inconsistency. The first “S&O” definitions are vindicated by their expanded treatment in
“IPPS”, and the second “S&O” definitions are vindicated by their expanded treatment in
“EoR”. This is not, however, to say that Stocker fails to identify any significant problems
for Chisholm’s accounts of moral offences. Stocker does not show that Chisholm’s category
is logically flawed, but he does call attention to deeply counterintuitive features of the
category. Stocker’s lesson, it may be suggested, is that in order to make sense of Chisholm’s
account, we must be prepared to reject claims that sound intuitively plausible, and are likely
to be endorsed by standard moral theories. For example, we must reject the claim that it is
36
always bad to intentionally bring about a state of affairs that is itself morally bad. Chisholm
can certainly suggest a logical framework in which this claim is consistent, but this is a long
way from showing that the claim is true. If a given state of affairs is morally bad, then how
could my intentionally bringing it about not be bad? Put another way, why should we think
that it is ever morally permissible to intentionally bring about states of affairs that should not
be? These worries point to a different strategy for attacking Chisholm’s work on offences,
which I believe to be taken up by later critics such as David Heyd.
1.8 Heyd’s Objections
Heyd’s attack on offences is embedded within a larger effort to construct a theory of
supererogation. The attack itself, as I see it, is two-fold. First, Heyd follows Stocker’s lead
in arguing against the logical coherence of Chisholm’s view:
The absence of a counterpart to heroic supererogation is indicative of the general asymmetry of doing
good and refraining from evil in respect of duty or ‘moral ought’. Doing good is an ideal which has no
definite boundaries, and unlike refraining from evil, it is not always morally required… One reason for
[this asymmetry of good and evil] might be that the adverb ‘morally’ adds to the general adjectives
‘good’ and ‘bad’ the dimension of ‘agency’—i.e. what is good (or bad) for a person to do (or not to do).
On this point I fully agree with Stocker’s criticism of Chisholm’s definitions of both supererogation
and offence, and his call for a distinction between wrongness and badness. (Heyd, Supererogation 128-129)
Here Heyd appears to endorse something like the principle that I called SP in the previous
section, and wants to use it to show that Chisholm’s deontic framework involves logical
errors. As I have argued, however, I do not see why Chisholm should be expected to accept
a principle that is incompatible with the rest of his deontic system. Moreover, I have argued
that SP can be made compatible with at least one version of Chisholm’s offences (the
“IPPS” version). If this kind of objection were to comprise the entirety of Heyd’s attack on
offences, then I do not think that it would merit further attention here.
37
Heyd’s critique of Chisholm is interesting, however, because he does not rely solely
on SP to show that there cannot be any offences. Instead, he offers some reasons for
thinking that that there are no moral offences, regardless of whether such actions are
logically possible. He grounds his dismissal of offences in the idea that “a moral system
does not leave patently bad action as morally permissible…The extremely good cannot be
required, but the extremely bad (vicious) is the prime target of prohibition” (Heyd,
“Supererogation”). One might reply, on Chisholm’s behalf, that moral offences are not
“patently bad actions”, but rather optional actions that bring about patently bad states of
affairs, but this would seem to miss the point. It seems deeply odd to say that a plausible
moral theory would ever leave us with the option to intentionally bring about a bad state of
affairs. Even if we can show that this option is compatible with certain systems of deontic
logic, we have done nothing to show that any actual moral theories will recognize moral
offences. After all, Chisholm himself grants that certain standard moral theories (such as
classical utilitarianism) will be unlikely to countenance offences, “since strict utilitarianism
implies that, for any act, if its performance is better than its nonperformance, its
performance is obligatory, and if its nonperformance is better than its performance, its
performance is forbidden” (“S&O” 13).35
This admission gives rise to two questions that threaten the significance, if not the
logical integrity, of moral offences. First, is it possible to show that there are any actual
moral offences? And second, if Chisholm cannot convince us that there are, then why
should we care about whether they are logically possible? Chisholm’s responses (or lack
thereof) to these kinds of questions do quite a bit, I believe, to explain why moral offences
35 As indicated previously, this problem need not confront all forms of utilitarianism. Still, I believe the
broader point here stands: Chisholm’s examples of offence would be much more compelling if they could be
explained in terms of some specific, plausible moral theory.
38
remain absent from the majority of subsequent discussions in moral philosophy. He
explicitly declines to answer the first question in passages like the following:
Whether there are, in fact, any instances of non-obligatory well-doing or of permissive ill-doing is a
controversial ethical question which we will not discuss. But if there are such acts, then there is a
problem for deontic logic, or the logic of morals, as it has been developed in recent years. (Chisholm
and Sosa 326)
This leaves us with only a few proposed examples—such as the Informer example—as
evidence of actual offences. If these examples are unconvincing, then critics like Heyd can
push us to the second question. Why should we care about “moral offence”, if it amounts
to nothing more than a logical construct? Chisholm could of course reply that logical
constructs are interesting, to the extent that philosophy is essentially concerned with
concepts and their logical limits. But this sort of response may miss the point of Heyd’s
objection. Heyd might grant that offence is logically possible, but is nevertheless challenged
by William James’ famous assertion that a “difference which makes no difference is no
difference at all.” (James, xiii) If the set of offensive acts is empty, then it offers nothing of
value to applied moral philosophy. In this sense, if not in the conceptual sense, it becomes
an uninteresting category.
The strength of Heyd’s critique, I believe, lies precisely in his ability to construct
plausible analyses of Chisholm’s examples that do not involve the concept of moral offence.
By explaining the intuitions that these examples elicit via distinctions and concepts that are
already recognized by standard moral theories, Heyd leaves us to wonder if there is any
advantage to be gained by including “offence” in our moral vocabulary. He is most critical
of Chisholm’s attempt to illustrate villainous offences:
Chisholm can hardly find examples of the ‘villainous’ type of offences, which corresponds to the
saintly and heroic type of supererogation. For how can an act be villainous, i.e. extremely bad and
heinous, yet not forbidden? Chisholm’s example of ‘the informer’ is extremely unconvincing: it is true
that actions of informers are usually immune from legal sanction, but they are nevertheless morally
wrong and morally forbidden. Informers can act only within their legal rights—not within their moral
39
rights. And saying that under some circumstances the act of the informer is permissible or even
obligatory, implies that the act is not ‘heinous and inhuman’. (Heyd, Supererogation 128)
On this description, the Informer’s behavior belongs in the category of the forbidden, and
not in the category of the offensive. Notice that Heyd identifies a plausible explanation for
intuitions contra the Informer’s behavior, and that this explanation hinges on a simple
distinction—the distinction between moral and legal permissions—that is already widely
recognized. Unless Chisholm can convince us that the Informer is acting within his moral
rights (and I think this will be very difficult to show), it appears that Heyd’s explanation has
the advantage of simplicity on its side. Some other example will be needed to convince us
that the set of “villainous offences” is not empty. Chisholm offers only one other example
of a villainous offence, and I do not think that it fares much better than the Informer
example. I will name this example “The Industrialist”:
Permissive ill-doing may also be villainous, as it sometimes is when there is competition. For
example, to improve a business which is already flourishing, an industrialist may introduce a line of
advertising which is calculated to drive a minor competitor out of business, and he may thus “win
without actually cheating”. Such deeds, or misdeeds, are not wrong or forbidden and since they are
morally offensive they are also neither obligatory nor indifferent. (Chisholm and Sosa 326)36
Heyd does not address this example, but it is easy enough to imagine how he might argue
that it fails to illustrate a villainous offence. He might say that the Industrialist’s behavior is
not legally forbidden, but that it is morally forbidden. This explanation allows us to identify
the source of our opposition to the Industrialist’s behavior without appealing to moral
offences. Alternatively, we might find that we have no intuitive opposition to the
Industrialist’s behavior at all. In this case, Heyd might say that that the Industrialist has done
nothing morally wrong—perhaps because all is fair in love and business—but neither has he
brought about a state of affairs that is morally bad. On this explanation, the Industrialist’s
36 Chisholm and Sosa repeat this theme in a briefly sketched example of villainous offence involving
“informing the authorities about the questionable political background of one’s competitor” (331). I think that
this example is susceptible to the same alternative explanations as the Informer/Industrialist examples.
40
business victory is morally indifferent. Again, unless Chisholm can show that his
explanation is preferable to either of these explanations, the example will fail to convince
anyone that there are actual villainous offences. Heyd uses this strategy to raise similar
worries about Chisholm’s examples of “trifling” offences. He again appeals to the
distinction between moral and legal obligations to explain our intuitions about the Perry
Zoso case:
‘Taking too long in a restaurant when others are known to be waiting’ is indeed not a grave moral sin,
can justify only mild forms of criticism, and is easily excusable. Yet it is, I believe, wrong and ‘not to
be done’. ‘You ought not to but you may’ is consistent only if the ‘ought’ and ‘may’ are interpreted on
different levels—for instance the moral and the legal. There are definitely cases in which a bad act is
(morally) permissible (in the same way as there are good acts which are not obligatory), but it is
doubtful whether a morally bad act may be permitted in the same way as a morally good act is not
always obligatory. (Heyd, Supererogation 129)
Heyd thinks that Perry Zoso has done something morally forbidden, but that his lingering at
the table is a relatively minor violation of his duties. Some duties are more serious than
others, but this does not mean that the less serious ones are not duties. As such, the case is
not one of a moral offence, trifling or otherwise. Alternatively, we might reject the example
as one in which Perry Zoso’s behavior is not ‘bad’ in any morally relevant sense. We might
say that it constitutes, at most, a mild violation of conventional etiquette. In either case, I do
not think that Chisholm will have much luck in showing that his own analysis of the example
is superior. If we can give equally plausible explanations of the example without invoking
new moral concepts, why shouldn’t we?
Here I believe that Heyd has identified a deep problem confronting anyone who
wants to defend the significance—and not merely the logical possibility—of moral offences.
For my own part, I have found that whenever I suggest the possibility of moral offences in
casual conversation, I am soon prompted for examples. It seems like a natural enough way
of introducing the category—we first call attention to a few examples of moral offence, and
then construct a theory to explain what these examples have in common. But to do this
41
presupposes that the examples really do illustrate moral offences. The strategy thus runs the
risk of question-begging. Heyd describes a similar problem with examples of supererogatory
actions:
The relation between the definition of supererogation and the examples suggested to
illustrate the concept is, therefore, circular, since the definition both determines the
type of acts which are to be called ‘supererogatory’, and is also formed in the light of
them so as to cover what we intuitively believe are the paradigm cases of
supererogatory behavior. (Supererogation 114-115)
Heyd is perhaps wrong to describe the relationship between the definition of supererogation
and its examples as “circular”, since stock examples of the concept do seem to have an
important feature in common—namely, the fact that they are somehow above the call of
duty—from the point of view of pre-theoretical intuitions. It does not seem unreasonable to
begin with the common elements of stock examples, and build a theoretical definition up
from there. Still, even if the problem is not strictly one of circularity, Heyd does seem to be
onto something here. For while it seems hard to deny that there are examples of actions
above the call of duty independent from the pre-theoretical point of view, it is not at all clear
that there are relevantly similar examples of offence. Where the concept of supererogation
arises from thinking about intuitively compelling cases, the reverse seems true for moral
offence. Chisholm begins by identifying his category within a conceptual framework, and
then tries to find examples that fit. And for each of his examples, opponents can reply in
one of two ways. On the one hand, an opponent might argue that because the example
involves an action that is bad to perform, it automatically qualifies as a forbidden act.37 This
type of reply is consistent with something like Stocker’s Principle, and may lead to further
attacks on the logical possibility of offences. But even if an opponent does not appeal to
37 Gregory Mellema recognizes this strategy when he writes: “It is not hard to imagine, in fact, that this line of
objection can be made with respect to any example of an offence which Chisholm and Sosa are able to
propose. For whenever a moral agent engages in behavior which is truly blameworthy, it is open for one to
object that the agent has a moral duty to refrain from such behavior.” (Supererogation 186-187)
42
this kind of principle, she can maintain that the example fails to meet one of Chisholm’s
conditions for moral offence. The strategy does not require us to think that offences are
logically impossible, but it does leave the concept of moral offence open to the charge of
irrelevance for applied moral philosophy. If examples will not convince critics that there are
actual moral offences, how else are we to proceed against this charge?
While I will attempt to address this question in the following chapters, for the
moment it will suffice to note that Heyd has raised a problem for moral offences that is very
different from the arguments found in Stocker’s critique. In short, Heyd leaves us to
wonder why we should care about the logical coherence of Chisholm’s category. None of
his examples conclusively shows that there are offences, and Chisholm himself seems to
admit that at least some major moral theories are incompatible with actions that are both
morally permitted and morally bad.
1.9
Schumaker’s Remarks on Chisholm’s Behalf
Chisholm’s published work on moral offence ends with “IPPS”, and critical
discussions of his views tend to reiterate the arguments found in the work of Stocker and
Heyd. I would like to conclude this section by calling attention to two broad suggestions
from the literature for how Chisholm should respond to his critics.
On one hand, we might try to alter Chisholm’s deontic model in order to make more
obvious room for moral offences. Stocker suggests that “Chisholm’s problems stem from
his using too few basic or primitive terms” (93), and that by expanding his basic moral
concepts he can avoid potential logical complications. I am not convinced that this is a
promising strategy, for two reasons. First, I am still not sure that there are logical problems
43
with Chisholm’s descriptions of offence. Secondly, even if expanding our primitive moral
terms makes more logical room for offences, it does nothing to address Heyd’s criticism. It
does nothing, in other words, to show that there are moral offences, or that they merit
philosophical attention.
Alternatively, we might try to more radically expand the definition of offence, such
that it exceeds the scope of deontic logic. Millard Schumaker hints at this approach in a
brief note on Chisholm’s work:
At least two kinds of action are morally permitted: the morally indifferent and the supererogatory; and
with respect to permission, these two kinds of action are indistinguishable. Only one kind of action is
required: duty. With respect to requirement, then, the morally indifferent and the supererogatory are
also indistinguishable. The lesson to be learned is this: morality, which must distinguish between the
morally indifferent and the supererogatory, must have a wider scope than does permission and
requirement, either of which concepts might well be defined in terms of the other… [D]eontic logic is
not the logic of morality; it is instead the logic of rights and duties, the logic of right conduct; and that
which is neither required nor forbidden is therefore shown to be indifferent only with respect to
rights and duties; it is not necessarily indifferent with respect to morality itself… This is a lesson
which was lost on Chisholm: in each of his articles he laboured mightily to find a way to account for
supererogation within the context of right conduct. But his labour was in vain: the morally indifferent
is every bit as ‘right’ as is the most laudatory supererogation. (428)
Schumaker does not deny that there are supererogatory acts. Instead, he suggests that
supererogation should not be understood as a deontic category. Moral evaluation, on this
view, involves distinctions that exceed the scope of deontic logic. In a similar way, we might
say that moral offence should be understood as something other than a deontic category.
This kind suggestion of course requires much more in the way of explanation, but I think it
points at an interesting direction for the discussion of moral offence. It hints at the
possibility that there are meaningful ways of evaluating actions from a moral point of view
that are independent of requirements, duties and the like. If this is correct, then there may
be a sense in which I morally ought not to x that has nothing to do with what I am morally
required to do. It may be possible to say (for example) that Perry Zoso fails to do what he
ought, but simultaneously to say that it is not the case that he ought to leave his table, where
both ‘oughts’ are moral terms. Perhaps Heyd’s resistance to moral offences stems from a
44
conflation of two (or more) different senses in which we can say that I morally ought (or
ought not) to act. If there are two (or more) fundamentally irreducible types of moral
reasons for acting, then there should be two (or more) corresponding types of moral
“oughts” governing our behavior. And if this suggestion can be shown to square with
standard moral theories—along with commonsense moral intuitions—then perhaps there is
a persuasive intuitive case to be made for moral offences after all.
This may sound far removed from the kind of picture that Chisholm tries to develop
in his own writing, since he is explicitly interested in making room for offences within a
system of deontic logic. There is textual evidence, however, to suggest some room for an
alternative approach within his conceptual framework. He says in “S&O” that “by replacing
our pair of contraries, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ with other pairs, e.g. ‘meritorious’ and
‘demeritorious’, we could classify acts in still other ways and multiply the number of possible
systems ad indefinitum” (13). Chisholm never discusses how a definition of
obligation/supererogation/etc. would actually look under one of these alternative
descriptions. As it happens, I think that a successful defense of moral offences can be more
easily built upon a scheme of classification in which we use “praiseworthy” and
“blameworthy”, rather than “good” and “bad”, to generate moral evaluations. By
constructing a system of evaluation in which moral blame and praise can be assessed
independently of obligation, I believe that moral offences can be described as not only
possible, but quite common.
But this gets ahead of the task at hand. As stated at the beginning of this chapter,
three alternative accounts of moral offence have been published since Chisholm’s series of
articles on deontic logic. Before pushing forward with my own description of moral
offences, in the next chapter I will discuss the views proposed by Gregory Mellema, Julia
45
Driver, Ishtiyaque Haji, and Paul McNamara. I will argue that each offers interesting
changes to Chisholm’s account, but that none successfully depict a category of moral offence
that is both consistent and intuitively compelling.
46
CHAPTER TWO: FOUR RECENT ACCOUNTS OF OFFENCE
2.1 Introduction
Chis2holm’s work on offence did not garner significant support in the decades
immediately following his original publications. There has been a resurgence of interest—if
not widespread—in the last twenty-odd years, however, with at least four contemporary
philosophers publishing endorsements of “permissive-ill doings”. In this chapter I will
closely examine the work of Julia Driver, Gregory Mellema, Ishtiyaque Haji, and Paul
McNamara, each of whom has offered arguments in favor of acknowledging moral offences.
I will show that each account has something of value to contribute to a plausible account of
the concept, but that none is adequate on its own to compel skeptics to recognize offences.
As I will argue, each account suffers from an incomplete or otherwise inadequate account of
moral blame. This will set the stage for the work of the next chapter, where I will argue that
an acceptable account of blame can indeed make sense of moral offence.
2.2 Driver: An Examples-Based Approach
Julia Driver calls moral offences “suberogatory” acts, and her description of the
category differs from Chisholm’s account in both content and approach. Rather than trying
to reveal the concept of suberogation within a rigorous logical framework, Driver opts to
motivate it by calling attention to a series of difficult moral cases. If, as she seems to believe,
ordinary moral concepts and distinctions cannot produce satisfactory assessments of these
47
cases, then we must accept a new moral concept—suberogation—to describe them. In this
way, her agenda is fundamentally different from the one seen in (for example) Chisholm and
Sosa’s “Intrinsic Preferability and the Problem of Supererogation”. Where Chisholm and
Sosa were content to show that moral offences are logically possible, Driver wants to show
that there are offences. If she is successful, then we can move past the worry that “the
suberogatory” is an unnecessary or irrelevant moral concept. While I do think that her
cases suggest a broader potential application of the concept than Chisholm seems to realize,
I will argue that her account of suberogation is unlikely to persuade those who do not
already recognize the category.
Driver defines suberogatory acts by contrasting them with a particular kind of
supererogation. She begins by observing that supererogation is commonly described as
action that is “above the call of duty,” but argues that this description too narrow. While
some supererogatory acts seem to acquire their status in virtue of exceeding the threshold
established by a moral obligation, it also seems possible to perform supererogatory acts
where there is no obligation whatsoever to exceed. By way of example, she appeals to
opening the door for a person whose hands are full at the grocery store. In this case, Driver
thinks, the door-opener has clearly done something praiseworthy, even though he was never
under any obligation to act in a particular way. As she puts it, “It is called supererogatory
because one is being nice when one does not have to be—but there is nothing that one has
to be with respect to that person and that situation” (“Sub” 290).38 Suberogatory acts, on her
view, are best understood in contrast with this kind of supererogation. These acts do merit
The door-opener does, of course, have duties to refrain from certain actions here. It would be forbidden to
strangle the stranger, after all. Still, Driver’s point may stand if we note that while duties tells us what we must
not do in this case, they tell us nothing about what we must do. I can satisfy the duty to be non-violent in many
ways—by holding the door for the stranger, by dancing a jig, or by laughing at her struggle to open the door
herself—but it seems strange that any of these “exceed” the duty of nonviolence. None of the three is more
nonviolent than the others. It seems to me that holding the door is the lone praiseworthy alternative of the
three I have mentioned here, and that this cannot be explained by appealing to its status as a nonviolent act.
38
48
blame when they are performed, but cannot be called forbidden because there is no duty
that they can be said to violate. In Driver’s words, the category of the suberogatory is
comprised of acts that are “worse than the situation calls for, but not forbidden” (“Sub” 290).
Driver appeals to three distinct types of problems in moral evaluation, and contends
that for each type of problem, “the suberogatory solution is best” (“Sub” 294). The first type
of problem is found in “morally charged” situations, in which the agent is faced with only
two options, one of which is praiseworthy and the other of which is blameworthy.39 Two
examples are offered to illustrate morally charged situations, corresponding to Chisholm’s
ideas of “trifling” and “villainous” offences:
The Seat-Splitter:40
[S]uppose that the train is almost full, and a couple wish to sit together, and there is only one place
where there are two seats together. If the person ahead of them takes one of those seats, when he
could have taken another less convenient seat, and knowing that the two behind him wanted to sit
together, then he has done something blameworthy. Yet, if he gives up this seat, and takes a less
desirable one, he has done something praiseworthy. The problem is justifying the blame when the
agent is acting within his rights. The people who want to sit together have no claim against the
person ahead of them in line. Thus, he has no obligation to pass up the more convenient seat.
(Driver, “Sub” 287)
The Seat Splitter has two options—take the more convenient seat or the less convenient
one—and will deserve blame if he chooses to take the more convenient seat. Morally
charged situations like this are difficult to assess, Driver argues, because we cannot explain
the moral blame associated with the latter option by invoking moral obligations. Because
the Seat Splitter has a right to choose the more convenient seat, we cannot say that this
blame stems from his doing anything wrong. We have thus discovered an instance of
suberogation. It may be worth noting here that Driver thinks that it would be supererogatory
for the Seat Splitter to choose the less convenient seat in order to allow the couple to sit
39 Driver distinguishes these from moral dilemmas, in which we are confronted with conflicting moral duties.
This may help to distinguish her strategy from the one that Gregory Mellema pursues in “Moral Dilemmas and
Offence”.
40
Driver does not name her cases. I have named them for easier reference later on.
49
together. Driver is not committed to the view that refraining from a supererogatory act is
always blameworthy, but believes that some situations—such as the situation described in
the ‘Seat-Splitter’ case—do work out this way. To the extent that choosing the more
convenient seat will result in a (presumably) small harm for the disappointed couple, we
might say that this case fits under the scope of what Chisholm calls “trivial offences”.
But just as Chisholm argues that some offences are non-trivial, Driver thinks that morally
charged situations can involve higher stakes for praise and blame:
Roger and Bob
Roger and Bob are brothers. Bob is suffering from severe kidney failure. His only hope is to obtain a
transplanted kidney, and the only compatible donor is Roger. If Roger donates the kidney, people
respond with intense approval, because he is making a large optional sacrifice. But if he does not
donate the kidney, the disapproval is also intense, even though Roger has no obligation to donate his
kidney to his brother, or to anybody. Bob has no right, or entitlement, to the kidney. And if Roger,
when failing to give a kidney to his brother is not violating a right, or failing in a duty, how can the
disapproval be warranted? (“Sub” 287)
Roger’s refusal to donate his kidney will result in significant moral blame, presumably
because it will result in significant physical harm to his brother. Such a refusal seems not
merely “worse than what is called for”, but much worse, so that Chisholm’s adjectives for
describing non-trivial offences—“heinous”, “villainous”—are applicable. It is worth noting,
however, that Driver does not think that morally charged situations are compatible with
Chisholm’s characterization of moral offences, and for this reason rejects his definitions
(“Sub” 291). In Chisholm’s conceptual scheme, moral offences are bad to perform, but
neither good nor bad to refrain from performing. Driver wants to say that some
suberogatory acts—namely those associated with morally charged situations—are good to
refrain from performing.
The second type of moral problem that Driver uses to illustrate suberogation comes
in the form of “owed favours”. Imagine that on numerous occasions, Olivia has asked
Lenore for help with unpleasant tasks (like moving to new apartments, house painting, and
50
the like), and that Lenore has very generously helped every time. Now imagine that one day,
Lenore calls Olivia to ask for help moving to a new apartment. Olivia knows that Lenore
has done a number of unreciprocated favors for her, but nonetheless refuses to help because
she would prefer to watch television. How are we to explain our intuitive contempt for
Olivia’s refusal? If it is clearly communicated between Olivia and Lenore that all of these
requests are for favors, then we will have a difficult time showing that Olivia has done
anything wrong. Lenore is asking for a favor, and as such there is no sense in which Olivia
is obligated to comply, because “[f]avours are, by definition, services which one has no
obligation to perform.” (“Sub” 289) It seems intuitively reasonable to say that Olivia owes
Lenore a favor, and indeed people often do speak in this way. But since there is, strictly
speaking, a contradiction in the idea of an owed favor, there must be some other way to
explain the negative judgment that we are inclined to make about Olivia’s refusal. We might
opt to say that “owed favors” are not really favors at all, but rather instances of obligatory
reciprocation. But Driver maintains that Olivia’s reciprocation would indeed be a favor, and
that we should call her refusal suberogatory.
The third example offered in support of suberogation comes in the form of what
Driver calls the “the problem of multiple abortions.” She asks us to suppose that a highly
liberal view of abortion is true, such that women have a universally applicable moral right to
have abortions for any reason whatsoever. Now imagine that a woman has had nine
abortions over the course of the last few years. While a universally applicable right to
abortions would guarantee that none of these abortions can be morally forbidden, Driver
believes that many people (including many of those who hold the highly liberal view) will
harbor negative attitudes toward the woman in question. This raises a problem for anyone
who wants to maintain a liberal attitude toward abortion: “[I]f every single abortion is
51
unreservedly permissible, why this feeling that there’s something wrong with the eighth, the
ninth or the tenth (per agent)?” (“Sub”, 289) Provided that a woman has an unreserved right
to an abortion, it seems that we cannot say that the ninth abortion involves a violation of any
moral duty. Any blame associated with the ninth abortion, Driver believes, is best explained
by appeal to the category of suberogation.
The strength of Driver’s project in “The Suberogatory” would thus seem to hinge
entirely on how persuasive her cases are as actual instances of suberogation—and it is
precisely on this point that Driver’s view has faced recent criticism. Just as Heyd attacks
Chisholm’s description of offences by explaining his supposed examples with more
commonly accepted moral concepts, recent work by Hallie Rose Liberto arguesthat Driver
fails to make a compelling case for suberogation, because her cases “do not require such a
realm for moral explanation” (402). 41 Liberto’s arguments go beyond the mere charge that
suberogation is an unnecessary moral idea, however, as she suggests that the concept can in
fact lead us to an “evaluative scheme that yields inaccurate moral conclusions” (402). On
this view, recognizing suberogation may not be only unnecessary, but harmful to our
attempts to evaluate difficult moral cases. In addressing Liberto’s critique, I will address two
points separately. First, it will of course serve well to consider whether Liberto is right to say
that Driver’s cases can be explained without appealing to suberogation. I will attempt to
show that Liberto’s efforts on this front are only partially successful. Even if one does find
Liberto’s explanations persuasive, however, a further point remains to be considered. She
assumes that we should resist appealing to suberogation “so long as the problem cases put
forward to motivate the new evaluative realm can be handled, and handled well, by our
traditional apparatus” (Liberto 396). I shall argue that her reasons for holding this view are
Coleen Macnamara (93) has also recently published the view that Driver’s conclusions are “deeply
misguided”, but does not argue for this position.
41
52
tenuous at best, and that even if Driver’s cases can be explained by appealing to other moral
concepts, there may still be reasons to recognize the category of suberogation.
I will take on the former point first, and address the alternative explanations that
Liberto proposes for Driver’s cases. As Liberto points out, Driver describes each of her
cases as instances where moral rights are abused. The Seat-Splitter, for example, cannot be
accused of failing to act within his rights by taking the more convenient seat, but he can
(according to Driver) be accused of abusing his rights—of doing something morally bad that
he is nonetheless morally entitled to do. The underlying idea, then that adopting the view
that “when one has a right to do x, one is entitled to do x” compels us to accept that “one
cannot be forbidden a right” (Driver, 288). Driver concludes that the badness that we
perceive in the Seat-Splitter’s behavior cannot be explained in terms of his performing a
morally forbidden act, and thus we should call it suberogatory. The problem with this
explanation, as Liberto sees it, is that “Driver does not allow that there are any truly
wrongful actions that are not moral rights violations” (397). If it can be shown that there are
morally impermissible actions that are not rights violations—and that Driver’s cases are
examples of such actions—then Driver’s case for acknowledging suberogation unravels.
Liberto’s criticism thus rests heavily on the view that we can sometimes act in a way
that is morally forbidden, while simultaneously remaining within our moral rights. It is
worth noting here that if this view raises problems for Driver’s examples of suberogation, it
will raise similar problems for Chisholm, who says that within the scope of moral offences
“we find little acts of meanness and all of the things we try to excuse by saying, truly, ‘Well,
after all, I’m within my rights.’” (“EoR” 152) But these are not instances of permissive illdoing (at least not necessarily), Liberto argues, if being “within one’s rights” fails to
guarantee that one’s actions are morally permissible. She supports this view by appealing to
53
the work of Jeremy Waldron and Alan Wertheimer, each of whom has argued that there are
(to use Waldron’s phrase) “rights to do wrong”. Driver acknowledges Waldron’s work on
this subject in her own article, but does not seem to think that it raises any problems for her
defense of suberogation. I would like to argue that a closer inspection of Waldron’s
arguments suggests that Driver’s lack of concern is warranted, because Waldron’s
description of “rights to do wrong” includes suberogatory acts within its scope.
I will begin by looking at Waldron’s argument. He frames this in terms of the
following two claims:
1.
P has a moral right to do A
2.
P’s doing A is morally wrong.
Waldron aims to show that these two claims are logically consistent. In constructing his
argument, he warns against trying to settle the possibility of “rights to do wrong” by
appealing to Wesley Hohfeld’s famous analysis of rights. To take this approach might
involve arguing that moral rights do not entail moral privileges. Privileges, by Hohfeld’s
definition, involve actions that violate no moral duty. If all moral rights were to entail moral
privileges, then there could be no “rights to do wrong”, since the exercise of a privilege
necessarily guarantees that no duty is violated. If we were to approach the example of the
Seat-Splitter in this way, for example, we might be inclined to say that the Seat-Splitter has
the privilege of the more convenient seat, so long as no one else (such as the couple wanting
to sit together) has a claim to the seat. The issue would thus reduce to a discussion of
whether the Seat-Splitter has the privilege of the more convenient seat, or perhaps of
whether his rights conflict with the rights of the other passengers.
54
The problem with thinking of the issue in this way, Waldron contends, is that
Hohfeld’s analysis is only intended to cover concepts of legal obligation, which differ from
moral obligation in some important ways:
[I]n the moral sphere, notions like duty, wrongness, and permissibility are—though relevant to rights—not
confined to the area of rights. Certainly, there are some actions that are impermissible, some actions
that we have a duty not to do, because they are infringements of the rights of others. But actions may
also be morally impermissible or more generally subject to moral criticism for other and more subtle
reasons. They may be seen as wrong because they are vicious, or because they fall short of the
standard required by some ideal or principle which is conceived of as a constraint independent of
moral rights. (Waldron 24-25)
We need to consider more than just whether the Seat-Splitter has a right to take the more
convenient seat, Waldron will say, because we have moral duties beyond honoring the claimrights of others. Waldron suggests that we resolve the apparent paradox of rights to do
wrong by adding two further claims to our set:
3.
It is morally wrong for anyone to interfere with P’s doing A.
4.
It is morally permissible for someone to interfere with P’s doing A.
We should accept, he thinks, that (2) and (3) are compatible, so that it might sometimes be
wrong for me to interfere with my friend’s performance of a wrong act. So long as
I remain on the right side of the “line at which mere prescription and admonition stop and
coercion begins” (Waldron, 30), I might be allowed to blame or renounce my friend’s
behavior in this case, even if I am morally prohibited from interfering. Whether my friend’s
behavior merits blame thus turns out to be independent of whether he has a right to act as
he does. Waldron illustrates this with the following example:
The Racist Speaker
I may be halfway through my speech in favor of the National Front when a radical member of the
audience interrupts me, saying, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t stop you making such an
evil racist speech.” In these circumstances, the reply, “I have a moral right to make the speech,” is, if
true, a perfect and sufficient answer. Although it does not provide me with any reason or justification
for acting, my right provides the radical with a reason for not interfering.” (Waldron 29)
While the audience has moral reasons not to interfere with the speech (for example, that the
Speaker has a right to deliver it, that interference might set a precedent for future censorship,
55
etc.), the Racist Speaker nonetheless has moral reasons not to give the speech (for example,
that he might precipitate unjust public policies). Where Driver might be inclined to describe
this as an instance of suberogatorily “sitting on one’s rights”, critics like Liberto (and
Waldron) might reply that the Racist Speaker is in fact doing something morally forbidden—
and thus not suberogatory. The action is forbidden, it might be said, because there are moral
reasons in virtue of which the Speaker ought not to give the speech. The Speaker’s right to
give the speech has nothing to do with his own moral reasons for speaking, but rather
pertains to the moral reasons that others have for not interfering.
I think that Liberto is right to criticize Driver for not taking seriously enough the
possibility of Waldron’s “rights to do wrong”—and for not taking seriously enough the
possibility that her cases are explained by these kind of rights—but I believe that it is a
mistake to think that the idea of a “right to do wrong” is enough to answer questions about
the behavior of the Racist Speaker or the Seat-Splitter. To see what I am getting at here,
notice that something odd happens in the latter half of Waldron’s remarks (above) on the
different ways in which acts can be morally wrong. Waldron appears to want us to treat an
act that is morally impermissible in the same way that we treat an act that is “more generally
subject to moral criticism”—that is, we should use the word “wrong” to refer to either type
of act. This should raise suspicion in the context of the current discussion of suberogation,
precisely because suberogatory acts are supposed to be those that are not impermissible, but
are more generally subject to moral criticism. If it turns out that we only have a “right to do
wrong” in the sense that we have a right to do that which is morally
impermissible/forbidden, then Waldron’s arguments should indeed concern Driver (or
anyone wanting to advance the possibility of suberogation). After all, this would raise the
possibility that the Seat Splitter is doing something morally forbidden by taking the more
56
convenient seat, even while he acts within his rights. If, however, it turns out that we can
have a “right to do wrong” in the sense that we have a right to do that which is generally
subject to moral criticism, but not impermissible, then it would appear that Waldron is
defending none other than suberogation itself. If we interpret him as defending the
possibility of “rights to do blameworthy acts”, then it would seem that Waldron’s arguments
hardly undermine the possibility of suberogation. It would seem that, at least on this
interpretation, Liberto fails to identify a non-suberogatory account of Driver’s cases.
But even if we accept that Waldron has shown that acts can be “within one’s rights”
and morally forbidden, I am not sure that Liberto has successfully defeated Driver’s defense
of suberogation. The real point of contention here remains whether it is possible for an act
to be simultaneously blameworthy and permissible. To agree with Waldron that we
sometimes have moral rights to do what is impermissible is not by itself enough to show that
Driver’s cases are not instances of suberogation. I understand why Liberto might feel
inclined to say that there is an element of “wrongness” to be associated with suberogatory
acts. To the extent the agent who commits them ought to act better than she does (or to use
Driver’s language, does something that is “worse than the situation calls for”), we may find
ourselves inclined to say that she acts “wrongly”. But we must be careful not to equivocate,
and to recognize that if we want to use the word “wrong” to describe both impermissible
and merely blameworthy actions, then we need to be careful to specify what we really mean
when we say that (for example) the Seat-Splitter does wrong. To reply that performing a
blameworthy action just is performing a forbidden action, I believe, is to beg the question
against Driver. Waldron’s text implicitly allows room for a distinction between the
blameworthy and the forbidden, and this distinction interferes with Liberto’s attempt to
keep “suberogation” out of our moral vocabulary.
57
Perhaps this point can be made clearer by returning to Liberto’s assessment of the
Seat-Splitter case. She thinks that our difficulty in evaluating the Seat-Splitter’s behavior “is
not that we have no category for the bus-rider’s action… [but] that it takes serious work in
applied ethics, combined with some missing empirical data, to determine whether he acts
wrongly, or permissibly, or if a new category is needed” (399-400). Her latter point here is
certainly reasonable—we do not want the motivation for recognizing suberogation to rest on
an aversion to hard work, after all—but I do not think that we should be too quick to adopt
her former point. She explains the Seat-Splitter case as follows:
The answer will hinge on how valuable it is to him to sit in the preferred seat, how much reason he
has to believe the couple wants to sit together, and how much self-partiality is permissible when
making moral decisions. For instance, if it turns out that the couple announced, before boarding the
train, that this ride constitutes their final hour together before one member of the couple is shipped
off to war then the train-rider’s action is certainly impermissible…If a greater amount of self-partiality
is permissible, then the first boarded train-rider’s preference for the window seat might justifiably
prioritized over the couple’s wish to sit together, if it is the first boarded train-rider making the choice.
(Liberto 400)
Why should we think that taking the window seat is “certainly impermissible” if the couple
has an understandably strong—and publicly announced—desire to sit together? This does
seem to explain why we might blame the Seat-Splitter more severely; it takes a jerk to split
up a couple on a bus, but it takes a serious jerk to split up a couple before their last hour
together. But if the Seat-Sitter appeals to his right to the seat, then why exactly should we
say that his behavior is nevertheless morally impermissible? Liberto can call this a “right to
do wrong” if she likes, but as I have argued, this is an ambiguous assertion that merely puts
off the kind of “serious work” we should be doing in evaluating the case. Saying that the
Seat-Splitter has more reasons to give up the convenient seat if it is the couple’s last night
together will not remedy the difficulty here. Are the reasons that the Seat-Splitter has
reasons that make his behavior morally forbidden, or merely blameworthy?
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It might be thought at this point that my replies on Driver’s behalf are on shaky
ground, because I have not yet provided any arguments to show that there are different types
of moral reasons corresponding to what is forbidden and what is blameworthy. As I see it,
this corresponds to what is ultimately the most serious objection facing Driver’s account of
suberogation: Without a clear account of moral blame, it is not obvious that any of her cases
really exemplify blameworthy actions. Why, one might wonder, should we think that it is
blameworthy to give priority to one’s own convenience over a couple’s desire to sit
together—especially given that this entails a small harm to oneself? Why is it blameworthy to
refuse to donate a kidney, given that this involves considerable risk to one’s own health? 42
In the absence of a theory of moral blame, the Seat-Splitter case (along with all of Driver’s
cases) is unlikely to be countenanced as an instance of suberogation by those who do not
already see it that way. In the next chapter I aim to show that plausible theories of blame
can explain why we might find the Seat-Splitter’s behavior blameworthy. At the moment, I
will be content to have shown that it is a conspicuous omission from Driver’s attempt to
garner support for the concept of offence.
Of course, showing that the Seat-Splitter’s behavior is blameworthy is only half the
battle here. It must also be shown that her behavior is not morally forbidden. As I see it,
the central thrust of Liberto’s criticism amounts to rejecting the moral permissibility of
Driver’s examples. But even if one agrees with Liberto’s assessment of Driver’s cases—that
they are not instances of suberogation, but are instead instances of agents exercising the right
to do the impermissible—I would like to question her deeper criticisms of the value of
recognizing suberogation. She seems to have two separate worries in mind. One is that
recognizing the possibility of suberogation will result in “an evaluative scheme that yields
42
Thanks to Felicia Nimue Ackerman for these points.
59
inaccurate moral conclusions” (Liberto 402). So long as we are committed to the hard work
that is needed “to gather empirical information about cases in applied ethics and determine
the answers to questions such as: just how much self-partiality is permissible?” (402), I see
no reason to believe that the inclusion of an extra category of evaluation will affect the
accuracy of our moral evaluations. At worst, we will find that after the empirical and
philosophical work is done, we never place an act in the category of the suberogatory. This
leads, of course to the second worry—that suberogation is an unnecessary concept. If
Liberto’s criticism of Driver’s cases holds up, then she might still reiterate the objection
(already leveled by Heyd) that there are no persuasive examples of suberogatory acts.
This is not to say that I think Liberto’s criticism of Driver’s work is uninteresting.
Rather, I think it hints at an important point that carries over from my previous discussion
of Chisholm’s description of moral offences. The point is that we are bound to encounter
difficulty when we try to motivate acceptance for the suberogatory exclusively by appeal to
examples. Liberto’s criticism of “owed favors” cases provides a good illustration of this
difficulty. She suggests that if Olivia accepts Lenore’s help, then we might think that she
enters into a tacit agreement to help Lenore when needed. If so, then, Olivia is obligated to
help Lenore, and her refusal to help becomes forbidden. I do not want to say that we
should settle the “owed favors” case in this way, but nor do I think that Driver has done
enough to preclude such an assessment. And if her critics want to suggest that her other
examples are similarly inconclusive—that the ninth abortion is simply not blameworthy, or
that Roger’s refusal to give Bob his kidney is forbidden in virtue of its failure to meet
(perhaps) familial obligations—then I do not think there is enough in Driver’s article to
defend her own assessment. Nevertheless, I remain committed to the view that there are
suberogatory acts. To this end, I think that Driver’s article is on the right track. Her strategy
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for convincing others of the existence of suberogatory acts is unlikely to succeed, but this
should not discourage us from pursuing some other strategy. And if we can find a more
persuasive strategy, then Driver’s cases may well reveal interesting cases for further
consideration.
2.3 Mellema on Moral Offence
Gregory Mellema has written more extensively about moral offences than any author
aside from Chisholm. His work on the topic is largely contained within four published
works. In Beyond the Call of Duty: Supererogation, Obligation and Offence, Mellema contends that
both supererogatory acts and moral offences are possible, and that the resistance
encountered in defending either category may ultimately be “based upon misunderstandings
of various sorts” (208). His remarks on moral offence in this book are primarily defensive,
as he is more interested in addressing critics of moral offences than of showing that there are
moral offences. He has, however, also published two separate positive arguments in favor
of moral offences, the first (“Offence and Virtue Ethics”) resting on considerations
pertaining to virtue-centered moral theories, and the second (“Moral Dilemmas and
Offence”) stemming from a type of problem that he calls a “blame dilemma”. Finally, in the
more recent The Expectations of Morality, Mellema argues that the category of offence follows
directly from recognizing the distinction between moral obligation and what he calls “moral
expectation”. I will address each of these four discussions in turn, and argue that while
Mellema has much of value to contribute to a plausible account of moral offences, his
remarks will likely be insufficient to convince anyone to adopt the concept. In short,
Mellema’s descriptions of offence suffer from an absence of a clear account of moral blame.
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2.4 Mellema I: The Asymmetries Defense
While Mellema’s definition of offence in Beyond the Call of Duty does share close
parallels with Chisholm’s definitions, provided that “one believes that a good act is one that
is praiseworthy, and vice versa, or that a bad act is one that is blameworthy, and vice versa”
(24), one difference quickly becomes apparent. According to Mellema, an act is offensive if
and only if:
1.
2.
3.
The performance of the act is not forbidden.
The performance of the act is morally blameworthy.
The omission of the act is not morally praiseworthy. (BCD 206)
In Chisholm’s system,43 a forbidden act is defined as bad to perform and good to refrain
from performing. If Mellema wants us to use “bad” interchangeably with “blameworthy”
and “good” interchangeably with “praiseworthy”, then on Chisholm’s view (1) and (2) would
render (3) redundant. If we know that the performance of an act is blameworthy (bad), and
we know it isn’t forbidden, then on Chisholm’s view we automatically know its omission is
not praiseworthy (good). (3), then, serves to distinguish offences from a separate category of
moral evaluation. Mellema calls this separate category quasi-offence, “which is just like an act
of offence, except that it is praiseworthy to omit” (BCD 106). For Chisholm, any act that is
bad to perform but good to omit is automatically forbidden. Mellema, however, thinks that
some actions fitting this description are not forbidden, and should be classified differently. It
may be worth noting here that Mellema’s “quasi-offences” correspond closely to Julia
Driver’s “morally charged” situations, and that accepting both offences and quasi-offences
into our conceptual scheme might be a way of bringing the views of Chisholm and Driver
43
Here I am referring to the first definitions in “S&O”, which are echoed in the “IPPS” definitions.
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into accordance. I will set “quasi-offences” aside for the moment, however, and focus on
Mellema’s strategy for defending ordinary moral offences.
Mellema does not explicitly argue for the claim that there are moral offences in
Beyond the Call o f Duty. He clearly accepts this claim, but his discussion of offences does not
leave his reader with any particular reason for agreeing. Instead, Mellema spends most of his
discussion highlighting “asymmetries” that are found when comparing the category of the
supererogatory with the category of the offensive. As I read him, he does not do this simply
for the sake of logical interest, but rather to lay the foundation for responding to a particular
objection facing Chisholm and other advocates of moral offence. Mellema is well aware of
the responses that Chisholm’s examples of moral offences are likely to elicit from critics. As
I have discussed above, for any given example of moral offence, an objector might either
deny that the action in question is blameworthy, or that it is not in fact forbidden. The
Informer, for example, might be said to act a forbidden manner, while Perry Zoso might be
exempted from any sort of moral blame. If no more persuasive examples are forthcoming
(and it does seem that all of Chisholm’s examples are susceptible to this kind of response),
then one might conclude that the set of morally offensive acts is, at best, empty. But
Mellema invites us to notice how this objection actually works: We cannot, of course,
deduce that there are no moral offences from Chisholm’s dearth of plausible examples. It
may simply turn out that proponents of moral offence have not yet stumbled upon the kinds
of examples that elicit intuitions in favor of their view. Instead, the critic will want to say
that the dearth of examples is best explained by the possibility that there are simply no good
examples of moral offence to be found. Picking apart the examples of offence offered by
Chisholm and Driver thus only works as a broad objection to moral offence to the extent
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that there is no other plausible explanation for why good examples of offence are so hard to
find.
Mellema’s examination of the asymmetries between supererogation and offence
becomes relevant precisely at this point in the discussion. He argues that critical resistance
to examples of offence is part of a broader phenomenon whereby “[p]eople will be more
likely to affirm the principle that one ought never to do that which is morally bad or
blameworthy than the principle that one ought to do whatever is morally good or
praiseworthy” (Mellema, BCD 207). This tendency, if true, helps to explain why
supererogation enjoys more intuitive recognition/support than moral offence. But the
tendency should not be seen to lend support to the view that there really are supererogatory
acts, but not offensive acts. Rather, it can be explained at least as well by asymmetries that
are built into the respective concepts of supererogation and offence themselves. Once we
see these asymmetries more clearly, Mellema hopes that we will regard the different intuitive
reactions to these moral categories as unsurprising. We should expect to find intuitively
plausible examples of supererogation more easily than examples of offence—and thus we
should not be steered clear of countenancing moral offences simply because Chisholm and
Driver’s examples are controversial.
Mellema directs much of his focus toward David Heyd’s criticism of Chisholm’s
work, as Heyd also seeks to identify asymmetries between supererogation and offence (albeit
for different reasons). First, Heyd argues that “while acts of supererogation are not
blameworthy to omit, it is not reasonable to conceive of acts of offence as not praiseworthy
to omit, for, in his opinion, ‘Forbearance from doing evil is always a right thing to do.’”44
44 Note that here Heyd seems to assume that all morally right actions and omissions are praiseworthy. This
assumption invites criticism of its own: Is it really praiseworthy to omit heinous evils that no reasonably decent
person would ever commit? Is it praiseworthy to omit an evil if the omission stems from morally hideous
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(Mellema, BCD 128) This amounts to the view that Chisholm’s category of offence is
empty, since there will never be an act that is blameworthy to perform, but neither
blameworthy nor praiseworthy to omit. If Perry Zoso deserves blame for lingering at his
table, then we should automatically conclude that his leaving the table would be
praiseworthy—and thus, on Chisholm’s scheme, that his lingering at the table is a forbidden
act. Secondly, “Heyd is not convinced that heinous or villainous acts of offence are
possible” (Mellema, BCD 190), even though he acknowledges the possibility of heroic acts of
supererogation. This is in keeping with the view that moral offences are uninteresting, since
the only actual offences we can hope to find with be trivial, and fail to deserve serious
attention.45 Finally, Heyd contends that “alleged examples of offence are plausible only
when one is thinking of permissibility legalistically… [while one] need not resort to a
legalistic interpretation of permissibility when one supplies alleged examples of praiseworthy
acts which are permissible to omit.” 46 (Mellema, BCD 192) On Heyd’s view, then, there are
at least three important respects in which moral offences are not mirror images of
supererogatory acts, and each of these three asymmetries constitutes a reason for thinking
that the category of moral offence is either incoherent or uninteresting.
Mellema agrees that “there is no neat logical symmetry between supererogation and
offence” (BCD 194), but argues that this can be explained without giving up on the
reasons? As I will argue in the third chapter, plausible theories of moral blame should allow us to say “no” to
these questions. If I am right about this, then once again an acceptable theory of moral blame can help to
defend the category of offence from critical objections.
45 One might object that repeated trivial offenses may amount to a non-trivial moral failing (thanks to Felicia
Nimue Ackerman for this point). This would seem to show that even trivial offenses might merit serious
attention. Still, Heyd’s basic objection stands, as this is not the same as showing that there are truly villainous
offences.
Heyd’s third “asymmetry” is reminiscent of Liberto’s attack on Driver’s examples of suberogation. Liberto
argues that these examples (along with the examples given by Chisholm) ultimately hinge on a failure to
recognize some basic moral distinction that explains them away. The Seat-Splitter can be said to act within his
legal rights, for example, but not within his moral rights. And even if he can be said to act within his moral rights,
there may be other moral concepts available to explain the blame we associate with his behavior (such as
Waldron’s ‘rights to do wrong’) that avoid the need to invoke moral offence/suberogation.
46
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plausibility of legitimate examples from the latter category. On his view, the difficulty in
finding clear examples of moral offence is the product of two asymmetries that are related to
supererogation and offence, and that are overlooked by critics like Heyd. The first is an
asymmetry between the more basic concepts of praise and blame. Blame, as Mellema sees it,
seems to be aimed at the category of the forbidden, in the sense that an increase in
blameworthiness makes an act likelier to be morally forbidden. By contrast,
When one imagines altering the circumstances so that a given act becomes more and more
praiseworthy to perform, it is not the least bit plausible to argue that its performance becomes an
increasingly prime candidate for the designation of obligatory… The realm of the obligatory is
certainly not the final destination of acts whose performances become increasingly praiseworthy.
(Mellema, BCD 196-197)
In support of this assertion, Mellema asks us to consider cases of praiseworthy act of selfsacrifice. Larger sacrifices will be deemed more praiseworthy than small ones, but are not
therefore likelier to be obligatory. On the contrary, Mellema argues, we will find such
sacrifices to be less likely to be obligatory as they increase in praiseworthiness. If this is
correct, and there is indeed “a significant asymmetry in the manner in which the concepts of
praiseworthiness and blameworthiness relate to what is morally required of one to do and to
avoid, respectively” (BCD 197-198), then Mellema thinks we have the basis of an explanation
for why acts of supererogation are easier to square with commonsense moral intuitions than
acts of offence.
Mellema’s second attempt at explaining the dearth of uncontroversial examples of
offence comes by way of comparing two hypothetical agents. The first, called the Pharisee,
“is eager to fulfil moral obligations while at the same time exerting a minimum effort to
benefit others, thus fulfilling duty while not going beyond the call of duty.” (BCD 200)
Mellema maintains that this agent, who intentionally avoids performing supererogatory acts,
is subject to moral blame in the form of criticism on aretaic grounds, where his refusal to go
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beyond the call of duty indicates an absence of some set of moral virtues. The second
hypothetical agent, called the Counterpart Pharisee, “is determined to avoid performing acts
which are morally forbidden while nevertheless remaining eager to perform acts of offence.”
(BCD 200) While there are some similarities between the Pharisee and the Counterpart
Pharisee—they both avoid performing forbidden acts, while simultaneously trying “to
exploit the category of the permissible to their own advantage as far as they are capable”
(BCD 201)—Mellema contends that there are important asymmetries between the two
agents. The first, he argues, lies in the type of blame that we can assign to the two agents.
While we can blame the Counterpart Pharisee on both aretaic and deontic grounds,47 we can
only coherently blame the Pharisee on aretaic grounds. We might try to blame the Pharisee
on deontic grounds if we think that he violates an imperfect duty to (for example) act
charitably. But if this is true, then the Pharisee ultimately fails to fulfill his moral duties—
and is thus not really a Pharisee after all. To keep the example of the Pharisee coherent,
then, it seems that we must have the aretaic sort of criticism in mind. The Counterpart
Pharisee, however, is subject to both types of criticism. We can blame him on aretaic
grounds by citing his “failure to cultivate and practice moral virtue”, and on deontic grounds
by appeal to the “very nature of offence” (Mellema, BCD 202).
The second asymmetry between the Pharisee and his Counterpart lies in “the manner
in which each regards the practice of the other” (BCD 202). Since the Counterpart Pharisee
seeks to perform actions that are blameworthy (namely, moral offences), but the Pharisee
does not, it seems that the two agents will regard each other differently. Where the Pharisee
will have a reason not to emulate the Counterpart Pharisee, the Counterpart Pharisee will
have no reason to avoid adopting the Pharisee’s behavior. Mellema explains this by stating
The distinction between these two types of criticism will be further discussed in my remarks on Gregory
Trianosky in Ch. 3.
47
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that “the practice of the Counterpart Pharisee will defeat the Pharisee’s strategy of avoiding
moral blame” (BCD 202), while the Pharisee’s strategy in no way interferes with that of the
Counterpart. If this is correct, then Mellema believes that we have identified yet another
symptom of the asymmetry between our ordinary intuitions about blame and praise. And
just as we should be unsurprised by the asymmetries that we find between the Pharisee and
his Counterpart, we should be unsurprised by other asymmetries between our concepts of
supererogation and offence.
In developing my own response to Mellema’s remarks in Beyond the Call of Duty, it will
help to assign names to the several asymmetries under discussion:
§
No Easy Examples: While it is easy to identify intuitively plausible examples of
supererogation, it is difficult to identify corresponding uncontroversial
examples of moral offence.
Heyd’s Asymmetries:
§
Offence is Empty: The set of offensive acts is empty, while the set of
suerperogatory acts is not.
§
Offence is Trivial at Best: Supererogatory acts can be both heroic and trivial,
while offensive acts can only be morally trivial.
§
Offence Equivocates: Moral offence depends upon a strictly legalistic (and not
moral) interpretation of permissibility, while supererogation does not.
Mellema’s Asymmetries:
§
Different Destinations: For any given act, an increase in its blameworthiness
corresponds to an increased likelihood that we will deem it morally
forbidden. An increase in its praiseworthiness, however, corresponds to an
increased likelihood that it is not morally required.
§
Deontic Difference: While the Counterpart Pharisee can be criticized on both
deontic and aretaic grounds, the Pharisee can only be criticized on aretaic
grounds.
§
Different Regard: While the Pharisee has reasons to avoid acting like the
Counterpart Pharisee, the Counterpart Pharisee has no reasons to avoid
acting like the Pharisee.
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I will now argue that Mellema’s asymmetries do not better explain No Easy Examples than
Heyd’s asymmetries, and that No Easy Examples remains a challenge for proponents of
moral offence.
Different Destinations faces two serious problems. First, I am not entirely
convinced that it holds up as a legitimate asymmetry between the concepts of praise and
blame. While some praiseworthy acts do seem to be poor candidates for the category of the
morally required, it seems clear that other highly praiseworthy acts are morally required. I
agree with Mellema’s observation that praise comes in degrees, but he seems to ignore the
fact that the difficulty in fulfilling moral obligations can likewise come in degrees. Consider
a firefighter who agrees, as a condition of accepting his job, to enter into dangerous
situations in order to save the lives of others. His agreement is no less binding in more
dangerous situations than in less dangerous ones. If he is called to assist a driver whose car
has broken down at the side of a moderately busy highway, he is morally required to do so—
and while we might find his fulfillment of this obligation to be praiseworthy, we will not say
that it is above the call of duty. If, however, he is called to extract an unconscious person
from the third floor of a burning building, we will intuitively find his fulfillment of this duty
to be highly praiseworthy—but no less obligatory for this fact. As such, it seems that the
degree to which an act is praiseworthy tells us very little (on its own) about how likely it is to
be morally required. It does not seem to me that there is any across-the-board asymmetry to
be found in the connections between praise and obligation on the one hand, and between
blame and the forbidden on the other. Secondly, even if we grant some asymmetry of the
sort that Mellema has in mind, I am not confident that it will better explain No Easy
Examples than the asymmetries identified by Heyd. While it is of course possible that this
difficulty “may at least partially be the result of a deeper asymmetry between what is
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praiseworthy and what is blameworthy” (BCD 198, my italics), Mellema offers no clear
argument to show that the difficulty is not in larger part explained by Heyd’s asymmetries.
In short, we might explain the wealth of uncontroversial examples of supererogation and the
dearth of similar examples of offence by (more) simply asserting that the former category is
intuitively plausible and interesting, while the latter category is not.
I do not think that Mellema’s appeals to the Pharisee and his Counterpart fare much
better as explanations of No Easy Examples. The Deontic Difference asymmetry, as I see it,
reveals an inconsistency in Mellema’s respective concepts of deontic and aretaic blame. This
inconsistency arises in the following confusing passage:
By the very nature of offence, a person who performs acts of offense is doing that which can be
criticized on deontic grounds. Thus, while the strategy of the Pharisee is to avoid moral criticism on
deontic grounds, the counterpart Pharisee has no parallel strategy. The latter is perfectly willing to
perform acts which can be criticized on moral grounds. (BCD 202, my italics)
If the Pharisee is not willing to be criticized on moral grounds, then it appears that Mellema
would have us accept that only deontic criticism qualifies as legitimate moral criticism. This
leaves us to wonder what sort of moral significance aretaic criticism is supposed to have, but
more importantly leads to a potential charge of question-begging from Heyd. Saying that
that the Counterpart Pharisee’s behavior is subject to deontic criticism presupposes that
there are acts that are not forbidden, but nevertheless subject to deontic censure. As a
consequence, we must assume that at least one of Heyd’s central claims (namely, Offence is
Empty) is false in order to even make sense of the Counterpart Pharisee’s behavior. I do not
see how Mellema can hope to persuade anyone to countenance moral offences by
presupposing that there are such acts.
Even if I do not think that Mellema’s work in Beyond the Call of Duty yields a
satisfactory solution to the No Easy Examples problem, I believe that it points at some
important strategies for advancing a persuasive theory of moral offence. For one thing, it
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calls attention to the problem itself, which Chisholm’s original work on offence never seems
to do. For another, it inadvertently points at a question that should steer us in the right
direction: Just what does it mean to criticize an action “on aretaic grounds”, and is a moral
type of criticism?
2.5 Mellema II: The Virtue-Theory Based Account
I will now examine Mellema’s work in “Offence and Virtue Ethics”. In this article,
Mellema argues that if one “acknowledges that there are moral duties to be virtuous or avoid
being vicious, one can make a plausible case for the existence of blameworthy acts which are
not swallowed up by the category of the forbidden.” (“OVE” 324) He is quite explicit about
this constituting a positive argument in favor of the possibility of offences, which
immediately identifies a different agenda from the one he pursues in Beyond the Call of Duty.
No longer content to indirectly defend offences by describing their asymmetries with
supererogation, Mellema now wants to persuade his reader that there really are moral
offences. In a manner similar to my assessment of Beyond the Call of Duty, I will argue that
this article is useful in developing a theory of moral offence, if not entirely convincing on its
own merits.
Mellema begins by calling attention to John Stuart Mill’s discussion of imperfect
duties, which Mill describes as “those in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular
occasions of performing it are left to our choice, as in the case of charity or beneficence,
which we are indeed bound to practise, but not towards any definite person, nor at any
prescribed time.” (Utilitarianism 49) If, for example, I live my entire life without acting
charitably, then even though I was not required to act charitably on any particular occasion, I
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have violated my imperfect duty of charity. Mill’s distinction between imperfect and perfect
duties seems to be well known and widely recognized48, but Mellema interprets it in a
peculiar way. He seems to read Mill as advocating the idea that our duty to act charitably is a
duty to be virtuous. And from the idea that people have obligations to cultivate virtues,
Mellema argues, we should find it “reasonable to hold that they have moral duties to refrain
from moral vices of various sorts (in fact, it may be that the latter duties are more obvious
than the former duties).” (“OVE” 326) The failure to refrain from these vices, in so far as it
does not constitute the violation of any direct duty, cannot be considered morally forbidden.
But since it does remain open to moral criticism, Mellema believes, it should be considered
an example of moral offence.
In order to illustrate the sort of act that he has in mind, Mellema calls our attention
to rude behavior. While we have no direct duties to avoid rudeness, he suggests, we
nevertheless have some sort of moral duty to avoid it at least some of the time:
One’s moral obligation to refrain from a vice such as rudeness is not an obligation which, in the
manner of most typical deontic duties, distributes over the entirety of potential individual acts which
fall within its scope. Hence an individual failure to refrain from exemplifying a vice such as rudeness
is not thereby the violation of one’s duty to refrain from displaying rudeness any more than the failure
to practice charity on a particular occasion is itself the violation of one’s duty to be charitable.
(“OVE” 327)
Mellema does not offer any specific examples of rude behavior, so for the sake of the
present discussion let us suppose that I act rudely on a particular occasion by belching loudly
during a philosophy colloquium. We should not, Mellema maintains, conclude than this act
is a violation of any direct duty (unless, of course, one maintains that I have a direct duty not
to belch during colloquia). Nor can we automatically conclude that it violates my duty to
refrain from displaying rudeness. After all, this particular instance of belching might be a
horrible anomaly in an otherwise stellar colloquium-audience career (in which I am, let us
I should note that the idea of imperfect duty is not universally accepted. See Statman (1996) for some
interesting arguments against recognizing imperfect duties.
48
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suppose, well known to be an attentive and enthusiastic participant), in which case I cannot
be said to actually exemplify the vice of rudeness. By contrast, any instance of theft
constitutes the violation of a duty, regardless of my past or future behavior. But while my
anomalous belch does not by itself violate a duty, and as such is not morally forbidden, it
does seem to be open to some sort of moral criticism. It is thus “a strong candidate for
qualifying as an act of offense…[and t]herefore, there does seem to be room in human life
for the possibility of what Chisholm and Sosa call ‘permissive ill-doing’.” (Mellema, “OVE”
329)
I can see at least two serious potential objections to Mellema’s account of what we
might call “vice-centered offences” here. First, one might insist that there is nothing morally
blameworthy about belching during a colloquium, or failing to act charitably on any
particular occasion. Mellema does anticipate this objection, and tries to cut it off by
reminding us that “blameworthiness is a concept which is capable of coming in degrees.”
(“OVE” 328) Even if an objector is unwilling to assign significant blame to my belching,
Mellema expects that she must grant that it is “worthy of moral blame or criticism to at least
a mild degree” (“OVE” 328). But I am not so sure that his objector should grant this. And
if she does, then she might immediately press Mellema with a follow-up objection. Recall
the manner in which Heyd dismisses the Perry Zoso case:
‘Taking too long in a restaurant when others are known to be waiting’ is indeed not a grave moral sin,
can justify only mild forms of criticism, and is easily excusable. Yet it is, I believe, wrong and ‘not to
be done’. ‘You ought not to but you may’ is consistent only if the ‘ought’ and ‘may’ are interpreted on
different levels—for instance the moral and the legal. There are definitely cases in which a bad act is
(morally) permissible (in the same way as there are good acts which are not obligatory), but it is
doubtful whether a morally bad act may be permitted in the same way as a morally good act is not
always obligatory. (Supererogation 129)
I suspect that most cases of rudeness will be susceptible to similar replies. The objector can
insist that the only sense in which my sleeping merits blame is a non-moral one, and if
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Mellema insists that it merits moral blame, then she can reply that it is therefore morally
forbidden.
This latter possibility—that Mellema’s examples are of morally forbidden, rather than
morally offensive, acts—points at a more worrisome potential objection that Mellema does
not address. Depending on how we understand “duties to be virtuous”, it may turn our that
we do not have the sort of moral option that is needed to make sense of moral offence.
Moral offences are optional, in the sense that they are not forbidden. As Chisholm puts it,
we ought not to perform offensive acts, but we may. But if our examples of offence (such as
rude behavior) do qualify as violations of direct duties, then of course it will be very difficult
to maintain that they are not morally forbidden. Mellema assumes that “duties to be
virtuous” should be understood as indirect duties, and it is therefore unsurprising that he
should not consider this objection in his paper. But I believe that this is a contentious
assumption, and that Mellema should be concerned with potential objectors who would
reject it.
To further illustrate why I think Mellema’s assumption leaves his virtue-based
account of offence vulnerable, I think it will help to examine some recent literature
suggesting that duties to be virtuous can demand specific behaviors on specific occasions.
This comes in the form of a published debate between Rosalind Hursthouse and Julia
Driver, who raise some interesting puzzles that are relevant to Mellema’s work in “Offence
and Virtue Ethics”. Hursthouse’s primary aim in “The Ethics of Virtue” is to defend the
claim that right action is best understood in terms of virtues. Contra Hursthouse’s view,
Driver argues that a number of difficulties plague the virtue-centered approach to right
action, providing good reason to doubt that the approach is at all capable of yielding a
complete moral theory. One of the objections raised in Driver’s paper pertains to the virtue
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ethicist’s apparent inability to account for commonsense intuitions regarding supererogation.
By appealing to the virtuous agent when we determine what’s right, it is argued, the virtue
ethicist either sets the bar for supererogation too high, or eliminates the possibility of
supererogation altogether. While a thorough examination of the completeness of virtue
ethics exceeds the scope of my own project, I do think that Driver’s remarks on
supererogation raise parallel problems for Mellema’s virtue-based account of offences. By
looking at the details of the disgreement between Driver and Hursthouse, I belive I can
show that Mellema’s virtue-based account of offence is inadequate.
Hursthouse’s article aims to address the familiar charge that an account of virtue
alone cannot tell agents what to do in a given situation. Without a procedure for making
rules, it has been said, virtue ethics fails to perform an intuitively key task of any complete
ethical theory; the advice to “Do what the virtuous person would do in similar
circumstances” is of little use to an agent who does not know where to find or how to
recognize a virtuous person to consult. Hursthouse seeks to avoid this charge by arguing
that agents do not need to actually consult virtuous persons in order to determine how to
behave in a given situation. Rather, she claims, a set of action-guiding ‘v-rules’, such as ‘Do
what is courageous’, can be generated from the following biconditional:
P1:
An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would, characteristically (i.e. acting in
character) do in the circumstances. (Hursthouse 106)
Because the characteristic feature of a virtuous person’s behavior is its manifestation of the
virtues themselves, “what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstances” is “what is
honest, courageous, etc.” So the right thing for an agent to do in a given situation is what is
honest, courageous, and the like.
While I do not intend to undertake a thorough critical examination of P1 here, I do
wish to point out that it leads to two distinct potential problems for Mellema’s virtue75
centered offences. First, P1 is subject to interpretive difficulties. Driver, for example,
spends a significant portion of her paper arguing that the term “circumstances” is fatally
indeterminate, as it is not clear from the biconditional whether or not the circumstances
relevant to right action include the motivational structure of the agent. Driver builds a
dilemma up from the indeterminacy, arguing that if the relevant circumstances do not
include the agent’s motives and reasons for acting, then P1 will in fact lead the agent to do
the wrong thing. For example, if I have a water phobia and see a child drowning in the ocean,
a P1 which disregards my motivational structure may well lead me to attempt to rescue the
child, resulting in both of our deaths (Driver, “VT” 117). To claim that the circumstances
relevant to right action do include the motivational structure of the agent, however, leads to
the other horn of the dilemma, as Driver argues that people sometimes act wrongly because
they are good. The idea here is that morality may sometimes require behavior that is
incompatible with the virtues of compassion and kindness:
Suppose that the only way to get rid of an evil dictator who has taken over one’s country is to kill him
and the only way to do this (let’s suppose) is by strangling him with one’s shoelace. It may well be
that the kind, compassionate person would not be able to carry it through, whereas a ruthless person
would be able to… The compassionate person who could not carry it through acted wrongly.
(Driver, “VT” 117)
If Driver’s dilemma is a legitimate one, then it does appear that the role of motivational
structure in P1 causes problems for the entire account.
This indeterminacy of “circumstances” may prompt parallel concerns about
Mellema’s understanding of “duties of virtue” in “Offence and Virtue Ethics”. After all, his
chosen examples of offensive acts—the refusal to be charitable and rude behavior—are both
compatible with a wide variety of motivational structures. Suppose, for example, that my
belching during a colloquium is not the simple product of contempt or disregard for others.
Suppose that instead it is the result of a convergence between by own unfortunate and
unexpected indigestion (because, perhaps, my cat escaped my house late last night and I had
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to spend several hours looking for her with a flashlight, during the course of which search I
was sprayed by a skunk, and after which I then had to make a trip to the store to buy tomato
juice to rid myself of the skunk stench, and thus did not have time to prepare to the special
sort of food that regulates my easily irritable constitution, and instead had to eat whatever I
could get my hands on quickly) and deep admiration for the speaker (who, perhaps, is a
former colleague from graduate school, and who I have not seen in many years, and who I
know would be profoundly disappointed by my absence, even in the light of my cat-andskunk escapade). A P1 that ignores my motivational structure may assess my belch
differently from a P1 that incorporates it, such that my belch may turn out to be forbidden
(or perhaps blameless) depending on how I interpret the principle. Without further
clarification, or an alternative principle to work from, there is quite a bit of room here for
Mellema’s virtue-centered offences to fail.
A further potential obstacle for Mellema’s account looms in the relationship between
P1 and supererogation. Commonsense morality (along with Mellema himself) would seem to
hold that there is a class of actions that may be appropriately deemed supererogatory, and
that the actions in this class share at least two features. First, supererogatory actions are
morally optional, which is to say that they are neither morally required nor morally
prohibited. If I see that someone has dropped a stack of papers that he was carrying, it is
not required that I go out of my way to help him pick them up, although there is nothing
wrong with my doing so. Second, supererogatory actions are somehow more praiseworthy
than some other permissible act or acts. While I have the option to either help or not help
my colleague with his dropped papers, it is clear that helping him is the more praiseworthy
act. One way of capturing these two intuitions, then, might be to say that a supererogatory
act is an optional act that is better than the one that the agent is merely obligated to perform
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in a given situation. If seen in this way, it seems clear that our concept of supererogation
might be called the mark on the value scale above which obligation applies.
While Hursthouse does not intend P1 to be seen as an explanation of moral
obligation, Driver argues that it thwarts any plausible explanation that might be given.
According to Driver, either of two possible virtue-based descriptions of obligation leads to a
difficulty with supererogation. On the one hand, the virtue ethicist might claim that an agent
is merely obligated not to do what’s wrong. This first description ties P1 to obligation by
appealing to right action in order to tell the agent how to avoid failing to do what morality
requires of her. This move leaves open the further question, however, of how an agent
might go beyond his obligation. I know I’m not doing anything wrong by either helping or
not helping my colleague with his dropped papers, so I know that either way I’m meeting my
obligation in that situation. But I can’t appeal to the idea of “not-wrong” to determine
which option would be better, and since it seems clear that helping my colleague would
indeed be better, it would appear that this description of obligation cannot account for a
simple instance of supererogation. This point raises a parallel worry for Mellema’s virtuecentered offences. It seems that we should be able to say that offences are optional acts that
are morally worse than other morally permissible alternatives. But if permissibility amounts
to nothing more than what is “not-wrong”, it is not obvious how we should determine
which options are worse than others.
Alternatively, the virtue ethicist might say that “obligation is set by the minimally
demanding action that falls within the range of right actions” for a given situation (Driver,
“VE” 119). This second description establishes a criterion for supererogatory acts that
appears consistent with commonsense morality. As mentioned above, our intuitions seem
to hold that any act whose value lies above the obligation mark must be deemed
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supererogatory. Driver claims that P1 may set the bar for supererogation far too high,
however, as she writes, “Virtuous persons, plausibly, do more typically than live up to
minimal obligations.” (“VE” 120) While I might think that I am not required to help my
colleague pick up his papers, it seems almost certain that a virtuous person would, all other
things being equal. After all, it might be asked, isn’t helping people in these very sorts of
circumstances the very hallmark of virtue? Unfortunately, if helping my colleague is what
the virtuous person would do, then it looks like helping is the right thing to do in the
situation, and so I’m obligated to help after all. So much for my moral option. Again, a
parallel problem emerges for Mellema: If the bar for right action turns out to be set as high
as this second interpretation seems to do, then it would seem that I violate my moral
obligations well before I get anywhere near the practice of truly vicious behavior. A truly
virtuous person, we might say, would not only not belch, but might (via her virtuous
fortitude and loyalty to her presenting friend, perhaps) exhibit even more polite behavior than
usual at this particular colloquium. If belching, or otherwise acting rudely, is not what the
virtuous person would do, then it turns out to be forbidden rather than offensive.
While Hursthouse does briefly discuss obligation and supererogation in her paper, I
believe that her comments largely fail to resolve Driver’s objections. Hursthouse attempts to
ground supererogation in right action by appealing to the distinction between two types of
obstacles that can impede the performance of a right act. 49 She considers the example of an
agent who sees someone drop a purse, and who finds it difficult to return the purse to its
owner. The difficulty impeding the return of the purse could be of two sorts: On the one
hand, the agent might find it difficult to return the purse because of features of her own
character, such as avarice. On the other, the agent might find it difficult to return the purse
49
The distinction is originally drawn by Phillipa Foot (1978).
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because of what might be called external circumstances—the agent might be very poor,
leading to an understandable temptation to keep the purse. If the difficulty is of the latter
sort,50 and the agent still manages to return the purse, then Hursthouse views the agent’s act
as supererogatory, because the agent manages to perform the right act despite circumstantial
difficulties. The agent meets her obligation by acting in accordance with the v-rule that
directs her to “do what is honest”, but the fact that she is able to act in accordance with the
v-rule in the face of circumstantial difficulties elevates the evaluation that her act ultimately
receives. On Hursthouse’s rough view, then, any act is supererogatory which is both a right
act and performed despite circumstantial difficulties.
It does not appear to me that Hursthouse’s suggestion can effectively answer
Driver’s challenge to the possibility of a virtue-based account of supererogation; indeed, I
suspect that Hursthouse’s brief description of supererogation gives rise to more problems
than it solves. Consider the second half of Driver’s criticism: Common sense judges many
of the actions of the virtuous agent to be more demanding, or better, than mere obligation
requires, even when those actions are performed without circumstantial obstacles. To see
this, one might imagine Mellema’s Pharisee, whose actions are generally in accordance with
his moral obligations, but never exceed the bare minimum that those obligations require. If,
for example, morality requires him to spend three hours a week doing volunteer work at the
local food bank, then he will work for the three hours, but leave the food bank the moment
that his obligation is fulfilled. While I do not mean to suggest that common sense morality
requires anything so specific as three hours a week at the food bank, I suspect that the
upshot of the example is clear. An agent who consistently meets his moral obligations, but
never exceeds them, will not be countenanced by our intuitions as virtuous. And I do not
We can imagine other impediments that do not amount to character flaws. The agent might, for example, be
physically exhausted or ill.
50
80
think that this assessment has anything to do with his motivational structure. One could add
to the example that the Pharisee quite enjoys fulfilling his obligations, or conversely that he
overcomes great inner temptation in order to do so, and yet his failure to ever exceed those
obligations would seem to disqualify him from being called “virtuous”. It seems to me that
virtuous people are those who, with at least some regularity, “go the extra mile” with respect
to their moral obligations. When one attempts to envision a virtuous food bank worker, one
likely envisions a food bank worker who occasionally (if not regularly) stays to help for a few
minutes after her three hour obligation is met, thereby performing an act which intuitively
falls under the category of the supererogatory. Indeed, in accordance with Driver’s criticism,
common sense morality would appear to call virtuous only those individuals who
characteristically exceed their moral obligations.
If we return our attention to Mellema’s vice-centered account of offences, it seems
that a parallel problem arises. Failing to act charitably on any particular occasion hardly
seems to exemplify a moral vice—Mellema himself admits this. But even a person who
performs minor charitable acts infrequently can to fail to exemplify the virtue of charity. A
truly charitable person would do much more than this. And if the right thing to do is to act
charitably on a regular basis (since that is what a virtuous person would do), then any act that
falls short of this—including giving more than the Pharisee, but less than the virtuous
agent—would seem to qualify as forbidden.
I can imagine two possible rejoinders that might be offered in Mellema’s defense, but
I do not think either will help much. First, we might try to defend Mellema’s vice-centered
offences via defending Hursthouse’s account of right action. We might say that Driver’s has
simply misinterpreted P1, and that there is in fact no such thing as a “range of right actions”
in a given situation. According to this objection, the supererogatory is distinguished from
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the merely obligatory by the circumstances surrounding an act, and not by comparing the act
itself with some other act that the agent might have performed. If a student leaves her purse
in my classroom, there is clearly only one right thing to do, namely to return the purse.
Doing so only qualifies as a supererogatory act if the agent faces circumstantial difficulties.
After all, if my obligation is simply to do what’s right in a given situation, then my obligation
is to do what the virtuous agent would characteristically do in that situation. And this claim
might be interpreted to mean that there is a singular act that the virtuous person would
characteristically perform in the situation, and to act rightly would be to perform that act. On
this interpretation, there is only one right act for any given situation—any other act is not
the one that the virtuous agent would characteristically perform. If it turns out that the
virtuous agent would characteristically spend three hours a week at the food bank, then that
is what it’s right to do. In order to perform a supererogatory act with respect to one’s food
bank obligation, then, one would not need to spend more time at the food bank, but instead
meet one’s three-hour obligation despite circumstantial difficulties, such as a broken leg.
I do not think this will help either Hursthouse or Mellema. For if it’s true that there
is only one right act in a given situation (the thing that the virtuous agent would
characteristically do), then virtue ethics yields a highly counterintuitive result in the case
where an agent spends more time at the food bank than the three hours required by her
moral obligation. Since her obligation is at every instant determined by the act that the
virtuous agent would in fact perform in that instant, spending more time at the food bank
than her obligation requires means ultimately doing the wrong thing. At any instant t after the
three-hour obligation spent at the food bank, the agent is doing something other than what
the virtuous agent would be doing at that instant. So she is not performing the right act at t
according to the proposed interpretation of P1, and rather than doing something more
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praiseworthy than the mere fulfillment of her obligation, she ends up doing something
wrong (which, by definition, precludes offence). This result is clearly inconsistent with
common sense morality, which would at the very least say that the agent has the option to
spend extra time at the food bank, if not that doing so would indeed be supererogatory.
As an alternative defense, Mellema might suggest that I am interpreting “true
charity” too strictly here, and that there is indeed a range of behavior that a virtuous agent
might exhibit, thus leaving room for the possibility of offence. After all, recent situationist
objectors to virtue ethics such as John Doris (2005) have argued that psychological research
(including the work of situational psychologists like Phillip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram)
shows that character traits are not “globally situation independent” in the way that we might
have in mind when we talk about the “truly charitable person”. I might be very courageous
in battle, for example, but incapacitated by fear when asked to speak in public. But if this is
right, then I think the situation becomes even worse for Mellema’s vice-centered account of
offense. On the one hand, we might accept Doris’ criticism, and give up on virtue-centered
accounts of our evaluative concepts. But this would amount to throwing out the possibility
of moral offence (itself an evaluative category) within a system of virtue ethics. On the
other, we might try to reply to Doris by saying that while there are no global character traits
that are universally exhibited across all situations (no “capital-C courage”, we might say),
there are nevertheless local character traits (“lower-case-c courage”, we might say). But this is
almost worse for Mellema’s account, since it places the onus on him to explain why
refraining from charity is blameworthy in some situations, but not others. Mellema is
entirely silent on this point.
To sum up, I think that Mellema has not done nearly enough to show that virtue
ethics can successfully account for moral offences. I do not see why a virtue ethicist will
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want, as Mellema seems to want, to characterize virtues in terms of imperfect duties. And
even if we try to do this, Mellema needs to say much more about why we should find the
failure to satisfy an imperfect duty on any particular occasion to be blameworthy. Still, I
believe that at least one element of Mellema’s strategy in “Offence and Virtue Ethics” is
worth pursuing further. Notice that Mellema’s interest in non-deontic duties is very much in
keeping his suggestion from Beyond the Call of Duty that we should blame the Counterpart
Pharisee on “aretaic grounds”. This seems consistent with Millard Schumaker’s suggestion
that Chisholm should have looked beyond deontic concepts in order to explain offences. I
do think that a successful account of moral offence will rely upon a distinction between
deontic and aretaic concepts. Mellema is looking in the right general place, even the
execution of the strategy is ultimately unsuccessful here.
2.6 Mellema III: The Ignorance-Based Account
Mellema offers yet another distinct argument in favor of acknowledging offences in
his 2004 book The Expectations of Morality. The broader thesis of this book is that we can
better account for commonsense moral intuitions by recognizing the concept of “moral
expectation”. This is distinct from other forms of expectations, such as predictive
expectation, where I might expect to find that my friend is awake at 10 AM based on her
usual habits. Instead, moral expectation pertains to the attitude that arises when (for
example) I am in a position to hold the door open for a stranger whose arms are full of
packages. While it cannot be said that I have an obligation to help the stranger, there seems
to be some sense in which I am expected to do so. My interest in the book stems from
Mellema’s assertion that “something is morally wrong with the failure to do what we are
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morally expected to do”, and that “[a] person can be morally expected to do some things
which he or she is not morally obligated to do.” (EM 1-2) These claims sound very similar
to those made by Chisholm regarding moral offences. Mellema does not think this is
accidental, and in fact argues that any failure to meet a non-obligatory moral expectation is a
moral offence (though he does not think that all moral offences are failures to meet nonobligatory moral expectations).
I will largely ignore the concept of moral expectation, and instead focus on the
book’s ninth chapter, where Mellema constructs an argument in support of moral offence
that is distinct from the rest of his body of work. This argument makes extensive use the
work of Michael Zimmerman, whose work on the relationship between blame and ignorance
is taken to show that we should acknowledge the possibility of offence51. Mellema
specifically focuses on Zimmerman’s arguments against a principle that he names B2:
B2
A person is morally blameworthy for performing an act only if the person has a moral
obligation not to perform the act. (Mellema, EM 93)
If Zimmerman is successful in showing that B2 is false, Mellema believes, then we must
acknowledge the possibility of actions that are morally blameworthy, but not morally
forbidden. This in turn opens the door to the possibility of moral offences.52
Zimmerman argues against B2 by calling our attention to the possibility of what he
calls “accuses”. These are described as analogous to J. L. Austin’s excuses,53 and are distinct
from “overall wrongdoing” in that they are situations where “one has a justification for what
one has done but is nonetheless to be blamed—is culpable—for it.” (Zimmerman, LWU
Mellema points out that Zimmerman is not himself a proponent of acknowledging moral offences.
Though Mellema focuses on Zimmerman’s arguments in an older (1997) article entitled my discussion will
also incorporate Zimmerman’s more recent Living With Uncertainty. The two pieces cover much of the same
ground with respect to accuses.
51
52
53
See Austin (1956-1957).
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194)54 Accuses are sometimes appropriate, Zimmerman believes, in cases where agents
perform acts that they are morally justified in performing, but where they mistakenly believe
that they are not morally justified in performing them. Here is an original example of the
type that he tends to use:
Orin the Agitator
Orin wants to upset his younger sister Adeline by moving her favorite doll from its usual place on her
bed to a window on the opposite side of the room. He believes that the relocation of the doll will
prompt her to cry, and he thinks this is funny. Instead, he inadvertently ends up saving the doll from
almost certain destruction, as the family dog (who is always trying to chew on the doll, and who Orin
knows to be in the vicinity of the bedroom, but who Orin is not thinking about at the moment)
rushes into the room a moment later and chews all the other toys on Adeline’s bed. Not only is
Adeline thrilled to find that her favorite doll is unscathed, she is surprised to find how much better
she likes the doll sitting on the opposite windowsill.
Suppose, for a moment, that obligation is determined by the states of affairs resulting from
one’s actions. In this case, Orin brings about a better state of affairs by moving Adeline’s
doll than he would by leaving it in its original place. It would seem, then, that Orin is
morally justified in moving the doll. B2, if true, would suggest that Orin is not blameworthy
for moving the doll, since he blame can arise only if he violates a moral obligation. But
Zimmerman believes that an agent like Orin can be the proper target of moral blame—more
specifically, a subcategory of blame that he calls “culpability”—even if he has not violated
any moral duty. This is not to say that anyone is justified in treating Orin in any particular
way, as being blameworthy is not always sufficient to merit overt expressions of blame.
Instead, Zimmerman merely wishes to show that specific acts, attempts, omissions, or
resultant states of affairs may diminish a person’s moral standing by “reflec[ing] ill on the
person”. (LWU 195) We might not feel inclined to overtly censure Orin (on the contrary,
we might even think it appropriate to thank him for sparing Adeline’s doll), but his attempt
54
I.e. one has not done anything that is “overall wrong” by violating any moral obligation.
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to cause suffering to his sister is nevertheless blameworthy, because it stems from a desire to
harm his sister.
Whether we end up accepting the possibility of accuses thus rests heavily on
Zimmerman’s ability to suppor the claim that culpability and wrongdoing operate
independently of one another. To do this, Zimmerman argues that “acting freely in the
belief that one is doing wrong is sufficient for being culpable for one’s behavior (but not
sufficient for actually doing wrong).” (LWU 198) The fact that a conscienious agent who
wants to fulfil his moral duty might nevertheless find himself unsure about what his duty
actually requires suggests that the moral status of his actions can come apart from his beliefs
about the moral status of his actions. I can believe that I’m doing wrong while doing
nothing wrong, just as I can believe that I’m doing nothing wrong while doing wrong. And
if I can freely act in accordance with the belief that I am doing wrong while doing nothing
wrong, then it seems that accuses are indeed possible.
Zimmerman anticipates some resistance to his view, addressing a few objections that
he believes are likely to arise. I would like to call attention to one specific objection here, as
I believe it poses deeper problems than Zimmerman realizes. This pertains to the case of
Huckleberry Finn, who refrains from turning his slave friend Jim in to the local authorities
despite believing that this refraining is morally wrong. Huck believes that he has a moral
duty to turn Jim in, and that by remaining silent he is violating his duty. But since he
presumably has no duty to turn his friend in—on the contrary, it seems as though moral
duty favors his actual course of action—it appears that he qualifies as an agent whose beliefs
come apart from the deontic status of his actions. Zimmerman’s account of accuses entails
that Huck is culpable for his behavior. He acts freely, after all, in the belief that he is doing
wrong. But this might seem deeply counterintuitive, as our intuitions would have us admire
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Huck. Such an intuition seems incompatible with the attitude that we take when we call him
blameworthy.
Zimmerman attempts to resolve the tension between our admiration for Huck on
the one hand, and the blame that he attributes to Huck on the other, by showing that they
are in fact compatible:
In response, I would again point out, first, that one’s being culpable for a certain item of behavior is
consistent with one’s being admirable in certain respects; second, that it is important not to lose sight
of the fact that, in these cases, the agent is indeed doing wrong from his perspective even if not in fact;
and, third, that it might be wrong to treat… Huck in some adverse manner, even if it is not
inappropriate to blame [him] in the relevant sense, that is, to judge [him] negatively. (LWU 201)
As Zimmerman sees it, we can simultaneously admire Huck—and perhaps even praise his
refusal to turn Jim in—without denying his culpability for doing what he thought was wrong.
If this is right, then it seems that Huck is no exception to the rule that “to justify an agent’s
behavior is not to exculpate the agent.” (Zimmerman, LWU 205) On the contrary, Huck is
subject to an accuse, along with anyone else who freely does what is not wrong, but he
nevertheless believes to be wrong. And since, as Mellema argues, “the presence of an accuse
signals the presence of an act which is morally blameworthy to perform but not morally
obligatory to omit” (EM 98), it would seem that Huck is guilty of a moral offence.
Once again, I find Mellema’s strategy here to be interesting, but ultimately
inadequate. The use of moral ignorance to support the possibility of offences, while initially
promising, encounters serious resistance if we notice that the Huckleberry Finn case (and
others like it) can be plausibly interpreted in ways that do not find Huck to be morally
blameworthy. A notable interpretation of this sort comes from Nomy Arpaly, who argues
that Huck is not blameworthy for his behavior because his actions stem from praiseworthy
motives. On Arpaly’s view, it is not the agent’s beliefs that determine the moral worth (i.e.
the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness) of his actions, but rather his responsiveness to the
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features of his situation that are actually (or as Zimmerman might say, “objectively”) morally
relevant. She maintains that Huck is motivated, albeit unconsciously, by recognition of Jim’s
humanity, which is in fact the reason (or at least one significant reason) that he has a duty to
remain silent. The fact that he believes he has a duty to turn Jim in is irrelevant to his
action’s moral worth. It is the reasons that actually constitute his duty, along with his
responsiveness to those reasons, that leads Arpaly to conclude that “on the reconstruction I
find most plausible, Huckleberry is morally praiseworthy for his action.” (UV 76) And of
course, if Huck is not blameworthy for his action, then we cannot find him guilty of a moral
offence. As I see it, then, Arpaly’s reading of the Huckleberry Finn case constitutes a
difficult potential objection to Mellema’s argument for offences in The Expectations of Morality.
And I do not think that the objection requires us to show that Arpaly’s views on moral
ignorance are superior to Zimmerman’s. Instead, an objector need only show that Arpaly’s
interpretation of the Huckleberry Finn case is at least as plausible as Zimmerman’s
interpretation. For if this can be shown, then the objector can now maintain that the
phenomenon supposedly best explained by moral offence can be explained at least well
without invoking the concept. The question that should concern Mellema, then, is whether
Arpaly’s account really is as plausible as Zimmerman’s.
Mellema might call attention to two possible responses from the literature. First,
Zimmerman himself briefly addresses Arpaly’s work in the following footnote:
Although [Arpaly] talks of “moral responsibility” when discussing praise- and blameworthiness, she
explicitly denies (pp. 172-3) that she is concerned with the appropriateness of punishment in
particular or with how people should be treated in general. Perhaps, then, she is concerned with a
sort of moral responsibility other than the culpability with which I am concerned, in which case there
is, or may be, no disagreement between us. (LWU 193)
The idea here seems to be that we can maintain that Huck is blameworthy for his behavior
without having to directly refute or otherwise engage with Arpaly’s theory of blame.
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Zimmerman might support this by reminding us (as he does elsewhere) that culpability is
only one form of moral blame, and that there might be some other sense of moral blame
that is not appropriate to attribute to Huck’s behavior. That is, our wish to admire (or
otherwise praise) Huck is compatible with his culpability, so long as we recognize that the
type of praise that he deserves is different from the type associated with culpability. In
short, appealing to Arpaly’s interpretation as an objection to Zimmerman amounts to an
equivocation on different meanings of “blame”.
I believe that Arpaly does disagree with Zimmerman, however, and that this
disagreement does not amount to a simple equivocation. Recall that Zimmerman attempts
to resolve the tension between our intuitive admiration for Huck and the culpability that his
behavior nevertheless supposedly warrants by saying that “ it might be wrong to treat…
Huck in some adverse manner, even if it is not inappropriate to blame [him] in the relevant
sense, that is, to judge [him] negatively.” (LWU 201) But if culpability is independent of
assertions of how we should treat culpable agents, it is very hard to see how Arpaly’s
understanding of blame differs from Zimmerman’s. Appeals to the distinction between
judgment and action do not seem to illustrate any significant conceptual difference between
her “moral responsibility” and his “culpability”. And with respect to moral responsibility,
Arpaly explicitly denies that an agent’s beliefs about the right- or wrong-making features of
his actions matter. It is instead his responsiveness to the features that do in fact make an act
right or wrong that confer blame or praise upon him. Successfully employing Zimmerman’s
ideas to vindicate offences, then, will need to involve more than simply dismissing Arpaly’s
account of blame as a pseudo-disagreement.
Mellema might pursue a second strategy, then, and look for some grounds for
dismissing Arpaly’s interpretation of the Huckleberry Finn case. He might, for example,
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appeal to Elizabeth Harman’s critique of Unprincipled Virtue, in which Harman argues that
Arpaly’s account of moral worth encounters a fatal dilemma. When we say that
praiseworthiness is equivalent to doing the right thing in response to the right moral reasons,
Harman wonders, do we mean to say that the agent is responsive to all of the morally
relevant reasons? Must Huck, for example, respond not only to Jim’s status as a human
being, but also to the fact that his silence will not bring about a greater overall evil in the
world, and that it is just, and that is the course of action most compatible with loyalty and
friendship, and so on? If so, then Arpaly’s account seems psychologically implausible. It
seems too much to expect Huck (or anyone) to respond to all of these reasons, and thus
Huck turns out not to be praiseworthy after all. Indeed, as Harman sees it, this
interpretation “implies that agents are never praiseworthy.” (436) We might, of course,
adopt a weaker reading of Arpaly’s account, according to which an agent need only respond
to at least one of the morally relevant reasons to merit praise. But Harman says that this horn
of the dilemma faces its own problems. For suppose that Huck is willing to remain silent
for Jim in an “obssessive” way, such that he is responsive to Jim’s humanity in a way that he
would not be responsive to the humanity of others. If he were asked about some other
runaway slave, for example, he would gladly speak up. Let us suppose further that Huck is
willing to actively harm others in order to protect Jim, but that on this particular occasion it
turns out that he needs only keep his mouth shut, without actually hurting anyone. Harman
worries that this type of motivational structure will result in Arpaly’s theory conferring praise
where it should not. Huck is responsive to one central right-making feature of his action—
he’s concerned with Jim’s safety and humanity—but he is utterly unresponsive to other
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right-making features, such as justice, in a way that should prompt us to rescind his
praiseworthiness.55
This line of criticism, while interesting, wll not help to further Mellema’s account of
offenses in The Expectations of Morality. Harman’s arguments can be addressed without giving
up the plausibility of Arpaly’s view. Arguing on her own behalf, Arpaly has rejected the idea
that an agent must be responsive to all of the morally relevant reasons in order for her
actions to be praiseworthy (“RHSM” 457-458). As for the second horn of Harman’s
dilemma, Arpaly argues that it is compatible with a plausible interpretation of the sorts of
cases that Harman has in mind. Arpaly notes that we can see this by calling attention to
another dilemma. Suppose that in giving a list of all of the morally relevant features of
Huck’s situation with respect to Jim, we include the fact that remaining silent would be
benevolent, as well as the fact that it is the course of action most compatible with justice.
We can then ask whether benevolence and justice reduce to some further common moral
reason (such as the maximization of utility), or whether they are distinct and irreducible
reasons. If we prefer the latter approach, then we can simply say that Huck’s action (or, in
this case, his forbearance) should be judged separately with respect to the two types of
reasons. Perhaps he is not praiseworthy with respect to justice, but he nevertheless remains
praiseworthy with respect to benevolence. If we prefer the former approach, then we can
vindicate Huck in at least two different ways. First, we might say that he is responsive to the
underlying moral reason, even if he is unaware of it. Arpaly explicitly maintains that we can
act in response to reasons without knowing that we are doing so. Alternatively, it might be
Harman makes these points in respect to a different proposed example involving a girl who chooses to give
cookies to her friend. I believe that I have accurately represented her points by applying them to the
Huckleberry Finn case, and prefer to retain my focus on Huck for two reasons. First, I think it is easier to see
the inter-relevance of the work of Mellema, Zimmerman, Arpaly and Harman by focusing on a common
example. Secondly, I think the Huckleberry Finn case stands to motivate our intuitions more compellingly than
a case involving cookie-giving, since there is considerably more at stake. This is not, of course, to suggest that
the giving of cookies should be a matter taken lightly…
55
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that Huck is genuinely not responsive to the underlying moral reason that ranges over both
justice and benevolence. In this case, he is not praiseworthy, but nor is he necessarily
blameworthy. Instead, he acts on mistaken motives. But this is not an entirely terrible
result, as it places Huck in the company of many interesting cases in which beliefs and
actions come apart.
Sherri Lynn Conklin has more recently offered further replies against Harman on
Arpaly’s behalf. One of these replies focuses on the “obssessive” manner in which
Harman’s agent fulfills his duty. Let us suppose, once again, that Huck’s concern with Jim’s
well-being is “obsessive”. We could interpret this in two very different ways. On the one
hand, we might say that Huck’s silence “is caused by a compulsion (a desire that is
disproportionate to its force as a reason)” (Conklin 7), in which case he is not in fact
responsive to the moral reasons he has for remaining silent. If this is what Harman has in
mind by “obsessive” behavior, then Arpaly can easily agree that Huck is not praiseworthy.
Alternatively, Harman could mean that Huck simply has a very strong desire—but one that
does not override its force as a reason—to protect Jim. In this, case, Conklin asks, why
should we not find Huck’s behavior praiseworthy? It may be true that Huck would be willing
to harm others to protect Jim, or that he would be willing to turn other escapees in. But since
he does not actually have to harm anyone, or otherwise actively disregard the rights of other
escapees, these considerations are irrelevant to the moral worth of his actions.56 Since “there
are no wrong making features to the act”—Huck does the right thing, after all—we should
have no problem saying that such actions are praiseworthy (Conklin, 8).
56 In Felicia Nimue Ackerman’s short story “A Man by Nothing is So Well Betrayed as by His Manners”, a
character suggests that “[a]n obsession is a strong interest someone disapproves of.” (139) I’m not sure that
Conklin is trying to make this exact point, but I do think that both Ackerman and Conklin raise a point that
Harman would do well to keep in mind: The word “obsession” is often used as a pejorative, but tt may be a
mistake to assume that there really is anything morally wrong with obsessions.
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My aim here, again, is not to suggest that Arpaly’s account of moral worth is correct.
Instead, I want only to show that it is defensible, and at the current state of the dialectic at least
as plausible as Zimmerman’s account. If this much is right, then it seems that Mellema is on
shaky ground at best in trying to use Zimmerman’s account of moral blame to motivate
acceptance of moral offences. One might object that this is not enough, however, to reveal
a significant problem for Mellema. After all, if Zimmerman’s view remains as plausible as
Arpaly’s, then why can Mellema not simply choose the theory that better supports his views
on moral offence? This is a reasonable question, but one that has an answer that should
further trouble Mellema.
There is one important respect in which I believe that Mellema should actually prefer
Arpaly’s account of blame to the account given by Zimmerman. Namely, the former
account does a better job of explaining a central feature of Mellema’s own limited remarks
on praise and blame. While he never explicitly endorses any particular account of moral
praise or blame, the idea that praise and blame come in degrees is present in each of
Mellema’s published works on moral offence. It would seem, then, that his own
understanding of offence should be more compatible with a theory that can make sense of
varying degrees of moral blame than a theory that cannot. As it happens, Arpaly can very
easily account for praise coming in degrees, as her account explicitly maintains that “an agent
is more praiseworthy, other things being equal, the deeper the moral concern that has led to
her action” (UV 84). Since concern (in the form of desire) admits of degrees, praise does,
too. We will consider Huckleberry Finn to be more praiseworthy for his silence if we
discover that it is the product of a very strong desire to protect a friend and fellow human
being, and will consider it less praiseworthy if we discover that it is the product of a less
strong desire. The same is true in cases of blame. Arpaly will have us find a thief who
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actively seeks to ruin the lives of his victims to be more blameworthy than a thief who
doesn’t want to ruin his victims’ lives, but doesn’t mind the harm that he will cause them by
taking their property. Both thieves’ actions are blameworthy, but the former theft is worse.
I am not confident that Zimmerman’s account can handle degrees of blame as easily,
if at all. Recall that for Zimmerman, culpability is not determined by desires or depth of
concern, but by the beliefs the agent has about the deontic status of his actions. If I freely
choose to perform an act that I believe to be wrong, then on this view I am culpable for my
behavior. But the violation of duty seems to be very difficult to understand in terms of
degrees. I either violate my moral duties, or I do not. And so it would seem that
Zimmerman’s understanding of moral culpability amounts to an all-or-nothing proposition.
On this view, a thief who believes that stealing is wrong and also desires to ruin the lives of
his victims is just as culpable as a thief who believes that stealing is wrong, nevertheless
steals, but feels sorry for his victims. This is not in keeping with Mellema’s own remarks on
praise and blame.
Zimmerman might try to remedy this problem by noting that beliefs can vary in
strength.57 This might allow us to describe blame as coming in degrees. My actions become
more blameworthy, we might say, as my beliefs about their wrongness become stronger.
Imagine that our first thief, who actively seeks to ruin the lives of his victims by stealing,
holds only a very weak belief that he is doing anything wrong. Imagine that our second, who
is significantly less interested in ruining the lives of his victims, believes very strongly that it
is wrong to steal. Where Zimmerman’s account of blame will find the second thief more
blameworthy than the first, Arpaly’s will find the first thief more blameworthy than the
second. This does bring Zimmerman’s view into accordance with Mellema’s remarks on the
57
Thanks to Felicia Nimue Ackerman for pointing this out.
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degrees of moral blame, but I believe that it does so at the cost of plausibility. For now our
second thief can escape moral blame simply by convincing himself that there is nothing
wrong with stealing. It strains credulity, I think, to say that this sort of rationalizing actually
diminishes moral blame.58 Perhaps Mellema could explain why we should think that it does.
The fact that he does not lends further support to my main point here: Mellema needs to
say quite a bit more to vindicate his ignorance-based defense of moral offence.
In this section I have tried to show that Mellema’s ignorance-centered account of
offence is incomplete. He might be able to vindicate this approach by offering some
arguments to show that we should prefer Zimmerman’s account of blame to competing
alternatives. I have argued that this would involve looking at theories such as the one given
by Arpaly, according to which ignorance is irrelevant to blameworthiness. But no such
discussion is given in Mellema’s text, and once again, his remarks on offence are hampered
by an inadequate discussion of moral blame. But even if Mellema cannot show that
Zimmerman’s account of blame is better than Arpaly’s, his remarks in The Expectations of
Morality may (perhaps inadvertently) point us in the direction of another promising strategy.
For if it can be shown that competing theories of moral blame, such as Arpaly’s, can also
accommodate moral offence—even if they get at the concept in different ways—then we
may have good reason for adopting it. I will pick up on this idea in the next chapter, and
argue that it may in fact be possible to make sense of moral offence using at least three
contemporary accounts of moral blame as our starting point. The details will differ, but in
each case I will argue that we can make sense of actions that are blameworthy, but do not
violate any moral duty.
‘Rationalizing’ is an unpleasant neologism, perhaps, but used widely enough that the reader might forgive its
appearance here.
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2.7 Mellema IV: The Dilemma-Centered Account
Mellema continues his effort to defend moral offences in “Moral Dilemmas and
Offence”, offering an argument that is entirely distinct from those previously discussed. In
this article, Mellema argues that there are moral offences by calling attention to a particular
kind of moral dilemma. The kind of dilemma that he has in mind is not a “requirement
dilemma”, in which all available alternatives violate a moral duty. The possibility of such
dilemmas is deeply controversial, with many philosophers maintaining that they are
impossible. Instead, Mellema asserts that there are circumstances in which an agent cannot
avoid performing a blameworthy act, even if at least one available alternative violates no
duties. He calls these situations “blame dilemmas”, and believes that if we agree that they
are possible, then it can be shown that we must also acknowledge the possibility of moral
offences. The success of Mellema’s argument thus depends on his ability to defend two key
claims. The first is that we should in fact acknowledge the possibility of blame dilemmas,
even if we do not acknowledge the possibility of requirement dilemmas. The second is that
our acknowledgement of blame dilemmas should lead us to likewise acknowledge moral
offences. As I see it, Mellema is unable to successfully defend either claim. I shall briefly
outline the details of the argument, and then argue that once again, Mellema leaves
important questions unanswered.
First, Mellema would have us believe that “blame dilemmas can be regarded as less
repugnant than moral dilemmas.” (“MDO” 294) To illustrate blame dilemmas, Mellema
offers a case in which an agent (let us call him Palomides) promises to give a book to
identical twins on separate occasions, believing that they are the same person. It is of course
impossible to keep both promises, and so the agent cannot avoid breaking at least one
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promise. These sorts of cases are widely used to examine the phenomenon of conflicting
duties, and there are many ways of arguing that Palomides is not precluded from performing
a morally permissible act. Perhaps, we might say, one of his promises overrides the other.
At any rate, Mellema does not insist that the agent faces a requirement dilemma, leaving
open the possibility that breaking one of the promises does not constitute a violation of
duty. However, he does maintain that the agent cannot avoid performing a blameworthy
act, assuming that “one is deserving of at least some blame when one breaks a promise.”
(“MDO” 293)
It is only reasonable, then, to wonder why we should agree that Palomides faces a
blame dilemma. I find it somewhat frustrating that Mellema does not show that all
alternatives available to Palomides are in fact blameworthy. Instead, he focuses on why we
might find blame dilemmas to be more plausible (or, at least, less implausible) than
requirement dilemmas. And here his explanation is, I think, less than helpful. He contends
that “the violation of a duty or obligation can reasonably be viewed as more serious, other
things being equal, than doing something which renders one blameworthy.” (“MDO” 294)
This difference in “seriousness” is supposed to show that blame dilemmas will encounter
less intuitive resistance than requirement dilemmas. But I do not think that there is any
reason to expect blame to be taken less seriously than the violation of duty. This is
especially true if we accept (as Mellema does) that blame can come in degrees. For as
Chisholm has pointed out, and I have agreed, the violation of some obligations can be a
trifling matter, while blameworthiness can be severe.
I think that it may even be possible for an act to simultaneously be a trifling violation
of obligation and severely blameworthy. To show this, I offer the following case, returning
us to Perry Zoso’s favorite restaurant:
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Xena Phobe
Suppose that Abe Serfant is a floor manager at the Deontic Diner, and that part of his job involves
occasional observations of random servers for quality control. Today he has been observing Xena
Fobe, a particularly dependable employee who reliably delivers the respectful and dutiful service for
which the diner is famous. Abe notices that Xena has been appropriately competent and courteous
with her tables (though she does appear to have been annoyed by one customer who took a long time
to pay his check, which with Abe sympathizes), and that her service could be properly described as
“above the call of duty” with respect to table 15 in particular. Whereas diner policies require that
servers greet guests within thirty seconds, Xena greeted table 15 within twenty seconds. Diner
policies require that servers offer coffee refills every ten minutes, but Xena has been offering warmers
to table 15 at eight minute intervals.59 Wondering whether there might be any special occasion for the
extra service, Abe meets Xena at the food station to compliment her on her excellent work.
She thanks him, saying, “There’s no special reason for my giving table 15 a little extra. I must just be
in a nice mood.” “Well I’m glad that you’re in a nice mood,” Abe replies, “because the members of
the Jewish Men’s Federation are long-time customers, and we like to see our servers treating them so
well.” Xena pauses a moment, and before returning to the floor, Abe hears her say to herself, “I had
no idea they were Jewish.”
From that point on, the extra service ceases. Abe watches as Xena returns to the diner policy of refills
every ten minutes. She never falls below the required level of service for table 15 (she is appropriately
polite, etc.), but she no longer exceeds that level of service. The customers at the table do not appear to
notice, and they in fact leave her a handsome tip. But from Abe’s perspective, Xena no longer
appears to be in a particularly “nice mood.” That afternoon, Abe finds himself rather repulsed by
Xena’s behavior, but does not think that she did anything grievously wrong. On the one hand, Xena
met the diner’s requirements consistently throughout her performance, providing each guest at table
15 with the service to which they were entitled. On the other hand, he saw that the level of service
that she provided decreased after she learned that the guests at the table were Jewish. Abe is
somewhat disgusted to realize that Xena’s behavior was affected by what appear to have been racist
motives. At the same time, she never allowed her level of service to fall below diner requirements,
and did nothing to violate the rights of or in any way harm the guests at table 15. Abe ultimately
concludes that Xena did absolutely nothing wrong during her shift—or at least nothing grievously
wrong--but that she still ought not to have behaved as she did. He briefly wonders at the paradoxical
nature of this conclusion as he sits down to attend to other managerial duties.
I intend to return to this case in the next chapter, as I shall argue that it may qualify as an
example of a moral offence. But for the present purposes, I offer it only to suggest that it is
a mistake to think that commonsense morality will treat blame any less seriously than the
violation of obligation. Abe is not even sure that Xena has actually violated an obligation,
but if she has, the violation has little to do with his objections to her behavior. He treats the
relationship between her behavior and her duties as being fairly trivial, but he nevertheless
takes her blameworthiness to be a very serious matter. If this is a plausible interpretation of
the case, then I think we can reject the claim that blame is less serious than permissibility.
While more frequent coffee refills aren’t always desirable, let us suppose that that Xena has good reason to
believe that the diners at table 15 want more frequent coffee refills, and that they do in fact want them.
59
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And thus Mellema’s explanation of why we should be more willing to countenance blame
dilemmas than requirement dilemmas fails.
Now, even if we do agree that blame is less serious than permissibility, it is not clear
how we might proceed to the further claim that blame dilemmas are more plausible than
requirement dilemmas. The former claim certainly does not entail the latter. Mellema does
offer a separate type of support for the latter claim by suggesting that blame dilemmas might
be a useful way of explaining the commonsense intuition that some sort of moral dilemma is
possible. After all, he points out, we do sometimes encounter circumstances in which all
available alternatives seem “regrettable” (“MDO” 294). But this observation can be
explained without acknowledging the possibility of genuine—and not merely apparent—
moral dilemmas. Returning to Mellema’s example, it may turn out that Palomides will feel
regret no matter what he does. And this seems appropriate, as he will end up disappointing
someone no matter which promise he breaks. But I am not sure that we must characterize
his feeling as a moral one. We might instead say that it is appropriate to feel regret about
disappointing a person, just as it is appropriate to feel regret about anyone’s diminished
happiness. But if it is not possible to avoid disappointing a person, then we are not only
absolved from an obligation to not disappoint, but from blame when we do.
It will likely be noted that this last claim invokes something very much like the ought
implies can principle, and that it seem to suggest that “ought” pertains to blame just as well
as it does obligation. I would like to discuss this suggestion, as it gives us an opportunity to
now examine the second key claim in “Moral Dilemmas and Offence”—namely, that “if
blame dilemmas are possible, then Chisholm is correct in holding that acts of offence are
possible.” (“MDO” 295) Mellema argues that the ought implies can principle, coupled with
the claim that blame dilemmas are possible, entails that offences are possible:
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Suppose Jones finds himself in a situation in which he cannot help but do something which is morally
blameworthy to at least some degree at a particular time t. Then by the principle that ought implies
can, it is not the case that Jones is morally required to refrain from all of the blameworthy alternatives.
Hence it is permissible for Jones to perform one of the blameworthy alternative at t, and hence at
least one of the blameworthy alternatives qualifies as an act of offence, assuming, of course, that
blameworthy behavior qualifies as ill-doing. (“MDO” 295)
He suggests that this can help us to establish a compatibility between the ought implies can
principle and the possibility of moral dilemmas. But while the argument strikes me as
formally valid, I am not at all convinced that it will persuade anyone who does not already
agree that either blame dilemmas are possible, or that offences are possible. Mellema insists
that his argument does not beg the question in favor of moral offences, “for it is not
assumed that any of the blameworthy alternatives are or can be permissible to perform.”
(“MDO” 296) This seems fair enough. But while it does not beg the question in favor of
offences, the argument does leave one to wonder why we should not prefer its modus tollens
counterpart. For if the possibility of blame dilemmas (coupled with the ought implies can
principle) entails that there are offences, but we maintain that there are no offences, then we
now have good reason to reject the possibility of blame dilemmas. This is especially
troubling given Mellema’s assertion that “[t]he plausibility of blame dilemmas lies in the
plausibility of acknowledging that at least sometimes we might have no choice but to
perform an act that is mildly blameworthy” (“MDO” 295). The idea that we sometimes
cannot escape moral blame is of course not logically equivalent to the idea that offences are
possible, but I believe that it is nevertheless precisely the sort of intuition that will be
rejected by those who reject the possibility of offences. I imagine that Heyd, Liberto and
others will argue that there are at least as many good reasons to doubt the existence of
offences as there are to grant the possibility of blame dilemmas. And I am not sure that
Mellema has done enough to dismiss this sort of objection.
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This is not to say, however, that the objection cannot be more effectively addressed.
Once again, I think that Mellema’s work in “Moral Dilemmas and Offence” offers important
insights that can help to further a defense of Chisholm’s “permissive ill-doings”. For if we
can find a more compelling way to show that blame dilemmas are possible—and I think that
we can indeed do this—then Mellema has shown an innovative way of arguing in favor of
moral offences. The problem here, as in the rest of Mellema’s work, is that we need a better
account of how blame works—and in this case, of how it can yield blame dilemmas—than
he gives us. His account of blame is limited to saying that “I shall understand the concept of
being morally blameworthy to mean deserving or warranting moral criticism or censure.”
(“MDO” 292) This remark hardly constitutes a rigorous analysis of blame, but a footnote
that follows it may offer another hint toward a defensible theory of offence. While he does
not elaborate on his particular views of moral blame, Mellema does refer his reader to a
passage in A.C. Ewing’s 1947 book The Definition of Good. In that book, Ewing writes, “[W]e
may have to admit a second indefinable concept in ethics, moral obligation, as distinct from
fittingness.” (170) While I do not want to commit Mellema to any specific view on what it
means for an act or agent to be deserving of blame (or praise)—he simply hasn’t said enough
on the matter—I do think that Ewing’s comment provides us with the beginnings of another
approach to explaining/describing moral offence.
The view I have in mind turns on the recognition of two fundamental (irreducible)
types of moral reasons for action, and on the possibility of assigning independent types of
moral blame for actions that are performed in response to these types of reasons. I intend
to say much more about this in the next chapter, but at present it may suffice to note that
my account of moral offence will turn heavily on the details of the relationship between
deontic blame and aretaic blame. Once it is shown that these two types of blame operate
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independently of one another—and the remarks on the work of Haji, McNamara and
Trianosky in the following sections will help in showing this—it becomes much easier to
show that moral offence is not only possible, but common.
2.8 Mellema, in Sum
In the previous sections I have discussed Gregory Mellema’s four distinct attempts
to motivate support for acknowledging moral offences. In each case I have argued that
Mellema’s work will be inadequate to compel skeptics to adopt the concept. But I have also
tried to identify “silver linings” for each strategy. The discussion of asymmetries between
offence and supererogation in Beyond the Call of Duty does well to call our attention to the No
Easy Examples and Offence is Empty problems, but does not adequately resolve either one.
The virtue-based account in “Offence and Virtue Ethics” does well to try grounding offence
in a specific normative theory, but encounters difficulties when we try to incorporate
Mellema’s understanding of imperfect duties into a plausible and complete system of virtue
ethics. The ignorance-based account in The Expectations of Morality makes innovative use of
the work of Michael Zimmerman, but faces serious problems from competing accounts of
moral blame. Finally, while the approach in “Moral Dilemmas and Offence” provides us
with an interesting ground for offence in the form of “blame dilemmas”, I have argued that
it ultimately encounters a problem of something akin to circularity.
As I have reiterated throughout my survey of Mellema’s work, I believe that he has
contributed much that can be used to further a persuasive account of moral offence. His
work seems to be largely overlooked in the recent literature (with one notable exception in
the form of Paul McNamara), but I think that his contributions should be seen as crucial to
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the development of Chisholm’s concept. Pieces of each of his four strategies will
undoubtedly be recognized in my own account of moral offence in the next chapter, where I
will argue that a more concerted focus on moral blame itself can help to overcome the No
Easy Examples and Offence is Empty problems.
2.9 Haji: Offence Without Blame
Ishtiyaque Haji’s discussion of moral offence in his Deontic Morality and Control is
interesting not only in its departures from the accounts of Mellema, Driver and Chisholm,
but in its demonstration of the role that the concept might play in broader philosophical
discussions of freedom and responsibility. While I ultimately reject the picture of
suberogation (his preferred term to describe offences) that Haji offers, on the grounds that it
fails to satisfactorily explain the negative attitude that we (presumably) will take toward
suberogatory acts, I believe that his account does offer some interesting suggestions for
responding to Heyd’s “No Easy Examples” objection.
Haji’s book is broadly concerned with the relationship between freedom and
responsibility, and employs considerations about suberogation in an attempt to refute a
particular claim about the necessary conditions for “appraisability” (Haji’s term for praise-orblameworthiness). More specifically, he is concerned with what he calls the “Objective
View” of appraisability, which is captured by two claims:
O1:
One is praiseworthy for an act only if one had an objective (overall) moral obligation to
perform it or it was objectively (overall) permissible for one to perform it; that is,
praiseworthiness requires that one have done something (objectively) obligatory or
permissible.
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O2:
One is blameworthy for an act only if one had an objective (overall) obligation not to
perform it; that is, blameworthiness requires that one have done something (objectively)
wrong. (Haji 163)
Importantly, the objective view hinges on the idea an act is objectively
obligatory/permissible/wrong independently of the agent’s beliefs about what he ought to
do. On this view, if it is the case that I have a moral obligation not to steal, then I am
blameworthy for stealing, even if I do not believe that I have done anything wrong. Haji
worries that if we accept this view, then determinism may well jeopardize the possibility of
moral appraisability. For if determinism successfully deprives us of “deontic anchors”,60
then we are never morally forbidden from any action, and thus can never be blameworthy.
Haji hopes to show that appraisability is compatible with a world devoid of deontic anchors,
in part by arguing that the Objective View is false.61 I do not wish to defend Haji’s
compatibilism here, but do think it worth pointing out that Haji has identified at least one
potential philosophical application of the concept of moral offence that has not yet been
considered. If Haji is right, then the category of offense should not only be of interest to
Haji believes that “deontic anchors”—such as an obligation to x—require that it be true both that I can x
and refrain from x.
60
61 It might be noticed that the Objective View has potential implications for another argument discussed
previously. Recall that Gregory Mellema uses Michael Zimmerman’s account of blame to argue in favor of the
possibility of moral offences. In that argument, it is assumed that an agent is blameworthy for his actions even
if he has not done anything objectively wrong, provided that he believes his actions are wrong. This leaves open
the possibility of actions that are “subjectively” wrong (and thus blameworthy) but not “objectively” wrong
(and thus not morally forbidden), vindicating the possibility of moral offence. Zimmerman’s assumption, of
course, is incompatible with the Objective View. Proponents of the Objective View61 cannot, therefore, accept
this particular argument in favor of moral offences. Haji’s work thus seems to bear heavily on Mellema’s
argument in The Expectations of Morality. One might hope that if Haji is successful in defeating the Objective
View, then Mellema no longer need worry about potential objections from competing theories of moral blame.
This hope diminishes significantly, however, once it becomes clear that a significant part Haji’s attack depends
upon our acknowledging the possibility of supererogation and suberogation. Haji accepts the claim that the
Objective View is incompatible with suberogation, and from there argues that we should reject Objective View.
Such a strategy will not be of much use to Mellema, who depends upon our rejection of the Objective View to
conclude that offences are indeed possible.
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those seeking more refined evaluations in applied ethics (as Driver has suggested), but to
those seeking to endorse compatibilist solutions to problems in the area of free will.
I will now turn my attention to Haji’s defense of suberogation. He maintains that
suberogation (“permissible action that falls short of decency”) is presupposed by
commonsense morality (167), which is of course at odds with the views of critics like Heyd
and Liberto. This is not to say, however, that Haji ignores the view that suberogation is
impossible. On the contrary, he anticipates a series of distinct arguments against
suberogatory acts. The first suggests that any act (including suberogatory acts) that is less
than maximally in accordance with the demands of morality is impermissible. This might be
restated as the view that it is morally forbidden to do anything less than the best one can.
Let us call this claim the “Do Your Best” principle. Haji thinks that this claim is false, or at
least that it fails to coincide with commonsense intuitions. I agree with this, to the extent
that the claim also renders supererogatory acts impossible. After all, if I am morally obligated
to maximize my fulfillment morality’s demands, then there is no sense in which I can exceed
my moral obligations. And since I agree with Haji that supererogatory acts are deeply
ingrained in our commonsense moral intuitions, I do believe that we have a good reason to
reject the Do Your Best principle.
In rejecting Do Your Best, however, I believe that Haji inadvertently overlooks
another worrisome problem. While rejecting the principle does allow for the possibility of
supererogation, it is less obvious how it helps us to accommodate suberogation. To this
end, Haji offers the following:
If we can meet morality’s demands in a variety of acceptable, yet better and better ways, we can also
meet these demands in a variety of acceptable, yet worse and worse ways, and we can do less than
meeting morality’s demands in the best or near-best way without doing wrong. (169)
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I find this statement puzzling, as I do not think that Haji is using the word “worse” in the
sense that he needs in order to convince us of the possibility of suberogatory acts. Suppose
that I have an obligation to be available to my students for in-person conferences, and that
this is specified by my faculty contract as holding at least one office hour per week in my
campus office. 62 I can fulfill this obligation by making myself available for exactly one hour
a week, but of course I might also make myself available for more time. I could hold two
office hours, or four. I might even make myself maximally available by selling my house and
moving into my office. It seems reasonable to me to say that I meet my obligation in a
better way by offering four office hours instead of one, and that it is perhaps even
supererogatory for me to offer the three additional hours. Conversely, it makes sense to say
that offering only one hour is worse than offering four, as one certainly falls shorter of
maximal fulfillment than four. But I do not think that it is worse in the way that Chisholm
intends when he speaks of “permissive ill-doing”. Haji himself seems to acknowledge this
point:
While suberogation implies permissible suboptimizing, it seems the reverse doesn’t hold. If paying a
visit is better than writing a letter, and the latter is not wrong, then the latter is an instance of
permissible suboptimizing. But it appears, we should not, for that reason alone, count it as an instance of
suberogation, as what is not optimal may still be good; but ill-doing is bad. (168)
It thus seems that denying of Do Your Best leaves open a crucial question. While it may be
true that we can do less than our best without doing wrong, it remains to be shown that
some permissible options are not merely less-good than others, but morally bad. Haji is at
this point concerned solely with the argument that Do Your Best entails that suberogation is
impossible, and so he might be forgiven for putting off the further question of how “ill-
I am working here under the assumption that agreeing to a professional contract that entails obligation x
entails a moral obligation to x.
62
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doing” can be morally permitted. But as I shall explain a bit later on, I do not think that he
ever satisfactorily answers it.
Haji next considers the objection that “the supererogatory seems capable of
adequately handling several of the purported examples of suberogatory conduct.” (169)
According to this objection, my failure to (for example) leave my seat at the crowded
restaurant promptly after finishing my meal is nothing more than the failure to perform a
supererogatory act. I have no obligation to give up the seat, but it would be beyond the call
of duty for me to do so. By not giving up my seat, I have failed to exceed morality’s
demands, but I have done nothing indecent. Haji rejects this interpretation on the grounds
that it “treads on a confusion between the appraisal of an agent and the appraisal of aspects
of actions of that agent” (169). He believes that we should be able to make sense of
suberogatory acts independently of any blame that might adhere to the agents performing
them. Suberogation, in short, is a property of acts, and has no direct implications for the
appraisability of agents. If this is correct, then I suppose he has given a reason for
dismissing the objection that suberogation is simply the failure to perform supererogatory
acts. But in maintaining that suberogation is a purely deontic category (which is to say that it
has no intrinsic component of appraisability), he ends up committing himself to the
possibility of “blameless suberogation”, his most significant departure from other accounts
of suberogation. Since I reject the idea of “blameless suberogation” (I will explain why
shortly), however, I am not sure that his response to the objection here is satisfactory.
Haji’s third anticipated objection says that while supererogation has been
acknowledged by previous moral theorizing, suberogation has not. Haji responds to this
first by pointing out that categories of action do not need to be acknowledged to be
legitimate, and then by suggesting that the category of the suberogatory does seem to
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correspond to the category of the “discouraged” found in ancient Islamic ethics.63 These
responses seem adequate for the objection as stated. But I believe that Haji is again missing
the more worrisome objection here. Setting aside formal moral theories, it does not seem
outlandish to say that supererogation is more easily identified than suberogation in
commonsense moral discussions. The sorts of phrases that moral theorists tend to use
interchangeably with “supererogatory”—“beyond the call of duty”, “more than you have to
do”, and the like—are prevalent in colloquial English. I am not certain that any stock
phrases for suberogation are as widely used. And while it is of course possible to suggest
that the category of the suberogatory can exist without being acknowledged by
commonsense morality, I believe this simply avoids the central thrust of the objection. If, as
it seems, commonsense morality does not need to invoke the category of the suberogatory
to describe and explain our moral intuitions, then what practical purpose does recognizing
the category serve? If we answer this by simply appealing to conceptual interest, then our
account of offence falls far short of the hopes of proponents like Driver, who want the
concept to actually help us in applied moral philosophy.64
After considering the preceding objections, Haji turns his attention to the possibility
of accepting supererogation while rejecting suberogation, focusing specifically on the work
of David Heyd. Heyd argues that there can be no villainous examples of offence, even if
one accepts the possibility of trivial examples. I have previously called this position
“Offence is Trivial at Best”, and discussed Gregory Mellema’s attempts to address via the
“Different Destinations” asymmetry between supererogation and offence. Haji rejects this
63 Mellema also argues that moral offence is found in ancient Islamic moral systems. Chisholm argues that an
idea corresponding to moral offence may also be anticipated—if not explicitly identified—in the work of
Meinong (“SO”, 7-8).
64 Recall here Liberto’s accusation that the category of offence serves to make our moral evaluations lazier,
rather than more rigorous.
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strategy, on the grounds that Different Destinations is threatened by the famous
hypothetical cases of Harry Frankfurt:
I don’t doubt that blameworthiness admits of degrees, but I reject the view that the more
blameworthy an act is, the more it “tends toward the realm of the forbidden” as “Frankfurtizing”
Mellema’s series of cases involving lying confirms. Assume that, in each, the counterfactual
intervener ensures that you cannot refrain from lying. Then your lying is not wrong in any of them (or
is it, of course, right or obligatory) even though you may be more blameworthy for lying in some than
in others. Blameworthiness, after all, can vary in degree along other parameters… (Haji 177)
I do not wish to weigh in here on the proper interpretation of “Frankfurt cases”—I have my
own reasons for rejecting Different Destinations—but do commend Haji for identifying an
interesting overlap between Mellema’s work and considerations of free will. What is more
interesting, I think, is Haji’s alternative suggestion for addressing the “Offence is Trivial at
Best” objection. He suggests that we will naturally encounter difficulty in assessing any
potential example of the category, villainous or otherwise, without first adopting a specific
normative theory (Haji 174). Haji does not go on to discuss suberogation within a particular
normative framework, but I believe his point is worth considering. For my own part, I think
that Haji is partly right.65 Situating offence within actual moral theories—a feat that even
Chisholm did not attempt—may well make it easier to establish a portion of what we want in
a persuasive example of suberogation. Namely, a specific moral theory can help us to see
that a given example is not morally forbidden. But as I will explain in a moment, this will
not suffice to establish the real obstacle to plausible examples of offence. Namely, we must
show that any given example is subject to legitimate moral criticism, despite being morally
permissible.
To see what I am getting it, consider Haji’s response to another objection that he
finds in Heyd’s work. Haji reads Heyd as endorsing the following argument:
65 My own account of moral offence in the next chapter will attempt to demonstrate the compatibility of moral
offence with consequentialist moral theories, but will not presuppose any particular consequentialist theory.
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Let A (for reductio) be any act that is suberogatory.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
Forbearance from doing evil is always praiseworthy.
When one refrains from performing A, one forbears from doing evil.
If (1) and (2), then the omission of A is praiseworthy.
Therefore, the omission of A is praiseworthy.
No act is suberogatory unless it is false that its omission is praiseworthy.
Hence, it is false that A is suberogatory. (Haji 173)
Heyd never offers an argument structured in quite this way, though it does seem consistent
with the spirit of his opposition to the possibility of suberogatory acts. For the sake of
discussion, I’ll refer to the argument as “Heyd’s Reductio”. The argument, if successful, goes
beyond showing that there can only be trivial offences. Instead, it would appear to
undermine the possibility of any offences at all. Haji attacks the argument in two ways.
First, he attacks (1)—the one claim in the argument that Heyd does explicitly endorse66—by
suggesting that the praise described in the premise depends heavily on why the agent forbears
from evil:
One could forbear from doing evil as a result of weakness of will, or cowardice, or promise of great
reward with no thought whatsoever to doing right for right’s sake, and then it would be far from
evidence that one would be deserving of praise for one’s forbearance. (Haji 173) 67
If we accept this suggestion,68 then it would appear that Haji has done enough to dismiss the
argument. Instead of stopping here, however, he goes on to attack (5) by appealing to the
possibility of “blameless suberogation”.
Haji’s insistence on this possibility—and, conversely, of supererogatory acts that are
not praiseworthy—strikes me as the strangest feature of his account. Regarding the latter
category, he suggests that any action that “goes beyond” objective obligation qualifies as
See Heyd (Supererogation 128).
As mentioned earlier, there may still be other reasons for doubting that the forbearance from evil is
praiseworthy. There are some heinous evils that simply don’t occur to most people (such as setting cats on
fire). It is implausible that we should be praiseworthy for refraining from all of these evils. I thank Felicia
Nimue Ackerman for this point.
66
67
68 Note that the suggestion is in close alliance with Arpaly’s account of blame. If I plan to mug an unsuspecting
stranger in a dim alleyway, but ‘chicken out’ at the last moment, then I presumably forbear from committing
evil. But since my decision (if it can indeed even be called a decision) not to assail the stranger is in no way
informed by the fact that the act would be wrong, then my forbearance cannot be considered praiseworthy.
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supererogatory, even if it is not performed from praiseworthy motives. So if two agents rush
into burning buildings to save imperiled occupants, both can be said to have performed
supererogatory acts (since their actions both exceed the minimally decent act of calling for
help), even if one does it in response to the plight of the occupants, and the other does it
exclusively for the hope of a cash reward. In this case, Haji says, the second agent “is not
deserving of praise for going beyond the call” (178), but has gone beyond the call all the
same. To illustrate blameless suberogation, Haji conjures a variation on one of Chisholm’s
original cases:
[S]uppose, aware that others are waiting for a table in the popular café, Joy lingers on; but she fails to
believe that she is doing any wrong by staying on and is justified in so failing… Or to alter the case a
bit, suppose, engrossed in her newspaper, Joy simply fails to notice that others want her table. Just as
one can do wrong in the absence of being aware that one is doing so, so I propose, one can
suberogate without being aware that one is doing so. But then it seems perfectly possible that our
lingerer, unaware that her table is in demand, is not to blame for staying even though she suberogates;
she may not act in light of any belief that she is doing wrong. Finally, suppose that just on the verge
of losing herself in the cartoon section, Joy notices others waiting for her seat and, acting partly from
a sense of doing right, gets up and leaves. Then I believe she has refrained from suberogating and
may well be praiseworthy for doing so. (Haji 178)
In this example, we are supposed to find Joy’s behavior to be suberogatory independently of
her motives, beliefs, or intentions. But I think it will be very difficult to explain why we
should call her behavior suberogatory without considering these features of the case. The
problem, as I see it, is that we are left with no obvious way of explaining how suberogatory
acts are morally worse than other permissible alternatives.
Recall that Chisholm himself insists on defining offence within a strictly deontic
framework, where the very same criteria used to define obligation are used to define
supererogation and offence. Recall also Millard Schumaker’s suggestion that this ultimately
hinders the plausibility of Chisholm’s account, as it ignores the possibility that morality
involves more than purely deontic evaluations. I think that Schumaker is correct to criticize
Chisholm on this point, the problem that I have identified for Haji’s “blameless
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suberogation” shows why. A plausible account of suberogation should explain the moral
disvalue associated with suberogatory acts. Without any such explanation, suberogatory acts
cannot be distinguished from “permissively suboptimal” alternatives. I believe that it is this
problem, rather than Chisholm’s failure to appeal to specific normative theories, that
ultimately explains why his critics reject his examples of offence. I ultimately prefer to keep
blameworthiness—a non-deontic form of moral evaluation—as a central feature of moral
offence, as it will more easily account for the “ill doing” that Chisholm originally attached to
the concept. This will allow us to easily distinguish suberogatory acts from other
permissively suboptimal acts, since not all permissively suboptimal alternatives in a given
situation will be blameworthy.
Haji rejects this strategy, insisting that suberogation is a strictly deontic category,
operating independently of our ascriptions of appraisability. He suggests that any attempt to
describe suberogation as a “hybrid” category that is determined by both appraisability and
deontic status (such as the idea that suberogation entails an act that is blameworthy but not
forbidden) stems from the difficulty of explaining the special disvalue of suberogatory acts in
strictly deontic terms. I think he is right about this, and more or less take this as a primary
reason for preferring to pursue a “hybrid” account of moral offence. If Haji were able to
clearly explain the special disvalue of offences in strictly deontic terms, then I might be
persuaded otherwise. As it stands, I am puzzled by his explanation:
I suggest that a sensible alternative is simply that the special value of supererogation is especially
valuable, is to be explained, at least in part, by the fact that when one supererogates, one does in a
more-than-minimal or much-more-than-minimal way what is good and morally demanded. And the
special disvalue of suberogation, in those cases in which we think suberogation is especially
disvaluable, is a function of the fact that when one suberogates, one does in a less-than-maximal or
much-less-than maximal way what is bad and morally demanded. (Haji 179)
The “bad” associated with suberogation must be a moral sort of bad, so as to avoid the
charge that the category conflates moral value with amoral value. But if an act violates no
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moral duty, and is not blameworthy, then I do not see where the “bad” comes from. We
might say that it is bad in that its consequences are not as good as other alternatives, but this
collapses into the problem of distinguishing suberogatory acts from other permissibly
suboptimal alternatives. If Joy lingers at her table for fifteen minutes after finishing her
meal, then clearly she creates an outcome that is much worse than if she were to leave the
table one minute after finishing. But given that both of these acts fall short of the optimal
outcome (where, perhaps, she vacates the table promptly upon finishing the last bite of her
meal), we are left to wonder why the 15-minute lingering is suberogatory while the 1-minue
lingering is not. We presumably do not want to say that the 1-minute lingering is simply less
bad than the 15-minute lingering, as this would seem to commit us to the view that the 1minute lingering is still somewhat bad, and thus subject to the charge of suberogation. But
as I read him, Haji’s intuition is that the 1-minuite lingering is not bad at all. I see no easy
way to justify this within a purely deontic point of view. Instead, we need a separate form of
moral evaluation—in the form of blame—to distinguish between those suboptimal
alternatives that are “bad”, and those that are not.
One might come to Haji’s defense here, and suggest that I have simply called
attention to an ordinary case of vagueness. As in so many variations on the sorites paradox,
we might say that the badness emerges gradually, but that there are nevertheless clear cases
on either side of the vague penumbra.69 I may not be able to “draw the line” at the specific
time interval where Joy’s lingering becomes bad,70 but this is compatible with saying that a 1minute lingering is bad where a 15-minute lingering is not. This response is reminiscent of
69
I thank Nomy Arpaly for this point.
70 This, of course, supposes that there is indeed any such interval. While some contemporary accounts of
vagueness will say that there is a specific number of hairs that defines baldness, others (such as the manyvalued logic approach) will deny that there is a “bald number”—or a “too-long-at-the-table-interval”, as the
case may be. Timothy Williamson’s Vagueness has more to say about this than I possibly could.
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Driver’s “multiple abortions” case, where she argues that a ninth abortion may be
considered morally bad even if a first abortion is not. I will address this objection in greater
detail in the next chapter, but in short, my response is this: Treating the badness associated
with table-lingering and multiple abortions as cases of vagueness misses the point. It still
doesn’t explain the special disvalue of suberogation. What makes table-lingering bad, I will
argue, has little to do with the amount of time that one lingers, and much more to do with
the reasons that motivate (or fail to motivate) the lingerer. On my view, lingering for a
minute may well be morally offensive, and lingering for 15 may not, depending on the
motivational structure of the lingerer.
In sum, I think that Haji’s remarks on suberogation reveal a few important points.
First, he shows that the category of suberogation may well play an interesting role in
furthering the cause of compatibilism. Second, I think that his remarks on “blameless
suberogation” serve to highlight the advantages of a “hybrid” approach to defining the
concept. Such a model will describe supererogation and suberogation as categories with
deontic conditions, but also appraisability-centered conditions. To see what this might look
like, I will now turn my attention to Paul McNamara, who in two recent articles offers an
account of moral offence that differs, if subtly, from each of the others discussed so far.
McNamara, who has in fact worked closely with Haji on the concept of suberogation, offers
an account that distinguishes suberogatory acts from other suboptimally permissible
alternatives by appealing to the idea of blame.
2.10 McNamara: Returning to a Formal Framework
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In many ways, I find McNamara’s approach to be most similar to Chisholm’s, in that
it focuses primarily on the logical aspects of the concept of offence. Just as Chisholm
attempts to explain supererogation and offence in terms of more fundamental moral
concepts (such as “ought to be”), McNamara believes that our evaluative categories are best
explained by the more primitive “Doing Well Enough”. But while I think that McNamara’s
work improves on Chisholm’s accounts in many ways, it hinges on an incomplete
description of moral blame.
McNamara aims to show, among other things, that “supererogation” should be kept
conceptually distinct from “acting beyond the call”. Supererogatory acts (at least in the
“classical conception” articulated by philosophers like Mellema) are morally optional,
praiseworthy to perform, and not blameworthy to omit. But since, as McNamara argues, I
can act beyond the call without being praiseworthy for my action, “beyond the call” does not
entail “supererogatory”. Nor, he argues, does the reverse entailment hold. McNamara
believes that some acts that fulfill the three conditions above will not meet a plausible
intuitive understanding of action beyond the call. There may be cases, for example, where I
can satisfy a dangerous duty in a minimal (M) or above-minimal (AM) way. Either option
should be praiseworthy, since the fulfillment of duties in the face of danger or fear is
praiseworthy. Since I can satisfy the duty by either acting in the (M) or (AM) way, there is a
clear sense in which (M) is optional—I can perform (AM) instead, after all. And if I opt for
the (AM) route, it does not seem reasonable to say that my decision not to perform (M) is
blameworthy. (M) satisfies the three conditions, and thus the classical conception of
supererogation, but is not beyond the call of duty. In order to re-establish a connection
between supererogation and action beyond the call of duty, he proposes a revision to our
definition of supererogation:
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An act is supererogatory for S iff:
1)
it is optional for S to Do,
2)
it is praiseworthy for S to do,
3)
it is not blameworthy for S to omit, and
4)
it is precluded by doing the least S can do. (McNamara, “SIO” 222)
This revision allows us to accommodate the intuition that supererogation does involve
exceeding some minimal threshold of permissibility. Note that it also provides us with a
means for distinguishing the views of McNamara and Haji. Where Haji might be willing to
call an act supererogatory that meets only conditions (1) and (4)—he would call this an
instance of “praiseless supererogation”—McNamara will say that the act is indeed “beyond
the call”, but not supererogatory. And in this respect, I believe that McNamara’s view has a
considerable explanatory advantage over Haji’s. Recall Haji’s assertion that in a
supererogatory act “one does in a more-than-minimal or much-more-than-minimal way what
is good and morally demanded.” (179, my italics) Without incorporating conditions (2) and
(3), however, it is very difficult to explain the “good” associated with supererogation. As I
have argued, this is a serious problem for Haji’s account, and I agree with McNamara that
“with no representation of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness, there is no way to
represent the standard conception of supererogation, much less that of ‘offence’” (“PBO”
153).
By including condition (4), however, a potential problem for offence arises. Just as
supererogation seems to fit with going beyond the call of duty, a passing glance at a “mirror
image” concept such as offence would seem to involve acting beneath some established
threshold. McNamara points out that this intuition is reinforced by the use of
“suberogation” as a descriptor for moral offences. Such acts ought to be described as
beneath something, but we cannot say that they are beneath the threshold of permissibility.
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This would involve a contradiction, since actions that fall beneath the threshold of
permissibility—i.e. actions that are not morally permissible—cannot be offences. To
accommodate suberogation, then, McNamara looks for “a line below which we can clearly
permissibly operate”, but that is not the “self-same line that is definitive of the act-evaluative
components of supererogation and suberogation.” (“SIO” 229) The line, as he sees it,
should be drawn at the “permissibly suboptimal”, including any and all acts that are
“permissible and precluded by the maximum.” (229) This yields the following analysis:
An action is suberogatory/offence iff:
1)
it is optional,
2)
it is blameworthy,
3)
it is not praiseworthy to omit, and
4)
it is precluded by doing the maximum. (231)
McNamara thus offers an elegant solution to some problems confronting previous accounts
of offence. Offences are morally bad to the extent that they are blameworthy (this improves
on Haji’s account), and suberogatory to the extent that they are permissibly suboptimal (this
handles worries about at least one potential asymmetry between supererogatory and
suberogatory acts). Since, as McNamara believes, our aretaic evaluations of praise and blame
are logically independent of our deontic evaluations of permissibility and obligation, it is
logically possible that there should be not only offences, but villainous ones.
This account thus handles several potential objections to Chisholm’s account of
offence (including some of Heyd’s objections), and likewise improves on other prior
accounts in some important ways. Like Zimmerman, McNamara relies on examples of
action from ignorance (such as paying you $15 for services rendered, believing that I have
promised this amount, when in fact I have simply forgotten that we agreed to $14) and “illmotivation”—such as rescuing a boy from a burning building only because I plan to torment
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him later on—to show that praise can fail to adhere to some acts that are beyond the call.
Unlike Zimmerman, however, McNamara maintains that praise involves more than simply
doing the right thing, as “a person can do more than she has to without the action flowing
from the sorts of intentions, motives, or character traits necessary for making doing so
praiseworthy.” (“SIO” 208) McNamara’s account allows for Driver-type examples—
McNamara argues that her cases of owed favors constitute a “fast and dirty consideration in
support of the claim that the category is worthy of consideration, and not to be ruled out on
merely conceptual grounds” (“SIO” 206)—but improves upon Driver’s account by actually
providing a thorough conceptual defense of suberogation. He is impressed with Haji’s
remarks on offence—the two have in fact presented together on the role of suberogation in
understanding Frankfurt-type cases71—but wisely avoids committing himself to the idea of
blameless suberogation. Finally, his ideas are compatible with at least some of Mellema’s
work on offence—McNamara considers the work in Beyond the Call of Duty to be “skeptical in
[its] own ways” of the concept,72 but notice that his appeals to ignorance are very much in
line with the arguments developed in The Expectations of Morality—but avoid appeals to
problematic ideas like blame dilemmas and a comprehensive virtue ethics.
Still, I find it necessary to pursue further revisions—if not a full-fledged alternative—
to McNamara’s account of suberogation.73 This is primarily because his account of
71
“Suberogation and Frankfurt Examples”, Annual Northern New England Philosophical
Association, University of New Hampshire. October 16-17, 2009
72 http://philpapers.org/bbs/thread.pl?tId=623
It might be noted that I have largely ignored the technical details of McNamara’s “Doing Well Enough”
systems of deontic and aretaic logic. If the reader would like evidence of these details’ complexity, I should
point out that McNamara introduces no fewer that 20 new pieces of symbolic notation to develop his account,
and that his “Doing Well Enough” system explodes the “deontic square” of four deontic categories (“Making
Room” 418) to a “Deontic Octodecagon” (“Making Room” 446). I hope that my decision to gloss over the
technical aspects of DWE will be forgiven here, since my main aim is simply to show that the aretaic
components of the system rest on an incomplete account of blame. Still, for the sake of full disclosure
73
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condition (2) rests upon an inadequate account of moral blame. He defines “praiseworthy
(blameworthy) propositions as those ranked aretaically higher (lower) than neutral
propositions”, where the ranking of propositions is determined by the fact that “[s]ome
states of affairs reflect favorably on people, others unfavorably, some more favorably than
others, and some neutrally.” (“PBO” 159-160) The idea, as I read it is roughly this: To say
that an act is blameworthy is to say that it reflects more poorly on the agent who performs it
in some way. The target of aretaic evaluation, then, is the agent—and this is affirmed when
McNamara says that “[a]lthough we might rightly say of such an action that it is
praiseworthy, I think this is always equivalent to, but derivative of, the agent’s being
praiseworthy for performing the action.” (“SIO” 204, my italics) This leads us to wonder
just what blameworthy actions reveal about the agents who perform them.
McNamara’s text is a bit obscure in explaining what it means for a state of affairs to
reflect poorly on agent. His only hints are found in footnotes, where at one point he claims
to use the word “aretaic” “for moral evaluation of agents generally, and not just on the basis
of their (non-transient) character traits” (“PBO” 153), and at another “to cover evaluation of
transient conative states, not just character traits.” (“SIO” 204) These remarks suggest that
McNamara includes negative non-transient character traits among the things that
blameworthy actions reveal about agents. As I have discussed earlier, this places
McNamara’s account at odds with situationists such as John Doris, who argue that global
character traits are incompatible with a plausible moral psychology.74 Non-transient states
are thus a problematic candidate for explaining aretaic evaluation. Broad claims about
(honesty is generally taken to hold some aretaic value, after all), I must admit that I find the system itself a bit
intimidating.
74 I have noted previously that Doris’ view itself invites immediate objections. One might simply maintain that
Doris misunderstands how ‘global character traits’ operate, so that a person who is usually (but not always)
courageous can be said to possess the global trait of courage. I do not mean to suggest that McNamara cannot
refute situationist objections. I hope only to show that McNamara, like the other authors discussed in this
chapter, leaves his account of offence incomplete by failing to include an account of moral blame.
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“moral evaluation of agents generally” don’t fare much better, as they beg the question of
what it means for an agent to be good/praiseworthy or bad/blameworthy. The success of
McNamara’s account of blame (and in turn of his account of suberogation), then, hinges
upon those “transient conative states” that are referenced in the footnote above. But it is
hardly clear what these states are, or how they are morally negative features of an agent.
McNamara offers a hint at how he might try to clarify this by referencing the work of
Gregory Trianosky. Trianosky argues in favor of a distinction between two forms of moral
evaluation, where the first (deontic evaluation) operates independently of the second (aretaic
evaluation). I will discuss Trianosky’s work in the next chapter, and argue that while it is
compatible with features of several of the accounts of offence surveyed in this chapter, it still
leaves important questions about blame unanswered. For the moment, I hope only to have
shown that if McNamara’s approach to defining offence is to succeed, then it must better
explain how our assessments of blameworthiness are generated.
2.11 Conclusion
I have now examined the work of five philosophers (including Chisholm) who
support the recognition of moral offences. While I do agree that offence is a legitimate
category of evaluation, I have identified problems with each of the previous attempts to
defend it. In the final chapter, I aim to offer a plausible alternative that lays to rest both the
worry that the category of offence is incoherent, and that it is empty. Before turning to this
task, however, I would like to end my survey of the recent literate by noting that at least one
objection to recognizing offences—that the category is uninteresting—should by this point be
seen as groundless. While I have argued that each of the surveyed accounts stands in need
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of further revision, I have in each case shown that the concept of offence is related to a
variety of topics that are seldom dismissed as uninteresting. As we have seen, the category
of offence has identifiable ties to ongoing debates pertaining to free will (see the work of
Haji and Mellema on the relationship between offence and the “ought implies can
principle”), normative theories (see Mellema’s attempt to tie offences to virtue ethics), moral
epistemology (see Mellema’s The Expectations of Morality), deontic logic (see Chisholm and
MacNamara’s extensive systems), metaethics (see the role of Trianosky’s aretaic/deontic
distinction), and applied ethics (see Driver’s discussion of multiple abortions). My survey of
the literature on offence may not yet have convinced the reader that the concept is
adequately defined, but I do hope that it has successfully established one point: The concept
of offence is relevant to contemporary moral philosophy.
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CHAPTER THREE: IN DEFENSE OF OFFENSE
3.1 Introduction
Roderick Chisholm first introduces the concept of moral offence with a question:
Does it make sense to say of any given action that we ought not to perform it, but that we
may? I have thus far examined a series of arguments from five philosophers who try to
answer this question in the affirmative. The details of these accounts differ in several ways,
but they do share a common goal. Namely, each of the philosophers discussed up to this
point aims to persuade us to acknowledge “permissive ill-doings”. A closer look at their
views reveals several problems, however. As we have seen, a successful theory of moral
offence must accomplish three distinct tasks. First, it must explain both the “permissive”
and “ill doing” components of offence in moral terms. As David Heyd has shown, we do
not want an account of offence that conflates moral permissibility with legal permissibility.
Rather, we must be able to show that offences are simultaneously morally permissible and
morally “bad”. Secondly, a theory of offence should enable us to not only identify plausible
examples, but non-trivial examples. Where Chisholm thinks that offences can be “either
trifling or diabolical” (“S&O” 5), critics like Heyd maintain that we will never find
convincing examples of the latter variety. Finally, a plausible account of offence must avoid
collapsing into alternative explanations. As we have seen, critics of offence tend to think
that purported examples of the category are explained at least as well by other moral
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concepts, such as imperfect duties or “rights to do wrong”. If this is correct, then there is
little to gain by introducing “offence” or “suberogation” into our moral vocabulary.
In this chapter, I aim to satisfy the first task by following Mellema and McNamara in
endorsing an account of offense that distinguishes between the deontic status of an act and
the blame that it warrants. If obligation and blame are truly independent moral concepts,
then we can show that there is nothing incoherent about the idea of actions that are
simultaneously permissible and blameworthy. I will meet the second task by more carefully
examining the nature of moral blame. I have argued in the second chapter that this has not
been adequately done in any of the previously discussed accounts of offence, and hope to
show that it is indeed the “missing piece” that is needed to generate convincing examples of
the concept. To this end, I will argue that three contemporary accounts of moral blame can
each help to motivate the intuitions that we want in examples of offence. This will allow me
to then tackle the third task, by considering a series of non-trivial cases of offence that
cannot be easily explained by appealing to alternative moral concepts. In this way, I hope to
conclude that Chisholm’s permissive ill-doings are not only possible, but quite common.
3.2 Offence as a “Hybrid” Concept
The work of the previous chapters reveals two fundamentally distinct approaches to
describing moral offence. Chisholm and Haji attempt to describe offence as a purely deontic
category, where the very same underlying concepts used to describe moral obligation are
used to describe supererogation and offence. In his earliest definitions, Chisholm attempts
to construct a complete framework of moral concepts (including obligation and offence) by
appealing to a single pair of contrary terms, “good” and “bad”. This results in his defining
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offences as good to perform, but neither good nor bad to omit. He later attempts to further
reduce the concepts of obligation, supererogation and offence to the single idea of “ought to
be”. In each of these sets of definitions, the concept of moral blame is absent.75 Haji
follows Chisholm in maintaining that obligation, supererogation and suberogation are each
to be understood independently of praise and blame, such that both “praiseless
supererogation” and “blameless suberogation” are possible. On these accounts, actions are
described as being supererogatory or offensive without appealing to the blame or praise
associated with them. This is at odds with the definitions offered by Mellema and
McNamara, who require that any offensive action must be blameworthy to perform, where
blameworthiness is assessed independently of the action’s deontic (i.e. permissible) status.
Julia Driver’s description of suberogation takes no firm stance on the role of moral blame,
instead saying only that suberogatory acts are “worse than the situation calls for, but not
forbidden” (“Sub” 290). What makes an act worse than the situation calls for is not
completely clear on her account. The five authors surveyed thus leave us with a question:
Should the “ill” involved in permissive ill-doings be described in terms of moral blame or
not?
In this section I will side with Mellema and McNamara in adopting a hybrid
description of offence,76 where offences are deemed “permissive” with respect to deontic
considerations, and “ill” with respect to non-deontic considerations of moral blame. I see
no plausible way of explaining the “ill” associated with offences in purely deontic terms, and
believe that any purely deontic account of offence will ultimately succumb to charges of
As noted in Chapter 1, Chisholm does hint at the possibility of using “praiseworthy” and “blameworthy” as a
pair of contraries for generating a conceptual framework, but he thinks this would yield a different set of
definitions for obligation and offence. He never explicitly describes what these alternate definitions would look
like.
75
76
I take the term “hybrid” from Haji (178).
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incoherence or triviality. It is not as clear, however, that a purely deontic description of
supererogation is incoherent. On the contrary, Thomas Hurka and Esther Shubert have
recently maintained that this is the proper way to understand supererogation:
We could… note that supererogatory acts are usually done from a more virtuous motive, such as an
altruistic desire for another’s five units of happiness rather than a selfish desire for your one. But this
isn’t an essential feature of supererogation…As Holly Smith has remarked, the concept of
supererogation is a deontic one, in the same family as right and wrong, rather than one from the
theory of moral virtue or of moral credit and blame. Its superiority must therefore be accounted for
in purely deontic terms. (8)
Hurka and Shubert do not say much more to explain why we should think that
supererogatory acts usually stem from more virtuous motives (rather than, say, the pursuit of
admiration or reward), or why we should think that supererogation is a strictly deontic
concept. I will not argue against the idea that supererogation is a purely deontic concept, but
I think that a closer look at what really motivates this approach will help to clarify my
insistence on a hybrid description of moral offence.
It seems to me that the search for a purely deontic account of supererogation stems
from a conflation of two distinct commonsense moral ideas. Hurka and Shubert exemplify
this conflation in the following:
The concept of supererogation has two sides. On one side, a supererogatory act isn’t morally
required; on the other side, it’s somehow better than its alternative, or “beyond” duty in a sense that
connotes superiority. (8)
The first “side” described here seems true enough. It is the second that I think merits closer
consideration. I believe that Hurka and Shubert overlook the possibility that an act can be
“better than its alternative” in more than one way. We might of course say that some acts
are superior because they go “beyond the call of duty”. But as Julia Driver has shown, there
are some acts that are intuitively morally superior to their alternatives, but where there is no
relevant duty that they can be said to exceed. According to Driver, we call ordinary
instances of courtesy, such as holding the door for strangers, “supererogatory because one is
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being nice when one does not have to be—but there is nothing that one has to be with
respect to that person and that situation” (“Sub” 290). Even if Hurka and Shubert want to
reject Driver’s example, they grant that actions can be performed from more-or-less virtuous
motives. If virtue is indeed a moral concept, then it seems hard to deny that performing an
act a more virtuous motive is morally better in some sense than the same act performed from
a less virtuous motive.
If this is right, then from a commonsense perspective there are two distinct ways in
which actions can be superior to their alternatives. On the one hand, an act can be superior
in the sense of “going beyond the call”—I might, for example, give four hours of service
when I am only obligated to give three. On the other, an act can be superior in the sense of
incorporating better motives—I might, for example, volunteer my time with a genuine
concern for my beneficiaries, rather than simply a desire to bolster my college application.
McNamara does well to show that neither of these senses of superiority entails anything
about the other. I can go beyond the call by giving an extra hour of service, but do so only
to bolster my application, just as I can be motivated by a strong desire to help others to
simply meet my three-hour obligation. We can of course say that better motives aren’t
essential features of supererogation, but then this simply amounts to saying that
“supererogation”—a term that is more or less exclusive to moral philosophy—captures only
one commonsense notion of moral superiority. Some, like McNamara, will try to build
motives into an account of supererogation.77 Others, like Haji, will prefer to exclude motives
77
Recall that McNamara does this by offering the following definition:
An act is supererogatory for S iff:
1) it is optional for S to Do,
2) it is praiseworthy for S to do,
3) it is not blameworthy for S to omit, and
4) it is precluded by doing the least S can do. ( “SIO” 222)
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from a definition of supererogation, and leave room for supererogatory acts that are beyond
the call of duty, but not praiseworthy.
Here we might wonder if there is any way of showing one or the other account to be
theoretically superior. We might, for example, prefer a hybrid account on the grounds that it
avoids the classic “demandingness” problem where the purely deontic approach cannot. A
purely deontic approach must explain how we can be morally permitted to bring about
anything less than the best outcome in a given situation. If it turns out that the threshold of
obligation—the right thing to do—is always determined by the best outcome that we can
bring about, then it would seem to be impossible to ever truly go beyond the call of duty. A
hybrid approach may have an easier time with this problem, by appealing to actions that are
not obligatory because there is no relevant duty to exceed, but that are nevertheless
performed from virtuous motives.78 Alternatively, a hybrid enthusiast might appeal to cases
where two agents both bring about a maximally good state of affairs, but where one agent
acts from better motives than the other. In this way we can make sense of supererogation
even if it is impossible to go beyond the call of duty. But this need not discourage
proponents of a strictly deontic description of supererogation. There are many strategies—
including those suggested by Hurka and Shubert—that we might pursue for addressing the
demandingness problem within a purely deontic account. We might, for example, appeal to
the concept of satisficing to establish a sub-maximal threshold for moral obligation.79 If this
is unappealing, we might look at something like the distinction between agent-centered and
78 Here I again have something like Driver’s examples of courtesy in mind. If I am not required to bring about
any particular state of affairs at all, then it does not seem that any state of affairs that I do bring about can be
better than the one required. I do not wish to suggest, however, that hybrid enthusiasts like McNamara will be
content to stop here. McNamara is, after all, committed to the possibility of going beyond the call. This
partially explains his insistence that supererogatory acts are precluded by doing the least we can.
Several such attempts are found in Michael Byron (ed.), Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical
Reason (Cambridge, 2003). For an interesting critique of the satisficing approach, see Bradley (2006).
79
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agent-neutral moral reasons to help us.80 On this approach, supererogatory acts might be
those in which I have an agent-centered option to benefit myself, but instead choose to act
in a way that generates the same amount of good, but distributed to others. For yet another
approach, we might delve into something like McNamara’s “Doing Well Enough” system of
deontic logic to show how we might go beyond the call of duty.81
But I do not think that we need to solve the demandingness problem in order to
address the more immediately relevant point here. Perhaps we can show that it is possible to
do “better than required” in the sense of bringing about a state of affairs that features more
of the right-making good than would be present in a merely permissible state of affairs. This
is what we seem to have in mind when we talk about “exceeding” or “going beyond the
call”. But even if we show that this is possible, we will only have illustrated one of the ways
in which commonsense thinking judges actions to be superior to their alternatives. Actions
can also be better or worse than alternatives in a non-deontic sense, as the very same action
can confer more or less praise on the agent who performs it. We might distinguish between
these types of superiority by saying that the former involving actions that are “above” their
alternatives, where the latter are “worthier” than their alternatives. If this is a legitimate
distinction, then we do not need to be too worried about whether supererogation—a
technical term that lies outside the language of commonsense morality—does or does not
See, for one example, Douglas Portmore’s (2003) work on “position-relative consequentialism”. Hurka and
Shubert disagree with several features of Portmore’s approach to supererogation, but do follow the basic
strategy of defining the concept in terms of agent-neutral permissions.
80
81 It might be noted that another response to the demandingness problem—namely, that supererogation is
impossible—is absent from my list of candidates. I am aware that some “anti-supererogationists” will maintain
that morality is maximally demanding. But I tend to agree with Jamie Dreier’s assertion that “[i]n
commonsense moral reasoning, we take it for granted that there are supererogatory acts, and it would be
incredible if the very idea of supererogation turned out to be incoherent.” (“Ethical Satisficing” 145) But even
if it turns out that morality is maximally demanding, moral offence might still be possible. If the hybrid
description of offence that I offer in the next section is correct, I might be blameworthy for bringing about a
maximally good state of affairs, provided that my action stems from blameworthy motives.
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apply only to those actions that are above than their alternatives. Instead, we can simply
note that some actions are above their alternatives, some are worthier than their alternatives,
and some are both. Purely deontic accounts of supererogation will not consider matters of
worth, while hybrid approaches will. An action x that is not above its alternatives, but is
nevertheless worthier than alternatives, will thus be considered supererogatory on a hybrid
account, but not supererogatory on a purely deontic one.
For my own part, I do not feel compelled to argue that x should be called
“supererogatory”. If it satisfies hybrid opponents like Haji, Hurka and Shubert, I am happy
to instead call x “shmupererogatory”. What matters here is simply that shmupererogation—
action that is not required, but nevertheless more praiseworthy than its alternatives—is
possible. I think this is important because, along with Driver, I think that moral offence is
best understood in contrast to shmupererogation. I do not think that we will have much
luck describing a non-empty category of offence in purely deontic terms. The notion of
action that is beneath the threshold of permissibility, but still permissible, seems like a nonstarter. But if we do not characterize the “ill” of permissive ill-doings in terms of acting
beneath the threshold, then it is very difficult to see how to explain it in a purely deontic
framework. Haji, who attempts a purely deontic account of offence, suggests that “when one
suberogates, one does in a less-than-maximal or much-less-than maximal way what is bad and
morally demanded” (179). Clearly, he thinks that offences are worse than other permissibly
suboptimal alternatives. But by excluding blame from his account of offence, he leaves us
with no way of explaining how offences are “bad”. A hybrid approach, by contrast, should
be able to do this rather easily. Offences are blameworthy, while non-offensive permissibly
suboptimal alternatives aren’t.
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This presupposes, of course, that the distinction between deontic and non-deontic
superiority is legitimate, and that we can indeed make sense of moral blame in the absence of
deontic wrongdoing. This is not a presupposition that an adequate account of offence can
leave undefended. After all, one might reject a hybrid account of offence on the grounds
that it violates what Haji calls the “objective view” of moral blame. On this view, “[o]ne is
blameworthy for an act only if one had an objective (overall) obligation not to perform it;
that is, blameworthiness requires that one have done something (objectively) wrong.” (Haji
163) If the objective view is correct, then we cannot hope to find instances of permissive illdoing on a hybrid approach. The blame that we would need to account for the ill-doing
cannot arise, according to the objective view, if an action is permissible. A hybrid approach
to moral offence thus seems to hinge on our ability to show that the objective view is false.
Haji argues against the objective view, but his strategy for doing so will not help the present
project. He assumes that offences are possible, and uses their incompatibility with the
objective view to conclude that the latter is false. To avoid circularity, I will need to find
another way.
As mentioned above, both Mellema and McNamara favor a hybrid definition of
offence, so that blame is a necessary component of any offensive act. Unfortunately, neither
Mellema nor McNamara explains exactly how moral blame arises. The objective view thus
threatens their respective accounts of offence. It is worth noting, however, that both
Mellema and McNamara refer their reader to the work of Gregory Trianosky for a better
understanding of moral blame.82 Trianosky, who argues in favor of an “aretaic” form of
evaluation that is independent of deontic evaluation, certainly does seem like a promising
82
See (McNamara, “SIO” 204) and (Mellema, BCD 200).
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starting point for a hybrid account of offence. But as I will show, Trianosky does not do
enough to completely dismiss the threat of the objective view.
3.3 Trianosky: On the Independence of Deontic and Aretaic Value
Like both Mellema and McNamara, Trianosky maintains that supererogation cannot
be properly understood in purely deontic terms. To support this claim, he argues that a
purely deontic definition of supererogation, in conjunction with two assumptions, yields a
paradox. Here are the deontic definitions that he uses:
(O)
(S)
An obligatory act is an act whose performance is required and whose omission is forbidden.
A supererogatory act is an act whose performance is recommended but not required and
whose omission is permitted rather than forbidden. (Trianosky 26)
And the assumptions:
[I]t is plausible to think that blame for failure to perform is appropriate only when the act in question
is obligatory and not when it is merely supererogatory. It is also plausible to think that there is an
essential connection between blame and excuse of roughly this sort: excuses function essentially to
deflect blame. (Trianosky 27)
This set of claims entails that “excuses are never appropriately made for failure to perform a
supererogatory act” (Trianosky 27), and herein lies the problem. Trianosky argues that from
a commonsense perspective, it often seems perfectly appropriate to offer excuses when we
decline to perform supererogatory acts. This includes cases where we are challenged to
perform supererogatory actions by others who are already performing them, such as
solicitors for pledge drives. In these cases, “[w]e seem often to feel uncomfortable or even
ashamed that we are unwilling to do more than is required of us, to ‘go the extra mile.’”
(Trianosky 26) So we offer excuses, and it seems like they are appropriate. We are thus
confronted with an apparent conflict between commonsense morality and a purely deontic
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account of supererogation: Why do we feel that it is morally appropriate to offer excuses for
omitting supererogatory acts, if, by definition, such omissions are not forbidden?
Before examining Trianosky’s proposed solution, I would like to point out that there
may is room for dismissing the puzzle out of hand. Trianosky attempts to defuse this sort of
response by stating that “[t]here are of course a number of ways of discounting this
putatively puzzling phenomenon, but none of them seems entirely convincing.” (28) Oddly,
however, he only addresses one of these “ways”, and his response is not entirely convincing.
He considers the possibility that the decision to (for example) contribute to a pledge drive is
an instance of an imperfect duty, so that my excuse is now offered “to show that nothing
can be inferred from this failure to act about whether I will on sufficiently many other
occasions act charitably.” (Trianosky 28) He says that this explanation won’t always work,
however, because the impulse to offer excuses will arise even in those cases where all
involved know that the agent has already fulfilled the requirements of the imperfect duty.
Even if I’ve already done a lot for local charity, I may find myself compelled to offer excuses
for refusing to help on some further occasion—a simple “No thanks, I don’t feel like it this
time” would seem inappropriate. The upshot, Trianosky argues, is that we cannot explain
excuses simply by appealing to imperfect duties. Instead, he suggests that we offer excuses
because we are “concerned that morally significant others not disapprove or think less well
of us.” (28)
But is this really the only plausible explanation we can offer? Note that he thinks we
will be especially inclined to offer excuses “when the challenger himself”—i.e. the pledge
drive solicitor—“is plainly going beyond the call of duty.” (Trianosky 28) This might be
explained by our desire to escape the challenger’s disapproval, but it is not difficult to
identify alternative explanations. Suppose my concern about the challenger’s disapproval
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does not stem from the fact that it is morally warranted, but instead from a sense of
competition. In this way, the excuse I give to the solicitor can be likened to the excuse I
might offer to an occasional exercise partner who invites me for an extra half-hour
weightlifting workout. Even if we both know that I’ve already completed a reasonably
rigorous workout routine for the day, I might offer an excuse (“I really need to get started on
some painting at the house”) simply because I don’t want him thinking that I am a lesser
(albeit perfectly competent) practitioner of physical exercise than he. Or maybe I offer the
excuse because I want to let the challenger know that I value his work and encourage him,
even as I am unwilling to contribute. My excuse thus amounts to something like, “I choose
not to participate, but I think it’s a good thing that you and others are doing this.” If
Trianosky cannot rule such explanations out, then there remains room to dismiss his puzzle
as a non-starter. But in the spirit of charity and interest in what his solution might show us
about supererogation (and, we may hope, offence),83 I will proceed under the assumption
that there is indeed a conceptual tension between the excuses that we give to pledge drive
solicitors and a purely deontic account of supererogation.
Trianoksy concludes that the best solution to the puzzle is found via a distinction
between two different types of moral judgments. Deontic criticism presuppose a judgment
“about the wrongness of some particular act”, while aretaic criticism pertains to “some
conative or affective state of the agent’s” (Trianosky 28-29). Trianosky maintains that
blameworthiness, as in the cases of finding fault, or of finding someone negligent in a
particular case, belongs in the former category. The latter type of judgment can be further
On Trianosky’s behalf, I might suggest that he only needs to show that we are sometimes motivated to offer
excuses by a desire to escape the challenger’s disapproval. And this does not strike me as implausible. In this
way, even if we are not convinced that excuses are essentially aimed at deflecting blame, a tension still arises in
those instances where an agent does use an excuse to deflect blame, but where there is no relevant blame to
deflect (as in cases of failing to perform supererogatory acts).
83
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divided into two sub-categories. On the one hand, we might judge an agent’s “standing
traits or dispositions”, such as finding a person to be dishonest or cowardly. These
judgments amount to identifying some “general flaw in the agent’s moral character.”
(Trianosky 29) On the other hand, we might judge some particular occurrent motivational
state in the agent. We might say that a person is not generally cowardly, but still say that a
particular act was cowardly of him. The idea, I gather, is that this amounts to saying that the
person was cowardly at a particular moment, but is not typically cowardly. Rather than
judgments of character, Trianosky suggests that we think of these moments as instances
where we find “a flaw in what I call the agent’s motivational struacture.” (29) With these
distinctions in place, the paradox of excuses is supposed to be resolved as follows: For any
given opportunity to perform a supererogatory act, we cannot rightly offer a negative
deontic judgment in response to my refusal to perform it. I cannot be, for example,
blameworthy for refusing to give to a pledge drive. This does not entail, however, that there
is no negative aretaic judgment that can be made, since I “may still have acted from a lessthan-virtuous motive, or, it seems, even a vicious motive.” (Trianosky 29) I offer an excuse
for my refusal contribute, then, to let it be known that my refusal does not come from a bad
motive.
This does seem compatible with the broad features of McNamara’s remarks on
supererogation, to the extent that it suggests that aretaic judgments operate independently of
deontic ones. This is not to say that the views overlap perfectly. Where Trianosky identifies
blameworthiness as a deontic concept, McNamara (along with Haji) argues that blame is to
be assessed independently of the deontic status of our actions. Still, it would appear that
Trianosky’s arguments, if they are successful, can be used to support something like the kind
of blame that McNamara associates with moral offence. McNamara states that the proper
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objects of attitudes like blame are “transient conative states, not just character traits.” (“SIO)
204) While Trianosky uses the word “blame” to refer to specifically deontic judgments, we
might of course simply assign the word to the kind of negative aretaic judgment that he
assigns to (for example) refusals to contribute to pledge drives that stem from vicious
motives. And while Trianosky never directly addresses the possibility of moral offences, it is
not difficult to see where his views might seem promising to proponents of the category. If
aretaic judgments pertain to my motives, and are made independently of the deontic status
of the actions that my motives bring about, then it should be conceptually possible to
perform actions that are not forbidden (from a purely deontic point of view) but
nevertheless ought not to be performed (from an aretaic point of view). Trianosky affirms
this, and thus comes closest to implicitly endorsing offences, in saying that “[n]ot every
judgment of viciousness presupposes a judgment that the agent has done wrong; and not
every negative aretaic judgment of the person need also be a negative deontic judgment of
the person.” (32)
Still, skeptics of offence might want some compelling example of an agent
successfully completing the act that he intends to complete, where the act merits no negative
deontic judgment, and where the motive does merit a negative aretaic judgment. To this
end, Trianosky returns to the person who refuses to contribute to the pledge drive. We
presumably would not want to suggest that all refusals to contribute merit negative aretaic
judgments. After all, if I politely decline the opportunity to volunteer because I am
exhausted from already having spent 8 hours working at the soup kitchen earlier in the day,
it is hardly plausible to suggest that I reveal anything close to a bad motive. I can perhaps
imagine a more perfectly virtuous person—maybe one of Susan Wolf’s moral saints—
mustering the strength to give a little more, and to this extent my refusal does show that my
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“motivational structure on that occasion falls short of that which the ideal, fully virtuous
person would display” (Trianosky 31). But Trianosky does not think that this is enough to
yield a legitimate negative aretaic judgment, as whether this shortcoming amounts to a
“genuine defect, a vicious flaw in motivation, depends in large part on the sorts of reasons the
agent has for omission” (31). I offer excuses, on his view, precisely to show that my
shortcoming is not evidence of a genuine defect. “I will not help clean the beach today
because I am rather tired and must rest for the coming work week” shows that I do not have
the stuff of the fully virtuous agent, but is not evidence of a deep flaw in my motivational
structure. “I will not help clean the beach because I cannot be bothered to do anything
other than what I immediately prefer, which at present is to bake brownies” might be
evidence of a more vicious flaw.84
If this distinction between deontic and aretaic judgment looks promising as a
supplement to McNamara’s account of offence, it is worth noting that Trianosky also uses
the distinction to assess cases that are very similar to some of the examples of offence
proposed by Mellema and Driver. Recall that Driver identifies instances of “sitting on one’s
rights”—such as in the case of the Seat Splitter, who refuses to leave exchange his seat on a
train for another, even though this would allow a couple to sit together—as instances of
suberogation. Trianosky seems to have something similar in mind, saying that a person who
seeks to deflect moral criticism with a statement like “I was within my rights” may miss the
point of the criticism he receives:
It is not that what he does is wrong, considered independently of its motive; for our common-sense
principles of moral obligation are narrow and legalistic here. Nevertheless, the agent reveals a
genuinely vicious motivation in his coldly calculated insistence on what is rightfully his. (34-35)
84 I hope that this last example does not suggest that I believe there is the slightest moral failing to be found in
the desire to bake brownies. It is the “I cannot be bothered to do anything other than what I prefer” that
matters here.
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While Trianosky never uses anything quite like the word “suberogatory”, we can easily
imagine him agreeing with Driver’s assertion that the Seat Splitter’s behavior is “less than
what the situation calls for” (Driver, “Sub” 290), or perhaps with the Chisholm-esque
suggestion that the Seat Splitter ought not to behave as he does, even though he may. In such
cases, our aretaic evaluation of the agent’s motives have nothing to do with the fact that his
behavior is permitted from a purely deontic point of view. Trianosky also anticipates cases
that are very similar to Mellema’s Pharisee example.85 Like Mellema, he finds something
morally objectionable about an agent who consistently meets all of his moral obligations
while refusing to exceed any of them:
In all likelihood, real concern for others is not defined by the same boundaries that define our
obligations. Conscientious such an agent may be. But, we suspect, he is conscientious as the
Pharisees described in the New Testament were conscientious. He swerves not one jot from what the
law requires, but has no real human concern in his heart. This hypocrisy is also a vice, a genuine
defect of character, which might be revealed in—and perhaps only in—the consistent refusal to do
what is beyond duty. (Trianosky 33-34)
Note that Trianosky does not find the Pharisee to be “blameworthy”, since on his use of the
term it would amount to a deontic judgment. At first glance, this places his description of
Pharisees at odds with that of Mellema, who agrees that Pharisees should be criticized “on
aretaic grounds”, but describes this criticism as “blame”. (Mellema, BCD 200) To remedy
this, we might of course simply introduce a distinction between two types of blame, where
one corresponds to a negative deontic judgment, and the other to an aretaic judgment. Here
we simply modifiy Mellema/McNamara’s definition so that offensive acts are “aretaically
blameworthy”. In this way, we might hope that Trianosky’s work is not only compatible
with their accounts of offence, but sheds further light on the sort of blame that figures into
these accounts.
38 Where
Driver does not identify Trianosky as an influence, Mellema does explicitly acknowledge Trianosky’s
work in developing his own remarks on Pharisees.
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But even if we can square Trianosky’s negative aretaic judgments with the kind of
“blame” that Mellema and McNamara (and perhaps Driver) need to support their views on
moral offence, it remains to be shown that Trianosky’s distinction between deontic and
aretaic evaluation itself stands up to scrutiny. And here I see a potential problem. To
motivate the problem, first notice Trianosky’s insistence that his distinction amounts to
more than saying that we sometimes do the rights things for the wrong reasons. In typical
cases of “doing the right thing for the wrong reason”, he writes, the “incongruity between
the positive deontic status of the action and negative aretaic status of the motive is only
apparent.” (Trianosky 33) But if we ask what distinguishes genuine aretaic shortcomings
from merely apparent ones, he answers that the latter are “cases in which the viciousness of
the motive (if it really is vicious and not just short of perfect) is borrowed in some such way
from the wrongness of some action the agent does or intends” (33). I think this raises some
interpretive difficulties for Trianosky’s view. For now it becomes difficult to distinguish
standing traits of character from the “occurrent states” that are supposedly the proper target
of aretaic evaluation. Remember, the latter are supposed to be features of the agent, and as
such distinct from the action he performs. But if the difference between merely apparent
deontic/aretaic incongruities and actual incongruities is that the latter involve viciousness in
the form of “borrowed wrongness”, then aretaic value does not operate independently of
deontic value. For if an act has no deontic wrongness to borrow—such as in the case of my
choosing not to contribute to the pledge drive—then it is hard to see how we can distinguish
vicious refusals from non-vicious ones. This amounts to something very much like the
objective view of moral blame, where aretaic blame can only arise if an action is deontically
forbidden. It is not clear how we can find cases of suberogation in this way, if (as Mellema
and McNamara seem to think) these acts are not wrong from the deontic point of view. A
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more satisfactory distinction between actual and merely apparent deontic/aretaic
incongruities seems necessary, then, if Trianosky’s distinction is to offer any advantage to an
account of moral offence.86
The trick, as I see it, is to refine the distinction between aretaic and deontic
judgments so that they really do operate independently, rather than the former “borrowing”
their wrongness from the latter. In effect, Trianosky’s work suffers from the same central
problem—namely, an inadequate account of moral blame—that hampers the work of
Chisholm, Mellema, Driver, Haji, and McNamara. The missing piece of the proverbial
puzzle remains an account of blame that can handle separate evaluations of deontic and
aretaic status. As it happens, I contend that a hybrid definition of offence—where offences
are permitted from a deontic point of view, but nevertheless morally blameworthy from
another point of view—is compatible with at least three contemporary accounts of moral
blame. These accounts, attributed respectively to Nomy Arpaly, T. M. Scanlon and Michael
Zimmerman, each allow us to make sense of moral blame without appealing directly to
deontic considerations. I will not argue that any one of these three accounts is superior to
The distinction also yields a second, separate potential problem for moral offences. Suppose that my refusal
to help (let us call this act R), because it stems from vicious motives, does warrant aretaic criticism. An
objector might wonder why we should not also find the action to warrant criticism from a deontic point of
view, and puzzle about Trianosky’s insistence that R is not wrong in this purely deontic sense. The tension
may arise here, I suggest, because the refusal places the agent in a situation where he must publicly express himself,
in the form of an answer to the challenger, and where any expression merits deontic censure. Trianosky
suggests (attributing the point to Stephen Darwall) that “perhaps any public statement, however polite, of my
true, selfishly trivial reasons for not helping is wrong because it is belittling or offensive to my challenger” (33).
But if I do not politely reveal my reasons for not helping, what else am I to do? Saying nothing at all hardly
seems acceptable, and alternative courses of action—such as telling the challenger that I will help when in fact I
know that I will not, or telling the challenger that I will not help because of some other reason that does not
actually motivate me—amount to lying. In short, by performing R I place myself in a situation where I must
now perform some further act S that will merit deontic censure. But, Trianosky insists, this does not entail that
R itself merits deontic censure. The idea, instead, is that we must evaluate R independently of any further public
expression that follows from it. But I can imagine an objector like Heyd rejecting the idea that any act
(including a private refusal like R) that guarantees the performance of some further, if distinct, forbidden act
must itself be forbidden. On this view, R cannot qualify as a suberogatory act.
86
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the others.87 Nor will I say much to defend any of these accounts from its critics.88 I am
content simply to show that contemporary moral philosophy features several avenues for
pursuing alternatives to the objective view of moral blame.
3.4 Three Accounts of Suberogatory Blame
I will discuss Arpaly’s account of moral blame first, not because I intend to argue
that it is a better account than those of Scanlon and Zimmerman, but because it is the one
that I find to be most directly compatible with Trianosky’s deontic/aretaic distinction—and
thus with McNamara’s account of offence. This turns out to be something of a surprising
result, however, since Arpaly herself endorses something like the objective view of moral
blame. I will first explain the connections between the views of Arpaly and Trianosky, and
then show how to make both views compatible with moral offences. This will involve a
slight medication to Arpaly’s definition of blame, which I will argue need not presuppose the
objective view to maintain its central strengths.
Arpaly’s definitions of praise and blame are shaped by a few key aims. First, she
aims to explain moral blame in a way that bears out John Stuart Mill’s intuition that motives
have “nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the
agent.” (Mill, Utilitarianism 18) But more than this, she wants her account to square up with
the complexities of a plausible moral psychology. This cannot be done with what we might
call a “naïve account” of moral worth, on which an action is worthy just in case it is a right
action motivated by a desire to do the right thing. This naïve account leads us to incorrectly
87 I have, however, previously suggested that Arpaly’s account does a better job than Zimmerman’s in assessing
the case of Huckleberry Finn.
88
Though I have discussed some of the critical discussion surrounding Arpaly’s account.
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praise the behavior of (for example) an agent who does the right thing as a result of mistaken
beliefs and values. To illustrate this, Arpaly offers the following example:
The Extremist: After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, some Jewish extremists expressed the opinion
that the murder was a horrible thing simply because it involved a Jew killing a Jew. Imagine for a
moment that Ron is such an extremist, believing deeply that killing a person is not generally immoral
but that killing a fellow Jew is a grave sin. Ron would very much like to kill Tamara, but he refrains
from doing so because he wants to do the right thing and he believes the right thing to do is to refrain
from killing Jews like Tamara. (UP 74)
Ron does the right thing by refraining from killing Tamara, and is motivated by a desire to
do the right thing. But this is not sufficient to call his refraining praiseworthy, since he is
not, in fact, refraining from killing Tamara for the right reasons. The naïve account gives the
wrong result here. Fixing the naïve account will not be so simple, however, as requiring that
right actions be motivated by both a desire to do what is right and an accurate understanding
of what is right. This revision would exclude the Extremist from praise, but it would yield
the wrong result in some cases of “inverse akrasia”, where “an agent does the right thing but
does so against her best judgment.” (Arpaly, UV 75) Huckleberry Finn, for example, does
not believe he is doing the right thing by helping his friend Jim to escape from slavery. On
the contrary, he believes that he is doing something wrong. But suppose that he helps Jim
despite his incorrectly believing it to be wrong, because he cannot bring himself to allow
another human being to endure slavery. It would then seem that Huckleberry not only does
the right thing, but does it for the right reasons. Our revised naïve account of moral worth
maintains that a desire to do what one believes to be the right thing is a necessary condition
for praise, however, and cannot allow us to praise Huckleberry.
Arpaly thus wants an account of moral worth that focuses on the motives of the
agent, ties praise to the de re right reasons for performing an act, and does not require the
agent to know that she is motivated by the de re right reasons. She accomplishes this with the
“Praiseworthiness as Responsiveness to Moral Reasons” (PRMR) account of moral worth:
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Praiseworthiness as Responsiveness to Moral Reasons (revised version): For an agent to be morally praiseworthy
for doing the right thing is for her to have done the right thing for the relevant moral reasons—that
is, for the reasons for which the action is right (the right reasons clause); and an agent is more
praiseworthy, other things being equal, the deeper the moral concern that has led to her action (the
concern clause). Moral concern is to be understood as concern for what is in fact morally relevant and
not as concern for what the agent takes to be morally relevant. (Arpaly, UV 84)
Huckleberry Finn’s efforts to help Jim are praiseworthy because they stem from the reasons
that in fact make them morally right—namely, that Jim is a human, and that humans should
not endure slavery. It doesn’t matter that Huckleberry doesn’t take these to be morally
significant reasons. Nor does it matter that he believes he is doing the wrong thing. He’s
responsive to the right reasons, and they lead him to take the right course of action. By
contrast, blame arises when an agent is motivated to do the wrong thing for the reasons that
make it wrong, regardless of whether she takes these to be wrong-making reasons. This
explains why we blame (for example) a “sincere racist”, who believes that he does nothing
wrong when he dismisses a job applicant because the applicant is Mexican. It also explains
why we sometimes excuse (which is to say, do not find blameworthy) minor wrongdoings
when they performed in response to morally neutral, rather than bad, reasons. As Arpaly
puts it, “if the sorrowing philanthropist is more praiseworthy than the happy philanthropist,
the sorrowing failed philanthropist is less blameworthy than the happy failed philanthropist.”
(UV 91). The happy failed philanthropist shows a worse motivation, as her happiness
reveals a less deep concern for morality. The sorrowing failed philanthropist, while still
having done (let as assume) the wrong thing, merits less blame if we take her sorrow to be a
sign that she is concerned with some of the moral reasons that she has to help others.
As I see it, the PRMR account is largely compatible with Trianosky’s description of
aretaic evaluation. Trianosky maintains that aretaic evaluation is not based on the deontic
status of any given action, but rather on the motives of the agent. So if I, for example,
refuse to contribute to a pledge drive, I offer an excuse to show that my refusal does not
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stem from vicious motives. If this means that my excuses are attempts to show that the
refusal is made in response to morally neutral reasons, then the PRMR will yield a similar
solution to the excuses paradox. I might say, “I’m sorry I can’t volunteer today, but I’m
simply not feeling very well”, to let my challenger know that my refusal is in response to my
not feeling well, rather than disdain for my potential beneficiaries. This explanation avoids
appeals to any “standing” character traits, and focuses instead on what Arpaly calls the
agent’s depth of concern for what is morally relevant to her circumstances. It would
presumably take an extraordinarily deep concern for morality to do the right thing in the face
of severe exhaustion. Accordingly, we would find an agent more praiseworthy who does the
right thing in the face of exhaustion than one who does the right thing when well rested.89
By avoiding appeals to character in the form of standing dispositions, Arpaly’s “concern
clause” aligns with the “occurrent” motivational structure that Trianosky cites as the source
of aretaic praise and blame. If this is right, then it would seem that the PRMR is a good
candidate for capturing the “transient conative states” that Paul McNamara mentions when
loosely describing what it means for an action to reflect well or poorly on an agent (“SIO”
204).
But it will likely be noted that the PRMR raises a familiar problem for the sort of
blame that I want to include in a definition of moral offence. Just as Trianosky ends up
describing aretaic blame in terms in “borrowed wrongness”—so that blame presupposes that
something wrong has been done from the deontic point of view—Arpaly’s account entails
that an act cannot be blameworthy without also being deontically wrong. The PRMR
requires that any praiseworthy act be performed in accordance with de re right-making
89 This assumes that the good thing in question requires expending energy. This is of course not always the
case (thanks to Felicia Nimue Ackerman for pointing this out to me). The point here is just that obstacles,
when they arise, can diminish blame.
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reasons, and that any blameworthy act be performed in accordance with de re wrong-making
reasons. In short, the PRMR rests upon something like what Ishtiyaque Haji calls the
objective view of moral blame:
O2:
One is blameworthy for an act only if one had an objective (overall) obligation not to
perform it; that is, blameworthiness requires that one have done something (objectively)
wrong. (163)
In a footnote that references Haji, Arpaly herself explicitly endorses a variant on O2:
I take it to be an intuition that in order for me to be blameworthy for an action, it has to be
the case that the action is wrong. (MMHB 91)
If, as Haji argues, the objective view of blame is incompatible with the possibility of
suberogation, then it would seem that the PRMR represents a dead end for a hybrid account
of the category. The PRMR seems not to allow for the sort of independence between
deontic and aretaic evaluations that are needed in a hybrid account of offence. I do not
believethat all hope is lost here, however. On the contrary, I believe that with a
modification, the PRMR can be made compatible with independent aretaic and deontic
evaluations. This will not only allow us to use the PRMR to describe the blameworthiness of
offences, but provide a simple solution to a separate problem confronting Arpaly’s original
version of the PRMR itself. Describing this problem will hopefully explain why I think
Arpaly might want to endorse my proposed modification to the PRMR.
To see the problem, then, let us note that the objective view—at least as it features in
the PRMR—encounters problems with both offence and supererogation. O2 renders
offence incoherent by ruling out the possibility of blame in the absence of objective
wrongdoing. Supererogation is compromised by the other half of the objective view:
O1:
One is praiseworthy for an act only if one had an objective (overall) moral obligation to
perform it or it was objectively (overall) permissible for one to perform it; that is,
praiseworthiness requires that one have done something (objectively) obligatory or
permissible. (Haji 163)
Now recall the first clause of the PRMR:
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For an agent to be morally praiseworthy for doing the right thing is for her to have done the right
thing for the relevant moral reasons—that is, for the reasons for which the action is right. (Arpaly,
UV 84)
The two claims are not equivalent, as O1 says nothing on its own about the agent’s
motives—it leaves open the possibility that an agent might be praiseworthy for accidentally
performing an objectively obligatory action. But the PRMR may be read as entailing O1 if we
read “the right thing” as “an action that is either objectively morally obligatory or
permissible”.90 Thus, if O1 is incompatible with supererogation, then so is the PRMR. Now
notice that O1 recognizes only two candidates for moral praise: Actions that are morally
obligatory, and actions that are permissible but not obligatory. Actions of the first sort are
not, by definition, supererogatory. This yields a principle that I will call the objective view of
supererogation:
OS1:
One is praiseworthy for a supererogatory act only if it is objectively (overall) permissible, but
not objectively (overall) obligatory.
If the PRMR entails O1, then the PRMR is further committed to OS1. But as I see it, the
conjunction of the PRMR and OS1 precludes a coherent account of supererogatory praise.
For unlike O1, the PRMR includes the further requirement that praiseworthy acts must be
performed in response to the reasons that make them right. If an act is “right” in the sense
of being morally obligatory, then it cannot be supererogatory. But if the act is not
obligatory, then we end up saying something like the following:
SPRMR: For an agent to be morally praiseworthy for doing a supererogatory thing is for her to have
done the permissible thing for the relevant moral reasons—that is, for the reasons for which
the action is permissible.
This generates a significant problem, as the SPRMR leaves us with no mechanism for
distinguishing between those permissible actions that are praiseworthy (i.e. supereogatory
90 We might alternatively read “the right thing” as “the morally obligatory thing”, but then the PRMR becomes
immediately incompatible with supererogation. On this reading, no act could be simultaneously non-obligatory
and praiseworthy.
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acts) and those that are not (i.e. neutral acts). In short, the SPRMR (and, consequently, the
PRMR itself) will not allow us to make sense of supererogation.
To see this, suppose that I am offered a choice of either chocolate or vanilla ice
cream, and that I choose chocolate. This is, let us assume, a morally permissible choice. I
imagine that if we ask what makes it a permissible choice, we will say something like, “The
choice violates no moral obligations”. If I choose chocolate ice cream simply because I like
it—without ever considering whether it violates moral obligations that I have—then the
SPRMR will not find my decision praiseworthy. I am not responsive, after all, to the reasons
that make the choice morally permissible. But imagine that I take it for granted that
choosing chocolate ice cream violates no moral obligations, and that this somehow plays a
role in my forming a decision to have chocolate ice cream. Now I am responsive to the
reasons for which choosing chocolate is permissible, and the SPRMR entails that my
decision is morally praiseworthy. But this is an absurd result, as there is intuitively nothing at
all morally praiseworthy about choosing chocolate over vanilla. The SPRMR finds
supererogation where it should not.
The problem does not stop here, as the SPRMR does not fare much better in finding
supererogation where it should. To see this, consider a case that I will call “The Merciless
Shopper”:91 Suppose that I arrive at the front of the checkout line at the grocery store with a
full cart, and that just before the clerk begins to ring up my items I notice that there is only
one person in line behind me, and that she has a single stick of butter in her hand. Now
suppose that she asks if I might let her quickly purchase the butter before my lengthy
91
This case was suggested during a conversation with Felicia Nimue Ackerman.
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transaction begins. It is intuitively morally permissible to let her go first.92 It is also
intuitively praiseworthy to do so. But I do not think that the SPRMR will be able to account
for this second intuition. For what makes it permissible to let her go first is again something
like, “It violates no moral obligations”. Now imagine that I do let the stranger go first, but
that my obligations play no role in my decision. Instead, I let her go first because she looks
like she’s tired, and I’m in a position to help her get home sooner rather than later. If this
happens, then the SPRMR will not find my decision praiseworthy, because I will not have
done the permissible thing for the reasons that make it permissible. But my actual reasons
do seem like they should merit moral praise in this case. In order to allow for the praise
associated with stock examples of supererogation, and in order to avoid praising neutral
actions like choosing chocolate over vanilla, some modification seems necessary. If the
PRMR does indeed yield the SPRMR, then the former claim is incompatible with
commonsense supererogation.
One might respond to this by agreeing that the SPRMR is unacceptable, but denying
that it follows from the PRMR. To explain supererogation within a reasons-responsive
account of moral blame, we might simply say that an action merits supererogatory praise just
in case it is done for the reasons for which it is recommended. This would enable us to
maintain that supererogatory acts are indeed praiseworthy, without adopting the SPRMR. I
do not want to suggest that Arpaly is herself committed to the SPRMR, but I do think that
describing supererogation in terms of what is “recommended” skirts the problem that I am
trying to raise here. The SPRMR is indeed avoided by saying that “the right thing” in the
original PRMR refers to more than what is obligatory or permissible. But then this suggests
92 One could object that I have an obligation to let the stranger go first. I do not share this intuition, but it
turns out not to matter much. The broad strokes that I use to explain the conflict between the grocery store
case and the SPRMR will arise for any stock case of supererogation.
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that there is a sense of moral “recommendation”—a moral reason for performing a
supererogatory act—that does not correspond to any moral obligation, and that is not fully
explained in terms of permissibility. The question thus confronts the PRMR again: Why are
supererogatory acts praiseworthy? What constitutes the reasons that “recommend”
supererogatory actions?
I propose a solution that will bring the PRMR into accordance with commonsense
intuitions about supererogatory praise, and that will subsequently vindicate the possibility of
moral offence. I do not think that the modification will cost the PRMR anything significant,
as it will still allow the account to handle the sorts of cases it was designed to handle. In a
sense, my suggestion might be interpreted as less of a modification of the PRMR, and more
as an expansion of what counts as a moral reason. Here, I have in mind a distinction that
Jamie Dreier has proposed between two irreducible types of moral reasons, deriving from
two different types of moral perspective. The first type might be thought of as the
perspective of the perfectly virtuous agent, whereas the second might be thought of as the
perspective of the perfectly dutiful agent. These two perspectives will recognize different
features of situations as morally significant reasons for acting, making supererogation
compatible with consequentialist moral theories:93
[M]y suggestion for how supererogation is possible is that there are two perspectives from which the
two different sorts of ethical standards are derived. What looked like a contradiction is merely a
conflict: From the one perspective certain facts are reasons, and from the other they are not.
Although it is true that at some point the two perspectives must be commensurated, the conflict is not
reintroduced as a contradiction because the point of view from which we make our all-thingsconsidered judgments needn’t be an ethical perspective. (Dreier, “Ethical Satisficing” 150)
93 If one worries that this excludes the possibility of supererogation or offence for non-consequentialist
theories, it may be worth noting that Dreier has argued elsewhere (2011) that all plausible moral theories have
consequentialist equivalents.
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Supererogation arises, on this account, in those cases where I have a reason to perform an
act from the perspective of the virtuous agent, but no reason to perform (or refrain from
performing) the act from the perspective of the dutiful agent.
If we alter Arpaly’s PRMR to countenance both duty- based reasons and virtuebased reasons as being relevant to praise and blame, then we can bring the PRMR into
accordance with the possibility of supererogation. The modification might look something
like this:
Praiseworthiness as Responsiveness to Moral Reasons* (modified modified version): For an agent to be morally
praiseworthy for doing the right thing is for her to have done the right thing for the relevant moral
reasons—that is, for the reasons for which the action is either morally required from the perspective of duty, or
desirable from the perspective of a virtuous agent (the right reasons clause); and an agent is more praiseworthy,
other things being equal, the deeper the moral concern that has led to her action (the concern clause).
Moral concern is to be understood as concern for what is in fact morally relevant and not as concern
for what the agent takes to be morally relevant.
We can now handle stock cases of supererogation easily. If it is my rightful turn to check out
at the grocery store, then the fact that the stranger behind me is tired does not constitute a
reason to let her go first from the perspective of duty (let us call reasons of this sort Dreasons). Duty, in this case, is determined by who is first in line, rather than by whether
anyone is tired. Nor do I have a D-reason not to let the stranger go ahead, since she is the
only other person in line and it is (presumably) my right to forfeit my own turn.94 In this
way, we can explain the permissibility of my letting her go first. It is not hard, however, to
imagine the stranger’s tiredness as constituting a reason to let her go first from the
perspective of the virtuous agent (let us call reasons of this sort V-reasons). The fact that
she is tired doesn’t make it obligatory to let her go first, but surely it makes the decision kind.
I can thus say that I have a moral reason—a V-reason—to let her go first. And if my
94 Dreier does point out that a fully developed description of the D/V distinction in moral reasons should be
able to explain “why justice should be weightier than beneficence” (“Ethical Satisficing 150). But I am not sure
that this explanation is needed for the present purposes, as I am specifically interested only in those cases
where courses of action are recommended by V-reasons, but where there are no relevant opposing D-reasons.
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decision to let her go stems from a desire to help a tired person, then the PRMR* can
describe the decision as praiseworthy. I am, after all, responsive to a de re moral reason in
this case. The modification also allows us to explain why choosing chocolate ice cream
instead of vanilla is not supererogatory. There is neither a D-reason nor a V-reason (and
thus no morally relevant reason) to choose chocolate ice cream over vanilla. Choosing
chocolate, according to the PRMR*, is not praiseworthy. It regains its intuitive status as a
morally neutral act.
Note that by allowing for a distinction between D-reasons and V-reasons, the
PRMR* retains its ability to handle the kinds of cases that concern Arpaly. Huckleberry Finn
is still praiseworthy for helping Jim, as he is still responding to a morally relevant reason.
The Extremist is still excluded from praise, as he is motivated by neither a de re D-reason nor
a de re V-reason in his decision not to kill Tamara. The PRMR* explains supererogation
better than the PRMR, maintains the latter theory’s focus on the motives of the agent, ties
praise to the de re morally relevant reasons for performing an act, and does not require the
agent to know that she is motivated by the de re right reasons. In this way, I believe that the
PRMR stands to gain quite a lot by allowing for the distinction between D-reasons and Vreasons, with nothing to lose. My description of V-reasons has been fairly informal thus far,
however, and this may be thought of as a problem if I want to employ it in a definition of
moral offence. If these types of reasons really do operate independently of D-reasons, such
that I can have a V-reason to refrain from an act even if I have no relevant D-reason, then it
would seem that some explanation of the grounds for V-reasons is called for. Without such
an explanation, there is room to doubt that V-reasons could ever operate independently in
the way that I am suggesting. This would seem to leave little room for cases of D-reasons
and V-reasons coming apart in the way I have suggested.
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We might try to solve this problem by describing V-reasons in terms of “what the
virtuous person would do”. On this account, I have a V-reason to x just in case the
perfectly virtuous person would x. My V-reason to give extra money to charity thus consists
precisely in the fact that the perfectly virtuous agent would do so. Suppose, for example,
that I have a moral obligation to give five percent of my income to charity. Where one of
Gregory Mellema’s Pharisees—agents who fulfill all duties without ever exceeding any of
them—will give exactly five percent, a perfectly virtuous agent might give more. There
might, then, be many things that a virtuous agent would do that are not required (such as
give more than five percent), and many things that a virtuous agent will not do that are not
forbidden (such as give exactly five percent). This approach does yield independent moral
reasons for giving—I have a V-reason to give more, but no D-reason to do so—but at the
cost of plausibility. The problem here is similar to one that I raised for Rosalind
Hursthouse’s virtue-based theory of obligation in the previous chapter. The perspective of
the perfectly virtuous agent is potentially more demanding than the perspective of the
perfectly dutiful agent, in that virtuous agents will typically bring about more good than is
merely required of them.95 But this leaves a troubling gap between the amount of good that
duty requires and the amount that the perfectly virtuous agent will bring about. For if I have
an obligation to give five percent, but the virtuous agent would give ten, then what am I to
say about a decision to give seven percent?96 I have no D-reason to give the extra two
95 Unless, of course, we adopt the view that we are obligated to bring about maximally good outcomes at all
times. This view would alleviate the worry I raise above, but it does not eliminate the possibility of
distinguishing between D-reasons and V-reasons. For even here we might say that the perfectly virtuous agent
might be motivated to bring about maximally good outcomes by for different reasons (such as friendship or
courage) than those that motivate the perfectly dutiful agent (such as maximizing overall happiness).
96 It will likely be noticed that I have not specified the extent of “the virtuous person’s” virtue. I think my
central point stands here regardless of whether we imagine a perfectly virtuous person (who has the maximum
amount of every virtue) or a person who simply has more of the relevant virtues than the agent whose behavior
we are evaluating. In either case, “the virtuous person” will give more.
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percent, but it surely seems praiseworthy for me to do so. If non-obligatory praise is
explained in terms of what the perfectly virtuous agent would do, however, then there is
nothing at all praiseworthy about my decision to give anything less than 10 percent. A seven
percent donation should be supererogatory, but turns out not to be on this account.
To explain V-reasons, then, we must do more than simply appeal to what the
perfectly virtuous agent would do. I propose that we instead explain V-reasons in terms of
the reasons that would motivate the virtuous agent. My V-reason to give extra money to
charity is here not merely the fact that the virtuous agent would do so. Rather, I might first
note that the virtuous agent would give extra because it is a generous thing to do. If I am
motivated to give extra—even if I do not give as much as the perfectly virtuous agent—by
the fact that giving extra is generous, then I am motivated to perform a non-obligatory act
by the same reason that motivates the virtuous agent. My seven percent donation becomes
praiseworthy, and thus supererogatory, once again. We might further press for an account
of the kinds of reasons that motivate the perfectly virtuous agent, but I am not sure that a
description of the full scope of V-reasons is needed here. Just as I do not want to
presuppose any particular theory of right action in my account of moral offence, I do not
want to presuppose any particular account of the virtues. Instead, I maintain only that the
virtuous agent will be motivated to act by features of her situation that do not bear directly
on moral obligation. If this is right, then we can proceed to see how V-reasons will make
moral offence possible.
If supererogatory acts are those that are not required by D-reasons, but that are
recommended by (and performed in response to) V-reasons, then offences are acts that are
not forbidden by D-reasons, but that are performed in defiance of discouraging V-reasons. I
will elaborate on this by first explaining “discouraging V-reasons”, and then by explaining
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what it means to respond defiantly to them. I have in mind here features of situations that
are morally relevant, in the sense that they will feature in the deliberation of a virtuous agent.
And while some of these features of the situation will count in favor of a course of action,
other features of the situation may count against it. For example, suppose that Cassandra
find herself in the commons building on a college campus, and notices that there is a piano
against the wall. Suppose further that she has an interest in becoming a competent pianist,
but at present is anything but. She has a heavy hand, with very limited control over the
tempo and volume of her playing, such that she ends up playing very loudly and at irregular
rhythms. In short, it is profoundly annoying to hear Cassandra play for any length of time,
and she knows it. She’s taken some introductory lessons, however, and knows that by
playing a simple melody over and over again—“Skip to My Lou”—she can develop some of
the basic mechanics that will allow her to improve as a pianist. And so she finds herself
considering sitting down at the public piano to practice. But now suppose that, being a
commons building, there students studying at table around the room. Should she sit down
and play or not?97 There are at least two features of this situation—the students’ annoyance
and Cassandra’s own desire to improve as a pianist—that a virtuous person would consider
relevant. Annoying students is not something that a virtuous person will do, ceteris paribus.
And so the fact that she will annoy the students thus constitutes a V-reason that discourages
Cassandra from playing. I do not mean to suggest that the virtuous person will not play; she
may determine that her right to play, in conjunction with the benefit she would gain from
the practice (itself a distinct V-reason that recommends playing), outweighs the students’
annoyance. But I do want to suggest that the virtuous agent would at least consider the
97 It does seem appropriate to ask the students if they would mind my playing, but for my purposes this needn’t
sink the example. If I ask the students if they mind, and they reply, “We do mind, but it’s a public place and we
can’t stop you”, then I find myself in essentially the same bind that I grapple with above.
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students’ annoyance, and that it would have some negative pull in her deliberation. The
student’s annoyance is thus a discouraging V-reason in this case.
If this is right, then the case of the incompetent pianist can also help to explain what
it means to respond defiantly to a discouraging V-reason. Whether Cassandra’s playing is
blameworthy or not, in this case, depends on her reason for doing so. She could take the
students’ annoyance into account and sit down to play anyway. In this case, she is
responsive to their annoyance, but might escape blame if she is also responsive to the
countervailing reasons constituted by her own rights. Here she does regret the students’
annoyance, even if it is not enough to prevent her from playing. But there are at least two
other possibilities to consider here. On the one hand, she might sit down and play without
any consideration for the students whatsoever, and thus fail to respond to a V-reason. She
may well be blameworthy in this instance. On the other hand, she might do something
much worse. She might sit down and play because it will annoy the students. Here the very
reason that the virtuous agent counts against playing becomes Cassandra’s reason for
playing. In this case her response to the discouraging V-reason constituted by the students’
annoyance is one of active opposition, or defiance. Just as there may be V-reasons for
performing an action in the absence of D-reasons (as in cases of supererogation), there may
be V-reasons against performing an act that is not prohibited by D-reasons. If she responds
defiantly to these reasons, then her act is blameworthy, but not forbidden. Permissive illdoing thus obtains, and the PRMR* places us in a position to complete a hybrid account of
moral offence.
It can also allow us to finally make sense of Chisholm’s distinction between trifling
and villainous offences. To see this, consider again the Merciless Shopper. If, as I assume, it
is morally optional for me to refuse the stranger’s request to go first, then there is neither a
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D-reason for or against granting it. But a virtuous agent will presumably be concerned with
more than just D-reasons in a case like this. A virtuous agent will notice, and respond to, the
fact that the stranger is tired. This is not to say that refusing her request is necessarily
blameworthy. I might, after all, be exhausted myself, and fail to notice or properly interpret
the exhaustion on the stranger’s face. In this case, I am not responsive to the V-reason for
granting the request, but nor am I acting on anything like a villainous motive. We might
even say that in this case the V-reason constituted by the stranger’s tiredness is defeated by
my own tiredness. But suppose that I am not particularly tired, that I do realize that the
stranger is tired, and for that reason refuse to let her go first. In this case, I am motivated by a
desire to further delay a tired stranger. My decision, let us suppose, is in no way motivated
by my own desire to leave the grocery store sooner rather than later. Rather, I take this as an
opportunity to enjoy some human suffering scot-free of moral obligations to the contrary,
and now find myself hoping that the clerk will take as long as possible to check out my items
so that I may savor the increasing desperation of the hapless stranger . This desperation is a
very real feature of the state of affairs resulting from my refusing her request, and while it
has no bearing on my moral obligations, it does seem to constitute a strong V-reason against
refusing. If my refusal stems from this reason, then I am blameworthy for refusing. The
greater my satisfaction in the stranger’s suffering, the more blameworthy I am from the
point of view of the virtuous agent. Greater satisfaction, after all, reveals a deeper rift
between my interests and what is recommended by morality. In this way, offences can range
from trifling (mildly blameworthy) to villainous (significantly blameworthy).
One might, of course, simply reject the PRMR (or my modified version of it), and
maintain that moral blame does not require responsiveness to de re moral reasons, virtuebased or otherwise. To this I would like to call attention to two other recent accounts of
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moral blame that accommodate moral offences even more readily than the PRMR*. The
first comes by way of T.M. Scanlon, who in his Moral Dimensions defines blame as follows:
[T]o claim that a person is blameworthy for an action is to claim that the action shows something about
the agent’s attitudes toward others that impairs the relations that others can have with him or her.
(128)98
This account shifts focus away from the de re wrong-making reasons for performing an act,
and instead grounds blame in the effects that our actions have on interpersonal relationships.
Unlike the PRMR, Scanlon’s account of blame requires no modification to accommodate
permissive ill-doings. Scanlon himself explicitly allows for this possibility:
When someone is blameworthy, it is generally for doing something that was wrong. But wrongness
and blame can come apart. The blameworthiness of an action depends, in ways that wrongness
generally does not, on the reasons for which a person acted and the conditions under which he or she
did so….It can also make sense to blame a person even when what he did was not impermissible. For
example, it can be appropriate to blame a person who has done what was in fact the right thing if he
or she did it for an extremely bad reason. (125)
What counts as “an extremely bad reason” may differ between Scanlon’s account and the
PRMR*. We might find, for example, that an action does not interfere with my interpersonal
98 While a thorough defense of Scanlon’s account exceeds my aims here, I should address at least one objection
that may immediately arise against it. Relationships can be compromised by virtue, it may be argued, just as
they can by vice. Susan Wolf raises this point in her “Moral Saints”, but it is captured particularly well in
George Orwell’s remarks on Gandhi:
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to
commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes
friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by
life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals. No doubt
alcohol, tobacco and so forth are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that
human beings must avoid. (Orwell, 467)
But I believe that Scanlon avoids this problem by restricting blameworthiness to those attitudes that
compromise “the default moral relationship.” (141) Moral relationships are characterized by “the kind of
mutual concern that, ideally, we all have toward other rational beings.” (140) Scanlon grants that more specific
relationships, such as friendship, involve quite a bit more than this abstract kind of concern, but argues that the
moral relationship is a necessary condition for these other kinds of relationships.
Still, problems may remain. Scanlon’s view seems implausible if it amounts to the idea that moral blame
attaches to anything impairing human relationships simpliciter, since many relationships are in fact strengthened
by immoral behavior. I might strengthen my relationship with my wife, for example, by unjustly placing her
spontaneous desire to go to a movie ahead of a promise I have made to meet with a student. Here I leave off
from my attempts to defend him, and will content myself to have shown that his account of blame, if it can be
defended, is compatible with the possibility of moral offence.
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relationships, but is still not the sort of thing that a perfectly virtuous agent would do. But
for my purposes, the differences between the Scanlon account of blame and the PRMR* are
less important than the fundamental similarity. Both reject the “objective view” of moral
blame, and allow for the possibility of actions that are not wrong from the deontic
perspective, but nevertheless blameworthy from the aretaic perspective.
A third alternative remains available in the form of Michael Zimmerman’s work on
moral ignorance. In opposition to Arpaly, Zimmerman argues that it is not de re rightmaking reasons that confer praise, but rather the agent’s beliefs about what is morally
required. Where Arpaly finds Huckleberry Finn to be praiseworthy for doing the right thing
against his own best judgment, Zimmerman finds Huckleberry blameworthy, on the grounds
that “acting freely in the belief that one is doing wrong is sufficient for being culpable for
one’s behavior (but not sufficient for actually doing wrong).” (LWU 198) As discussed in
the previous chapter, Gregory Mellema has used Zimmerman’s account of culpability to
identify an alternate route to moral offence. If I can be culpable for an action that is not in
fact wrong, then permissive ill-doing again become possible.
I call attention to the work of Scanlon and Zimmerman only to show that there are
ways of accommodating moral offence even if one rejects the PRMR*. Each of the three
accounts of blame amounts to rejecting the “objective view”, yielding the kind of blame that
a hybrid account of offence needs. This is not to say, however, that it does not matter which
of the three accounts of blame we choose. We may, after all, end up including or excluding
specific cases from the category of offence depending on which theory of blame we adopt.
In the previous chapter I introduced the case of Orin the Agitator, who inadvertently rescues
Adeline’s favorite doll from destruction in an attempt to make her cry. In the original
version of the example, Orin’s belief that moving the doll will distress his sister turns out to
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be mistaken—she turns out to be thrilled that her doll has been rescued from the jaws of the
family dog. Zimmerman will find Orin’s action blameworthy, since he did what he believed
to be the wrong thing. The PRMR* may not allow us to call this action blameworthy,
however, as on this account it is the de re moral reasons that matter. And so Zimmerman
may find Orin blameworthy where Arpaly will not. There is still plenty of room for the two
views to agree on specific cases, however. For now imagine that Orin’s prediction is correct,
and that he simultaneously rescues the doll from the family dog and succeeds in making his
sister cry. This is not implausible if we imagine that Adeline is a very young child, and
unable to understand that the result would have been much worse if Orin had left the doll in
its original location. The state of affairs resulting from Orin’s action is surely better than the
one resulting from his leaving the doll alone, and so he has done the “right thing” from the
perspective of D-reasons. He is of course in no way motivated by a desire to save the doll,
and so cannot be said to be responsive to any de re D-reasons in this case. If these were the
only morally relevant reasons, as might be held by Arpaly’s original version of the PRMR,
then we would simply dismiss this as an act that is obligatory, but not praiseworthy. On this
interpretation, the moral worth of Orin’s action is neutral. The PRMR*, however, can find
Orin blameworthy, if we grant that a truly virtuous person would, ceteris paribus, avoid
knowingly making his sister cry. It is of course true in this case that ceteris is not paribus, as I
assume that saving the doll constitutes an overriding D-reason to move it. But this reason in
no way motivates Orin. Rather, he is motivated entirely by a feature of the situation that, in
the absence of the threat posed by the family dog, constitutes a reason not to move the doll.
It is a discouraging reason from the perspective of the virtuous agent. Even if we think that
a virtuous person will also move the doll, we must grant that she not be moved to do so by
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the reason that motivates Orin. On the contrary, she will find Adeline’s sadness to be a
lamentable, if unavoidable, consequence of doing the right thing.
While I have done nothing to show that the PRMR* is superior to the other two
accounts, I will rely on it as I now proceed to examine specific potential cases of offence. If
it turns out that the cases I discuss can be equally well vindicated by the views of
Zimmerman or Scanlon, so much the better for my project. I hope only to have shown that
a hybrid account of offence is plausible, and can make sense of villainous offences as well as
trifling ones. On the definition that I have suggested, an act constitutes an offence just in
case it is simultaneously morally permissible (i.e. not forbidden) and blameworthy (i.e.
performed in defiance of reasons that discourage the act from the point of view of the
virtuous agent). But even if it is now agreed that moral offence is a coherent concept, a final
task awaits. I want the category of offence to be more than internally coherent—I want to
show that it is a useful concept, and that both trifling/trivial and villainous/interesting cases
are common.
3.5 Revisiting Previous Examples of Offence
In this section I will re-examine several purported examples of offence that have
been discussed so far. I have two aims here. First, I will address the objection that the
concept of offence is not needed to handle the kinds of cases that fall under its scope. Here
I will show that alternative explanations, such as those involving appeals to imperfect duties,
are much less compelling than critics of offence might have us believe. Next, I will address a
problem that previous authors have failed to recognize in their own examples. As I will
argue, many of the previous examples remain unpersuasive because they omit details about
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the motivational structure of their agents. Seeing this will allow me to show that further
examples of both trifling and villainous offence are not at all difficult to find.
For any given example of offence, it must be shown that the example involves an act
that is morally permissible (let us call this condition P), and an act that is morally
blameworthy (let us call this condition B). Each of these two components faces potential
challenges in our previous examples. Recall, for example, the case of Perry Zoso, who
lingers at his restaurant table after completing his meal, even though other hungry customers
are waiting for a table.99 Chisholm and Sosa contend that Perry (P) does nothing wrong,
because he has a right to remain at his table, but (B) ought not to linger at the table, and is
thus guilty of a moral offence. (P) can be attacked in at least two ways. First, we might
think that the example conflates moral rights with non-moral rights. David Heyd, for
example, argues that Perry does have a moral duty—if a somewhat trivial one—to vacate the
table for other customers. The only right that Perry has to linger, on this interpretation, is a
legal right. He has no relevant moral right to his table, and thus no guarantee that his
lingering is morally permissible. A second threat to (P) comes from critics like Hallie Rose
Liberto, who contend that actions can be forbidden even if they fall under the protection of
moral rights. Several examples that have been considered so far, including Driver’s Seat
Splitter case, encounter this difficulty. Liberto employs Jeremy Waldron’s work on “rights to
do wrong” to argue that moral rights can be abused in ways that violate deontic
requirements. Cases of abused rights, such as those offered by Driver, Mellema, and
Trianosky, thus fail to constitute persuasive instances of offence.
These objections demand some sort of response, since Perry’s lingering cannot
constitute an offence if it is morally forbidden. I have addressed each of the objections
99
This example is originally proposed by Chisholm and Sosa (326).
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previously, but would like to reiterate the key points here. Regarding Liberto’s objection, I
have argued that the “wrong” that Waldron identifies in cases of abused rights is better
understood in terms of moral worth than moral obligation. Waldron’s view hinges on the
idea that “actions may also be morally impermissible or more generally subject to moral
criticism for other and more subtle reasons” than the violation of duty, and “may be seen as
wrong because they are vicious” (24-25). While Waldron never commits himself to the view
of aretaic blame that I have advanced in this chapter, I do think that his remarks are clearly
compatible with my own. I might agree that the Seat Splitter has a moral right to remain in
her seat, but that her decision is “more generally subject to moral criticism” because it is
“vicious”. In this way, I can agree that the Seat Splitter abuses her right without giving up
on assessing it as an offence. The Seat Splitter’s behavior is indeed wrong, but not
forbidden.
To address Heyd’s objection, I suggest that the legitimacy of the example turns on
the specific moral requirements of one’s preferred moral theory. Suppose that my preferred
moral theory requires me to bring about the maximal amount of happiness that I can in any
situation. It seems entirely likely that my lingering at the table while others are waiting fails
to maximize the amount of happiness in the world, and perhaps likelier still that the
suffering I bring about by denying two lovers their last moments together will outweigh any
happiness I gain by keeping my train seat. In each of these cases, then, my moral theory
forbids my actions. Heyd is correct, then, to assert that these kinds of cases fail to meet
condition (P). But I am not at all sure that his objection will be as readily compatible with
other moral theories. If I reject maximizing consequentialism, then the fact that Perry could
bring about more happiness by vacating his table leaves open the question of whether he is
morally required to do so. Perry may well have a moral right to linger at his table, depending
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on the moral theory I prefer. If this is right, then Heyd’s objection shows only that different
cases will be evaluated differently depending on one’s moral theory. But this is hardly
surprising, as it seems to be true of all categories of moral evaluation. Thought experiments
like Philippa Foot’s classic “trolley problem” typically yield different responses from
different moral theories. Where an act utilitarian might argue that the lever operator is
morally required to switch tracks, a Kantian might argue that it would be forbidden to do so.
These responses reveal interesting differences in approaches to moral reasoning, but they
hardly seem to show there is no such thing as a morally forbidden act.100 This does not, of
course, shown that Perry or the Seat Splitter should indeed be found guilty of an offence. I
maintain, however, that they can be found guilty of an offence, depending on specific deontic
requirements that one brings to bear on cases in applied moral reasoning.
Condition (B) faces a different sort of challenge, as critics might look for alternative
explanations for the relevant “ill-doing” that do not invoke moral blame. One might, for
example, maintain that the Merciless Shopper’s refusal to give up his place in line is not an
instance of offence, but rather a failure to fulfill an imperfect duty. We have an obligation,
the story might go, to let others go ahead of us some of the time. Since the imperfect duty to
yield to others does not specify when we must yield, it would be incorrect to say that the
Merciless Shopper has violated an obligation. She has certainly not fulfilled the obligation in
this particular instance, but that’s not the same as a violation. There is, moreover, nothing
intrinsically blameworthy about failing to fulfill an imperfect duty on a particular occasion.
The Merciless Shopper’s behavior, then, is not a moral offence—it is instead an ordinary
instance of an agent performing a permissible, appraisably neutral act. If there is any
100 My remarks here might, of course, be challenged by the view that all plausible moral theories ultimately
converge on identical deontic judgments. For more on this view than I could possibly fathom including here,
see Parfit (2011).
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intuitive disapproval here, it has nothing to do with the moral worth of his behavior, but
rather to do with the fact that we have misunderstood the nature of imperfect duties.
This objection can be addressed in two ways. First, we could simply note that some
cases of offense involve the fulfillment of duties. If Orin brings about the best state of affairs
by moving Adeline’s doll, then he cannot accused of violating a duty, perfect or imperfect.
But if he is motivated to do this by the fact that it will make his sister cry, then he is still
subject to blame from the perspective of V-reasons. Secondly, we might argue that the
concept of imperfect duties is itself incoherent. Here we might turn to the work of Daniel
Statman, who argues that there is ultimately no plausible distinction to be drawn between the
moral reasons constituted by perfect duties and the ones constituted by imperfect duties.
Statman attributes the following “disjunctive” definition of imperfect duties to David Heyd:
(D1a)
There exists an imperfect duty to perform an act-type A iff there is a duty to do either (act-t
oken) A1 or A2…, or An. (Statman 211)
The idea, roughly, is that imperfect duties can be fulfilled in a variety of ways, where perfect
duties can only be fulfilled in one specific way. But this definition fails to distinguish
imperfect duties from perfect ones, Statman argues, because many supposedly “perfect”
duties are disjunctive in the same way. Suppose that I borrow five dollars from my brother.
I now have a duty to repay him five dollars. This is typically understood as a perfect duty.
But there are of course many ways that I could repay the debt. I could pay him this morning
or this evening, or perhaps tomorrow. I might give him a five dollar bill, or five ones, or a
slew of quarters. I might hand him the money with my left hand or my right, with my shoes
tied or untied, and so on.101 We are thus left to accept either that there are no perfect duties
(since there will seemingly always be some latitude available for fulfilling any given duty) or
101 It is worth noting that Chisholm, in his initial work on moral offence, offers the exact same objection
against this definition of imperfect duties (“S&O” 4). Statman does not cite Chisholm in his own discussion of
(D1a).
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that (D1a) fails to distinguish between perfect and imperfect duties. There are of course
other ways of drawing the perfect/imperfect distinction, and for each Statman identifies a
problem.
Instead of explaining categories like supererogation (and, presumably, offence) in
terms of imperfect duties, Statman suggests that we should look for an explanation that
appeals to a single concept of moral duty. At first glance, this might seem to preclude the
possibility of supererogation. After all, if the duty to give to charity is no more “imperfect”
than the duty repay a specific loan amount, then it would seem to be difficult to find the
optional status that we typically associate with supererogatory acts. Statman’s reply to this
problem brings his view into alignment with the distinction between deontic and aretaic
evaluation that underlies my own account of offence:
If all acts of helping people are obligatory, doesn’t this remove altogether the category of
supererogation? Well, yes and no. Yes, if we conceive supererogation as primarily a feature of acts.
No, if we conceive of it as primarily a feature of persons… [A]s Marcia Baron nicely argues (1987, pp.
228 ff.), in most cases of supererogatory behavior the agent does not do anything that is very special
or admirable by itself. What is impressive in her behavior is the seriousness with which she takes her
duties, her devotion to humanity, and her willingness to keep marching on the moral track in
circumstances where most of us would stop to take a break. (220-221)
The difference between obligatory acts and supererogatory ones, on this account, is not
explained by appeal to the act itself. Rather, Statman endorses what I have called a hybrid
account of supererogation, where components of both deontic and aretaic evaluation are
required to make sense of supererogatory acts. In a similar manner, I favor a description of
permissive ill-doing that turns on features of the agent’s concern for morality, rather than
failures to perform imperfect duties.
To this end, we cannot properly evaluate cases like the ones offered by Chisholm
and Sosa without obtaining details that they omit. Even if we suppose that Perry has a
moral right to his table, this is only enough to show that his behavior meets condition (P).
Where Chisholm and Sosa ask us to find an offence in “taking too long in the restaurant
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when others are known to be waiting” (326), I maintain that we would need to know much
more about why the agent takes too long before evaluating the case with respect to condition
(B). If Perry lingers at the table because he is deeply distracted by recent news that his wife
intends to leave him, then it does not seem appropriate to find him guilty of an offence.
Here, his failure to respond to the fact that others want the table does not reveal a lack of
moral concern. If, however, he lingers because he enjoys interfering with the waiting
customers’ dinner plans, then he is responsive to a feature of the situation that would count
against lingering from the perspective of V-reasons. Whether he is blameworthy for
lingering, then, turns on considerations about the agent that are absent from the original
description of the case. This observation goes a long way, I think, toward explaining why
critics have not accepted many examples offered by previous authors. In most cases,
previous authors have included the details needed to establish that their cases are
“permissive”, but have left out some of the details needed to establish that their cases
constitute “ill-doing”.
Driver’s “Multiple Abortions” example further illustrates this point, while calling
attention to another important consideration in the evaluation of prospective cases of
offence. Driver asks us to consider “abortions by a single agent which exceed a certain
vague number,” where “a woman who has had one or two abortions has not had multiple
abortions, but a woman who has had seven or eight has.” (“Sub” 288) She contends that we
will find something objectionable about a particular woman’s ninth or tenth abortion, even if
we maintain that women have unqualified moral rights to abortion under all circumstances.
This feeling cannot be explained in terms of moral obligations if all abortions are protected
by moral rights. We should conclude, then, that multiple abortions are suberogatory. If
there is any blame that is applicable, it must be explained in terms of the agent’s reasons for
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procuring the tenth abortion. Driver suggests one such reason by calling attention to
abortions that are “wantonly wasteful”, where the agent fails to recognize that “the fact that
the abortion has to be performed at all is regrettable.” (293). One might question, as Liberto
does (401), whether there is anything intrinsically regrettable about killing a fetus. But this
type of worry can be sidestepped easily by noting that abortions could also be motivated by
the desire to harm others whose personhood is uncontroversial. Here we might imagine a
situation in which a woman procures her tenth abortion simply because she wants to spite
her husband, who very much wants a child. The husband’s desire for a child certainly does
not constitute an overriding D-reason obligating the woman to carry the fetus to term, but
surely a virtuous person would find something lamentable about frustrating his desires.
Driver’s central point stands; if the abortion is procured in response to reasons that count
against the abortion from the perspective of V-reasons, then the abortion is blameworthy.
But this raises a parallel point that I do not think Driver emphasizes sufficiently: If a
woman is responsive to reasons that do not count against the abortion from the perspective
of virtue, then she is not blameworthy. If a woman becomes pregnant as the result of rape
on ten separate occasions, it hardly seems plausible that her tenth refusal to carry the fetus to
term should be any more blameworthy than her first. Driver argues that that “the badness
becomes much more salient when the number of abortions increases” (292), where badness
is explained in terms of frivolity. My point is that cases of multiple abortions do not
necessarily make frivolity salient. They may make frivolity seem likelier, but this is not the
same thing. Without identifying the agent’s actual reasons for procuring a tenth abortion, we
cannot properly conclude that the tenth abortion is blameworthy. And just as a tenth
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abortion can be motivated by frivolity, so can a first. It is the frivolity, rather than the
number, that is relevant when evaluating abortions as candidates for moral offence.102
This idea is endorsed, if implicitly, by some remarks in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s
seminal “A Defense of Abortion”.103 Thomson argues that we cannot deduce our moral
rights from what we morally ought to do. Instead, there are some things that we ought not
to do, where the “ought” should not be understood in terms of what is morally required or
forbidden. To support his, she offers several examples where a refusal to help others
becomes more “callous”, but not more forbidden, as the help becomes easier to provide. In
one example, we are asked to imagine a person whose life can only be saved by the actor
Henry Fonda giving “the touch of his cool hand on my fevered brow” (Thomson 179). It
would seem that the person has no right to Fonda’s touch, as it would intuitively be
inappropriate to require Fonda to fly across the country to deliver it. But if Fonda is in the
room, and need only walk a few short steps to deliver his saving touch, “[t]hen surely he
ought to do it, it would be indecent to refuse.” (179) Rather than adopting the “shocking
idea that anyone’s rights should fade away and disappear as it gets harder and harder to
accord them to him”, Thomson explains the moral disapproval that we feel in the case
where Fonda is in the room with the sick patient in terms of what is “self-centered, callous,
indecent, but not unjust.” (179)
Thomson never discusses the case in terms of anything quite like moral offence, and
one might well object that the her distinction between justice and decency is properly
understood as something other than the distinction between permissible and impermissible
I hope this point will help to clarify my earlier remarks on Haji’s views. I think it is a mistake to treat the
“special disvalue” of moral offences as a simple matter of vagueness. But this isn’t to say that the intuition that
we should blame a 15-minute table-lingerer more than we would a 1-minute table-lingerer is entirely
groundless. We might simply say that the longer Perry lingers at his table, the likelier it seems that he has a
callous motivational structure.
102
103
I thank Derek Bowman for pointing this out to me.
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wrongdoing. We might say that her “indecency” simply involves morally forbidden actions
that correspond to no relevant moral rights. On this interpretation, I have no right to the
cool touch of Henry Fonda’s hand on my brow, but he may nevertheless have duty give it to
me.104 I am not sure, however, that this interpretation is consistent with certain features of
Thomson’s original text. First, consider the following:
So my own view is that…even supposing a case in which a woman pregnant due to rape ought to
allow the unborn person to use her body for the hour he needs, we should conclude that he has a
right to do so; we should say that she is self-centered, callous, indecent, but not unjust, if she refuses.
The complaints are no less grave; they are just different. (179)
Thomson is clearly trying to distinguish between the moral criticism associated with injustice
and some other type that is “no less grave”, but nevertheless “different”. We could say that
she is drawing a distinction between two types of forbidden acts, but I do not think her
subsequent remarks support this:
However, there is no need to insist on this point. If anyone does wish to deduce “he has a right” from “you
ought,” then all the same he must surely grant that there are cases in which it is not morally required of you that you
allow that violinist to use your kidneys, and in which he does not have a right to use them, and in which you do not do
him an injustice if you refuse. And so also for mother and unborn child. Except in such cases as the
unborn person has a right to demand it—and we were leaving open the possibility that there may be
such cases—nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, or all other interests and
concerns, of all other duties and commitments, for nine years, or even for nine months, in order to
keep another person alive. (179, italics added)
Here Thomson suggests that the kind of “ought” relevant to considerations of justice is the
same “ought” that corresponds to moral requirement. If Fonda’s refusal to help me is not
unjust, then it is not morally required. So a behavior that is indecent but not unjust cannot
be described as morally forbidden, since it violates no moral requirement. Indecency is no
less grave than wrongdoing—but it is different.
I thus find a strong parallel between the views of Thomson and Driver. In both
instances, we are told that there is room for moral disapproval in the absence of deontic
wrongdoing. But just as I think that Driver is too quick to assume that multiple abortions
104
I thank Nomy Arpaly for this point.
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are indicative of morally blameworthy motives, I think that Thomson is too quick to assume
that physical proximity is indicative of callousness. If a person denies me his saving touch
from across the room, I might certainly assume that his refusal is likelier to be motivated by
callous self-centeredness than if he denies it from his hotel room across the country. But it
is of course entirely possible that he could deny it from across the room for other, nonblameworthy reasons. To see this, suppose that it is not Henry Fonda’s touch that I need,
but rather that of Howard Hughes, and that Hughes is in the room. Hughes may well find
himself desiring to help me, but prevented from doing so by a paralyzing fear of touching
strangers, or by profound allodynia. Here Hughes is not unresponsive to the fact that he can
help me, and is in no way motivated by features of the situation that would count against
touching me from the perspective of V-reasons.
My point in all of this is simply to suggest that the majority of examples from
previous authors on offence have been long on details about the situation, and short on
details about the agent. Cases of offence, in the way that I have defined the category,
become much more compelling when the agent’s reasons for acting are specified. Is the Seat
Splitter guilty of an offence? It depends entirely on why she stays in her seat. Is a tenth
abortion an instance of suberogation? It depends entirely on why the abortion is procured.
The very same act can either qualify or fail to qualify as an offence depending on the reasons
that motivate it. And here I think we can locate the central focus of disagreement for many
of our previous examples. The disagreement stems from conflicting intuitions about the
plausibility of blameworthy motives. A tenth abortion is better suited as an example of
offence than a first only to the extent that we think that blameworthy motives are more
plausible in the former than the latter. To know whether the actions of the Merciless
Shopper, Perry Zoso, Orin the Agitator and the rest are offensive, we need the details of the
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motivational structure behind them. Without those details, the success of the examples will
turn on how plausible we find it that they are indeed acting in defiance of discouraging Vreasons.
The details will also allow us to more easily motivate cases of villainous offences. If
a tenth abortion is blameworthy when it is frivolous, then it is surely worse if it is both
frivolous and motivated by a spiteful desire to deny one’s partner the children that he or she
desperately wants. In this way, Chisholm is right to insist that offences can be both trivial
and villainous. But we can also now see why his original example of the Informer might be
unconvincing. In the original example, A knows concerning B, whom A dislikes, that the
loss of B’s employment would result in great tragedy for B and his family; that there is
another man, C, who could do B’s work but no more satisfactorily than B does it; and that
B’s employer, even if he knew the foregoing, would replace B by C if he thought that C were
available. One might plausibly argue that, if A were deliberately to bring the availability of C
to the attention of B’s employer, his act would be permissible but at the same time heinous
and inhuman. (“S&O” 5)
To know whether it is morally blameworthy to tell the employer about C’s
availability, we need information that Chisholm omits. Namely, why would A deliberately call
C’s availability to the employer’s attention? Is it simply because he dislikes B, and wishes him
ill? Is it partially because he dislikes B, but partially because C is a former wartime buddy
who once saved A’s life, and who A would now like to help? Or does A’s dislike for B play
no role in hid decision, such that he feels badly about B losing the job despite disliking B,
but feels compelled to do what he can to help C? The first explanation seems villainous, the
second less so, and the third, perhaps, not blameworthy at all. If we want compelling
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examples of offence, villainous or otherwise, we must not forget the old saw: The devil is
indeed in the details.
3.6 A Final Case Study: Offence in Entertainment
If offence is a legitimate category of moral evaluation, then it can play a role in
discussing a wide variety of moral phenomena that are hard to discuss in terms of obligation
alone. Christopher Heath Wellman offers an interesting example of how the category might
be applied, by arguing that the concept of suberogation better explains the moral disapproval
that arises in cases of ingratitude than alternative moral concepts can.105 In this last section I
would like to suggest an application for the category of offence that has not, as far as I am
aware, been discussed by previous authors. Namely, I would like to discuss offences
involving entertainment, where agents amuse themselves with both actual and fictional evils.
If I am correct in my assessment of these cases, then offence will turn out to be a much
more prevalent phenomenon than previous authors have realized.
Some forms of consumer entertainment are easily described as morally forbidden.
These include instances where the support of the consumer is partly causally responsible for
actual moral evils. Patronizing dogfights, for example, contributes to the suffering of dogs
by providing both a reward and incentive to those who would put them in the ring. I may
not be able to prevent all dogfighting by refusing to patronize a particular dogfight, but
buying a ticket does seem to contribute to the likelihood that additional dogfights will
happen in the future. We might find that the consumption of child pornography is morally
forbidden in a similar manner. By purchasing child pornography, an agent helps to
105
See Wellman (1999).
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perpetuate a market that harms actual children. In these forms of entertainment, the
audience is not immune from moral criticism.
There are other instances where criticism seems warranted, but where this criticism is
more difficult to explain in terms of moral obligation. These include cases where an agent is
entertained by something morally disturbing, but where the agent is in no way a contributor
to the evil that she enjoys. To illustrate this, consider Felicia Nimue Ackerman’s short story
“Entertain the Thought”, in which Amy discovers that her fiancé Roger has been secretly
travelling to Missouri to watch executions. Amy’s disgust might be thought to come from
the fact that Roger has lied about his activities. This would not be terribly difficult to
explain, as we could simply say that lying to one’s fianceé is morally forbidden. Roger’s lying
is thus blameworthy, and so it would make perfect sense for Amy to hold it against him. But
she does not hold it against him, saying that “it’s a point in his favor that he’s ashamed
enough to lie about it.” (12) Amy is upset about the fact that Roger has chosen to attend the
executions. The concern here is not about the lie, but about the choice itself. When she
asks for advice, her friend Sara offers a suggestion that is very much in keeping with my
remarks from the previous section: “I’d ask him about it and see if he had a good
explanation.” (12) As I interpret it, Sara is telling Amy to withhold judgment about Roger’s
activities until she understands the reasons behind them. He might, however unlikely,
simply be watching the executions as a means to somehow further his own research of
violence in the work of Thomas Malory. But when Amy confronts Roger, it quickly
becomes apparent that research plays little role in his ongoing desire to attend the
executions. Instead, he watches them because he likes them:
At first my mind kept filling up with things like the smallness of the chamber and the whiteness of the
sheet—the man was stretched out on a gurney with a sheet over everything but his head. But…but
then I started thinking, I can get up and walk away but he can’t, and ten minutes from now, he’ll be
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dead and I won’t; and he deserves to die and I don’t; and I felt safe and innocent and alive and free;
and oh, God, yes, Amy, I liked it, I liked it, it gave me a thrill. (14)
This is hardly the “good explanation” that Amy hopes for, and she goes on to characterize
his desire to watch the executions a “vice” (14). The story is ultimately ambiguous about the
effect that Roger’s activities have on their relationship, but a brief exchange between he and
Amy reveal why I am interested in the case:
“My enjoying executions is just a matter of my thoughts. I’m not hurting the prisoner.
Outside observers are a safeguard against torture. That’s part of why they have them.”
“But it’s not why you go.”
“No. It’s not.”
I opened my eyes but kept my gaze on my hands. “Of course it matters what kind of
thoughts you have.” (14)
Here, Roger attempts to justify his indulgence, but appeals only to reasons that protect it
from deontic criticism. The facts that his behavior causes no further harm to the prisoner,
that his refraining from watching would not prevent any harm to the prisoner, and that his
watching may constitute a safeguard against potential abuse are all morally relevant. But they
are not relevant to Amy’s criticism. Even if these are facts of the case that make it morally
permissible, Amy is upset because Roger is not responsive to these reasons. Instead, his
thoughts—which do indeed matter—are occupied by the thrill he derives from watching
convicted murderers die. If Roger’s behavior is blameworthy—and the story certainly leaves
the reader feeling that it is—then we must explain the blame in non-deontic terms. This, I
submit, brings the example under the umbrella of moral offence.
If this is correct, then an agent may commit an offence by entertaining himself with
the suffering of others, even where he is no position to influence the content of what he is
watching. This result is significant, I think, because it describes an increasingly prevalent
form of popular entertainment. While relatively few people will fly to Missouri to watch an
execution, millions of people watch the suffering of actual people on “reality television”
programs on a daily basis. Here I do not at all wish to suggest that watching reality TV is
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always offensive. There are simply too many different reasons that people might have for
tuning in. But I do wish to suggest that some of these reasons—such as the fact that people
are suffering on camera—are good candidates for reasons that would be discouraged from
the perspective of V-reasons. A virtuous agent may well find herself inclined to watch a
program in which “Real Housewives” scream at, embarrass, and otherwise torment one
another. But I do not think that she will be motivated to do so by the torment itself. On
the contrary, the torment must be considered a lamentable feature of the programming from
the perspective of V-reasons.
One might object that I have too quickly dismissed the fact that television viewers,
like Roger, are in no position to causally influence the suffering that entertains them. To
address this objection, I will turn to Allan Hazlett, who in the course of addressing a
particular objection to David Lewis’ modal realism has recently argued that we have reasons
to be concerned with evils that occur in possible worlds. This position encounters an
intuitive problem when one notes that (at least on Lewis’ view) the events of possible worlds
are in no way affected by the events of the actual world. The worry is roughly something
like this: If we can do nothing whatsoever to prevent possible evils, then there is no sense in
worrying or otherwise responding to them. Hazlett attempts to defend Lewis against this
sort of objection by arguing that “there is conduct relevant to evils that is not aimed at
stopping evils” (193), and that there are indeed morally appropriate (and inappropriate)
responses to evils that we cannot prevent. If this is true, then the fact that we cannot
prevent possible evils is insufficient to show that we have no reason to care about them. If
Hazlett is right about this, then the fact that Roger cannot prevent executions is not enough
to guarantee that he is immune from moral criticism when he is entertained by them.
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To illustrate “behaviours that are ethically good regardless of their causal influence
on the evils they are, in some sense, directed at” (194), Hazlett first asks us to consider cases
of deathbed repentance. He asks us to imagine Kara, who on her deathbed “denounces a
tragic crime that she had previously remained aloof towards, despite its salience.” (193)
Hazlett suggests that Kara is morally better for denouncing the crime than an agent who fails
to denounce it. If this is correct, then we cannot explain the moral supereority of repentance
over non-repentance in terms of its prevention of actual evils. With respect to preventing
evils, the effects of repentance are identical with those of its omission.106 But Hazlett
maintains that in repenting, Kara does something that ought to be done. We need not,
moreover, take her repentance as “a sign that [she] will commit fewer crimes in the future.”
(Hazlett 194). If by some stroke of good luck Kara suddenly recovers her physical health,
only to return to her former aloof attitude, we should still consider her (near) deathbed
repentance to be morally good. Explaining the goodness of repentance must therefore not
involve any appeal to the effect that repentance may have on actual evils. Hazlett suggests
that we instead explain the moral value of repentance by appeal to the following principle:
(Denouncing Principle)
If the fact that evil e, occurred, is occurring, or will occur is salient S
ought, ceteris paribus, to denounce e, express moral disgust towards e,
lament that fact that e occurred, is occurring, or will occur, etc. (194)
106 If it is true that we can “consequentialize” any moral theory, then I grant that we might find a difference if
we specify consequences in the right way. Consider the following “genereal recipe” for consequentializing
offered by Jamie Dreier:
Here is how to consequentialize. Suppose a theory has a norm that directs us not to tell lies. We can
build the importance of not lying into the consequences. Unlike a utilitarian, though, I am not
looking for some other consequence of lying that counts against it. The bad consequence is that I have
told a lie. This is certainly a consequence of my lying. The consequentialized version of this
common-sense norm builds the feature that counts against the act into the consequences of the act.
(“In Defense of Consequentializing” 98-99)
We might, for example, say that the consequences of repenting include the fact that repentance as occurred. If
we take it to be a “common-sense norm” that I have a moral obligation to repent for past evils, then it is false
to suggest that repentance fails to have a morally significant effect on the actual world. I will not argue against
this possibility, but will point out that at least some moral theories will leave repentance morally optional.
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The Denouncing Principle (DP) does not require us to actively lament all evils at all times.
Instead, the idea is simply that we should expect “moral people to express moral disgust
when morally repugnant facts are salient” (Hazlett 194). When Kara considers a tragic crime
on her deathbed, an evil is salient. She ought, then, to express an appropriately negative
attitude. In this case, the expression takes the form of repentance.
While I think that it is correct to say that we ought to denounce salient evils,
Hazlett’s “denouncing principle” becomes much more plausible when interpreted in the
light of moral offence. To see what I mean, consider an agent who remains unrepentant
about his evil deeds, even as he is about to die. It is difficult to imagine a better example of
this sort of agent than Aaron the Moor, a central antagonist in Shakespeare’s Titus
Andronicus. Having been finally caught and sentenced to execution, Aaron is asked whether
he is sorry for any of the many evil deeds he has performed in his life. His response is
chilling:
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,—
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
(V.i.124-144)
177
We are horrified at Aaron’s monologue, but not because it has any impact on the evils that
Aaron has done in the past (he can do nothing to remedy them) or that he will do in the
future (he is apprehended, and facing execution). Rather, his remarks reveal the depth of his
viciousness. And while we might say that he has a negative causal effect on those who hear
his monologue, this is irrelevant to the point. To express these attitudes publicly is one
thing—and arguably a forbidden thing to do. But to express them at all, even in private, is
another. Aaron’s monologue is offensive, and villainously so, regardless of its causal effect
on the actual world. In a similar manner, then, we can maintain that finding amusement in
the suffering of others is subject to moral criticism, even where this amusement has no
causal effect on the world.
If I have not exceeded the plausible application of the category of offence already, I
would like to push just a little further, and suggest that offence can arise even when we
entertain ourselves with fictional evils. Hazlett provokes intuitions to this effect in the
following:
If someone watches a movie in which a brutal dictator crushes his opposition by tortuing and killing
innocent people, she should feel moral disgust. If she does not, something is morally amiss with
her…[W]e are ourselves morally disgusted at those who do not express the proper moral disgust
when fictions make possible evils salient. (196)
Hazlett contends that we have a moral requirement to express disgust in the face of fictional
evil, but I am not committed to anything quite so strong. Hazlett’s requirement stems from
his characterizing fictional evils in terms of harms befalling agents in other possible worlds,
where these agents (per Lewis’ modal realism) are different from us only in that they occupy
a world other than our own. I do not wish to take any stance on the reality of possible
people, and do not think that modal realism is needed to support the point that I am after.
Instead, I am more interested in Hazlett’s admission that, independently of any obligation
178
that we may or may not have to express disgust, “reacting with moral disgust when evils are
described in fictions is a reliable indicator of a virtuous character.” (197)
The point here is not that virtuous agents cannot enjoy fictional suffering, or be
entertained by fictional evils. There are plenty of reasons for enjoying fictions that feature
suffering that are not discouraged by V-reasons. Hazlett points out, for example, that we
need not be disgusted by fictional evils if they allow us to “achieve some kind of positive
aesthetic experience that we couldn’t get at otherwise.” (197) He illustrates this with
examples of violence in Dostoyevski, whose description of murder in Crime and Punishment
allows the reader to feel the thrill of Raskolnikov’s heinous deeds, but also to better
understand the nature of the criminal mind (and, perhaps, of morality itself). For these
reasons, it is quite easy to imagine a virtuous agent enjoying the descriptions of violence in
Crime and Punishment. But for my part, it is much harder to imagine a virtuous agent enjoying
“torture porn”, a relatively recent development in horror cinema that eschews plot in favor
of graphic depictions of death and suffering. It is harder still to imagine a virtuous agent
playing “RapeLay”, a video game released in Japan in 2006, in which the player perpetrates
realistic and violent rape on multiple virtual victims. It seems deeply implausible that there is
any “positive aesthetic experience that we couldn’t get at otherwise” to be found here.
Given the multitude of other opportunities for simulated violence that also feature complex
puzzle solving elements, narrative structure, and the like, a person who plays “RapeLay”
seems likelier to be motivated by a thrill from simulated rape itself than by anything like
aesthetic experience. To the extent that a virtuous agent would respond negatively to
realistic simulations of rape—and I do not think it a stretch to say that he would—enjoying
“RapeLay” thus constitutes an offence.
179
If I am right about this, then the category of offence may help to shed light on
heated public debates about the moral status of disturbing entertainment. One can maintain
that individuals have the right to entertain themselves with fictional evils, without conceding
that there is nothing morally blameworthy about some forms of entertainment. This point
could help shift focus away from (for example) deeply contentious claims about the causal
influence of violent video games on player’s propensity for real-world violence. In an article
that criticizes slippery slope reasoning in public debates about the popular video game Grand
Theft Auto IV, Bill Blake suggests the need for this type of shift in focus:
Fortunately, for the most part we don’t actually give credit to such reasoning. But for the most part
we also don’t like the idea of a 6-year-old child entering into an interactive world of realistic violence
and graphic sexual content. Whether such an objection is sensible in itself is not the point. The point
is that such objections don’t need to be argued on the basis of media-effects claims. Maybe it’s okay
to have ethical ideals about media that are based on principled ideals and not on fungible empirical
evidence of cause-and-effect patterns of experience. (B5)
My point is in many ways similar to Blake’s, as I am less interested in arguing that enjoying
fictional evils is morally reprehensible, and more interested in a way of capturing the
possibilty that it might be. As moral intuitions are confronted with increasingly complicated
cases in entertainment,107 it may turn out that moral offence is precisely the sort of concept
that can help to sort them out.
Perhaps I have not done enough to show that there can be anything morally
blameworthy about playing violent video games, watching slasher films, or enjoying
grotesque comic books. But I do hope to have at least shown that agents are open to moral
criticism to enjoying some forms of entertainment, and that this criticism is best explained in
terms of moral offence. If I am right about this, they David Heyd could not be further from
For another example, see Peter Singer’s (2007) work on the recent phenomenon of virtual child
pornography. This involves materials that realistically depict children in sexual situations, but where no
children are ever actually placed in those situations. Examples might include video games—a game called
Second Life has been notoriously put to this use—or “photoshopped” images that are very difficult to
distinguish from real ones. It is perhaps interesting that even Singer seems to think that we can only object to
these materials by appealing to their likelihood “to increase serious crime in the real world”. If I am right, there
are other interesting ways of criticizing the consumption of these forms of entertainment.
107
180
the truth in his suggestion that offence is rare and trifling. As I see it, offence—including
villainous offence—abounds.
3.7
Concluding Remarks
In the preceding I have argued in favor of a definition of moral offence that avoids
many of the problems confronting its predecessors, and attempted to demonstrate its
applicability to a broader range of cases than has been noticed previously. As should be
clear by now, I firmly reject Hallie Rose Liberto’s suggestion that the category of moral
offence is merely “a method of bypassing” hard work in moral reasoning (402). On the
contrary, I maintain that the category of offence is simply another tool to employ in that
hard work. And it is a tool that works well where others do not. To ignore it, I believe,
compromises our ability to illuminate many of the darker corners of morality.
181
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