Friday, December 28, 2018

Obligation, Prohibition, and Permission

This posts concerns what you morally ought to do, what you morally ought not to do, and what is morally permitted but not obligatory - and how to tell the difference.

The Basic Definitions

An act is morally obligatory when that act is what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would have performed the action in those circumstances.

An act is morally prohibited when the act is one that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would not have performed the action in those circumstances.

An act is morally permitted, but not obligatory, when a person with good desires and lacking bad desires may or may not perform that action in those circumstances, depending on the agent's non-moral (personal) interests and concerns.

Not too long ago, in a posting called "Good Desires, Right Action", I explained what a good desire is. First, in a posting called The Good I explained that for something to be good it must be such as to fulfill the desires in question. Consequently, a good desire is a desire that tends to fulfill other desires. Insofar as we are talking about moral goodness, a good desire tends to fulfill other desires regardless of whose they are. Because they tend to fulfill other desires, these are desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote universally, using their tools of reward (such as praise) and condemnation (such as punishment) to do so.

This means that if I am morally obligated to perform some action, yet I am not sufficiently strongly motivated to perform that action, then this must mean that I lack good desires or that I have a bad desire. This means that I am the kind of person that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn - and perhaps even to punish.

When we say that people generally have reason to condemn, and perhaps to punish, people of that type, this generally implies that I, too, have reasons to condemn, or perhaps to punish, those people. Condemnation and punishment (as well as rewards such as praise) are tools that have the power to alter the mental states of others - creating desires to do that which is praised and rewarded, and aversions to doing that which is condemned and punished.

Let's take lying as an example. People generally have many and strong reasons to promote a universal aversion to lying, fraud, and other forms of deception. Imagine that you are in a position where you could choose to live in one of two communities. In Community1, people habitually lie and deceive each other whenever they think they can gain an advantage or benefit. They have no aversion to lying, and refrain from lying only when they fear it will make their situation worse off. In the alternative community, people have an aversion to lying. Because of this, they will likely tell the truth even when they could get away with a lie. Having an aversion to lying is like having an aversion to eating broccoli or to holding one's hand over a hot flame. People do not do these things even when they would otherwise benefit because the motivation that the aversion provides outweighs these other incentives. I suspect most readers will see the reasons to prefer the honest community over the deceptive community.

In a sense, we face this choice - a choice concerning what type of community we are going to live in - daily. We often have opportunities to use our power to praise and reward honesty and to condemn and punish dishonesty, fraud, and deception. In doing so, we have the power to promote in others a desire to tell the truth for its own sake, and an aversion to performing acts that are basically dishonest, fraudulent, or deceptive. In this way, we get to decide whether we are going to create a community that is more or less honest, or more or less filled with deception and misrepresentation. If we choose the latter - if we choose to not only allow lies and deception to go unpunished - then we are partially responsible for creating a society in which people generally - including, in all probability, ourselves - is worse off than it would have otherwise been.

Somebody who lies shows that he does not have the requisite good desires and/or has a bad desires. Such a person is the type of person that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn. Even the followers of a President to habitually lies have many and strong reasons to condemn, and perhaps to seek the punishment for, such a person whether they realize or admit this or not. Failure to do so will likely have the unfortunate effect of teaching the next generation that lying is a perfectly legitimate activity when it gets you what you want, meaning that the next generation is going to have to live in a society filled with habitual liars, and will suffer accordingly.

"In Those Circumstances"

These definitions all contained the phrase "in those circumstances". This phrase captures the fact that these obligations and prohibitions often come into conflict. Recall that in The Internalist Objection to Desirism, this aversion to lying would be one aversion among many. It will not prevent a good person from lying when more important values are at stake (e.g., protecting the Jews from the Nazi soldiers or the runaway slaves from the slave catchers, for example). In fact, in those circumstances, a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would lie and protect the innocent person. In those circumstances, one has an obligation to lie - though, again, there may be circumstances where lying could be much too costly even for the person with good desires and lacking bad desires.

However, this does not change the fact that in the vast majority of our everyday circumstances - those not involving Nazi soldiers, slave catchers, or ICE agents who are hunting people they have no moral permission to hunt - where a person with good desires and lacking bad desires will tell the truth. We have an obligation to tell the truth in those circumstances. People generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and perhaps to punish, those who do not tell the truth in those circumstances. These include cases such as, for example, if I am trying to sell something to you, or I am trying to convince you to do something (e.g., when I am seeking fully informed consent), or I am providing you with advice on the basis of which you will be making an important decision. These are the types of circumstances where a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would tell the truth, and where each of us has an obligation to tell the truth.

Non-Obligatory Permission

Sometimes, a person with good desires and lacking bad desires still does not have a sufficiently strong reason to choose one option over another. Within broad constraints, there is nothing about having good desires and lacking bad desires in the sense being discussed that dictates what to wear, what to eat, what to read, what profession to enter, where to live, who to marry, or where to shop, when to get out of bed, whether to try to steal second base, or who to invite to the party. This is the realm of non-obligatory permission.

Some moral theories do not allow for a category of non-obligatory permission. Maximizing utilitarian theories (always perform that action that will produce the most utility) and other maximizing consequentialist theories are the most common examples of this. Desirism allows that there are situations in which the motivation provided by good motives (and the lack of motivation provided by the absence of bad motives) provides such a weak motivation in favor of one option over another that other interests and desires can easily override them. It also allows there to be cases that are marginal, where even the person with good desires will struggle to resolve the question of whether he should do is important enough to outweigh what he wants to do instead.

In fact, in some cases, we have reason to want people to come up with different desires. A particularly obvious example is that of choosing a profession. Given a choice, we are far better off in a community where some people like teaching, others like engineering, some like construction, and some enjoy accounting - particularly when compared to a community where everybody wants to do exactly the same job and some are forced into occupations they do not like because they have to be done. We can avoid a great deal of conflict if we encourage diverse preferences for such things as where to live, who to marry, who to invite to the party, and what to study.

Even when some moral considerations are in play - such as the obligation to give to charity - there are reasons to prefer that different people be interested in different charitable activities than that everybody has one and the same concern. Some may be interested in researching cures to cancer or Parkinson's disease, others interested in providing clean water and sanitation, and others concerned with promoting education - because all of these things provide value. Though here, as in other areas (e.g., what profession to take up) morality provides some constraints on the available options. Charitable contributions to terrorists and taking up the occupation of hit-man provide a couple of examples.

Conclusion

This, then, is how desirism handles the moral categories of obligation, prohibition, and non-obligatory permission. They are all defined in terms of what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would do in the circumstances. They identify the acts that identify the agent as somebody that people generally have many and strong reasons to praise and, perhaps, to reward. At the same time, when an agent acts in ways contrary to what a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would act, then people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and perhaps to punish, those people. Yet, there are large portions of our daily lives where we exist in a realm where we can choose from a variety of options. For example, one may decide to satisfy one's obligation to make the world a better place than it would have otherwise been by studying theories of value and presenting one's findings to those who may be interested.

3 comments:

Tikno said...

This post requires deep understanding to understand it.
I think, affection will overcome everything called obligation, prohibition, and permission. That's my simple way.

Alonzo Fyfe said...

Well . . . desirism does not even try to put "obligation" and "prohibition" up against "affection" to see who wins in a battle. Rather, it defines "obligation" and "prohibition" in terms of what people have reason to promote universally as objects of affection (or of desire). Indeed, the virtuous person has a particularly strong affection for doing that which is a right and will not even want to do that which is wrong.

Tikno said...

I think "desirism" is a kind of moral rule or moral lesson by referring to what the people with good desires would perform. This is good, but unfortunately there are many different customs and norm in this world, where in one hemisphere was considered good, but not good in the other hemisphere. Take an example of a habitual way of eating. Some easterners have a habit of chatting with each other while eating, eating using their hands, and sipping soup straight from the bowl, while some westerners consider it was rude.

Desire conflict between two masses can also occur in the political world, eventhough the desire of both are equally have the good intention. Take the example of the United States government shutdown due to the wall. So I think "desirism" maybe more simple as a reference at the micro level, but not as simple as at the macro level.

I think, desirism a way of using human's logical thinking to formulate or logicized the moral value of what the people with good desires would perform. That's not a bad things. I also do that using an analogy in my recent post. Please read it if you have time.