2.1. Property analysis

My aim in this paper will be to make some headway in elucidating the nature of the property of moral wrongness; that is, it shall be an investigation into what moral wrongness fundamentally is.Footnote ²

But what is it to elucidate the nature of a property? Here is how I understand the task.Footnote ³ To elucidate the nature of a property is to explain what it is to instantiate that property in terms of other properties that are, in an intuitive sense, fundamental to the property at issue. Elucidating the nature of a property is tantamount to providing an analysis or reduction of that property.Footnote ⁴ For example, the nature of the property of being a brother is elucidated by explaining that to be a brother is to be a male sibling. In this case, the property of being a brother is analyzed in terms of other properties – the property of being male, and the property of being a sibling – that are fundamental to being a brother. Fundamentality here need not be identified with necessity; rather, it should be understood as something like constitution. Thus, an elucidation of the nature of a property can be thought of as a description of the other properties that comprise that property’s constituent elements, as well as the logical relations in which those properties stand that comprise the structure of the property at issue.Footnote ⁵

2.2. Problems with leading sentimentalist analyses of moral properties

The two most prominent types of sentimentalist accounts of moral properties – dispositionalism and what we can call standard normative sentimentalism – have in common that they seek to analyze moral properties in terms of people’s sentimental responses to objects with moral features. They differ primarily in that dispositionalism, unlike standard normative sentimentalism, does not invoke the sentimental responses that have some particular normative feature, but simply the sentimental responses that some specified group is disposed to have, under specified conditions.Footnote ⁶

When invoked as accounts of the nature of moral wrongness, however, both theories face serious problems; indeed, dispositionalism does not even seem to be extensionally correct. The problem with dispositionalism emerges when we try to specify the group of people who are disposed to have the relevant reactions. Regardless of how we identify such people (e.g. via normalcy or statistical regularity) there is no guarantee that the dispositions of such people will conform to an intuitively acceptable view of morality – for any sentimental reaction the dispositionalist employs in her analysis, such people might be disposed to react in a way that is out of sync with clear moral standards (e.g. feeling guilty for having done something that is obviously morally permissible). For this reason, dispositionalism appears implausible (cf. Koons Reference Koons2003; D’Arms and Jacobson Reference D’Arms, Jacobson and Copp2006).

Standard normative sentimentalism avoids this worry. On such a view, what matters morally is not what the members of some group of people are disposed to feel, but rather what people in general ought to feel, what we are justified in feeling, what one has reason to feel, or some other similarly normative fact about sentimental responses. And it is highly plausible that the normative features of morally relevant reactive sentiments (unlike facts about our dispositions to have such sentiments) will necessarily sync up with clear moral standards (e.g. necessarily, one is justified in feeling guilty if and only if one has done something morally wrong) – thus, it is likely that at least some versions of standard normative sentimentalism will be extensionally correct. For that reason, of the extant, currently prominent realist sentimentalist views, standard normative sentimentalism appears to hold the best prospects for being true.

However, despite extensional correctness, there is a major worry for standard normative sentimentalist theories as elucidations of the nature of moral properties, based on a well-known circularity problem: the nature of any sentiment that would be invoked in such an analysis (such as guilt or indignation) will itself be plausibly elucidated in terms of the moral property in question (e.g. moral wrongness), rendering the account circular (e.g. guilt and indignation are plausibly understood as sentiments that represent or are responsive to one’s own morally wrong acts and the morally wrong acts of others, respectively) (Ross Reference Ross1939, 276–9; D’Arms and Jacobson Reference D’Arms and Jacobson2000a, Reference D’Arms and Jacobson2000b; Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen Reference Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen2004). And elucidations of the nature of a property are supposed to be informative in a way that rules out circularity. Furthermore, and importantly, if we take seriously the notion that elucidations of a property’s nature describe that property’s constituent elements, i.e. its proper parts, then circular elucidations are impossible, since nothing can be a proper part of itself.

The upshot is that the sentimentalist project – if such a project is aimed at elucidating the nature of moral properties – has thus far been unsuccessful. That is not to say that the circularity problem for standard normative sentimentalism constitutes a decisive objection to the theory (although the extensionality problem for dispositionalism does seem to rise to that level); but the problem is sufficiently worrisome to warrant looking to alternative theories, and it is in that context that I present and defend my view here. I shall suggest that there exists a plausible, hitherto unexplored form of normative sentimentalism. Such a theory, I shall argue, not only avoids the circularity problem that plagues standard normative sentimentalism, but has important and unique theoretical virtues of its own. In what follows, I provide arguments in favor of such a view, explicate the view’s details, and respond to objections.

3.1. Theoretical starting points: compassion and respect

I shall begin by distinguishing between two kinds of immoral acts: those that are callous and those that are non-callous yet immoral. Callous acts are immoral acts that cause significant and unjustified harm to another. Callous acts can be extremely callous, e.g. torturing an innocent person for money, or less callous yet callous nonetheless, e.g. robbery. Non-callous yet immoral acts, on the other hand, are simply those immoral acts that are not callous. I shall have more to say about non-callous immoral acts shortly, but first let us consider how we are inclined to react to someone who commits an act that is callous. One way in which we are inclined to react is to wonder how someone could have so little concern for the suffering of another, so little compassion. This reaction does not reflect an empirical problem, but a normative one – we are at a loss in such cases not because we are unable to explain or understand the person’s lack of compassion, but because the person’s lack of compassion is unwarranted. That is, we think that this person ought to have had more compassion (just what sort of ‘ought’ is at issue will be discussed shortly).Footnote ⁷

Now, consider how we are inclined to react to someone who commits an act that is not callous but is nevertheless morally wrong. There may be no particularly helpful descriptive generalization of such acts, but we can list paradigm cases: stealing, cheating, lying, freeloading, promise-breaking, and unjustly distributing burdens and benefits.Footnote ⁸ There is, however, a common element in how we are inclined to react to such behavior: we wonder how someone can have so little concern for the desires and interests of others, so little respect for people? This type of reaction to someone’s lack of respect, like that described above regarding an immoral actor’s lack of compassion, is based on a normative judgment: that those who commit such acts ought to have more respect for the people whose desires and interests are thwarted as a result of their behavior.Footnote ⁹

If what I have said thus far is correct, then it appears, at least in general, that (1) someone who commits an immoral act that is callous ought to have had more compassion, and (2) someone who commits an immoral act that is not callous ought to have had more respect. But how strong a claim should we accept regarding the relationship between morally wrong action and lacking the amount or degree of compassion or respect that one ought to have? There are several possibilities – for example, the relationship could be universal (i.e. applying to all immoral action), or even necessarily universal (i.e. applying to all possible immoral action). But if the remarks I’ve made thus far are on point, then at the very least we should be willing to accept the following relatively weak claim:

The phenomenon described by S1 – the consistent connection between performing a morally wrong act and failing to have the degree of compassion or respect that one ought to have – provides the starting point for the theory of the nature of moral wrongness I shall propose and defend in this paper. As I explain in the following section, a key virtue of that theory will be its ability to felicitously explain why S1 is true.

3.2. The theory

We can begin by noting that S1 describes an interesting connection between two otherwise disparate phenomena: morally wrong action, and lacking the degree of compassion or respect that one ought to have. Such a connection cries out for explanation. Thus, any theory that is able to provide an explanation of the truth of S1 would thereby gain plausibility; and the simpler and more powerful the explanation, the more plausibility that theory would enjoy. The theory I shall propose stands to explain, in an extremely simple and powerful way, why S1 is true. Here is my proposal:

PNS provides a maximally powerful explanation of the truth of S1, since PNS entails S1.Footnote ¹³ Furthermore, PNS is a decidedly simple explanation of the truth of S1, because the truth of PNS itself does not demand explanation. Explanation comes to an end with an elucidation of the nature of a property. There is no informative answer to the question why an elucidation of the nature of a property is what it is – the answer can only be (something like) ‘because that’s what it fundamentally is to be that property.’ Thus, we do not need to invoke any theory beyond PNS itself in order to explain the truth of S1. This kind of explanatory simplicity is an additional and important virtue of PNS; moreover, it is a virtue that is not shared by any previously proposed theory of the nature of moral wrongness. Indeed, PNS seems uniquely poised to explain the phenomenon described by S1, and thus it represents a distinct and plausible prospect for an elucidation of the nature of moral wrongness.

Furthermore, PNS avoids the kind of circularity problem that plagues standard normative sentimentalism. Recall the problem: sentiments that are justified in response to the instantiation of moral properties (e.g. guilt and indignation) are themselves plausibly analyzed in terms of the moral properties in question (e.g. moral wrongness). Standard normative sentimentalist theories analyze moral properties in terms of such sentiments, and thus run a high risk of circularity. PNS, however, does not invoke reactive sentiments – unlike guilt and indignation, for example, compassion and respect are not justified in response to moral wrongs, but rather (simply) dispose people to refrain from morally wrong behavior. And, there is no philosophical pressure to analyze compassion and respect in terms of the wrongness of the behavior they dispose against; rather, the acts ruled out by having a certain degree of those sentiments just are the morally wrong acts – or so I suggest.Footnote ¹⁴

3.3. Ruling out action

PNS relies crucially on the notion that having certain sentiments to certain degrees of strength rules out the performance of certain acts. This requires explication. The relevant notion of ruling out is simply that of being prevented or precluded by the particular motivational elements involved in having the sentiments in question to the relevant degrees. The idea is that having the degree of compassion and respect that one ought to have entails having a certain motivational profile – a set of motivations of particular strengths to perform and to refrain from performing various acts (or act-types) – which is so composed that it precludes the performance of certain acts. That is, due to the particular makeup of the motivational profile in question (and the strength of the motivational states therein), one simply cannot have such a profile while being motivated to the point of action to perform certain acts.

But, one might question, are the motivational aspects of compassion and respect so tightly connected to the degree to which those sentiments are had? In particular, might a person have the proper degree of compassion and respect while not being strongly motivated in the ways characteristic of those sentiments as long as other aspects of those sentiments, such as their purely affective dimensions (i.e. their ‘raw feels’), manifest prominently? That seems to be a coherent view, and perhaps it is not implausible. However, there are reasons to favor a view more friendly to PNS. In particular, it seems that one simply cannot have a high degree of compassion or respect without having strong associated motivations, affective responses notwithstanding. For example, one cannot have a high degree of compassion for someone while lacking significant motivation to help that person avoid suffering, regardless of how strong one’s affective response is to that person’s suffering. Or, for instance, if one is not strongly motivated to share equally the fruits of equal labor with one’s collaborator (all else being equal, e.g. desert and need), then one simply does not have a high degree of respect for that person. These thoughts lend significant credence to the PNS-friendly view: that in order to have a certain degree of compassion or respect, one must be motivated to a certain degree to perform the acts characteristic of having those sentiments. In any case, I submit, that view is at least sufficiently plausible to maintain the plausibility of PNS.

But what about the idea that having compassion and respect to certain degrees can actually rule out particular behavior? One skeptical of such a notion might argue as follows: even if having a certain degree of compassion and respect entails having a particular level of motivation not to perform immoral acts, one might still commit such an act while having any degree of compassion and respect if one is motivated to a strong enough degree to commit that act.

A plausible response to this worry holds that sentiments function to control motivation not simply by providing motivation, but also by regulating motivations whose source is external to those sentiments. On this view, having a certain level of compassion and respect not only involves having certain motivations of certain degrees of strength not to perform callous and disrespectful acts, but also involve a suppression of one’s motivation to perform such acts (cf. Vogelstein Reference Vogelstein2011). Indeed, this view fits with our common-sense conception of what is involved in having those sentiments. For example, it stands to reason that one simply cannot be highly motivated (especially, motivated to the point of action) to perform heinously callous acts while having a very high level of compassion – that is simply not what someone filled with compassion would be strongly motivated to do, and certainly not what such a person would do. Thus, it should be plausible that part of the way in which compassion and respect function to influence one’s overall motivational profile is by suppressing the strength of one’s desires to commit certain sorts of acts; and that readily allows us to accept that having a great enough degree of compassion and respect can indeed rule out certain behavior.

3.4. Sentiments, reasons, and oughts

At this point, a key question about PNS remains: what is referred to by the relevant ‘ought’? When we say that the callous person ought to have more compassion, and that the disrespectful person ought to have more respect, what are we saying? It might be thought that this is a purely moral ‘ought’ – that there is some moral failing on the part of one who fails to have compassion and respect to the relevant degrees. If that were the whole story, then, it seems, PNS would be rendered circular; but it is plausible that that is not the whole story. Even if it is the case that the callous and disrespectful fail in some moral respect by lacking compassion and respect to certain degrees, that such people ought to have had one or both of those sentiments to a greater degree seems to imply something more: that such people have failed to properly respond to their reasons for having those sentiments. One way of drawing out that implication is by recognizing that those who fail to have the degree of compassion or respect that they ought to have are justifiably criticizable on that basis, and, plausibly, a necessary condition of justifiable criticism is a person’s failure to properly respond to her best reasons (Joyce Reference Joyce2001; Vogelstein Reference Vogelstein2013). If that is correct, then in saying that the callous or disrespectful person ought to have more compassion or respect, we are (at least in part) saying that such a person has most reason to have those sentiments to a greater degree.

In that case, the reasons at issue in PNS will be so-called right-kind reasons as opposed to wrong-kind reasons. Roughly, a wrong-kind reason to have attitude A is a reason that derives from the value of merely having A, regardless of what sort of attitude A happens to be (e.g. prudential reasons to believe).Footnote ¹⁵ A right-kind reason to have A, on the other hand, is a reason that is tailored to the type of attitude that A is. Such reasons bear upon the fit, given by the nature of the kind of attitude in question, between that attitude and its object (e.g. evidential reasons to believe). Thus, in the same sense in which one ought not to be afraid in the absence of danger, or feel guilty when one has done nothing wrong, one ought to have compassion and respect for beings like us. And according to PNS, one ought to have those sentiments to a degree sufficient to rule out certain acts, and those very acts just are the acts that are morally wrong. In that way, the nature of moral wrongness is elucidated in terms of (right-kind) reasons for having compassion and respect.Footnote ¹⁶

3.5. Moral normativity

In this section, I describe an additional and important advantage of PNS – one that derives from the notion that there is a special connection between morality and normative reasons. It is a commonplace that morality is genuinely and robustly normative, and a common way to understand that idea is via the thesis that morality involves a necessary and universal relation to normative reasons. PNS gives us a novel account of that relation – an account that satisfies the dictum that necessarily, one who does wrong is not in conformity with her reasons, but an account that does not imply that those reasons are reasons against performing the immoral act. For all PNS says, the only way in which violating the dictates of morality implies that one has failed to conform to one’s reasons is that performing immoral acts entails that one has failed to conform to one’s right-kind reasons for having compassion and respect – there may be no necessary connection between immoral action and reasons for action.Footnote ¹⁷ But this is a welcome result, due to the plausibility of Humean theories of reasons for action, according to which reasons for action require the presence of a desire that would be served by such action (Williams Reference Williams and Harrison1979; Hubin Reference Hubin1999, Reference Hubin2001; Schroeder Reference Schroeder2007a, Reference Schroeder and Shafer-Landau2007b). Humeanism places considerable pressure on the traditional view of moral normativity (according to which moral reasons are reasons for action). After all, if reasons for action require the presence of desires that would be served by such action, then it is hard to see how any reasons for action could be necessary and universal, given that desires are not. Therefore, if moral reasons are reasons for action, Humeanism ought to be rejected, or else we ought to accept that necessarily, every moral agent has a desire that would be served by refraining from morally wrong action. Since the latter claim is highly controversial (if not simply implausible), and since Humeanism is a plausible and prominent view, the fact that the traditional view of moral normativity requires either accepting the latter claim or rejecting Humeanism is a significant cost of the traditional view.Footnote ¹⁸

The account of moral normativity implied by PNS, on the other hand, allows us to preserve the necessary and universal connection between morality and normative reasons without incurring the controversial theoretical commitments at issue. Humeanism, as a thesis about reasons for action, does not apply to the reasons in PNS (and thus would not impugn the necessary and universal applicability of those reasons). Furthermore, there is no analogous, plausible ‘Humeanism’ about sentiments which the defender of PNS should be compelled to reject and whose rejection would be controversial – right-kind reasons for sentiments, and for compassion and respect in particular, do not plausibly depend on one’s desires. Such reasons are reasons of fit, and whether a sentiment is a fitting response to the circumstances should not depend upon what one happens to want. For instance, the fact that you are suffering is a reason for me to have compassion towards you, and the fact that you are an autonomous agent is a reason for me to have respect for you, regardless of whether I have any desire that would be served by having such sentiments. The upshot is this: even if one’s reasons for action are always contingent on one’s desires, and thus even if we cannot necessarily say of someone who did wrong that she had most reason to do otherwise, or even any reason to do otherwise, given PNS we can, without incurring controversial commitments about practical reason, always say of such a person that she had most reason to have the compassion and respect that would have precluded such action, and thus that in doing wrong she has failed to conform to her best reasons. This view of moral normativity represents a novel and important middle-ground, and is a significant and unique virtue of PNS.

Furthermore, the fact that PNS allows us to explain why morality is necessarily and universally normative in general is an advantage PNS has over any theory that lacks such a feature, including standard normative sentimentalism. According to standard normative sentimentalism, it remains unexplained why morality has any necessary and universal relation to normative reasons, such that when one does wrong one has failed to conform to one’s reasons. To be sure, standard normative sentimentalism can explain the relationship between morally wrong action and reasons for having reactive sentiments such as guilt and indignation (although see Section 3.6 below for an explanation of why that is not a significant advantage of the theory); but that a person behaves in a way that justifies such reactions entails nothing about that person’s failure to conform to her reasons – for all standard normative sentimentalism implies, a person might do wrong, feel guilty, and conform perfectly to her reasons (reasons for action as well as for having sentiments). Of course, we ordinarily have a reason to avoid feeling guilty, since guilt is usually experienced as unpleasant; but it seems possible that someone could lack such a reason. The upshot is that it does not follow from standard normative sentimentalism itself that doing wrong necessitates failing to conform to one’s reasons. Thus, standard normative sentimentalism fails to explain the right sort of connection between morality and reasons. And it is unclear exactly how such a connection might be explained if not via the nature of the moral properties themselves – thus any theory of the nature of moral properties that can explain that connection, such as PNS, has a significant prima facie advantage over a theory that cannot, such as standard normative sentimentalism.

3.6. Other considerations for ethical theory

An important additional factor in the evaluation of any moral theory is the extent to which the theory coheres with intuitively strong first-order moral judgments, i.e. whether the theory appears to be extensionally correct. Here, both PNS and standard normative sentimentalism do well. Indeed, as was noted previously, standard normative sentimentalism’s chief theoretical virtue is its apparent extensional correctness. PNS likewise holds good prospects for being extensionally correct. That is because (I submit) it will be difficult to imagine a case in which either (1) an act was wrong but we are intuitively inclined to think the agent had just the degree of compassion and respect that he ought to have had, or (2) an act was morally permissible yet we are intuitively inclined to think that if the agent had the compassion and respect he ought to have had, he would not have committed such an act. Thus, neither PNS nor standard normative sentimentalism seems to run counter to our intuitive judgments about the morality of particular actions.

That said, it should be noted that standard normative sentimentalism does aim to explain a phenomenon that PNS does not aim to explain: the connection between the normative features of reactive sentiments and the instantiation of moral properties, e.g. that an act is morally wrong just in case guilt is a justified response to such an act. For example, a standard normative sentimentalist theory according to which to be a morally wrong act just is for guilt to be a justified response to that act explains why an act is morally wrong if and only if guilt is justified in response to it (which is a plausible thesis in its own right). PNS does not explain why that sort connection would hold. However, that explanatory ability of standard normative sentimentalism is not a significant point in its favor. To see why, recall from our discussion of the circularity worry for standard normative sentimentalism (Section 2.2) that there is a highly plausible explanation of the relevant connection between the normative features of reactive sentiments and morally wrong action that could obtain if standard normative sentimentalism were false: that such sentiments are themselves to be analyzed in terms of moral wrongness such that having those sentiments is justified just as a response to morally wrong behavior (e.g. by representing that an act was morally wrong). And here is why that is relevant: the fact that a theory is able to explain a particular phenomenon is a virtue of that theory only to the extent to which the phenomenon will be insufficiently explained if the theory is false – if the phenomenon has a perfectly good explanation even without that theory, then the theory’s explanatory ability does not significantly raise the probability that the theory is true. Therefore, the ability of standard normative sentimentalism to explain why certain sentiments are justified if and only if certain moral properties are instantiated fails to be a significant virtue of that theory, since that fact has a highly plausible explanation in any case. That is not to say that standard normative sentimentalism’s explanatory ability here is no advantage of the theory – after all, the other explanation (based on the natures of the sentiments themselves), even if highly plausible, might be false, in which case standard normative sentimentalism might indeed provide the correct explanation of the relevant phenomenon. But so long as the other explanation is highly plausible, standard normative sentimentalism’s explanatory advantage here will be minor.

Furthermore, note that there appears to be no analogous highly plausible alternate explanation of S1 – that is an important part of why PNS’s ability to simply and powerfully explain S1 (indeed, its unique ability to do so) is a strong point in its favor, and is a key reason why PNS stands in contrast with, and is superior to, standard normative sentimentalism vis-à-vis their respective explanatory virtues: S1 is in need of explanation, while the key explanandum for which standard normative sentimentalism is the explanans – the fact that an act is wrong if and only if relevant sentiment(s) are justified in response to such an act – is not in need of explanation.

3.7. Moralized compassion and respect?

In this section I respond to a final objection, based on the idea that compassion and respect are to be analyzed in moral terms after all. The objection is motivated by the initially plausible thought that one ought to have less compassion and respect for morally repugnant individuals than one ought to have for others, all else being equal. Indeed, if a person is morally bad enough, perhaps one ought to feel no compassion and respect towards that person; at the very least, it seems that one should mitigate one’s compassion and respect in proportion to the moral badness of the individual – the worse a person is, morally speaking, the less right-kind reason there is to feel compassion or respect for him. But if that is correct, then a problem for PNS emerges: it seems, in that case, that the natures of compassion and respect must themselves involve moral properties. After all, the natural way to explain why one ought to tailor one’s compassion and respect in response to certain moral features of a person is that those sentiments themselves are moralized, e.g. that they represent or are responsive to, at least in part, the moral properties instantiated by people (or their actions, motives, character, etc.). If that is correct, then PNS faces a circularity problem of its own.

Despite the initial appeal of the view, however, it is dubious whether one should indeed temper one’s compassion and respect for the morally bad. Notably, the ideal according to which compassion and respect should not be mitigated in response to wrongdoing is a central tenet of certain cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions, e.g. many forms of Buddhism and Christianity (cf. Conway Reference Conway2001; Cates Reference Cates2003).Footnote ¹⁹ Moreover, we can plausibly explain why it merely seems as if such mitigation is warranted: wrongdoing plausibly does warrant certain sentimental responses that themselves naturally diminish the level of compassion and respect one is inclined to have for the wrongdoer, such as anger (indignation and resentment), disrespect, and moral disgust. Plausibly, when we say of an evil person that one shouldn’t feel compassion or respect for him, what we really mean is that one should feel anger, disrespect, or disgust towards him to a degree that would rule out feeling compassion or respect (or rule out having those sentiments to a significant degree). And that does not imply that one’s right-kind reasons for having compassion and respect for the person are weaker than they otherwise would be – the strength of those reasons is not diminished by the existence of right-kind reasons (even conclusive reasons) for having other sentiments that naturally preclude or mitigate one’s compassion and respect.Footnote ²⁰ Thus, due to the ease with which we may be inclined to conflate the strength of our reasons for having reactive sentiments that diminish one’s compassion and respect with a lack of reason to have compassion and respect themselves, we should be highly skeptical of the intuition that we have less reason to have compassion and respect for wrongdoers or for the morally bad.

Furthermore, there is a response open to the preventionist even supposing that compassion and respect should be had differentially according to the moral features of agents. Such a phenomenon can be explained not by supposing that the sentiments themselves are moralized, but rather by invoking a recursive account of compassion and respect according to which they are representative of or responsive to the degree of compassion and respect that an agent has. On this view, compassion represents or is responsive to misfortune suffered by those who themselves have an appropriate degree of compassion and respect, while respect represents or is responsive to the interests and desires of those who likewise have an appropriate degree of those sentiments. Thus, if A lacks the degree of compassion or respect that A ought to have, the compassion or respect that we have towards A ought to be mitigated as well. In this way, we can explain why we should have lower levels of compassion and respect towards those who do wrong – because such people lack the degree of compassion and respect that would rule out such behavior, and the strength of our reasons for having compassion and respect depends upon the degree to which their target has those very sentiments – without having to invoke moral properties themselves in an elucidation of the nature of compassion or respect.Footnote ²¹

To be sure, this is simply a sketch of a strategy that preventionists may employ in response to the kind of objection under consideration, and perhaps the details of the strategy’s application will reveal it to be less plausible than I have suggested. For example, there is a legitimate question about whether this strategy results in a problematic regress, i.e. whether a recursive account may acceptably be invoked as an elucidation of a property’s nature, given how I understand that task. But in concert with the first response (that it is plausible that compassion and respect are not justifiably mitigated in response to wrongdoing) this additional strategy comprises one component of a two-pronged reply to the objection at issue – the idea being that it is plausible that one of the two responses succeeds (i.e. that their disjunction is true) – a reply which, I suggest, when taken as a whole weakens the objection enough to maintain the plausibility of PNS.Footnote ²²

Benefits of PNS that standard normative sentimentalism lacks

• (1) PNS simply and powerfully explains S1.

• (2) PNS (a) explains the commonplace that morality is necessarily and universally normative, i.e. why doing wrong entails that one has failed to conform to one’s reasons, and (b) does so in a way that avoids controversial commitments about practical reason (either to the rejection of Humeanism, or to the view that all moral agents necessarily have desires that would be satisfied by refraining from doing wrong).

Benefit of standard normative sentimentalism that PNS lacks

• (3) Standard normative sentimentalism explains why, for certain sentiments, an act is wrong just in case those sentiments are justified in response to such an act. However, this is a minor virtue of standard normative sentimentalism because that phenomenon has a highly plausible alternative explanation.

Cost of PNS that standard normative sentimentalism lacks

• (4) PNS relies on a potentially controversial (albeit plausible) view of the relationship between degrees of compassion and respect and their characteristic motivations: that having a particular degree of compassion or respect entails being motivated, in the way characteristic of that sentiment, to a particular degree of strength.

Benefits of both PNS and standard normative sentimentalism

• (5) Both theories accord with intuitively strong first-order moral judgments – they do not appear to suffer from any obvious counterexamples.

Cost of both PNS and standard normative sentimentalism

• (6) Both views are susceptible to circularity worries, although the problem is more acute for standard normative sentimentalism than for PNS. That is because it is not clear how to understand the natures of sentiments that are justified just as responses to the instantiation of moral properties if not via the thesis that the natures of those sentiments are themselves elucidated in terms of moral properties. The notion that compassion and respect are moralized, on the other hand, is highly controversial, and the intuition that drives that view (the sense that we should have less compassion and respect for wrongdoers) is explicable in ways that are consistent with PNS, either via a debunking explanation of the intuition, or via a recursive account of compassion and respect. Thus, standard normative sentimentalism, but not PNS, suffers from a strong circularity worry (even though there is some circularity worry for PNS).

The tally

PNS:

(1), (2), and (5) are major virtues

(4) is a minor cost

(6) is a minor to moderate cost

Standard normative sentimentalism:

(3) is a minor virtue

(5) is a major virtue

(6) is a major cost

Thus, PNS has three major benefits and two minor costs (or, at worst, one minor and one moderate cost), while standard normative sentimentalism has one major benefit, one minor benefit, and one major cost. Thus, the balance of costs and benefits stands in favor of PNS in comparison with standard normative sentimentalism. Moreover, (a) the benefits of PNS outweigh its costs, overall, and (b) two of PNS’s major virtues – (1) and (2) – are enjoyed by PNS uniquely; thus PNS stands as a significant and plausible theory in its own right.

5.1. Conflicting and overabundant compassion and respect

Paradigmatic immoral acts are criticizable in virtue of the fact that the immoral actor failed to have a sufficient degree of compassion and respect. As has been discussed, callous acts routinely involve a lack of sufficient compassion, and non-callous yet immoral acts involve a lack of sufficient respect. But it might also be that immoral acts involve a lack of the degree of compassion or respect that one ought to have not because one should have a greater degree of one of those sentiments, but because one has too much of one or the other.

Of course, in many cases having too much compassion or respect does not result in immoral action – after all, in many situations the actions that are ruled out by having the degree of compassion and respect that one ought to have will also be ruled out by having even more compassion or respect. But the fact that the motivational forces of compassion and respect can, in certain cases, pull in opposite directions opens the possibility that having too much of one or the other will result in a motivational profile that does not rule out the actions that are ruled out by the correct degree of those sentiments. Let us explore that possibility.

Consider cases of punishment. Compassion might motivate towards mercy, while respect – in particular, respect for those who have been harmed or otherwise wronged by the immoral act – might motivate towards punishment. Or, consider a case in which honoring a person’s autonomous choice entails causing or allowing significant harm to that very person. Compassion might motivate towards paternalism, i.e. contravening the person’s choice in order to prevent the relevant harm, while respect for that person might motivate helping or letting him achieve what he has chosen despite it being a detriment to his welfare. In cases in which compassion and respect have contrary motivational valences, one of those sentiments will ‘win out, ’ motivationally speaking. Note, in PNS the relevant ‘preventer’ of immoral action is the combination of the compassion one ought to have and the respect one ought to have. Thus, even if the sentiments involved in that combination pull in opposite directions in particular cases, the combination itself is able to rule out action based on the stronger and thus ‘winning’ motivational element.

But if one has too much compassion or respect, the winning motivation might not be in concert with what would result from the degree of compassion and respect that one ought to have. For example, suppose that punishment in a given case is morally required; an overabundance of compassion for the criminal might result in withholding that punishment. Or, suppose that punishment in a particular case is morally wrong; an overabundance of respect for the victims might result in providing that punishment. Similarly with paternalism: too much compassion might result in wrongfully paternalistic acts (i.e. the compassion one feels for a person, and the resulting motivation to prevent harm to that person, might overwhelm the respect one ought to have for her autonomous choice), while too much respect might make one refrain from paternalism that is morally called for, e.g. if a person’s choice will result in serious and irreparable harm to themselves.

The upshot is that PNS does not imply that having the degree of compassion and respect that one ought to have just is having compassion and respect above a certain level. Rather, in order to avoid problems of overabundance, generated by the fact that the motivational forces of the two sentiments can sometimes pull in opposite directions, one must have the precise degree of compassion and respect that one has most right-kind reason to have – the degree that is called for the by the situation and the relevant features of the parties involved.Footnote ²³

5.2. Subjective and objective morality

A final complication with PNS arises from the fact that the actions that are ruled out by having compassion and respect to particular degrees depend upon one’s beliefs. No action is ruled out by having a certain degree of compassion and respect per se – rather, actions are ruled out by combinations of those sentiments and beliefs that are relevantly related to the motivational attitudes those sentiments involve. Suppose, for example, that I am exorbitantly compassionate and respectful, and that I have a choice of whether to push a button. Whether or not I push the button will depend on what I believe about the consequences of doing so. If I believe that pushing the button will cause 100 innocent people to needlessly suffer and die, I will not push the button; if I believe that pushing the button will save 100 people from needless suffering and death, I will push the button. Thus, we must specify PNS in terms of particular sets of beliefs that, in concert with the degree of compassion and respect that one has most reason to have, would indeed rule out certain action.

One natural thought is to specify PNS in terms of the beliefs one actually has. If, for example, one believes that pushing the button will save 100 people, even though it will in reality have the opposite effect, then there is a clear sense in which one does nothing morally wrong by pushing the button; indeed, it seems one does something morally wrong by not pushing the button. The sense in which it is wrong not to push the button in such a case is the subjective sense of moral wrongness. Roughly, the subjective wrongness of an act is determined by one’s doxastic state (one’s beliefs and/or credence levels). Objective wrongness, on the other hand, is determined by what is actually the case – thus, in this case, it would be objectively wrong to push the button due to the terrible consequences of doing so. So specifying PNS in terms of one’s actual beliefs would seem to provide an account of subjectively morally wrong action, the idea being that subjectively wrong action just is action that is ruled out by the combination of (1) one’s actual beliefs, and (2) the degree of compassion and respect that one has most reason to have.

But things are a bit more complicated, because the reasons that attach to sentiments also admit of a distinction between subjective and objective varieties, where objective reasons are based on what is actually true, while subjective reasons are based on one’s doxastic state – roughly, subjective reasons can be thought of as the objective reasons one would have if one’s beliefs were true, or as the objective reasons that are entailed by what one believes.Footnote ²⁴ Thus we must specify which of those types of reasons – subjective or objective – is relevant to subjectively morally wrong action; and not surprisingly, the plausible answer is that subjective reasons are the relevant kind. We can see why objective reasons will not do by considering the following case:

In this case, I have most objective reason to have compassion and respect only for those in chamber B, but most subjective reason to have compassion and respect for both those in chamber A and chamber B. Thus, given my actual beliefs, were I to have the compassion and respect that I have most objective reason to have I would not press the button (since I wouldn’t be concerned with the beings in chamber A); but, it seems, I subjectively ought to press the button. If, however, I were to have the compassion and respect that I have most subjective reason to have, then I would indeed press the button (since in that case I would have compassion and respect for those in chamber A, and would, presumably, be more strongly motivated to prevent one million people from suffering and dying than to save the three people in chamber B). Therefore, the kind of reasons relevant to PNS, if PNS describes the nature of subjective moral wrongness, must be subjective reasons. Thus, we have:

Subjective moral wrongness is supposed to be relative to one’s doxastic state, and S-PNS captures that idea. Objective moral wrongness, on the other hand, is supposed to be relative to what is true; we can thus describe objective wrongness in terms of the compassion and respect one has most objective reason to have (reasons which are grounded on what is true, as opposed to one’s doxastic state), and in terms of an agent having true beliefs and no false beliefs:

We have already seen how S-PNS accounts for the fact that it is subjectively wrong for me not to push the button. Likewise, O-PNS accounts for the objective wrongness of pushing the button – if I were to believe, as is the case, that only those in chamber B are sentient and that pushing the button will cause them to die, and if I were to have the compassion and respect for those beings that I have most objective reason to have, I would not push the button. Thus, S-PNS grounds subjective wrongness in terms of the beliefs one has, while O-PNS grounds objective wrongness in terms of what is actually true; and that is just what we want out of an account of the distinction between subjective and objective wrongness.