This recent collection of essays brings together the two issues named in the subtitle – moral demandingness and the Ought Implies Can (henceforth OIC) principle. The two issues have received considerable attention in the recent literature but mainly separately. The mission of the book is to discuss them together.
The introduction nicely presents an overview of the two related literatures. One of the suggestions is that ‘given that the conceptual interpretation of OIC is still the most prominent one, it is not surprising that OIC rarely has been discussed in relation to the question of (over)demandingness’ (p. 12). OIC has to be valid regarding overdemandingness. Obligations cease to be valid when justification involves impossibility, as impossibility is surely overdemanding.
Brian McElwee's contribution tackles the definition of demandingness. Something impossible, as we know, can be judged demanding. McElwee considers two ways to account for demandingness: the first is cost (in particular the idea of being worse off or reaching a lower level of well-being after doing what morality asks me to do) and the second is difficulty (which is different from mere opportunity cost). McElwee's main theses are:
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(i) we cannot reduce the two factors to one – let's call this the twofold account of demandingness;
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(ii) as all agents are different and evaluate their difficulties and costs in different ways (we have to factor in their moral preferences and the different contexts of action as well), there cannot be a fixed scale for evaluating moral prescriptions as overdemanding.
McElwee suggests that we want our tasks to be always as uncostly as possible, but the same does not hold for difficulty. Success in overcoming difficulties, for example becoming a better musician, is rewarding and enjoyable. My main worry, here, concerns applying the cost and difficult machinery to impossible demands. Does it make sense to evaluate the cost and difficulty of something impossible?
One option for avoiding the objection would be to say that something impossible has the higher cost or maybe even an infinite cost. The same goes for difficulty. Something impossible has the higher cost ever or maybe even an infinite degree of difficulty. Still, all this seems ad hoc in order to make the cost/difficulty machinery work.
We want difficulty coefficients to be exploited and performed. Think about the highest difficulty coefficients used in Olympic gymnastics: cost and difficulty rate feasible performances and impossible ones are not feasible by definition. Further, the ad hoc move will not work for McElwee as it reduces both difficulty and cost to the same concept (highest on the scale or even infinite).
The essay by Vanessa Carbonell investigates differential demands in particular. She develops the demandingness variance thesis, focusing on the ‘for whom?’ question as demands are always demands for a particular agent. We need to look at a single agent and figure out different elements of the demand in question. Carbonell distinguishes three factors: (i) those that are almost never up to us, such as circumstances or other people's actions and compliance, (ii) those that are partially up to us, such as roles, relations and even the agent's own psychology, and (iii) the epistemic factor of knowledge.
Carbonell concludes that we have to accept an unequal distribution of moral labour. This conclusion follows from two new assumptions: (i) knowledge is part of agent ability and (ii) some obligations are triggered by knowledge. We might agree that we have an obligation to stop a bully from beating a child, but that is different from what we can do upon noticing a bomb and having no time to spare. To prevent the bomb causing harm, we need to have know-how to dismantle it.
What happens if we bring this knowledge requirement into play in the OIC debate? Do I have obligations to know? How do we evaluate them? How can we square the fact that there are some issues I ought to know with the legal principle according to which ignorance of the law is no excuse?
Imagine you say to Carbonell that there are too many moral theories and you don't know how to behave morally. It is quite implausible to use the fact of an over-competitive moral theory market as an excuse to act recklessly. Maybe there is a distinction to be drawn between knowledge-obligations and the learning curves of these obligations. This distinction depends on the agents and their differences. Proper knowledge obligations are those depending on specific knowledge as in the bombing case. In that case, lacking relevant skills and knowledge, you are off the hook. Then we have improper knowledge obligations that refer to common knowledge. In these cases, lacking knowledge is no excuse. You can even say that failing to fulfil them is a way of learning proper knowledge. Think about the case in which you do not know that you do not have to address strangers informally (‘man!’, ‘dude!’) or imagine the case of a student thinking assignment deadlines are negotiable or some cultural variance issue related to everyday activity (greetings, eating, going out, etc.).
Marcel van Ackeren's essay takes on Joseph Raz's attempt to dismiss demandingness. According to Raz, the demandingness objection: (i) gets wrong the relations between morality, agents and demands, and (ii) assumes the existence of a moral point of view and a dualism of practical reason. Marcel van Ackeren reconceptualizes Raz's critique so that conflicts between agents and morality shall be at least conceptually possible though very rare in practice.
Claire Benn's essay explores demandingness via the concept of supererogation. Benn's driving thought is that theories that are considered overdemanding do not leave space for supererogatory action, i.e. actions that are good but not required. Benn identifies three different kinds of objections (extreme demands, moral fanaticism and confinement) and searches for links between them and supererogation. Only confinement exhibits a demandingness-supererogation link. Benn shows that theories with no room for supererogatory actions face confinement objections only contingently, and hence the link between demandingness and supererogation is not as strong as it seems.
Sophie Grace Chappell provides a new framework for thinking about demandingness, namely moral epiphanies in which values become factual. Hence demandingness is not something we can control and sometimes we simply face situations that are really demanding. Though her essay does not defend moral realism, my worry is that it leans this way. Since a valuable talk or meeting is not necessarily a talk or meeting with value (i.e. the inference from ‘X is valuable’ to ‘there's value in X’ is difficult to establish universally), we cannot say that Francis encountered a value in his moral epiphany that later led to his being canonized as Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis simply met a poor man. Certainly, the encounter was not up to him and, given his moral personality, no other outcome than abandoning all his material belongings was possible. Nonetheless, there is still space to say that he simply met a poor man rather than a value. He himself constructed the situation as a valuable one for him that required his moral intervention. The fact that he reacted as he did was not due to some moral fact out there in the world, he simply (constructed and) perceived the situation as a valuable one. The fact that he managed to construct and see something different compared to the rest of the people of Assisi of his time, led him to become the saint we know. Chappell, further, focuses mainly on positive and virtuous encounters. Think about an evil person somehow encountering value in a vicious situation and then turning into a serial wrongdoer. Presumably, she saw a value, so to speak. Is that a problem for the proposed account?
Robert Stern focuses on the question of why Ought Implies Can. Stern claims that whether Ought Implies Can or not depends on the theory of obligation one has. This might seem obvious, but it is not so obvious. OIC is often said to work only for some kinds of ‘ought’, certain definitions of ‘imply’, and some of the possibilities and abilities we possess that fit into ‘can’. But typically, we first take OIC to be true and then define our concept of obligation. If a requirement fails the OIC test, it is no obligation at all (think about ad impossibilia nemo tenetur in Roman law, i.e. the thesis according to which nobody is obliged to do the impossible). Once this starting point is granted, Stern considers three theories of obligation, namely the divine command account, the natural law account and the social command account.
Regarding divine command theory, Stern points out that the requirement for which it seems pointless to issue an order that cannot be followed runs into problems in the full-fledged divine command theory because of the role of grace and forgiveness. Further, I would say, we also have to consider examples in which impossible commands (in the sense of commanding something deontically forbidden, which is often taken as a deontic impossibility) are a way God tests us, as Abraham knew well. Further, if miracles are possible, then there is always a small chance to justify the possibility of even the most difficult or absolutely impossible order (e.g. ‘divide by zero!’: you might succeed because you cannot rule out that a miracle will happen). Turning to the natural law account, Stern raises the same worries for the divine command theory plus some specific to the alleged shortcomings of natural law itself, namely that it makes it difficult to accommodate moral oughts as, after all, all oughts are natural.
The next account is Kantian, which Stern points out is weaker than the divine command theory because it is pointless to issue impossible commands as it is no longer clear what is commanded. This claim should cause us concern given that Kant is probably the philosopher mostly associated with Sollen impliziert Können principle. Regarding social command accounts, Stern points out that their relying on blame can explain how morality becomes binding. Still, there is the problem that these accounts take morality as a way to live together, and we cannot rule out that some impossible moral obligations might help achieve this.
Michael Kühler's essay asks whether demanding the impossible is conceptually misguided or merely unfair. The strategy turns on denying the thesis that ought conceptually implies can. The target of Kühler's critique is Zimmermann's concept of remote obligation and the use of indexes to track down how my opportunity to fulfil the demand changes. For instance, I can meet a deadline in a month, but I can't meet it at the last minute (if I did not work through the whole month).
Kühler approaches OIC as a normative principle, i.e. he asks whether, in the case we are asking the impossible, it would be morally fair or practically prudent to do so. This requires focusing on the ‘cannot’ so that we can better see what leads to a failure (was it lack of ability or opportunity or something else?) in evaluating whether we have reasons to ask the impossible. Kühler provides a list of the controversial cases of cannot. He concludes by going back to the OIC-demandingness link and sees his normative OIC as a way to identify what is overdemanding: ‘If an agent cannot do that he ought to, it would prima facie be a matter overdemandingness to uphold the “ought” in question’ (p. 127).
Ishtiyaque Haji focuses on obligation, ability and blameworthiness, defending OIC from two standard objections: its use in Frankfurtian cases and the objection that blameworthiness requires impermissibility (BRI), a principle that is taken as a companion to OIC, based on ranked permissible options. Both arguments are too complex to discuss here, but they are engaging and promising. Haji concedes something to his opponents (especially to McNamara), builds on their critique to improve his proposal and then makes further points directed towards his interlocutors.
Garrett Cullity addresses demandingness, ought and self-shaping, as well as the pointlessness and unfairness of impossible requirements. The purpose of the essay is to criticize such arguments by way of noting that something pointless might nonetheless be true. The reply to the unfairness argument is that if you are responsible for your failures in getting fit to comply with the obligation, then it is your fault and any impossible obligations have to be seen as standard obligations you are not good enough to meet rather than impossible demands. Cullity calls this reply ‘Self-Shaping’.
Despite the obvious technicalities as far as ‘can’ and ‘ought’ are concerned, Cullity weakens the support that the demandingness thesis derives from OIC. His analysis ‘leaves it open that there is a good argument why (some parts of) morality cannot be extremely demanding. But it will have to come from elsewhere than an appeal to the principle that “ought” implies “can”’ (p. 160).
Matthew H. Kramer examines OIC and moral demandingness, concentrating on moral conflicts. He contrasts OIC with conflicts though admitting that he is unsure whether we have to create ad hoc conceptions to make conflicts impossible. Kramer sides with conflicts discrediting the truth of OIC as universally quantifiable (which is not to say that OIC is always false or useless). He begins by examining the notion, prima facie: sometimes it means presumptively or upon initial examination, sometimes it means pro tanto or susceptible to being overridden.
Kramer further says: ‘a moral duty with a logically incoherent content can itself be logically impeccable’ (p. 177). Here Kramer is distinguishing three aspects worth exploring. First, there is the ‘logic’ of the content of the obligation: an action that cannot be performed is (pragmatically) incoherent. Second, there is the ‘logic’ of the obligations itself: depending on your view of OIC and on the circumstances, some obligations (the impossible ones, but also those that we find immoral) might be impossible. Third, there is the ‘logic’ that we adopt in evaluating a normative system. This is the deontic logic that can be constructed in many different axiomatic forms. The axioms determine what constitutes contradiction within our formal treatment of obligations.
The last essay, by Dale Dorsey, focuses on the trade-offs between the scope of a normative theory and its normative force. According to Dorsey, these trade-offs have to be settled for ‘the greater the scope, the weaker the force’ (p. 188). Dorsey's solution is methodologically motivated. If a theory first defines the scope and then the strength of the obligations it sustains, we will be able to skirt demandingness objections. Dorsey defines scope as a combination of reach (from egoism to altruism, past and future) and the comparative strength of moral reasons (does the same obligation applies to all in the same way?).
The book as a whole ends up being more valuable than the sum of the essays it collects. By way of bringing together demandingness and OIC, the editors show the need for wider perspectives when tackling certain areas of moral discourse. The book is recommended to everybody interested in either OIC or moral demandingness.
