Consequentialism is enticing, and yet it also seems overly demanding. As a result, many non-consequentialists feel the need to explain why we are not required to maximize the good. One explanation is the Integrity Explanation. It says that we are not required to maximize the good because morality must make room for us to pursue the projects we value most deeply, and perhaps our trivial interests as well.
The Integrity Explanation has received a great deal of attention. Partly, interest arose because the Integrity Explanation is a plausible explanation of why consequentialism is false. But in addition, many philosophers hope that the Integrity Explanation will also vindicate an important feature of ‘ordinary morality’: the permission it gives us to generally refrain from promoting the good of other people and instead engage in non-harmful actions of our choice.Footnote 1 Specifically, they hope that if we treat consequentialism as our default moral theory, then modify it as demanded by the Integrity Explanation, the resulting theory – which can be called the Integrity Theory – will look a great deal like ordinary morality in at least this one important respect.
It is easy to understand the source of this hope. The definition of the Integrity Explanation does not tell us how much license morality must give us to pursue our interests. One might hope that the license is broad and thus that the Integrity Theory gives us broad permission to pursue non-harmful courses of action.
However, this article argues that no version of the Integrity Theory will contain broad permissions of the sort found in ordinary morality. Since this argument takes place against a background of existing work on integrity, the article begins with a review of that background.
1. BACKGROUND ON THE INTEGRITY THEORY AND ORDINARY MORALITY
1.1. The Integrity Explanation and the Integrity Theory
Bernard Williams and Samuel Scheffler, among others, have criticized consequentialism for failing to protect individual integrity. Each philosopher who writes on the subject takes up a distinct position, but their explanations can all be characterized in the same general way:Footnote 2 agents have projects and interests – for example, commitments to saving the whales, or to their hobby of performing prestidigitation. Forcibly alienating agents from all of their own projects and interests would take away their integrity. But morality must not take away our integrity, and so it must sometimes permit us to pursue our non-harmful projects and interests. Let us call this the Integrity Explanation.
The purpose of this article is not to evaluate the truth of the Integrity Explanation, thus defined. Still, it should be noted that the claims of the Integrity Explanation are far from obvious. Depending on how we flesh out the notion of ‘integrity’,Footnote 3 morality may or may not be permitted to infringe on our integrity. Moreover, Shelley Kagan has raised questions about whether the claims of the Integrity Explanation are consistent, alleging that if morality must protect our integrity, this implies that we are sometimes required to pursue our projects and interests, rather than being allowed to.Footnote 4 These are challenging issues, but they cannot be addressed here. Instead this article simply presupposes that the Integrity Explanation is correct and examines its implications.
The principal implication discussed in the philosophical literature is that the Integrity Explanation implies the falsity of one of the most alluring forms of consequentialism: maximizing act-consequentialism which is not agent-relative. (Hereafter this will simply be referred to as ‘consequentialism’.) Engaging in our personal projects rarely, if ever, constitutes maximizing the agent-neutral good, and in certain perhaps hypothetical circumstances would never constitute maximizing the good. In light of this, consequentialism might always compel agents to abandon their projects, no matter how deeply the agents were committed to them. The Integrity Explanation says that such abandonment cannot be required, and hence that consequentialism is false.
But as noted above, the Integrity Explanation has not interested people only because it could disprove consequentialism. Instead they hope to treat consequentialism as the default moral theory, modify it as demanded by the Integrity Explanation, and produce a theory – the Integrity Theory – that will vindicate ordinary morality's broad permission to engage in non-harmful actions of our choice.
Before asking whether this can be accomplished, we must first define ‘ordinary morality’ and ‘vindication’ more precisely.
1.2. ‘Ordinary Morality’ and ‘Vindication’
First, ‘ordinary morality’. This article focuses on the extent of our requirement to promote the good of others. Even given this restricted focus, it is probably a mistake to think that there is a conception of morality that is shared by most people. But insofar as generalizations are possible, one natural characterization of this aspect of ordinary morality is the following. Ordinary morality requires that we refrain from many harms, but it less often demands that we do good. Its positive requirements to promote the good can be roughly characterized using four principles:
i We are generally obligated to do what we have agreed to do (even if the agreement is implicit).
ii We are often (but not always) obligated to promote the livelihood of people with whom we have certain ‘relationships of chance’ – e.g., a familial relationship.
iii We are generally obligated to produce a great good when we can do so at very little cost and inconvenience.Footnote 5
iv We must spend some time and resources helping the worst off.Footnote 6
These standards characterize much of what we might say if asked to describe our moral duties to promote the good, and perhaps more importantly, the lax standards that most of us employ when living our lives. The characterization is not uncontroversial,Footnote 7 but since it is widely shared, this description of ordinary morality will be assumed and the article will investigate the more interesting question of whether the Integrity Theory would vindicate the standards of ordinary morality, so understood.
This brings us to the notion of ‘vindication’. As we will see later on, a great deal hangs on what exactly one wants in a ‘vindication’ of ordinary morality, and many details will come out in subsequent discussion. For now, the following will suffice: the Integrity Theory vindicates ordinary morality if and only if both allow us to perform the same non-optimific actions in exactly the same circumstances, or if there are at most justifiable and minor divergences between the two.
The project of vindicating ordinary morality with the Integrity Theory faces several prima facie difficulties. Since these have been partly explored in the existing literature, and since the arguments of this article build upon them, let us briefly review these difficulties.
1.3. Maximizing the good
Ordinary morality has various aspects. This article has mentioned three: agent-centered restrictions on the promotion of the good, a set of requirements to pursue certain goods of others, and a set of permissions to refrain from promoting the good of others. ‘Vindication’ has been defined solely with reference to the last of these – the Integrity Theory vindicates ordinary morality just in case it ‘mirrors’ ordinary morality's permissions to refrain from promoting the good.
However, someone might object that this (narrow) project of vindication is pointless, since the Integrity Theory could never vindicate another important aspect of ordinary morality: its requirements that we promote the good. Specifically, someone might object that the Integrity Theory, if true, implies that there are some situations in which we are required to maximize the good. But ordinary morality never requires that we maximize the good, and so the Integrity Theory could never vindicate the standards of ordinary morality, once those are conceived in broader terms.
This objection cannot be dealt with in detail here; because of space considerations, this article focuses solely on ordinary morality's permissions not to pursue the good. However, because this article might seem pointless with the objection unanswered, I will briefly argue that the Integrity Theory does not necessarily imply that we sometimes have an obligation to maximize the good, and thus that the objection is a failure.
In order to understand why the Integrity Theory does not necessarily require us to maximize, recall how one arrives at the Integrity Theory. The Integrity Theory results from taking one moral theory as the default, then modifying it so as to respect individual integrity. Above maximizing-act-consequentialism was treated as the default moral position. However, one could start from another default moral position. For example, one might think that for reasons having nothing to do with integrity, maximizing-act-consequentialism is implausible; instead the default should be, say, satisficing-act-consequentialism, or rule-consequentialism.Footnote 8 If one did, then the Integrity Explanation could be true and yet we might never have an obligation to maximize.
For example, imagine that the default moral position is satisficing-act-consequentialism of the following sort: one must always act so as to produce at least 80 percent of the total possible good that one can produce. If that were so, then when this theory were modified to accord with the Integrity Explanation, all that would follow is that, in some circumstances, one must do one of the many things that would produce 80 percent of the total possible good one could produce.
More to the point (if one wants to vindicate ordinary morality), one could treat rule-consequentialism as the default moral position. Some forms of rule-consequentialism are fairly lax; they make demands that are already similar to those of ordinary morality, though perhaps somewhat more demanding. (See, for example, Mill's Utilitarianism, where Mill argues that the right rules will be very similar to the ones we already live by.Footnote 9) These moral theories might never require maximization at all, so if they were modified as demanded by the Integrity Explanation, their requirements to promote the good might be very similar to those of ordinary morality.
So that, in sum, is why the Integrity Theory's requirements to promote the good might mirror ordinary morality's, at least to a great extent. It is also why this article is justified in focusing solely on the question of whether the Integrity Theory can vindicate ordinary morality's lax permissions instead.
Even so, there is one more challenge to the project of vindication that has been issued in the literature, and it too must be reviewed before we can venture into new territory.
1.4. Slote and Kagan's challenge
Michael Slote highlighted a problem for anyone who hopes to use an Integrity Theory to vindicate ordinary morality: Suppose that the reason we do not have to promote the greater good is that morality must make room for us to promote our own interests. If so, then it seems that the only time when we may refrain from promoting the greater good is when we are promoting our own interests. However, that implication is in conflict with ordinary morality. Intuitively, ordinary morality sometimes allows us to pursue a non-harmful course of action even if doing so is not in our interest. For example, ordinary morality seems to allow us to laze about on the bed, even though, in many cases, doing so neither promotes the greater good nor promotes our interests, and may even set back our interests.Footnote 10
The point was reiterated and expanded by Kagan:
It might be argued that [the Integrity Theory will fail to] account for the full range of options recognized by ordinary morality. In particular, it might be argued that the options embraced by ordinary morality permit an agent to react nonoptimally not only when this promotes her interests, but even when the reaction in question does not promote the agent's interests. That is, although typically the agent is permitted to promote her interests (at the cost of the greater good), and permitted to promote the greater good (at the cost of her interests) – she is also permitted to react in a manner which neither promotes her interests nor the greater good. But the permissibility of this last possibility cannot be explained by a defense of options that views those options as serving to protect the agent's interests (against any general requirement that they be sacrificed for the greater good); since reactions of the kind in question do not promote the agent's interests, such a defense seems incapable of justifying this aspect [of ordinary morality].Footnote 11
With this criticism understood, we arrive at the current state of the debate: the Integrity Explanation seemed like a promising criticism of consequentialism, but it also seems, on the face of things, as if it is unable to vindicate ordinary morality.
However, the debate must continue, because defenders of the Integrity Theory might respond to the Slote/Kagan criticism in at least two ways.
First, defenders of the Integrity Theory could argue that, once the theory is properly understood, it reveals that there are many situations in which we may refrain from promoting the overall good, and that as a result, there will be co-variance between the Integrity Theory and ordinary morality – that is, in every situation in which ordinary morality allows us to refrain from promoting the greater good and instead do X, the Integrity Theory will as well. For example, perhaps ordinary morality allows us to eat an entire pizza, merely because it is not harmful to others. The Integrity Theory cannot give that rationale, but perhaps it can be proven that eating the pizza promotes one's interests in some way. If so, then the Integrity Theory co-varies with ordinary morality.
Second, defenders of the Integrity Theory can admit that there are some divergences between their theory and ordinary morality, but argue that these are in some way unimportant. Perhaps the divergences reveal that certain aspects of ordinary morality are inconsistent or cannot be given a principled rationale. To that extent, the Integrity Theory acts as a ‘friendly amendment’ to ordinary morality, modifying it where appropriate, and vindicating it otherwise.
Though both of these replies are interesting, this article will argue that neither can succeed and thus that the Integrity Theory cannot vindicate ordinary morality. The next section tackles the co-variance reply in particular.
2. THE CO-VARIANCE REPLY
2.1. The Co-Variance Strategy, and the problem with it
It is easy to see why someone might be attracted to the co-variance strategy. The Integrity Theory results from treating consequentialism as the default moral position, then altering the theory in the ways demanded by the Integrity Explanation – i.e., so that our integrity is preserved to some extent. Given this description, there are at least two points of vagueness in the description of the Integrity Theory. One is that ‘preserving integrity’ has not yet been thoroughly defined. Another is that it has not been specified to what extent morality must preserve that integrity. Depending on how these issues are dealt with, the moral standards generated by the Integrity Theory will be more or less demanding.
For example, if ‘preserving integrity’ is defined as ‘allowing us to pursue our deeply-valued projects’, then the Integrity Theory will be very demanding. We will only be exempt from maximization if we are pursuing a deeply valued project. But things will be different if preserving our integrity involves allowing us to pursue our happiness, even in frivolous ways. In that case, the Integrity Theory might be quite lax.
Similar effects follow from changes in the definition of ‘to some extent’. Recall that the Integrity Explanation did not say that morality must always preserve our integrity. Rather, it said that it must preserve our integrity to some extent. But to what extent? If our integrity must be preserved to a great extent, then the Integrity Theory could be fairly lax. If not, not.
In sum, then, depending on how we flesh out these details, the Integrity Theory will end up generating a more or less demanding set of moral standards. And for this reason, it might seem that if the details are filled in properly, there could be co-variance between the Integrity Theory and Ordinary Morality.
However, appearances are misleading, because no matter how the details of the Integrity Theory are fleshed out, it will not co-vary with ordinary morality.
To see why, let us make the assumptions that are most favorable to the person who wants to reconcile the Integrity Theory and ordinary morality. Let us assume that morality must not only make room for us to pursue our deeply held projects, but that it must also make room for us to pursue our happiness, even in frivolous ways. Moreover, let us assume that it must make a great deal of room for those pursuits. In fact, let us make the implausibly strong assumption that we are always allowed to pursue our own happiness or projects, so long as we are not actively harming others. Will these assumptions vindicate the lax standards of ordinary morality?
No, they will not; consider this example. Imagine that a person is lazing about on his bed, staring idly at the ceiling, and considering whether to get up and go to the gym. He knows that whenever he faces these decisions, he is always reluctant to get up and go, but that he always feels better after he does and feels guilty if he does not. And yet instead of getting up, he simply lies there. If these facts are correct, then lying there promotes neither a project nor his own happiness. (More on the latter in a moment; for now assume it is true.) Furthermore, assume that lying on the bed does not (i) break an overt agreement, (ii) neglect the duties associated with his special relationships with others, (iii) cause him to miss out on a chance to do a very great amount of good at little cost and inconvenience to himself, or (iv) break his imperfect duty of beneficence.Footnote 12 If these assumptions were true, then ordinary morality and the Integrity Theory would not agree on the person's obligations. Ordinary morality would say that his lying on the bed is perfectly permissible, since doing so meets the four conditions just listed. The Integrity Theory would imply that he should be maximizing the good, since he is not pursuing one of his projects or his own happiness.
The upshot of this thought experiment can be put abstractly. The lax rules of ordinary morality tell us that in a few circumstances we come under moral obligations, and in all others we may do whatever we want. Those standards do not co-vary with the standards of (my hypothetical exaggeration of) the Integrity Theory. Because the Integrity Theory results from treating consequentialism as a default and then modifying it to accord with the Integrity Explanation, it says that unless we are pursuing our projects or happiness, we come under an obligation to maximize the good.
2.2. Objections
There are several potential objections to the foregoing arguments and examples:
(1) Some readers might object to this proof by saying that lying on the bed does promote the person's happiness, since he is at the very least doing what he chooses to do – even if his choice is irrational. I disagree; I think he is not promoting his own happiness. However, it is probably not worth arguing over the details of this particular case. For the proof to work, all that readers need to be able to imagine is an activity which (a) does not promote a person's projects or happiness, (b) is not harmful to others, and (c) does not violate the four conditions listed above.Footnote 13 That activity – whatever it is – will be sanctioned by ordinary morality, but ruled out by the Integrity Theory.
(2) Above it was claimed that if someone is loafing on the bed, this might not be part of his pursuit of projects or happiness, and from this it was concluded that the individual is obligated to maximize. But some people might object that the proof rests on an incorrect conception of ‘pursuing one's own happiness and projects’. The proof overlooked the fact that a certain amount of idleness – ‘down time’, if you will – is necessary if a person is to more seriously pursue their own happiness, projects, or the good of others. Since that down time is necessary, it was wrong to say that a person loafing on the bed was not pursuing his own happiness and projects. In fact, it may be the case that we require such great amounts of down time that even the Integrity Theory will make vast amounts of room for idleness and loafing.
It should be admitted up front that there can be no definitive response to this objection, since whether one finds it plausible ultimately depends on one's instincts about the amount of down time one needs to function well. But for my part, I simply find it implausible that the amount of free time granted to us by ordinary morality is really necessary for the pursuit of our own projects, happiness, and the good of others. Consider again how minimal the standards of ordinary morality might be. My imperfect obligation of beneficence is ex hypothesi not very extensive. My obligations to do what I have promised to do are completely avoidable, should I chose not to make promises. Obligations to help out my friends and relatives might rarely arise, should I be lucky enough to know people who are largely self-sufficient. And I might rarely have to help out strangers, since doing so might always involve cost or inconvenience. In sum, ordinary morality might allow me to fritter away almost all of my time. And yet it is hard to believe that we could justify that amount of frittering by saying it is necessary for the pursuit of my own happiness, projects, and the good of others.
(3) Above it was claimed that if the only reason we do not have to maximize is that we must be allowed to maintain our integrity or pursue our happiness, then it follows that we are obligated to do what is best whenever we are not pursuing an important project or pursuing our own happiness. But some people might claim this does not follow. They might say that in order to allow individuals to pursue their own projects or happiness, morality frees up a certain amount of time and resources with which individuals can pursue their own projects and happiness. They may or may not use these resources for pursuit of their own projects and happiness. But even if they do not, the freedom remains – they do not come under any obligations merely because they have failed to use the time and resources for their intended purpose.Footnote 14
If this were right, then the principles of morality would be somewhat similar to liberal principles of government. Many of us believe that the government should not engage in paternalistic intervention in individuals’ lives because individuals do the best job of promoting their own good. Moreover, we believe that the government should not try to pick and choose among paternalistic interventions. Instead it should leave individuals alone, even if those individuals fail to pursue their own good with the freedom they have been given. In a similar way, someone might contend that morality frees up resources with which we can pursue our own projects and happiness, and that these resources remain freed up even if individuals fail to pursue their own happiness or projects.
However, this cannot be right, because the two cases are importantly different.Footnote 15 When it comes to the state, there are good reasons why the state should not adopt a policy of trying to determine when individuals are or are not pursuing their own happiness – namely, that this policy would require the state to engage in intrusive investigation of individual lives, and such investigations would do more harm than good. But when it comes to morality itself, no such reasoning is available. After all, ‘morality’ is not an actor with limited knowledge. It can infallibly free up resources with which we can pursue our own projects and happiness, exempting us from maximization when we use them, but requiring us to maximize when we do not. For that reason, the Integrity Theory implies that whenever individuals are not pursuing their own projects or promoting their own happiness, they are obligated to do what is morally best.
With these three objections out of the way, we see that defenders of the Integrity Theory cannot vindicate ordinary morality using the co-variance strategy. Instead, they must admit that there will inevitably be some cases in which ordinary morality allows us to engage in non-optimific action X, but the Integrity Theory does not. Thus they must adopt a second strategy: arguing that the divergences are minor and justifiable.
3. THE ‘FRIENDLY AMENDMENT’ RESPONSE
3.1. The response itself
It might seem that because the Integrity Theory gives rise to different requirements than ordinary morality, defenders of the Integrity Theory cannot vindicate the standards of ordinary morality. But in fact there is a gap between those two conclusions.Footnote 16 Defenders of the Integrity Theory might argue that the example of the lazy person only shows that the requirements of ordinary morality and the Integrity Theory do not co-vary in specific cases: cases in which someone fails to pursue his projects or happiness. Thus for all that has been said, the Integrity Theory might imply that we are entitled to pursue non-optimific courses of action so long as we are pursuing one of our own projects or happiness. True, that permission is not quite as broad as the permission that is part of ordinary morality. But it is very broad, and perhaps broad enough that the Integrity Theory has vindicated ordinary morality to the extent that one would wish.Footnote 17 After all, why assume that we must (or would even want to) vindicate every aspect of ordinary morality, including the seemingly bizarre permission we have to do things that do not promote the overall good, our own projects, or our happiness? Perhaps the Integrity Theory could be like a ‘friendly amendment’, vindicating much of ordinary morality, but also offering a few, minor corrections.
There are several things that are right about this objection. It is true that if we could vindicate many aspects of ordinary morality – including some of its broad permissions to pursue non-optimific courses of action – that would constitute a significant result. Moreover, it is true that no reasonable person would assume that to ‘vindicate’ ordinary morality requires that one show that every aspect of ordinary morality is correct. Ordinary morality might be mistaken. It might even be internally contradictory, and thus impossible to vindicate as a whole. Still, the ‘friendly amendment’ strategy cannot succeed, for two distinct reasons. Let us take each on its own.
3.2. The extent of divergence
The first reason why the ‘friendly amendment’ strategy is problematic is that the divergences between the Integrity Theory and ordinary morality will be extensive rather than minor, for several interrelated reasons:
(1) If the Integrity Theory always allows us to pursue our happiness, it may seem as if it will therefore include a broad permission to behave as we like – a permission that resembles the permission found in ordinary morality. But that is not necessarily so. True, if doing what one wants – except in exceptional cases like that of the irrational, lazy person – counts as pursuing one's happiness, then the permission might be broad. But there are more robust notions of what constitutes ‘pursuing one's happiness’, according to which doing what one wants does not always constitute pursuing one's happiness.Footnote 18 If those notions were correct, then the Integrity Theory would not contain a broad permission to do as one wants.
(2) In addition, the Integrity Theory might not open up a broad permission to pursue one's own happiness, because it might not open up a permission to pursue one's own happiness at all. Defenders of the Integrity Theory disagree on whether ‘preserving integrity’ requires that we be able to pursue our own projects and happiness; or whether it requires only the ability to pursue the first. If integrity can be preserved without allowing individuals to pursue their own happiness, then the Integrity Theory would not resemble ordinary morality at all.
(3) Finally, it must be noted that, in the example of the bed-loafer above, we made the implausibly strong assumption that morality must always allow us to us to pursue our deeply valued projects and happiness. No actual defenders of the Integrity Theory would make this assumption. Instead they would make the more plausible assumption that morality can preserve our integrity while still demanding substantial sacrifices from us. If that were so, then there would be an even greater number of cases where the standards of ordinary morality did not co-vary with the standards set by the Integrity Theory. Thus the Integrity Theory would diverge more greatly from ordinary morality.
These three reasons are far from definitive; to turn them into substantial arguments, one would have to fully develop the Integrity Theory – a task too large for this article. Moreover, depending on how the theory was developed, the criticisms would be more or less severe. However, there is another reason why the Integrity Theory will greatly diverge from ordinary morality, one that works no matter how the theory is developed. It is therefore a more definitive reason why the ‘friendly amendment’ strategy cannot succeed.
3.3. The reasons behind our permissions
Up until now the debate has centered on the extent to which ordinary morality co-varies with the Integrity Theory. In particular, it has centered on how many times, if any, ordinary morality allows us to perform non-optimific action X, but the Integrity Theory does not. Suppose that there are no such divergences or only very few. Even so, the Integrity Theory will greatly diverge from ordinary morality because it will often give different reasons why we may perform many of these non-optimific actions. Specifically, the Integrity Theory only allows us to perform a non-optimific action because doing so promotes our interests. In contrast, ordinary morality often allows us to perform a non-optimific action for different reasons.
What reasons? One was noted above: ordinary morality often allows us to perform non-optimific actions merely because they are non-harmful. And as Slote noted in his critique of Integrity Theories, when pursuing our own interests also promotes the overall good, ordinary morality allows us to sacrifice our own good (and thus the greater good) for the benefit of others.
These reasons often lie behind ordinary morality's permission for us to engage in non-optimific action. Moreover, no matter how the Integrity Theory is filled out, it can never justify non-optimific action for these reasons; they are simply not part of the theory at all. And thus in this one way, the Integrity Theory is doomed to diverge greatly from ordinary morality. It may get the common-sense answers to moral questions, but it cannot get them for the common-sense reasons. No vindication is possible.
In response, defenders of the Integrity Theory might try to downplay the significance of what has been shown. After all, so long as the Integrity Theory sanctions more or less the same actions as ordinary morality, why does it matter what the reasons are? It is easy to see why this response might occur to someone. In discussions of academic ethics, philosophers tend to decide whether a principle gives ‘intuitive’ results solely by asking whether the principle forbids actions that are intuitively forbidden and whether it allows actions that are intuitively allowed.
However, in this case at least, this procedure makes no sense – that is, it would make no sense for defenders of the Integrity Theory to have an interest in vindicating the results of ordinary moral principles but not their rationale. For why are defenders of the Integrity Theory interested in vindicating ordinary morality at all? The reason must be that they give some theoretical weight to ordinary morality; convergence with it is some reason to believe a theory, and divergence is some reason to disbelieve, or at least to keep questioning the theory's truth.Footnote 19 But if this is why they are interested in convergence or divergence, then they should care about convergence or divergence in reasons just as much as results. Our intuitions about why we must do things are just as strong, and just as much a part of our ordinary moral thought, as our intuitions about what we must do.
In the end, then, there is a large and inescapable divergence between the Integrity Theory and ordinary morality. The former cannot vindicate the latter's broad permission to engage in non-harmful projects of our own choice.
4. CONCLUSIONS
Since this article has crossed a great deal of terrain, a brief recap is in order.
Many philosophers hope that the Integrity Theory will vindicate ordinary morality's broad permission to engage in non-harmful actions. This project faces a prima facie difficulty stated by Slote and Kagan: the Integrity Theory allows us to act non-optimifically only if we are pursuing our own interests, whereas ordinary morality allows such action in a seemingly wider variety of circumstances. There are two possible responses to the Slote/Kagan challenge. First, defenders of the Integrity Theory could try to argue that the theory will co-vary with ordinary morality, allowing non-optimific action in all and only the same circumstances. However, this strategy was proven untenable by the example of the person loafing on the bed. Second, defenders of the Integrity Theory could try to argue that the Integrity Theory and ordinary morality diverge only in minor ways, so that the Integrity Theory is more like a ‘friendly amendment’ to ordinary morality than anything else. Two responses were given. It was argued that, when the Integrity Theory is filled out, it will probably diverge greatly from ordinary morality. Moreover, it was shown that no matter how much convergence there is, the reason for the convergence will often be radically different in the two theories. To that extent, they are irreconcilably different.
Suppose that the Integrity Theory cannot vindicate ordinary morality – what, if anything, should we conclude about the truth of the Integrity Theory or ordinary morality? That is a deep and difficult question; it raises issues about the weight to give to moral intuitions and more generally about how one should choose a moral theory. I cannot resolve those issues here, but let me point out at least one conclusion that all parties should agree to. As noted above, when philosophers ask whether a theory is ‘intuitive’, they tend to focus solely on co-variance. This is a mistake. No matter how we may disagree on the weight to be given to ‘intuition’, we must keep in mind that our intuitions are not only about what to do, but why. On that score, the Integrity Theory fares much worse than is ordinarily assumed.
