An Unsolved Problem for Slote's Agent-Based Virtue Ethics

An Unsolved Problem for Slote's Agent-Based Virtue EthicsAuthor(s): Daniel JacobsonSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 111, No. 1 (Oct., 2002), pp. 53-67Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4321305 .

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DANIEL JACOBSON

AN UNSOLVED PROBLEM FOR SLOTE'S AGENT-BASED VIRTUE ETHICS

(Received in revised version 12 July 2002)

ABSTRACT. According to Slote's "agent-based" virtue ethics, the rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by the motive it expresses. This theory has a problem with cases where an agent can do her duty only by expressing some vicious motive and thereby acting wrongly. In such a situation, an agent can only act wrongly; hence, the theory seems incompatible with the maxim that 'ought' implies 'can'. I argue that Slote's attempt to circumvent this problem by appealing to compatibilism is inadequate. In a wide range of psychologically realistic cases, an agent's effective choice will be between failing to do her duty and doing it from inferior motives. Then anything she can do will be wrong, according to the agent-based theory, contrary to the maxim Slote wishes to preserve.

I

Michael Slote has recently put forward a novel version of virtue ethics with several promising features. While many contemporary advocates of virtue ethics see their approach as an antidote to the ills of ethical theorizing, Slote seeks to develop the view as an alternative moral theory rather than an alternative to theory. In this respect his approach is more conservative than most. It would preserve the classical deontic moral concepts (such as right and wrong), while giving pride of place to aretaic concepts (such as morally good and the specific virtues). There is another respect, however, in which Slote's approach is more radical than other forms of virtue ethics. Slote advocates what he calls an agent-based theory, on which the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the motive from which it is performed. The fundamental ethical facts thus concern the worthiness of various motivations; whence the title of his recent book, Morals From Motives (Slote, 2001).

Since on this view actions are right because they are performed virtuously - that is, from some morally good motive - Slote

Li Philosophical Studies 111: 53-67, 2002. ? 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



54 DANIEL JACOBSON

expressly forgoes claiming that the virtuous person does what she does because it is right. Aristotelian forms of virtue ethics often hold, instead, that the virtuous person is especially sensitive to independent facts about what is right (or just, noble, etc.) to do. Another Aristotelian approach holds that although the evaluation of character is prior to the evaluation of action, as Slote claims, virtue is not fundamental but must be grounded in a particular characterization of human flourishing (or eudaimonia). Slote considers his agent- based theory to be a purer form of virtue ethics than either of these alternatives, because it alone makes virtue explanatorily basic. As he explains, "An agent-based approach to virtue ethics treats the moral or ethical status of acts as entirely derivative from independent and fundamental aretaic (as opposed to deontic) ethical characterizations of motives, character traits, or individuals" (Slote, 2001, p. 5). The substance of Slote's conception of virtue too is inspired less by Aristotle or the Stoics than by the British Sentimentalists and the "ethics of care" of some current feminists. However, the problem I will elaborate here arises from the form of the theory, not from its specific content. The problem thus extends to any agent-based theory, whatever its substantive conception of virtue.

Slote actually broaches this problem himself, using an example borrowed from Sidgwick, of "a man who prosecutes from malice a person whom he believes to be guilty" (Sidgwick, 1981, p. 202).1 We are to suppose that a just prosecutor would also try the case; this is one of those situations commonly described as "doing the right thing for the wrong reason." Sidgwick develops the example in order to draw the familiar utilitarian distinction between the evaluation of act and agent. The utilitarian view is that while the act of prosecution is right, the prosecutor himself, because of his dubious motivation, is less than virtuous. A Kantian would describe the case somewhat differently but draw an analogous distinction. For Kant, the prosecutor's act conforms to his duty and is therefore right; yet since it is not done from duty but from (malicious) inclination, its performance has no moral worth. The agent-based virtue theory, by contrast, holds that the act of prosecution is wrong simply because it is done out of malice - a vicious motive.

There are two ways of developing this example as a challenge to Slote's view. The most straightforward objection is that the agent-



AN UNSOLVED PROBLEM FOR SLOTE 55

based theory gets an incorrect result by deeming the malicious prosecution wrong. Of course, this objection is only as strong as the underlying deontic judgment, which even Sidgwick grants to be controversial.2 A more subtle objection is that the agent-based theory founders in such cases because it is unable to make a crucial distinction drawn by both utilitarian and Kantian theories, each after its own fashion. Slote cannot distinguish between doing the right thing and doing it for the right reason, it is charged, precisely because an agent-based theory grounds its deontic assessment of acts on an aretaic assessment of motives. Virtuous motives make for right actions, vicious motives for wrong actions: that is the leading thought of agent-based virtue theory. While it is hard to find a precise formulation of Slote's account of right and wrong, the following seems a fair provisional statement of the view:

An act is right if it expresses (or "reflects" or "manifests" - Slote uses these terms interchangably) a virtuous motive, and wrong if it expresses a vicious (or "inferior") motive.

This statement should be taken as provisional, however, because in two sorts of circumstance it delivers conflicting verdicts or no verdict at all.3

First, Slote needs his theory to apply to what would ordinarily be deemed omissions as well as acts, which means that he also needs to adduce motives reflected in failures to act. Sometimes it seems clear enough what motive is expressed when an agent refrains from acting, particularly when the possibility of doing something could not have escaped the agent, so we can be confident that she refrained deliberately. In some cases of non-deliberate omission, too, surely the fact that it never occurred to the agent to act - for instance, to help someone in obvious distress - manifests a vice (in this case, egocentrism or selfishness). Yet, in various other cases of non-deliberate omission, and perhaps for some ordinary actions as well, there may be no determinate and non-tendentious answer to the question of what motive is being expressed. This is not merely the epistemic point that it is often hard to know whether an action is right or wrong, which Slote can accept as unfortunate but realistic (Slote, 2001, p. 19). The point is rather that it isn't always clear there is any particular motivation expressed in an action, or what makes it the case that the act manifests one motive rather than another. Slote



56 DANIEL JACOBSON

needs to do more to explicate the fundamental notion of what it is for a motive to be expressed, reflected, or manifested in action, beyond the most obvious (and often artificial) cases.4 I put this problem forward less as an objection to Slote's theory than to point out a respect in which it seems to require substantial further development.

The second problem is more directly relevant to the objection at hand. What should an agent-based theory say about an action that is motivationally over-determined, in that the agent's act expresses more than one motive, each of which would be sufficient to move her to action? Of course, if all her motives are vicious - if the agent is motivated by both hatred and envy, say - then there is no puzzle: the act is wrong. But what if an agent acts from multiple conflicting motives, good and bad? (Notice that it is not just that she has mixed motives, which is perhaps always the case; rather, the idea of motivational over-determination is that one acts from - or one's action reflects - more than one motive.) Should we conclude that the action is therefore both right and wrong? The provisional statement of Slote's deontic account given above would yield this paradoxical result. The most obvious way to avoid paradox would be to make the expression of a virtuous (or vicious) motive a necessary but not sufficient condition for an act's being right (or wrong); but this proposal would create a surfeit of indeterminate cases. Clearly, Slote holds that whenever someone's action expresses a single motive, virtuous or vicious, her action is thereby right or wrong. It is unclear, however, what other resources the theory can bring to bear on more complex or nuanced cases, so as to yield a deontic judgment without undermining its central ambition of deriving morals from motives.

The problem posed by conflicting motivational over-determination is an important lacuna in Slote's theory, which may even threaten its coherence. Prosecution of so serious a charge is beyond the scope of this paper, however, and must await further development of the agent-based approach. The theory is still young, and perhaps Slote can refine it so as to avoid paradox or else argue that the appearance of paradox is specious. A more concrete form of this problem will emerge from our discussion of Sidgwick's malicious prosecutor. For now, it suffices to observe that Slote's theory yields a straightforward deontic judgment only for actions that express, reflect, or manifest a sole motive (or, more precisely, solely virtuous




or vicious motives). Sidgwick's malicious prosecutor seems to be such a case, by stipulation, and Slote treats it as such in Morals From Motives. We shall begin by doing so as well.

II

Some philosophers attracted to virtue ethics would criticize Slote for developing an agent-based moral theory in the first place. For them, part of the appeal of virtue ethics is that it eschews theory in favor of particular perceptions or intuitions, or even that it dispenses altogether with the deontic concepts which distinguish morality from other forms of ethics.5 But Slote offers good reasons for attempting to formulate a moral theory that can incorporate much of what is attractive and invigorating in recent philosophical work on the virtues. He points out that "ordinary intuitive moral thought is not just complex, but subject to paradox and internal incoherence, and this is a far less acceptable situation than what the antitheorists imagine to be the case. In fact, it is what makes moral theory both necessary and desirable" (Slote, 2001, p. 11). Though I will not attempt to argue for moral theory against its antagonists, it is important to note that, as Slote contends, coherence with ordinary thought and sentiment is both a motivation for moral theorizing and a criterion of its success.6 Therefore it is imperative for an agent-based theory to be able to draw such fundamental and intuitive distinctions as that between acting rightly and acting for the right reasons. Even so, a moral theory need not capture all our pre-theoretic judgments; indeed, insofar as they are mutually incon- sistent, that will be impossible. In the case at hand, Slote is not averse to calling the act of malicious prosecution wrong. Although this verdict conflicts with utilitarian and Kantian theory, Slote does not think it intuitively implausible. "What is implausible, rather, is the claim that the prosecutor has no duty to prosecute" (Slote, 2001, p. 14). But the judgment that malicious prosecution is wrong does not imply that the malicious prosecutor has no such obligation, Slote claims.

How can an agent-based theory hold that even the malicious prosecutor has this obligation, despite the fact that it would be wrong



58 DANIEL JACOBSON

to prosecute out of malice? The first thing to note is that the theory does not suggest that it is permissible to let the accused go free. Slote, like Sidgwick, makes it clear that we are to suppose that any prosecutor who neglected to try this case would thereby express an insufficient regard for professional duty and the public good. The malicious prosecutor too is therefore obligated to prosecute - though whether he acts rightly or wrongly, in so doing, will be determined by the motive from which he acts. Slote contends that this result suffices to answer the problems raised by Sidgwick's example:

This allows us then to distinguish between doing one's duty for the right reasons and thus acting rightly, on the one hand, and doing one's duty for the wrong reasons and thus acting wrongly. And this is very close to the distinction between right action and acting rightly for the right reasons, except for the fact that it supposes that when the reasons aren't right, the action itself is actually wrong. But we have already seen that this idea in itself is not particularly implausible, and so it turns out that [this] complaint against agent-basing turns on a faulty assumption about the inability of such views to make fine-grained distinctions of the sort we have just succeeded in making. (Slote, 2001, p. 15; his emphasis)

However, there is a significant problem with this way of drawing the requisite distinction. The trouble is that if the malicious prosecutor's only choice is between letting the accused go free and prosecuting her out of malice, then it seems that anything he can do would be wrong according to the agent-based theory. For the sake of simplicity, let us make the unrealistic but harmless stipulation that the prosecutor has no easy way out - he cannot recuse himself from the case, for instance. This is harmless because nothing hangs on Sidwick's example being a realistic illustration of the general problem, and there will be a large class of cases in which no such circumvention of the problem is available. (Or so I claim - let this point be stipulated for now.7) These are precisely those cases where we seem unable to do the right thing for the right reason. If the prosecutor's only choice is between prosecuting maliciously and letting the accused go free, then the agent-based theory seems to imply that anything he can do would be wrong. Slote acknowledges this apparent difficulty for his theory. It "seems to contravene the maxim that 'ought' implies 'can', for if badly motivated people have obligations but everything they can do counts as wrong, they have obligations they are unable to fill" (Slote, 2001, pp. 15-16).8 Yet




he contends that the apparent tension between maxim and theory is illusory and, hence, that the most powerful challenge arising from Sidgwick's example can be readily answered.

Slote argues that the objection is based on a simple error. It assumes that a malevolent person is incapable of acting "out of character": that is, in a way that does not express malevolence. But the fact that someone acts (or will act) malevolently does not show that she was unable to do otherwise - assuming only what Slote calls "reasonable free-will compatibilism." As he explains:

Presumably, one cannot change one's motives or character at will. But a thor- oughly malevolent individual who sees a person he can hurt may still have it within his power to refrain from hurting that person, even if we can be sure he won't in fact exercise that power. And the act of refraining would fail to express or reflect his malevolence and would therefore not count as wrong. (Slote, 2001, p. 17)

Since even a vicious person is often capable of refraining from doing harm, she is obligated to do so, which is the requisite conclusion. Slote therefore concludes that the problem is spurious. The malicious prosecutor "has an obligation not to act in ways that express inferior motives, but if the above is correct, he has it in his power to fulfill that obligation. Thus agent-basing is consistent with 'ought' implies 'can"' (Slote, 2001, p. 17).9

But Slote's response to the challenge posed by Sidgwick's example is inadequate. His solution requires that the malicious prosecutor be capable of prosecuting this case out of duty rather than malice; whereas what he has shown is that a malevolent person is typically capable of refraining from doing harm. This seem- ingly minor discrepancy is crucial. Although a malicious person is typically capable of refraining from many possible acts of malice, it might nevertheless be true that she is incapable of performing certain specific acts from any other motivation.

It would be helpful to have an explicit gloss of what Slote means by reasonable free-will compatibilism, but he does not elaborate. I will rely on A.J. Ayer's classic argument for compatibilism, given in his essay "Freedom and Necessity," where he offers the following dictum. To act freely is (inter alia) for it to be the case that had one chosen otherwise, one would have acted otherwise (Ayer, 1982,



60 DANIEL JACOBSON

p. 22). Suppose then that our prosecutor (P) has two choices: to prosecute the case (A) or to let the accused off without trial (B). Now, on the assumption that P is sane and not under any external compulsion, he is free - in the negative, compatibilist sense - to do either A or B. He is therefore morally responsible for his action, and we can say that he ought to do A. The trouble for Slote is that even when our actions are volitional, our motives may not be. To illustrate the implications of this point, let us differentiate between A1 (prosecuting from duty) and A2 (prosecuting from malice). We can now ask what, exactly, are the options available to P?

Slote claims, and I grant, that a malevolent person is often capable of refraining from performing a harmful act. Similarly, a malicious person is typically capable of refraining from acting maliciously. But we must remind ourselves why a qualification like 'often' or 'typically' has to figure in these claims. The compatibilist is not committed to denying the possibility of psychological constraint, and compatibilists have not wanted to do so.10 They need to be able to differentiate the kleptomaniac from the ordinary thief, as well as to allow for more local and specific cases of psychological impossibility. It is a nice question what actions ordinary, non-pathological humans are psychologically capable of performing - and from what motives. Could we kill an innocent child benevolently, in order to prevent catastrophe? Can we love our enemies, and act in ways reflecting that love, regardless of what they have done? More generally, do our emotions and evaluative attitudes place no constraints whatsoever on what we are capable of doing? It is extremely implausible to deny that we can be so constrained. Whatever reasonable compatibilism is, it cannot have such unreasonable implications. Moreover, one of Slote's philosophical virtues is his good sense, and we have already quoted him as granting, sensibly, that one cannot change one's character or motives at will. The reasonable compatibilist assumption is not that the prosecutor can rid himself of malice, but that he can often forgo acting maliciously. He doesn't always have to kick the dog when things go badly. That is reasonable enough, but it is inadequate for Slote's purposes. To see this, we must flesh out Sidgwick's case a bit further.




Let us suppose that the reason our prosecutor P "prosecutes from malice a person whom he believes to be guilty," as Sidgwick's example has it, is that P was the victim of a similar crime himself. 1 1 It is nevertheless the case that if P were to choose to do A, he would do A; and if P were to choose to do B, he would do B. Hence, he is obligated to prosecute - but that is not the issue. Can we simply assume that he is equally free to choose between A1 and A2: prosecuting from duty or from malice? Of course, there can be no definite answer to this question when it is posed about a hypo- thetical and under-described case. But we can make a reasonable psychological generalization that creates grave problems for Slote. It is much easier to force oneself to perform a given act - not to flee in the face of danger, say - than to perform it with proper feeling (as Aristotle has it) or from the proper motive (for Kant or a utilitarian). This is a point that Aristotle, Kant, and Sidgwick all expressly endorse. As Sidgwick writes, "no one, I think, will contend that we can always suppress entirely a strong emotion; and such suppression will be especially difficult if we are to do the act to which the wrong impulse prompts" (Sidgwick, 1981, pp. 202-203).12

In many situations, even an admirable person may be incapable of anything more than the continent simulacrum of virtue. We may be capable of obeying the moral law but incapable of imbuing our actions with moral worth. This will be the case whenever someone is psychologically capable of fulfilling his obligations only by acting from a vicious motive. Then it will not be true that P is free, even in the compatibilist's negative sense, to do either A1 or A2. Indeed, since P might not know that he is so constrained, he may engage in all the introspective rituals of deliberation and choice - but they will be causally inert. Yet it is precisely when "my own deliberations have ceased to be a causal factor in my behaviour," Ayer concluded,

.... that I may be said to be constrained" (Ayer, 1982, p. 20). In many of the most psychologically realistic ways of fleshing out Sidgwick-style examples, P can effectively deliberate about whether to do A or B, but not about whether to do A1 or A2. The decision to prosecute from duty is not one that P is capable of acting upon. In such cases, the claim Slote requires will be false. Recall how he dismisses the problem: "[P] has an obligation not to act in ways that express inferior motives, but he has it within his power to fulfill



62 DANIEL JACOBSON

that obligation. Thus agent-basing is consistent with 'ought' implies 'can"' (Slote, 2001, p. 17). To the contrary, I have suggested that P's actual choice might, more plausibly, be between failing to prosecute (B) and prosecuting maliciously (A2). Yet it seems that according to an agent-based virtue theory, both these actions would be wrong; hence every action available to him is wrong; and therefore the theory is incompatible with the maxim Slote aims to preserve.

III

My argument rests on a stipulation made earlier: that it is implausible to think one can always circumvent this problem by appealing to something like the possibility, in Sidgwick's example, of the prosecutor recusing himself from the case. Were recusal an option, as it would be in the most realistic scenarios where a prosecutor feels malice toward some defendant, then the prosecutor could avoid both the malicious action and the derelict failure to act. However, I claimed that it's implausible to think such circumvention will always be available and, hence, that it's harmless to ignore the possibility of recusal. Slote's problem does not essentially concern prosecution, of course; it rather emerges from the difficulty of banishing vicious or otherwise inferior motives for doing what we are obligated to do. In ordinary interpersonal relations - not to mention fanciful desert island examples - there often will be no other agent who can carry out our duties without the taint of our dubious motives. Parents cannot recuse themselves when dealing with their children, for instance.

The question is whether it is plausible to claim that there will always be some action an agent can perform that isn't wrong according to an agent-based theory - which is to say, an action that doesn't express some vicious motive. In light of the challenge developed in the previous section, a defender of agent-basing might be tempted to circumvent the problem in this manner.13 Here is one way to attempt to make the claim plausible. You might think that even if recusal is impossible, at least the malicious prosecutor could, if he chose, fix his mind on the thought that this case is one he is obligated to try. Although this awareness is unlikely to extinguish his dubious motives (all sides agree), perhaps it can inculcate an




additional, superior motivation: in this case, to do his duty. If so, then the scenario becomes an instance of conflicting motivational over- determination, where the prosecutor acts from both duty and malice. This is no panacea for Slote, since such cases have problematic - if not paradoxical - implications for an agent-based theory. At several points in Morals From Motives, Slote implies that the presence of an inferior motive is sufficient to make an action wrong. If so, then this response to the challenge would be futile. Can the theory be refined so as to avoid paradox, secure the result that not every available action is wrong, and be made consistent with the maxim that 'ought' implies 'can'? There are ample grounds for skepticism.

First, the claim that the simultaneously malicious and dutiful prosecutor does not act wrongly must not rest on a prior intuition that prosecution is the right thing to do. That would undermine the entire project of deriving morals from motives; it would be tantamount to abandoning the leading thought of an agent-based theory. Whatever Slote wants to claim about cases of conflicting motivational over-determination must be held consistently for actions that seem right, intuitively, and those that seem wrong. Thus any solution proposed to handle Sidgwick's malicious prosecutor must also apply to a prosecutor who, out of love or gratitude, foregoes prosecuting someone she believes guilty. She acts with love, but her action also expresses insufficient regard for her duty; whereas his action, we are now supposing, expresses both his malice and his concern for duty. What makes these conflicted actions right or wrong - or are they neither or both? Until we are told how motivational over-determination can be handled successfully by an agent-based theory, without covertly reintroducing fundamental deontic judgments, we should be suspicious of the claim that this notion helps solve Slote's problem. Moreover, the claim that circumvention is always possible must be held of a great variety of cases, including many where there is no proxy who can perform the same action from better motives.

Another possibility is for Slote to retreat from his claim that an agent-based theory is consistent with 'ought' implies 'can', and say instead that it is consistent with the more circumspect proposal broached by Stocker (1971): that 'ought' implies something like 'could have done' .4 Stocker argues that an agent can, through



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her own wrongdoing, bring it about that she cannot do what she (still) ought. The obvious rejoinder is that, strictly speaking, she no longer has just this obligation; indeed, she might now be obligated not to attempt what she can no longer carry out. I am not persuaded by Stocker's argument, which seems to obscure more than it clarifies, but the more important point is that this retrench- ment does not solve the problem at hand. Slote would still need to argue that circumvention is possible whenever the agent isn't culpable for her predicament. This will seem plausible only if you think that although it is possible for every available action to be wrong, a properly motivated agent can always avoid such a bind. As I see it, this thought looks more like wishful thinking, or an ad hoc assertion designed to save the theory, than like an independently plausible claim. Another reason for skepticism, then, is simply that the argumentative burden Slote has to shoulder is so daunting.

In Morals From Motives, Slote claims that his agent-based virtue theory is compatible with the maxim that 'ought' implies 'can', and he bases this claim on an appeal to compatibilism. I take my argument here to show, at least, that this is an inadequate solution to the problems posed by cases like Sidgwick's malicious prosecutor. Furthermore, the two ways Slote seems tempted to respond to this challenge require much more development and threaten to strain the theory considerably. First, the appeal to conflicting motivational over-determination is deeply problematic, because it is unclear how an agent-based theory can handle such cases without undermining its claim to derive morals from motives. Second, the suggestion that it will always be possible for an agent to avoid actions that reflect some dubious motive seems implausible. A philosopher like Slote, who is committed both to morality and common sense (if not commonsense morality), would be well advised to forego such measures.

Slote thus seems faced with a choice between two intolerable options. An agent-based virtue theory can hold that the malicious prosecutor has no obligation to prosecute, a conclusion that is highly implausible and would jeopardize many other apparent moral obligations. Or the theory must be admitted to be in tension with the platitude that 'ought' implies 'can', a maxim that seems partly constitutive of the concept of moral obligation. Moreover, this very




general problem afflicts any form of agent-based theory, whatever its substantive conception of virtuous motivation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank an anonymous referee, David Copp, and Michael Slote for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

NOTES

1 Sidgwick attributes the example to Bentham. 2 Though he concludes that judgments of right and wrong are determined by the consequences of an action rather than the motivation from which it is performed, Sidgwick allows that some people hold that "an act cannot be right, even when the intention is such as duty would prescribe, if it be done from a bad motive" (Sidgwick, 1981, p. 202). 3 A possible alternative, which is neither explored nor excluded in Morals From Motives, is for Slote to claim that it is only when an agent acts solely from a motive such as benevolence or malice that an agent-based theory yields the conclusion that she has acted rightly or wrongly. However, this claim makes the theory indeterminate in a wide range of cases, such as those discussed in the next two paragraphs. 4 David Copp has helped me see the depth and relevance of this more general problem. 5 See for instance Anscombe, 1997. 6 This methodology is nowhere so clearly exemplified and defended as in Sidgwick (198 1). 7 Nothing about the agent-based theory commits Slote to accepting this empirical claim. In fact, he has indicated to me in correspondence that he is inclined to reject it. I will consider the merits of the claim in the following section. 8 A philosopher less committed to moral theory might be inclined to accept this result. Yet this is not one of the situations in which the maxim has previously been called into doubt - it is not a "tragic" circumstance or one where previous wrongdoing by the agent leads her to have obligations she cannot possibly meet. See Williams (1981) and Stocker (1971), respectively. These arguments against the maxim are by no means uncontroversial. Moreover, Williams uses thoughts about the possibility of tragic conflicts of value to challenge the concept of moral obligation, the enterprise of moral theorizing, and ultimately the "peculiar institution" of morality altogether (Williams, 1997). We will presently discuss Stocker's proposed revision of the maxim.



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9 Notice that Slote expressly claims his theory to be compatible with the actual commonplace that 'ought' implies 'can' - not merely with some more modest variant of the maxim. This is for good reason. The concept of moral obligation seems partly constituted by the claim that it must be within our power to fulfill such obligations. This volitional aspect of morality is one of the features that distinguish it from other ethical views (about how to live). He cannot easily forswear this maxim because of his deep commitment to moral theory; indeed, one of the principal advantages Slote claims for agent-based virtue ethics is that it can preserve deontic concepts. 10 Frankfurt's case of the man "stampeded" by fear of a threatening gunman, for instance, is expressly put forward as an example of someone psychologically incapable of doing otherwise than submit to coercion. See Frankfurt, 1988. l l Alternatively, we might imagine that P bears a grudge against this particular defendant for some other, similarly recalcitrant reason - the details are not crucial. 12 He continues by reaffirming the conclusion that such an act would be right: "... while yet, if that act be clearly a duty which no one else can so properly perform, it would be absurd to say that we ought to omit it because we cannot altogether exclude an objectionable motive" (Sidgwick, 1981, p. 203). 13 Indeed, Slote himself is at least tempted by this response (see n. 7). I hope to discourage him from officially plunking for it, but the decision is his. I owe both of the following rejoinders to Slote, though of course he is not responsible for any weakness in their presentation. 14 Stocker's revision of the maxim is less radical than other alternatives, because it preserves the thought that - as long as you are not already to blame for your current situation - it will be possible for you to fulfill all your moral obligations. However, Stocker's argument rests on deontological claims that I don't find compelling. I think his putative counterexamples can be more perspicuously described in terms consistent with the original maxim.

REFERENCES

Anscombe, G.E.M. (1997): 'Modern Moral Philosophy', reprinted in R. Crisp and M. Slote (eds.).

Ayer, A.J. (1982): 'Freedom and Necessity', reprinted in G. Watson (ed.), Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crisp, R. and Slote, M. (eds.) (1997): Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frankfurt, H. (1988): 'The Principle of Alternate Possibilities', in Frankfurt (ed.), The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sidgwick, H. (1981): The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn., Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Slote, M. (2001): Morals From Motives, New York: Oxford University Press.




Stocker, M. (1971): "'Ought" and "Can"', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 49, 303-315.

Williams, B. (1981): 'Conflict of Values', in Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Williams, B. (1997): 'Morality, the Peculiar Institution', reprinted in R. Crisp and M. Slote (eds.).

Department of Philosophy Bowling Green University Bowling Green OH 43403-0222 USA

E-mail: [email protected]



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An Unsolved Problem for Slote's Agent-Based Virtue Ethics