Deontic Morality and Control

TRANSITION AND SYNOPSIS

There are no deontic anchors in deterministic worlds. Some indeterministic worlds in which agents lack even proximal control over their decisions or actions will also be bereft of deontic anchors. Why should this matter? I explore this question in the present and in the subsequent four chapters.

I begin in this chapter, by registering one cost of being without deontic anchors: A number of our reactive attitudes such as indignation, resentment, and forgiveness properly require that persons perform at least some actions that are wrong. A world devoid of deontic anchors, then, is a world devoid of the grounds for such attitudes. We value these attitudes or sentiments insofar as we believe that they have legitimate grounds. Hence, a world with these attitudes or sentiments but without rational grounds for them, would be a world deprived of something deemed morally valuable.

In the next chapter (Chapter 10), I lay out an argument for the thesis that no one can be appraisable – that is, praise- or blameworthy – for any of one's deeds in a world lacking in deontic anchors. The argument hinges on what I have dubbed the “Objective View” of blameworthiness and its praiseworthiness analogue: One is morally blameworthy for performing an action only if that action is morally wrong; and one is praiseworthy for performing an action only if that action is morally permissible or obligatory. Though many find it plausible, I believe that the Objective View is false.