Monday 15 December 2008

Gardner and Duties to Succeed (Part 1)

In his paper “The Wrongdoing that Gets Results”, John Gardner (2004) argues that there may be moral duties to succeed. Gardner takes this conclusion to have the following two significant implications: (1) that there can be strict liability wrongdoing, and (2) that there can be resultant moral luck. Gardner summarises the conclusions of his paper as follows:
It follows that the argument of this paper supported the view that, within morality in the broad sense, there can be duties to succeed even where trying does not entail success, so that there can be strict liability wrongdoing…. In the only sense of ‘moral’ that has real philosophical significance, viz. the broad sense, I argued that there can be moral luck in the way our actions turn out…(Gardner, 2004, p. 86).
Since (with the exception of cases in which trying entails success) whether one succeeds or not partly depends on factors outside of one’s control (i.e., luck with respect to how things turn out), then moral duties to succeed must implicate what Nagel refers to as "resultant luck". It is generally held that reasons for succeeding just are reasons for trying. However, Gardner argues that sometimes the two kinds of reasons may come apart, such that one has a reason to succeed even though one lacks a reason to try. One case in which this seems to be true is when trying makes one less likely to succeed. For example, we can imagine someone who has an annoying song stuck in his head, but finds that the more he tries to stop thinking about the song, the more he is unable to stop thinking about the song. In such a case, it seems plausible to say that while the agent has a reason to succeed, he lacks a reason to try. However, it is not clear that there are ever cases in which one has a duty to succeed even though trying makes one less likely to succeed. Thus, even if cases in which trying makes one less likely to succeed are also cases in which one has a reason to succeed and no reason to try, it is not clear that such cases lend support for the claim that there are duties to succeed. The lesson, here, is that it is not sufficient for Gardner to show that there may be reasons to succeed that are independent of reasons to try. The reasons to succeed must be of a certain kind, if they are to lend support to the claim that there are duties to succeed and/or strict liability wrongdoing. Gardner presents the following example in support of his claim that there are reasons to succeed that are independent of reasons to try:
Suppose that, since I cannot swim a stroke (and have no boat, and no helicopter, and no telephone, and am perched on a clifftop in the middle of nowhere, etc.) it would be quite futile for me to try to rescue a man who is drowning in the stormy sea below. That this man needs to be rescued is a reason for me to rescue him. If I had no reason to rescue him, after all, I would not be so horrified at the realisation that it would be so utterly futile for me to try. I could walk past without compunction. But, by the logic of satisfactoriness, the futility of my trying does have the consequence that my reason to save the man is not a reason for me to try to save him. No amount of trying on my part will allow me to save him.
Gardner claims that the agent in the clifftop example (who, following Gardner, I will refer to in the first person) has a reason to succeed, but no reason to try, saving the drowning man. The argument relies on three major premises. First, he stipulates that, under the particular circumstances, it is impossible for me to save the drowning man.
(G1): “No amount of trying will allow me to save the man.”
Second, he claims that the fact that the drowning man needs to be saved is sufficient for me to
have a reason to succeed in saving him.
(G2): “That this man needs to be rescued is a reason for me to rescue him.”
Third, he invokes what he (following Anthony Kelly) refers to as “the logic of satisfactoriness”:
(G3): “I have reason to do whatever is sufficient to achieve whatever I have reason
to achieve...” (Gardner, 2004, p. 55)

Gardner emphasises that the type of sufficiency he has in mind, in (G3), is not logical but rather contingent. That is, it only need be the case that my trying can (or will eventually) lead to success, for me to have a reason to try. Since, (by G1) no amount of trying is sufficient to save the drowning man, then (by G3) I have no reason to try to save the drowning man. However, since (by G2) I still have a reason to succeed in saving the drowning man, this is a case in which I have a reason to succeed but no reason to try.

Unfortunately, as it stands, (G2) is highly implausible. One straightforward way in which this is so—and for which, I believe, a charitable reading of Gardner ought to correct—is (G2)’s failure to distinguish between an objective reason and a subjective reason to perform a certain action. While the fact that the drowning man needs to be saved may be a reason for someone (i.e., an objective reason) to save him, it does not follow that it is a reason for me (i.e., a subjective reason) to save him. For example, suppose that I simply fail to see the drowning man. While there still remains a reason for someone to save the man, it fails to constitute a reason for me, in the sense that it is not a reason I am aware of or have subjective access to. Without this distinction between objective and subjective reasons, there would be no way to differentiate between the type of reasons I may have to save someone who is drowning right before my eyes, and the type of reasons I may have (if any) to save someone who, unbeknownst to me, happen to be drowning 10,000 miles away at this very moment. Thus, we would do well to reformulate (G2) in a way that specifies that the reason in question is one to which I have subjective access.
(G2*): That I am aware that the man needs to be rescued is a reason for me to rescue him.
Earlier, I opined that it would be more charitable to read Gardner as being committed to (G2*)
than to (G2). That this is so is suggested by the single piece of evidence Gardner presents in
favour of (G2):
That this man needs to be rescued is a reason for me to rescue him. If I had no reason to rescue him, after all, I would not be so horrified at the realisation that it would be so utterly futile for me to try. I could walk past without compunction. (Ibid, p. 55).

Thus, Gardner seems committed to something like the following claim:
(*) That I feel horror at the realisation that I am unable to φ entails that I have
a reason to φ.
I have serious reservations about the legitimacy of (*), as will eventually become apparent. However, for the time being, I wish to point out that (*) presupposes that I am aware of the circumstances that generate my reasons to act since I could not be horrified by something I was unaware of. Moreover, by Gardner’s lights, not only must the agent be aware of the need in question, but he must also be horrified by his inability to fulfil said need. This imposes an additional qualification to (G2), which we may now capture with following revised premise:
(G2**): That I am aware that the man needs to be rescued (and horrified by my inability to rescue him) entails that I have a reason to rescue him.
Although (G2**) is much more plausible that (G2), in my next post on this topic I will argue that Gardner's argument outlined above still fails.

Thursday 4 December 2008

CFP: Johns Hopkins Graduate Student Conference

Inside/Outside

An interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
hosted by the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University

April 2nd and 3rd, 2009

Keynote Speakers: Espen Hammer (University of Oslo/Essex) and Terry Pinkard (Georgetown University)


Foregrounding the relationship inside/outside, this conference seeks to consider the effects of this pervasive structuring relation across philosophy, literature, the human sciences, politics, and the arts. What work does this distinction do? How do we understand its ubiquity? Furthermore, what is our contemporary relation to this (perceived?) opposition: do we overcome, dissolve, ignore, work through, maintain, or dialectically negotiate this relationship? Papers exploring these and related questions are welcome.

Some suggestions: scheme and content, content and form, mind and world, interiority and exteriority, self and other, inclusion and exclusion, human and inhuman, literary, aesthetic, and political strategies and figures, historical investigations and genealogies, theological figurations and disfigurations, contemporary philosophical approaches ("continental" and "analytic") to this question, etc.


Please send full papers (for a 45 minute presentation), abstract (300 words max.), and contact information (including institutional affiliation) to insideoutsideconference@gmail.com

Deadline for all submissions is January 15th, 2009.

For details, see conference website here.