To Live is to Devour Others

This paper studies how Ishida Sui’s Tokyo Ghoul creates its typical sense of “tragedy,” by stressing the injustice inherent in every act of eating, and by generalizing the model of nutrition to every ethically laden act. Ishida undermines the Kantian principle that “ought implies can,” depicting a twisted world which forces us into wrongdoing: we have to eat, but there is no Other we can eat with moral impunity. Still, his characters provide some ethical models which could be implemented in our everyday food ethics, given that the tragicality spotted by Ishida is not that alien to our food system: food aesthetics, nihilism, amor fati, living with the tragedy, and letting ourselves be eaten are the options Ishida offers to cope with the tragedy, to approach the devastation our need for food brings into the world in a more aware and charitable way. The examination of Ishida’s narrative device, conducted with the mediation of thinkers such as Lévinas, Ricoeur, Derrida, and other contemporary moral philosophers, shall turn the question: “how to become worthy of eating?” into the core problem for food ethics.

Dispensing with the Subjective Moral ‘Ought’

There are cases in which, intuitively, an agent’s action is both morally right in one sense and morally wrong in another sense. Such cases (along with other intuitions about blameless wrongdoing and action-guidance) support distinguishing between the objective moral ‘ought’ and the subjective moral ‘ought.’ This chapter argues against drawing this distinction on the grounds that the prescriptions delivered by an adequate objective moral theory must be sensitive to the mental states of agents. Specifically, an adequate theory of the objective moral ‘ought’ must respect a strong ought-implies-can principle—morally ought implies agentially can—in order to prescribe actions to real-life agents. An agent’s mental states determine what is agentially possible for that agent; thus, what an agent objectively morally ought to do is in part determined by the agent’s mental states. This chapter describes the structure of a compelling non-ideal moral theory that is both objective and mental state-sensitive. This non-ideal theory illuminates the shortcomings of extant objectivist and subjectivist moral theories and illustrates how we can dispense with the subjective moral ‘ought.’

Psychology and Obligation in Hobbes: The Case of “Ought Implies Can”

Many interpreters use Hobbes’s endorsement of “ought implies can” to justify treating Hobbes’s motivational psychology as an external constraint on his normative theory. These interpreters assume that, for Hobbes, something is “possible” for a person to do only if they can be motivated to do it, and so Hobbes’s psychological theory constrains what obligations people have. I argue this assumption about what is “possible” is false and so these arguments are unsound. Looking to Hobbes’s exchange with Bramhall on free will, I argue that the sense of “possible” relevant for “ought implies can” in Hobbes’s philosophy only concerns an agent’s capacity to do something if they decide to do it. Whether a person can be motivated to do something, then, does not determine if it is possible for them. Consequently, Hobbes’s motivational psychology cannot determine what our obligations are by invoking the principle that “ought implies can.”

If You Can't Change What You Believe, You Don't Believe It

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one's rational character, whether or not those activities are under one's voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle.

Love and Freedom

Chapter 6 contends that love and relationships need not be compromised if we, motivated by ethical considerations and skepticism about free will, relinquished the retributive emotions. When we are wronged in relationships, there are non-retributive emotions available to us, whose expressions can play the relevant roles. These emotions include feeling hurt or shocked or disappointed about what the offending agent has done, and sadness or sorrow and concern for him, and taking on the stance of moral protest against him. Personal relationships might presuppose free will due to being structured by moral obligations, and, by way of the ‘ought implies can principle,’ moral obligations presupposing the ability to refrain from wrongdoing. Two responses are offered, one compatibilist about the relevant ability to do otherwise, and the other invoking a sense of ‘ought’ that does not imply ‘can’ in the threatening sense.

Why Impossible Options Are Better: Consequentializing Dilemmas

To consequentialize a deontological moral theory is to give a theory which issues the same moral verdicts, but explains those verdicts in terms of maximizing or satisficing value. There are many motivations for consequentializing: to reconcile plausible ideas behind deontology with plausible ideas behind consequentialism, to help us better understand deontological theories, or to extend deontological theories beyond what intuitions alone tell us. It has proven difficult to consequentialize theories that allow for moral dilemmas or that deny that “ought” implies “can.” This article argues that the problem is best solved by allowing impossible actions as inputs into consequentializations. It shows that all other approaches that have been advocated are inadequate. It also argues that progress in consequentialization, and in formal ethics more generally, requires thinking about more than just wrongness and permissibility; we should think about contrary-to-duty obligations and degrees of wrongness as well.

Inability and Obligation in Intellectual Evaluation

If moral responsibilities prescribe how agents ought to behave, are there also intellectual responsibilities prescribing what agents ought to believe? Many theorists have argued that there cannot be intellectual responsibilities because they would require the ability to control whether one believes, whereas it is impossible to control whether one believes. This argument appeals to an “ought implies can” principle for intellectual responsibilities. The present paper tests for the presence of intellectual responsibilities in social cognition. Four experiments show that intellectual responsibilities are attributed to believe things and that these responsibilities can exceed what agents are able to believe. Furthermore, the results show that agents are sometimes considered responsible for failing to form true beliefs on the basis of good evidence, and that this effect does not depend on the seriousness of the consequences for failing to form a belief. These findings clarify when and how responsibilities for belief are attributed, falsify a conceptual entailment between ability and responsibility in the intellectual domain, and emphasize the importance of objective truth in intellectual evaluations.

How "Ought" Exceeds but Implies "Can": Description and Encouragement in Moral Judgment

This paper tests a theory about the relationship between two important topics in moral philosophy and psychology. One topic is the function of normative language, specifically claims that one “ought” to do something. Do these claims function to describe moral responsibilities, encourage specific behavior, or both? The other topic is the relationship between saying that one “ought” to do something and one’s ability to do it. In what respect, if any, does what one “ought” to do exceed what one “can” do? The theory tested here has two parts: (1) “ought” claims function to both describe responsibilities and encourage people to fulfill them (the dual-function hypothesis); (2) the two functions relate differently to ability, because the encouragement function is limited by the person’s ability, but the descriptive function is not (the interaction hypothesis). If this theory is correct, then in one respect “ought implies can” is false because people have responsibilities that exceed their abilities. But in another respect “ought implies can” is legitimate because it is not worthwhile to encourage people to do things that exceed their ability. Results from two behavioral experiments support the theory that “ought” exceeds but implies “can.” Results from a third experiment provide further evidence regarding an “ought” claim’s primary function and how contextual features can affect the interpretation of its functions.