Does Obligation Require Weak or Strong Alternatives?

Weak alternatives are alternatives one can have even if determinism is true. Strong alternatives are unavailable to anyone if determinism is true. Chapter 6 pursues a strategy to establish that the alternatives obligation requires are weak. This strategy is negative, consisting in showing that various considerations for the opposed position—obligation requires strong alternatives—are not cogent. The chapter also assesses a line of reasoning for the view that one can circumvent entirely the thorny issue of whether responsibility or obligation, if either requires alternatives, requires strong or weak alternatives. The recommendation is that we should focus instead on whether determinism undermines ability or opportunity to do otherwise. It is argued that attempting to skirt the thorny issue in this way is problematic.

Indeterminism and Obligation

The obligation dilemma’s indeterministic horn, whose primary constituent is the luck objection, is introduced in this chapter. This is the objection that indeterministically caused actions are too luck-infected to be obligations. Two versions of this objection are discussed. On the No Explanation Version, if an agent indeterministically decides to do one thing rather than another, then there is no detailed causal account of her decision. Since the control free decision requires is causal, her deciding to do what she does is not free. On the Pure Luck Version, if an agent does something, which she refrains from doing in another possible world with the same past and laws, and there is nothing about her powers, capacities, states of mind, moral character, and the like that explains this cross-world difference, then this difference is just a matter of freedom-undermining luck.

Options and Challenges

The chapter first summarizes various respects in which the responsibility and obligation dilemmas are relevantly similar and relevantly different. One similarity is that the luck objection underpins the indeterministic horns of both. A salient difference is that whereas some have thought that the responsibility dilemma’s deterministic horn is persuasive because responsibility requires ultimate origination, there is no such requirement for obligation. The chapter then lays out certain options as responses to the obligation dilemma. The principal alternatives include: (i) accepting both horns and, thus, embracing obligation skepticism; (ii) rejecting the indeterministic horn by rejecting the luck objection; and (iii) rejecting the deterministic horn on the assumption that obligation requires alternatives which determinism does not preclude. The chapter also comments briefly on the proposal that an analysis of specific ability should help with assessing the dilemma.

Obligation and Forgiveness

Obligation compatibilism is the view that moral obligation is compatible with determinism. A competitor, obligation libertarianism, says that moral obligation is incompatible with determinism, and there are free actions that are morally obligatory for some people. A way to appreciate the importance of the obligation dilemma is to reflect on whether either of these rivals can accommodate forgiveness, something deemed central to interpersonal relationships. This chapter explores this issue by examining whether forgiveness presupposes our having free will owing to its putative essential ties to moral obligation. It proposes that forgiveness is conceptually associated not with obligation but with prima facie obligation. The chapter terminates with a discussion on whether prima facie obligation, and thus forgiveness, presupposes our having free will.

Determinism and Obligation

Chapter 2 addresses the deterministic horn. Whether determinism threatens obligation turns partly but pivotally on whether the alternatives obligation requires are of the sort that one can have even if determinism is true (weak alternatives) or of the sort determinism precludes one from having (strong alternatives). A line of reasoning for the view that obligation presupposes only that that agents have weak alternatives is evaluated. The chapter concludes with the argument that even if a teleological account of reasons explanation, according to which actions are to be explained in terms of the goals of agents and not in terms of whether they are caused by appropriate mental items (or their neural realizers), is true, determinism still threatens obligation if obligation requires strong alternatives.

The Extended Luck Problem

Chapter 4 continues critical discussion of the cross-world or present luck problem regarding obligation. It assesses various responses to this problem, including responses by teleological theorists about action explanation, agent causalists, and event causalists. It evaluates the view that so-called non-action-centered varieties of libertarianism (as opposed to action-centered varieties) bypass this objection. It discusses why the phenomenon of “tracing” with respect to obligation—the freedom of an action that is obligatory may be inherited from a previously performed free action—is not promising. It argues, finally, that this sort of luck objection is far reaching. It affects non-moral varieties of obligation, such as prudential obligation, and extends to best-from-one’s-own-point-of-view judgments that play a vital role in our practical deliberations.

Freedom and Obligation

This chapter first summarizes the responsibility dilemma—responsibility is incompatible with both determinism and its falsity—and then outlines the homologous obligation dilemma. It primarily focuses on showing that obligation requires alternative possibilities: an obligation for one to do something presupposes that one can do, and one can refrain from doing, it. Four principles undergird the view that obligation entails avoidability: (i) If one ought to do something, then one can do it; (ii) if it is impermissible for one to do something, then one can do it; (iii) one ought to do something if, and only if, it is impermissible for one not to do it; and (iv) if it is impermissible for one to do something, there is something else one can do, which is obligatory for one. A formidable analysis of the concept of obligation validates these principles.

Obligation and Responsibility

This chapter first exposes one substantial consequence of the obligation dilemma by introducing principles that forge putative connections between blameworthiness and impermissibility. The primary principles, or variations of them, are: (i) necessarily, one is blameworthy for doing something only if it is impermissible for one to do it; and (ii) necessarily, one is morally blameworthy for doing something only if one believes that it is morally impermissible for one to do it. If these principles are true, blameworthiness is imperiled if the obligation dilemma is sound. This initial discussion supports the thesis that factors that affect obligation may influence responsibility. The chapter then develops an interpretation of the view that factors that affect responsibility may impinge on obligation. Finally, some theses that link blameworthiness with desert, on the one hand, or sanction with desert, on the other, are addressed.