From Duty for the Right Reasons

Abstract

An action has moral worth when it’s a morally right action and when it is motivated in such a way that its being right is not accidental. When an action is, in this way, non-accidentally right, the agent is morally praiseworthy for doing the right thing. According to the Right Reasons View, an agent performs an action with moral worth, or is praiseworthy for doing the right thing, roughly to the extent that she does the right thing for reasons that make it right to act in this way (e.g., Arpaly, Markovits). According to another kind of view, actions with moral worth spring from the ‘motive of duty,’ or are based on the agent’s justified belief or knowledge that she ought to act in the relevant way (e.g., Sliwa, Johnson King). These are both attractive ideas. But given certain plausible assumptions, these ideas are in tension with each other. Chapter 9 suggests that the extent to which this is so depends on how the nature of moral thought is to be understood, and that certain forms of expressivism—relational expressivism, in particular—allow the pursuit of a reconciliatory approach.