We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
This paper is a brief reponse to some of Douglas Portmore's criticisms of our version of the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction.
In his interesting and helpful paper ‘McNaughton and Rawling on the Agent-relative/Agent-neutral Distinction’, Douglas Portmore criticizes our formalization of duties on the grounds that we have over-looked an important class of conditional cases in which the antecedent of the conditional falls outside the scope of the deontic operator.
1 Utilitas, xiii (2001)Google Scholar.
2 See e.g. McNaughton, D. and Rawling, P., ‘Achievement, Welfare, and Consequentialism’, Analysis, lxi (2001)Google Scholar.
3 H. A. Prichard, ‘Duty and Ignorance of Fact’, repr. Moral Obligation, Oxford, 1949.
4 Forms (A) and (B) below we dub ‘universal reasons statements’. Whether reasons are universal is a matter of controversy that we shall not tackle here. However, when we agree (below) with Portmore that there are true statements of form (B) that are not equivalent to any statement of form (A), we have in mind that much can be packed into the antecedent of A→xR[B]. Some of the items in the antecedent might be described as reasons, others as background conditions, with the dividing line between the two being, perhaps, inquirer-relative.
5 We are guilty of confusing use and mention. We leave it to the concerned reader to make the obvious adjustments.
6 McNaughton, D. and Rawling, P., ‘Honoring and Promoting Values’, Ethics, cii (1992)Google Scholar.
7 See Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984Google Scholar.
