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Notes
More specifically, they are morally better than a permissible act that we could have performed instead. For brevity, I use the term ‘morally good’ throughout this paper.
Due to the fact, say, that the level of risk to the agent involved is too high for this action to be obligatory but not so high as to be morally impermissible. I assume that all the rescue cases discussed have this form. Alternative cases of the same structure could be given, if the reader objects to the particulars of this one.
See for example Robin Attfield, “Supererogation and Double Standards,” Mind 88, no. 352 (1979): 481–99; Michael Clark, “The Meritorious and the Mandatory,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 79 (1978): 23–33; Barry Curtis, “The Supererogatory, the Foolish and the Morally Required,” Journal of Value Inquiry 15 (1981): 311–18. It is also a premise of the debate between Elizabeth M. Pybus, “Saints and Heroes,” Philosophy 57, no. 220 (1982): 193–99; Patricia M. McGoldrick, “Saints and Heroes: A Plea for the Supererogatory,” Philosophy 59, no. 230 (1984): 523–28. See also the discussion of their disagreement in Russell A. Jacobs, “Obligation, Supererogation and Self-Sacrifice,” Philosophy 62, no. 239 (1987): 97.
Marcia Baron, “Kantian Ethics and Supererogation,” The Journal of Philosophy 84, no. 5 (1987): 239.
Jacobs, “Obligation, Supererogation and Self-Sacrifice,” 97.
Joseph Raz, “Permissions and Supererogation,” American Philosophical Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1975): 164. Gregory Mellema, “Quasi-Supererogation,” Philosophical Studies 52 (1987): 142.
For further discussion, see Phillip Montague, “Acts, Agents, and Supererogation,” American Philosophical Quarterly 26, no. 2 (1989): 101–11.
Those taking such a position include: J.O. Urmson, “Saints and Heroes,” in Moral Concepts, ed. Joel Feinberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 60–73; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Rev. Ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999); David Heyd, Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Alfred Archer, “Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?,” Theoria 82, no. 3 (September 2016): 238–55.
Nancy A. Stanlick, “The Nature and Value of Supererogatory Actions,” Journal of Social Philosophy 30, no. 1 (February 1999): 210. Stanlick draws on Susan Wolf’s work, who questions “the assumption that it is always better to be morally better” where ‘morally better’ is understood as always putting the interests of others ahead of our own (Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints,” The Journal of Philosophy 79, no. 8 (1982): 419–39).
Jean Hampton, “Selflessness and the Loss of Self,” Social Philosophy and Policy 10, no. 1 (1993): 1.
Ibid., 8.
Jason Kawall, “Self-Regarding Supererogatory Actions,” Journal of Social Philosophy 34, no. 3 (September 2003): 495.
Neera Kapur Badhwar, “Altruism Versus Self-Interest: Sometimes a False Dichotomy,” Social Philosophy and Policy 10, no. 1 (1993): 90–117. See also Curtis, “The Supererogatory, the Foolish and the Morally Required”; Clark, “The Meritorious and the Mandatory,” 32.
Archer, “Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?” He cites as evidence: supererogation as understood in Christian theology (David Heyd, “Supererogation,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016.), Dale Dorsey, “The Supererogatory and How to Accommodate It,” Utilitas 25, no. 3 (2013): 355–82; Michael Ferry, “Does Morality Demand Our Very Best? On Moral Prescriptions and the Line of Duty,” Philosophical Studies 165, no. 2 (2013): 573–89, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9968-6; Heyd, Supererogation, 1982; Douglas W. Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Archer, “Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?”
Ibid. Archer argues that our deontic concepts would be less unified in the sense that supererogation would not involve a connection to an assessment of the agent’s motives, while obligation and prohibition do not (Ibid., 9.). And, as Archer later discusses, it is less parsimonious to reserve the term ‘supererogatory’ for those actions that are optional, good and praiseworthy, as another term would then be needed for those actions that are optional, good and not praiseworthy (Ibid., 16.). On the other hand, there may well be reasons, as Kawall supposes, to reserve the term supererogation for when “everything goes right” (Kawall, “Self-Regarding Supererogatory Actions,” 495.). Nevertheless, it is not the purpose of this paper to determine the merits of this argument against the exclusion of praiseworthiness; but rather to reveal a tension that arises from including the agent’s intentions and excluding their motives, as proposed by the advocates of the Anti-Motivation View.
Alfred Archer, “Supererogation and Intentions of the Agent,” Philosophia (United States) 41, no. 2 (2013): 451. Philip Montague notes the same: “standard definitions of the concept of supererogation are formulated entirely in terms of references to features of actions” (Montague, “Acts, Agents, and Supererogation,” 102.).
Heyd, Supererogation, 1982, 116. I disagree with Heyd’s further claim that the agent “must have the intention of promoting the good by his action.” (Ibid., 133.)
It seems clear from these kind of examples that accidental actions cannot be supererogatory. Archer gives the example of Louise who makes a large donation to a famine charity by bank transfer but does so accidentally: she “intended to transfer the money between two of her own accounts to enable her to buy an expensive car” (Archer, “Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?”). This is not supererogatory. However, it should be noted that it is possible to accidentally, and therefore unintentionally, do what we intended to do: for example, “If I intend to be shaking in order to signal my confederate, and this intention makes me nervous, so that I shake, I am shaking because I intend to do so—though not intentionally” (Kieran Setiya, “Intention,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, 2015.). Consider my modified version of Archer’s case: Eleanor makes a donation to a famine charity by bank transfer but does so accidentally: she intended to transfer the money to her savings account and she intended only after doing so to send some money to the famine charity but she accidentally did it the wrong way round. It just so happens it was the same amount as she intended all along. This action was accidental but was nevertheless in accordance with her intentions. A test of whether an action is in accordance with our intentions is whether we regret the action or whether we would have done otherwise. Archer states that Louise “would like to retrieve the money but is unable to do so” (Archer, “Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?”) whereas, on my case, Eleanor probably would not. Note, however, if regret is really what matters then there are actions that could be supererogatory despite being performed unintentionally and not in accordance the agent’s intentions. We could imagine a case where Louise did not regret the action and would not retrieve the money even if she could, despite the fact that it was a complete accident and not in accordance with her intentions because, after having sent the money, the plight of those suffering from famine became vivid to her and so she does not regret sending it. These counterfactuals may be more important than the original intention. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this paper to delve more deeply into this possibility.
For more on the issue of forced supererogation, see Bashshar Haydar, “Forced Supererogation and Deontological Restrictions,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 36 (2002): 445–54.
Archer, “Supererogation and Intentions of the Agent,” 458. See his Moral Intention Requirement Two (MIR 2).
Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1980), 45.
Except in the sense that we can accidentally do something that when done intentionally is supererogatory or that we can accidentally do something that is usually considered supererogatory.
The sufficiency of intentions for supererogation is explicitly endorsed by, for example, Heyd, Supererogation, 1982, 133.
The relationship between attempts, completions and moral goodness may well be quite complex. There may be a difference, for example, between thinking that the moral goodness comes straightforwardly from an attempt (and thus completions, as a subset of attempts—namely, successful attempts—also have this goodness) and thinking that completions are what are morally good, but attempts share or sufficiently track what it is that make completions themselves good. It makes no difference for my discussion here, however, as either account has the same effect in terms of which actions are classed as supererogatory. For more on attempts, see Gideon Yaffe, Attempts: In the Philosophy of Action and the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2010).
The sufficiency of intending can in part be further explained because, from the point of view of the deliberating agent, intending to do something and intending to try to do something look the same (T.M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning and Blame (Harvard University Press, 2008), 46.).
M.W. Jackson, “The Nature of Supererogation,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 20 (1986): 295. There is a caveat however about what the agent ought to have known or believed about the act and its consequences. If it is only through wilful ignorance or negligence that I believe that my action would be of a certain sort, then its status as supererogatory would be undermined. The standard could be made more or less strict depending on your views about the epistemological requirements that apply to deliberating agents.
G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd Editio (Harvard University Press, 1957), 11.
Ibid.
Ibid., 12.
In this, therefore, the role of intentions in accounts of the supererogatory is perhaps very different to the role it has in accounts of duty. As Heyd says, “At least some theories of duty maintain that a duty or an obligation can be discharged or met unintentionally, and a fortiori with no intention of benefiting anyone. And as for the second meaning of ‘intended’, some philosophers (notably Moore and Ross) would deny that mere intention (not complemented by actual success) can suffice to make an act duty-fulfilling” (Heyd, Supererogation, 1982, 133.).
For example, Archer, “Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?”; Heyd, Supererogation, 1982.
John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X - Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 219.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 219, footnote *.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
I assume here that we should see Beth as intending to get her name in the paper. For those who doubt this characterisation, see my discussion in §6 of how, even if she is taken to be motivated by getting her name in the paper, the two cases of Beth and Clara still ought to be treated in a similar fashion.
For those who are still sceptical we can strengthen the cases in two ways. First, we can note that Clara only intends to torture the man in question, not to torture him to death. Second, we can even suppose that the success of saving the man, or his ultimate survival, matters very little to Beth (maybe even less to her than to Clara): perhaps Beth is equally likely to reach her ultimate goal of getting her name in the paper whether or not he survives the night at a local hospital; or perhaps she is likely to get more press coverage if he suffers and eventually dies. I do not think this emphasise on her attitude towards his future would make a difference to the Anti-Motivation View’s assessment of her act as supererogatory. However, it puts pressure on the idea that we should both characterise Clara’s action as one of torturing but not of saving but also characterise Beth’s action as one of saving and not of self-publicity.
Note that just because someone intends a morally impermissible end does not entail that the means to that end is itself impermissible. That would entail that Clara is forbidden from saving the man at all, which cannot be correct (for more on this, see Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning and Blame. Note that nothing in this paper relies on Scanlon’s claims concerning the role of intention in determining permissibility; nevertheless, his assessment (and explanation) of this particular case seems both correct and illuminating).
Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X - Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, 219, footnote *.
Anscombe, Intention, 18.
Ibid., 21.
Ibid., 18.
Ibid. In light of these problems, Anscombe goes so far as saying that in terms of the relative importance of considering motives as opposed to intentions, she is “very glad not to be writing either ethics or literary criticism, to which this question belongs” (Ibid., 19.)!
My thanks to Lucy Campbell for this example and for an illuminating discussion of Anscombe’s position on intentions and motives.
We might even need to go so far as to say that we must take into account what an agent merely foresees as motivating side-effects might also make a difference to the moral quality of an act even if they aren’t intended. Consider these two cases. Scuppered Competition: In order to help my friend be first in his class, I intend to distract his nearest competition by deliberately exploiting her weakness for late night movie marathons. I know that this will cause her to do very badly in the important test the next day, giving my friend an edge. Thin Walls: In order to help my friend be first in his class, I intend to stay up all night quizzing him and helping him study. Given the thin walls in his student halls, I know that this will cause his neighbour to be kept up leading her to do badly in the important test the day that I am helping my friend prepare for. If we think that the latter case is also not supererogatory it must be because of the foreseen though unintended side-effects of my actions.
Again, my thanks to Lucy Campbell for help in formulating the issue in these terms.
H. Gross, A Theory of Criminal Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 111. My thanks to Leora Dahan Katz for bringing this quotation to my attention.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to David Heyd, Georgie Statham, Silvia Jonas, Olla Solomyak, Leora Dahan Katz, Sharon Berry, Elvira Di Bona, Moyra Tourlamain, and Lucy Campbell. I am also grateful to the participants at the Israeli Philosophical Association as well as the anonymous reviewers for this journal for their helpful feedback.
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Benn, C. Intentions, Motives and Supererogation. J Value Inquiry 53, 107–123 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-018-9645-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-018-9645-x