James L. D. Brown (University of Sheffield), "On Scepticism About Ought Simpliciter"

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2023

By James L. D. Brown

We’ve all been there. You’re at a family dinner, everyone is having a nice time, and then someone has to ruin everything with an ill-judged comment. You know the kind of thing I mean. There wasn’t any malicious intent behind it. It’s probably one of those generational things. But it’s clearly not okay to say. It expresses a derogatory and harmful attitude. As such, it’s clear that you ought to say something to counter it. But you really don’t want to. Obviously, it’s awkward. But you also know this person is sensitive about being called out and doing so is bound to ruin the evening. Not only that, but you know how important the dinner is for your host, who you know would take it badly if they perceived the evening as a failure. So while you know you ought to say something, it also seems that it would be better not to say anything at all, to steer the conversation back to safer grounds. 

It is natural to think of situations like this as involving normative conflict. One set of considerations pull you to respond in one way, while another set pull you to respond in a different, incompatible way. Many philosophers think of such cases in terms of a conflict between different normative standpoints. For instance, in our difficult dinner, perhaps one morally ought to say something but prudentially ought to say nothing. Whether this is plausible depends on how we flesh out the details of the case. But even if we think there is prudential value in acting morally or in standing up for one’s values, and even if morality factors in prudential or personal costs, it seems plausible that there is some rendering of the situation such that one morally ought to say something but prudentially ought to say nothing. Given that we can’t do both, what should we do?

A natural thought is that we resolve the conflict by weighing up the overall normative importance of the different considerations in play to determine not what we morally or prudentially ought to do, but, all-things-considered, what we just plain ought to do, or less prosaically, what we ought simpliciter to do. However, as natural as this thought might seem, some deny that it makes any sense. Instead, the sceptics argue, there is a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective, but none authoritative as such. This is because, they argue, the concept of ought simpliciter is incoherent, lacks definite sense, or has implausible normative consequences. As such, philosophical and ordinary practical thought should abandon the very notion that there is such a thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. 

In my paper, On Scepticism About Ought Simpliciter, I defend a unified view of practical reason against scepticism about ought simpliciter. I argue that the sceptic’s argument relies on an assumption that defenders of the unified view can reject. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. I argue, moreover, that rejecting this assumption is independently plausible given a certain familiar picture of our normative concepts. If right, this shows that ought simpliciter is coherent, has a definite sense, and need not have implausible normative consequences. Not only this, but I argue that answering the sceptical challenge in this way offers an independently motivated account of what makes something authoritatively normative. So I hope the paper has something to offer to anyone interested in the nature of authoritative normativity and the relation this has to different varieties or ‘flavours’ of normativity (e.g., morality, prudence, etc.).