Double-Counted Impossible Oughts Sample Clauses

Double-Counted Impossible Oughts. Key to the value-conflict view is the idea that these values can retain their evaluative importance even when deprived of their action-guiding function. The importance of not violating a key moral value is retained even if violating the value is ATC-justified — this is how a moral remainder is generated (and how value-conflict views can explain moral dirt). Moral conflicts arise when we encounter “double-counted impossible oughts”. Xxxxxxx rejects the notion that ought necessarily implies can. A strict application of that principle, he argues, leaves us unable to properly describe situations in which we are, whether by physical or moral necessity, forced to commit a wrong. By erasing the ought from these scenarios, Xxxxxxx (1990: 12) contends, we will find ourselves struggling to describe the harm inflicted or the inherent imperfections in the outcome. Similarly, Xxxxxxxx (1973a: 181-183) had earlier criticised the view that moral oughts never conflict with one another by describing cases of double oughts, where fulfilling both oughts is contingently impossible. When separate obligations exist to do both a and b, these are separate and independent oughts. We cannot “get off the moral hook” to do a by doing b, even if b is the more pressing ought and renders a impossible. Even if ought implies can, then, moral conflicts remain. There is no single ought to do a and b, as such an ought would be impossible. However, the separate oughts to do a and to do b can both be satisfied on their own terms. These oughts are both, on their own, possible, yet taken together conflict. For Xxxxxxxx (1973a: 175), this inflexible insistence on ‘ought implies can’ is based on an attempt to apply the structure of factual beliefs to moral ones. When two factual beliefs conflict, then at least one should be changed or rejected. This specificationist strategy, however, is unsuitable for moral claims (Xxxxxxxx, 1973a: 177-179). We thus arrive at the notion of impossible oughts. Let us now turn to double-counting. Acts have costs. With some justified acts, we can “double-count these costs: once in taking them as costs and once in holding that despite their being costs, what they are costs for is justified” (Xxxxxxx, 1990: 15). If we consider costs solely as a cost, then they are never worth enduring, but if we ask what they are considered a cost for, then it can be “better had than not had”. This goes beyond mere cost-benefit analysis by accepting that this additional disvalue linger...