Moral Remainders Sample Clauses

Moral Remainders. The final necessary criterion for generating dirt is that there must be some tangible moral residue, something tainting and polluting that attaches to the agent because of the decision. The moral disagreeableness involved in the act is not dissolved and cannot wholly be passed onto others. This dirt tracks some kind of responsibility for a wrongful act (Xx Xxxxx, 2018: 130) or some evidence of moral corruption on the agent’s behalf. When gaining this dirt is justified, “praise” and “opprobrium” can both be simultaneously appropriate (De Wijze, 2018: 141). There is a “residual moral claim against” the agent (Hall, 2022: 218). The “remainders thesis”15 requires more than just pointing to the fact that a moral imperative remains uncancelled. It must represent an uncancelled disagreeableness (Xxxxxxxx, 1978: 62-63), more serious than a forgone opportunity cost. In addition to there being something to be mourned about the path not chosen, there must be something lamentable about the path that has been chosen. There are legitimate grounds for others to complain about how 15 As described by Xxxxxxx (2009: 47). they have been treated or what the responsible agent has become, even if they ultimately accept that the action was ATC-justified. These acts do not lose their morally polluting character and evaluative force even if ATC-justified (Xxxxxxxx, 1978: 71). What is crucial is that this dirt is real. It is more than a mere phenomenological observation or a useful fiction. This is what differentiates the idea of justifiable moral dirt from the evaluations put forward by, say, consequentialists and threshold deontologists.