Moral Worth and the Problem of Psychological Contingency

To act with moral worth, the agent must do the right thing non-accidentally. The question is what this amounts to. The dominant theories of moral worth try to secure this non-accidentality by appeal to the content of motivation: the agent must be moved either by the right-making features themselves (rightness de re) or by the fact that the act is right (rightness de dicto). I argue that both strategies fail, because they allow a kind of worth-undermining psychological contingency: given the agent's beliefs about reasons, it can remain merely accidental that she performs the right act.

I propose a test: (roughly) hold fixed the agent's beliefs about reasons and ask: was it merely fortuitous that she did the right thing? If so, the right act is accidental in the relevant sense. Both the de dicto and de re views permit failure of this test. I defend an alternative account of non-accidentality: an agent acts with moral worth only when she does the right thing because she takes the right-making features to be binding moral reasons. This can support a steadfast commitment to the right that does not depend on psychological luck.

Alisabeth Ayars
https://alisabethayars.com/
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
Washington University in St. Louis

About the Speaker:

My research interests lie in the mental states most closely tied to evaluation and moral motivation, and their normative upshots. My early work focused on moral psychology and experimental philosophy. Currently I have a project on moral worth in progress. I focus on someone I call a “moral hobbyist”: a person who is intrinsically motivated by morally relevant features, such as helping the poor, but treats morality as if it were a hobby—something they would have no reason to pursue if they weren’t attracted to it. I argue that the hobbyist is not praiseworthy, despite acting directly for the reason that the act is right. What undermines the hobbyist’s praiseworthiness, I contend, is that they fail to act from a certain kind of desire for the right-making feature: “categorical concern”. The view of moral worth I defend aims to preserve a Kantian insight about moral worth within a broader Arpaly-Markovits framework.

In addition to these projects, I am working on papers on metaphysical grounding, moral non-naturalism, consent, and responsibility and desire.

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Free pizza and refreshments will be served at the event. Sometimes we look for each other after the talk for further discussion about the topic.

The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here [to be posted]

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai