CEPPA Talk – Elizabeth Harman (Princeton University)

Title: ‘Does Morality Speak within the Realm of the Morally Permissible?’

Abstract: You hear that your next-door neighbor Alicia is sick with COVID-19. You’re new to the neighborhood and haven’t met Alicia yet. You’re overwhelmed with working from home and overseeing your kids’ remote schooling. You could reach out to Alicia and ask whether she needs someone to pick up medicine or groceries for her; that would be a nice thing to do. Morality doesn’t require you to do it, and you know that. You think it over. “I don’t have to offer to help, but I should,” you think, and you are right. You offer to help.

This could be a true story. Sometimes, there is a way that you could help someone; you don’t have to help; but all things considered, you should help. This means that morality speaks within the realm of the morally permissible. Moral reasons can win out within the realm of the morally permissible to settle that you should do something morally good that you don’t have to do. Sometimes, a supererogatory action should be done. If one fails to act, then one makes a moral mistake that isn’t morally wrong: it turns out that some moral mistakes are not morally wrong.

I will argue for this view and then discuss an objection from multiply satisfiable moral requirements. Sometimes you don’t have to do a particular thing because it is just one way of fulfilling a moral requirement; there are other ways you could also fulfill that requirement. This appears to be something that you should do that you don’t have to do. But doing it is not supererogatory—it’s just a way of fulfilling a moral requirement. The objection holds that the cases I use to argue for my view all involve multiply satisfiable moral requirements, such as the general moral obligation to help some people sometimes. I pursue two lines of response to the objection: the more concessive line of response concedes that my argument needs to be revised in light of the objection, but shows that this can be done; the less concessive line of response holds that my original argument survives the objection.

Harman St Andrews Talk Handout December 2020