4 - Control Requirements of Deontic Anchors: Some Objections

Summary

The upshot of the last chapter is that rightness, wrongness, and obligatoriness all require alternative possibilities. I have argued for this result by invoking a number of principles, including K and OW. These principles may, however, be regarded by some with suspicion. In this chapter, I first address various objections to K and then turn to concerns regarding OW.

OBJECTIONS TO K AND REPLIES

I find principle K, particularly the moderate version, attractive, and in this I am not alone. K enjoys widespread support, the basis of which, I believe, is at least twofold. First, there is the deep-seated intuition had by many that if overall moral obligation expresses moral necessity or requirement, then one must be able to do the thing – one must have control over doing the thing – that one ought morally to do. Indeed, partly for this reason, K seems to have the status of a sort of axiom – a deontic one – that in the minds of many, any adequate substantive moral theory about what makes right acts right, wrong acts wrong, and obligatory acts obligatory, or any acceptable analysis of the concept of obligation, should “validate.” Second, as we have seen, some of the best theories about the nature of moral obligation, theories that, among other things, provide an analysis of the notion of obligation, have K as a theorem; K is, roughly, implied by these theories.