On Moral Obligations and Our Chances of Fulfilling Them
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On Moral Obligations and Our Chances of Fulfilling Them Farbod Akhlaghi 1 Accepted: 29 June 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Many actions we perform affect the chances of fulfilling our moral obligations. The moral status of such actions is important and deeply neglected. In this paper, I begin rectifying this neglect by asking: under what conditions, if any, is it morally wrong to perform an action that will lower the chance of one fulfilling a moral obligation? In §1, I introduce this question and motivate concern with its answer. I argue, in §2, that certain actions an agent has good reason to believe will drastically lower their chances of fulfilling a moral obligation in the future, relative to at least one alternative action available, are pro tanto morally wrong. This answer, I argue, captures our intuitions in a range of cases, avoids the problems that other views considered here face, and can be plausibly defended against some independent objections. I conclude in §3 by noting some consequences for normative and practical ethics of the moral wrongness of at least some actions that lower the chances of fulfilling our moral obligations, and by raising a series of important questions regarding these actions for future consideration. Keywords Chance-affecting actions . Moral obligation . Moral wrongness . Normative ethics . Practical ethics
* Farbod Akhlaghi farbod.akhlaghi–[email protected]
1
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK
F. Akhlaghi
1 Introduction We have moral obligations. What moral obligations we have is contentious. Some relatively uncontroversial ones are moral obligations we have towards our friends, family, and to any moral agent in virtue of their being a moral agent. For example, one may have a moral obligation to help a friend, to support a parent in old age, or to minimally respect another’s autonomy as a moral agent.1 We can succeed in meeting, or fail to fulfil, our moral obligations. Ceteris paribus, fulfilling a moral obligation is morally right and failing to fulfil one is morally wrong. Other things being equal, if I am morally obligated to aid my ailing relative, then if I do I have done something morally right; if I do not, I have done something morally wrong. What moral obligations we have, why we have them, and the moral status of fulfilling them are much discussed. But there is a class of actions we perform and activities we engage in which, whilst falling short of involving success or failure in fulfilling our moral obligations, affect the chances of fulfilling our moral obligations.2 Call any action that one can perform which increases or decreases the objective probability of performing some further action that they are morally obligated to perform at a later time a chance-affecting action. What is the moral status of chance-affecting actions? This question is largely neglected in normative ethics. To my knowledge, there is little to no work that directly addresses it.3 In this paper, I begin to rectify this neglect by asking:
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