Sufficient Reasons to Act Wrongly: Making Parfit’s Kantian Contractualist Formula Consistent with Reasons

Philosophia (2017) 45:227–246 DOI 10.1007/s11406-016-9766-z Sufficient Reasons to Act Wrongly: Making Parfit’s Kantian Contractualist Formula Consistent with Reasons Mattias Gunnemyr 1 Received: 31 May 2016 / Revised: 4 August 2016 / Accepted: 13 September 2016 / Published online: 23 September 2016 # The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract In On What Matters (2011) Derek Parfit advocates the Kantian Contractualist Formula as one of three supreme moral principles. In important cases, this formula entails that it is wrong for an agent to act in a way that would be partially best. In contrast, Parfit’s wide value-based objective view of reasons entails that the agent often have sufficient reasons to perform such acts. It seems then that agents might have sufficient reasons to act wrongly. In this paper I will argue that such reasons are a symptom of a fundamental inconsistency between the Kantian Contractualist Formula and Parfit’s view of reasons. The formula requires that we consider what everyone could rationally will, while a wide value-based objective view requires that we consider only what the agent has sufficient reasons for doing. The same inconsistency is particularly obvious in Parfit’s version of the Consent Principle, which share important features with the Kantian Contractualist Formula. Parfit accepts that moral principles might entail that we sometimes have sufficient reasons to act wrongly. However, to accept that supreme moral principles have such implications is objectionable if you, like Parfit, also hold that principles with such implications should be rejected or revised. I suggest that we could abandon the requirement that we have to consider the reasons of everyone. This would make the Kantian Contractualist Formula consistent with Parfit’s view of reasons, at least in this respect. I also argue that we can keep most implications of the Kantian Contractualist Formula that Parfit finds attractive. Keywords Parfit D . On What Matters . Kantian Contractualist Formula . The Consent Principle . Reasons * Mattias Gunnemyr 1 Department of Philosophy, The Faculties of Humanities and Theology, Lund University, Box 192, Helgonavägen 3, 221 00 Lund, Sweden 228 Philosophia (2017) 45:227–246 1 Introduction Derek Parfit’s influential work On What Matters has been widely discussed, but so far the commentary has largely revolved around the metaethical views it presents. I want instead to address some concerns about the central moral principles advocated in this work. As I see it, these principles can be shown to be inconsistent with certain implications of his metaethical view in some important cases. Parfit advocates three central moral principles, all of which are revised versions of Kantian Contractualism, Scanlonian Contractualism and Rule Consequentialism. He argues that the three principles ultimately amount to one and the same claim. He then unites them in what he calls the Triple Theory. This paper only treats Kantian Contractualism and the related Consent Principle, but I think the worries I raise here trouble the other formulas as well. Parfit rejects or revises moral principles in order to make them less conflicting with what we have reasons to do. Most significantly, he revises Kant’s own moral formulas to make them less vulnerable to some important objections. He ends up with the Kantian Contractualist Formula that BEveryone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will^ (Parfit 2011 – henceforth referred to by page number alone – pp. 20, 342, 355, 378). Whether this formula is truly Kantian can be disputed, but Parfit argues that our primary aim as philosophers should be to make progress – not merely to arrive at correct interpretations. The Kantian Contractualist Formula is a revised version of Kant’s Formula of Universal Law: BAct only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law^ (Kant 1785, AK 4:421). Parfit also considers several other formulations and interpretations of Kant’s categorical imperative, although ultimately he does not include these in the Triple Theory. Of these, the Consent Principle is particularly interesting for the purposes of this paper, since it inspires a crucial revision of the Kantian Contractualist Formula which renders the Kantian Contractualist Formula inconsistent with Parfit’s own metaethical view of reasons – or so I will argue. In addition, Parfit’s discussion of the Consent Principle includes comments on the question why moral principles are not superfluous, something that I will return to in the end of this paper. When it comes to reasons, Parfit’s view is that there are two distinctive viewpoints – a partial and an impartial viewpoint. In some cases, as when we are choosing between spending money on an evening’s entertainment or giving the money to an effective aid agency, what we have most reason to do from a partial viewpoint differs from what we have most reason to do from an impartial viewpoint. Parfit claims that we can compare reasons presented from a partial viewpoint with reasons that are grasped from an impartial viewpoint, but only very imprecisely. Hence, when one of Btwo possible acts would make things go in some way that would be impartially better, but the other act would make things go better either for ourselves or for those to whom we have close ties, we often have sufficient reasons to act in either of these ways^ (p. 137). This is called a wide value-based objective view of reasons.1 Parfit uses the indefinite article in ‘a wide value-based objective view’ of reasons since he thinks that this view can be further specified in a number of ways, and he wants to include all these ways in his reasoning. He writes, BDifferent wide value-based objective views make conflicting further claims about when it would not be true that we had sufficient reasons to act in either of these ways. We ought, I believe, to accept some view of this kind.^ (p. 137). 1 Philosophia (2017) 45:227–246 229 My objection to the account presented in On What Matters does not turn on whether it is right to adopt this wide value-based objective view. Nor does it concern whether it is right to revise moral principles if they entail that in some cases we have sufficient reasons to act wrongly. Instead, my objection is that you cannot endorse: (1) a moral principle which entails that agents have sufficient reasons to act wrongly in some important cases. and simultaneously claim that: (2) moral principles should be rejected or revised if they entail that agents have sufficient reasons to act wrongly in some important cases. I will argue that a wide value-based objective view entails that we sometimes have sufficient reasons to act in ways that moral principles such as the Consent Principle or Kantian Contractualist Formula classify as wrong. In important cases, t (...truncated)