In Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality, Douglas Portmore introduces a novel position regarding the actualist securitism – a position he argues is theoretically superior to the standard views in both the actualist and possibilist camps. After distinguishing the two camps through an examination of the original Procrastinate case, I present Portmore's securitism and its implications regarding his modified Procrastinate case. I level two serious objections against securitism: that it implausibly implies that morality is radically more demanding for the virtuous (...) than it is for the vicious and that it fails to recognize moral vice in a wide range of cases. I close by arguing that a possibilist variant of Portmore's securitist view is impervious to such objections and thus appears theoretically superior to the actualist version Portmore promotes. (shrink)

A relatively new debate in ethics concerns the relationship between one's present obligations and how one would act in the future. One popular view is actualism, which holds that what an agent would do in the future affects her present obligations. Agent's future behavior is held fixed and the agent's present obligations are determined by what would be best to do now in light of how the agent would act in the future. Doug Portmore defends a new view he calls (...) moral securitism, which is supposed to avoid the problems associated with actualism. On this account, what an agent would do in the future is treated as fixed iff that agent's future actions are not currently under the agent's present deliberative control. φ-ing is under an agent's present deliberative control iff whether the agent φ's depends upon the immediate outcome of the agent's present deliberations. I argue that moral securitism falls prey to two of the same serious problems that actualism does: it lets agents avoid incurring moral obligations because they have rotten moral dispositions and entails that agents ought to perform truly terribly acts. After providing a few standard counter-examples to actualism to show how it is plagued with these two problems, I offer my own example which demonstrates that moral securitism is subject to a version of these same two problems. I then review Portmore's response to my objection, arguing that it fails. I end the paper by offering a tentative revision of moral securitism that would allow it to avoid the aforementioned problems. (shrink)

Rational actions reflect beliefs and preferences in certain orderly ways. The problem of theory is to explain which beliefs and preferences are relevant to the rationality of particular actions, and exactly how they are relevant. One distinction of interest here is between an agent's beliefs and preferences just before an action's time, and his beliefs and preferences at its time. Theorists do not agree about the times of beliefs and desires that are relevant to the rationality of action. Another distinction (...) is between actions that would, in one sense or another, maximize expected utilities given relevant beliefs and desires, and actions, decisions for which would, in one sense or another, be stable. There is disagreement about the relevance of these things to the rationality of actions. Here, in the first part below, several possible positions on these issues are explained and compared. In the second part, I contrast perspectives on these issues, and comment on arguments that might be brought against the position I favor. In the third part, I restate and elaborate on this position. (shrink)

Knows-knows principles in epistemology say that if you know some proposition, then you are in a position to know that you know it. This paper examines the viability of analogous principles in ethics, which I call ought-ought principles. Several epistemologists have recently offered new defences of KK principles and of other related principles, and there has recently been an increased interest in examining analogies between ethics and epistemology, and so it seems natural to examine whether defences of KK and related (...) principles carry over to OO principles. In this paper, I introduce two OO principles, and I show how some arguments in favour of KK carry over to them. Then I show how these OO principles can be used to shed light on a much-discussed case in ethics, that of Professor Procrastinate. (shrink)

Professor Procrastinate receives an invitation to review a book. Best would be to accept it and then write the review. But if he accepts it, he will never get around to writing. And this would be worse than declining. Should he accept? Possibilists say yes, Actualists say no, and I say we need more information. In particular, we lack some information about the level of goodness of the various options. For example, we lack information regarding how much better it would (...) be to accept and write than it would be to decline. In the course of defending my view, I discuss its implications for ethical theory and our everyday actions. (shrink)

We ought to perform our best option—that is, the option that we have most reason, all things considered, to perform. This is perhaps the most fundamental and least controversial of all normative principles concerning action. Yet, it is not, I believe, well understood. For even setting aside questions about what our reasons are and about how best to formulate the principle, there is a question about how we should construe our options. This question is of the upmost importance, for which (...) option will count as being best depends on how broadly or narrowly we are to construe our options. In this paper, I argue that we ought to construe an agent’s options at a time, t, as being those actions (or sets of actions) that are scrupulously securable by her at t. (shrink)