Abstract

The view I try to develop and defend, which I call the Subjective Theory of Moral Obligation, is based on the writings of H. A. Prichard, primarily on the essay "Duty and Ignorance of Fact". According to this view an agent is rendered morally bound not by the objective facts of his situation, but by his thoughts about the situation in which he is. ;The subject of the first chapter is Prichard's account of knowledge, belief, and likelihood. Cook Wilson's epistemology is discussed at length. The next three chapters are concerned with the Argument From Knowledge. This argument involves essentially two claims: that we sometimes know what we ought to to, and that the Objective View implies that we could never know what we ought to do. Almost all of the discussion in these chapters is focused on proving this second claim. In the second chapter I try to develop the Argument From Knowledge as it occurs in "Duty and Ignorance of Fact" by stating it in a wholly explicit form. It turns out, however, that Prichard's version of this argument doesn't quite work. In the third chapter I state a revised version of the Argument From Knowledge in a general form, and I divide all of the accounts of action that are compatible with the Objective view into four mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. In the fourth chapter I apply this general form of the Argument From Knowledge to each of the four categories. In the fifth chapter I present an argument which I call the Argument From Hypotheticals based on Prichard's arguments from certain hypothetical cases in "Duty and Ignorance of Fact". In the last chapter I look at Prichard's own theory of action, and his arguments for that theory. I also discuss how this theory affects his theory of moral obligation. I conclude chapter six with what I take to be the most plausible interpretation of Prichard's Subjective Theory of Moral Obligation