Moral and Rational Commitment

Shpall, Sam

doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2012.00618.x

Cited by 30 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(25 reference statements)

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“…In addition to refraining from making insincere and deceptive promises that they have no intention of keeping, promisors must also be sure to have a sufficiently strong commitment to acting as promised. I am speaking of commitment in the subjective attitudinal or volitional sense that involves actually caring about acting (e.g., Alice is committed to working for social justice and so joins grassroots organizations and strives for change), rather than in the normative sense, which involves being such that you ought to act or believe in some way (e.g., philosopher X's theory commits her to implausible conclusions, regardless of whether she recognizes this; see Shpall [2014] for an account of these two types of commitment). Call a promise that displays an adequate level of volitional commitment one that is made in good faith.…”

Section: Promising In Good Faithmentioning

confidence: 99%

Permissible Promise-Making Under Uncertainty

Liberman¹

2019

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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I outline four conditions on permissible promise-making: the promise must be for a morally permissible end, must not be deceptive, must be in good faith, and must involve a realistic assessment of oneself. I then address whether promises that you are uncertain you can keep can meet these four criteria, with a focus on campaign promises as an illustrative example. I argue that uncertain promises can meet the first two criteria, but that whether they can meet the second two depends on the source of the promisor's uncertainty. External uncertainty stemming from outside factors is unproblematic, but internal uncertainty stemming from the promisor's doubts about her own strength leads to promises that are in bad faith or unrealistic. I conclude that campaign promises are often subject to internal uncertainty and are therefore morally impermissible to make, all else being equal.

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Section: Promising In Good Faithmentioning

confidence: 99%

Permissible Promise-Making Under Uncertainty

Liberman¹

2019

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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“…Enactment of a rule for oneself is best thought of in terms of commitment . It's at least somewhat plausible to think of the special authority we all have to make rules for ourselves as the ability to commit ourselves to certain courses of action (Schroeder : 308, for discussion of commitment see Shpall ). For example, one might think that to make a rule that prohibits eating sugar for oneself is nothing but to commit to not eating sugar.…”

Section: The Governance View Of Performing Rule‐constituted Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constitutive Rules: Games, Language, and Assertion

Reiland

2018

Philos Phenomenol Research

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Many philosophers think that games like chess, languages like English, and speech acts like assertion are constituted by rules. Lots of others disagree. To argue over this productively, it would be first useful to know what it would be for these things to be rule‐constituted. Searle famously claimed in Speech Acts that rules constitute things in the sense that they make possible the performance of actions related to those things (Searle 1969). On this view, rules constitute games, languages, and speech acts in the sense that they make possible playing them, speaking them and performing them. This raises the question what it is to perform rule‐constituted actions (e. g. play, speak, assert) and the question what makes constitutive rules distinctive such that only they make possible the performance of new actions (e. g. playing). In this paper I will criticize Searle's answers to these questions. However, my main aim is to develop a better view, explain how it works in the case of each of games, language, and assertion and illustrate its appeal by showing how it enables rule‐based views of these things to respond to various objections.

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“…According to a conception that is standard within the philosophical literature, a commitment is a relation among a committed agent, a second agent to whom the commitment has been made, and an action which the committed agent is obligated to perform. The committed agent is obligated to performing the action because she has given an assurance to the second agent that she will do so, and the second agent has acknowledged this under conditions of common knowledge (Searle ; Scanlon ; Gilbert ; Shpall ).…”

Section: A Simple Conjecturementioning

confidence: 99%