Supererogation and Optimisation

ABSTRACT

This paper examines three approaches to the relationship between our moral reasons to bear costs for others’ sake before and beyond the call of duty. Symmetry holds that you are required to optimise your beneficial sacrifices even when they are genuinely supererogatory. If you are required to bear a cost C for the sake of a benefit B, when they are the only costs and benefits at stake, you are also conditionally required to bear an additional cost C, for the sake of an additional benefit B, when enough other costs and benefits are at stake that both of your alternatives are presumptively supererogatory. Disconnection rejects the requirement to optimise when your options are presumptively supererogatory and maintains that you have an entirely free hand to choose as you will among them. Asymmetry holds that when acting beyond the call of duty you are entitled to a measure of additional freedom compared to when you are not taking on supererogatory costs—you can prioritise your own well-being and reasons to a greater degree—but places constraints on the options that you may permissibly choose. We defend a version of Asymmetry and explore its implications for recent debates on charitable giving.

KEYWORDS:

• Supererogation
• Duties to Aid
• Effective Altruism

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Moral Sciences Club at Cambridge, the Moral Philosophy Seminar at Oxford, and the Winter Ethics Workshop. We are very grateful to those audiences and especially Arif Ahmed, Adam Bales, Joe Bowen, Garrett Cullity, Anne Gelling, Kerah Gordon-Solman, Bashshar Haydar, Stephen Hetherington, Josef Holden, Richard Holton, Joe Horton, Tyler John, Kirsten Mann, Will MacAskill, Jeff McMahan, Daniel Muñoz, Theron Pummer, Nic Southwood, Katie Steele, Patrick Tomlin, Chris Tucker, and two anonymous referees of this journal for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Both Pummer and Horton allow cases in which a person possesses agent-relative reasons strong enough to make it permissible to act suboptimally beyond the call of duty.

2 Each of these principles is consistent with Muñoz’s ‘prerogatives principle’, according to which ‘An option is obligatory just if, for any alternative , there is more reason to choose than there is combined reason and prerogative to choose ’ [Muñoz 2021: 702]. They differ in their answers concerning when reasons outweigh the prerogatives, and whether this changes when considering presumptively supererogatory options.

3 A version of this objection applies to the sequencing argument put forward in McMahan 2017.

4 Horton does consider this possible narrowing of his view, and his response is instructive [Horton 2017:100]. He argues that the basic question here is whether, in a choice as to whom to save, we should save the greater number [Taurek 1977]. If we reject saving the greater number in standard ‘lifeboat’ cases, when no personal cost is at stake, we should also reject it when weighing claims beyond the call of unconditional duty. Conversely, if you should save the greater number when no personal cost is at stake, you should do the same when making significant beneficial sacrifices. This is, of course, no more than an appeal to Symmetry, so we cannot use it in our attempted argument to support Symmetry.

5 Things are different when suboptimality is unintended. Suppose I get flustered when helping Ben, and save one of his legs rather than two. Then I’ve done the wrong thing—I should apologise to him afterwards—but my action doesn’t express objectionable disrespect towards him, and what I’ve done is better than nothing.

6 For a related discussion see Muñoz and Pummer 2021.

7 Agent-Favouring Asymmetry also contrasts with Patient-Favouring Asymmetry, according to which our conditional welfarist positive duties are more stringent than our unconditional ones. Each objection against Symmetry applies with even greater force against Patient-Favouring Asymmetry, so we shall simply set it aside here. While we have not encountered a defence of Agent-Favouring Asymmetry in print, a proposal in its spirit is defended by Wessels [2015: 94].

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council through grants DP170101394 and DP180100355.