Hypocrisy and Conditional Requirements

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the formulation of the moral requirement against hypocrisy, paying particular attention to the logical scope of ‘requires’ in that formulation. The paper argues (i) that we should prefer a wide-scope formulation to a narrow-scope formulation, and (ii) this result has some advantages for our normative theorizing about hypocrisy—in particular, it allows us to resist several of Daniela Dover’s (2019) recent arguments against the anti-hypocrisy requirement.

KEYWORDS:

• hypocrisy
• wide-scope
• narrow-scope
• conditional requirements
• moral requirements
• rational requirements

Acknowledgements

I presented a version of this paper at the 2022 Central States Philosophical Association (CSPA) annual conference, held at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. I’m grateful to those in attendance, especially my colleagues at Nebraska, for many helpful questions and discussions. The paper also benefitted from the insightful comments and constructive advice provided by the referees and editors of this journal.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 See, for instance, Wallace 2010; Isserow and Klein 2017; Fritz and Miller 2018.

2 This distinction is most familiar from the work of John Broome (see Broome 2000, 2007, 2013). Other early proponents of the distinction also include Hill (1973) and Dancy (1977). Thomas Hurka (2014: 29–30) reads C D Broad as defending a wide-scope interpretation of the hypothetical imperative, in contrast to the narrow-scope interpretations held by both Ross and Prichard—interpretations which led them both to deny that the hypothetical imperative was genuinely normative.

3 For an excellent discussion of Hume’s view of hypocrisy, see Baier 2007.

4 We could see such conditions as helping to articulate the jurisdiction of the requirement. See Schroeder 2014c and Fogal 2018 for illuminating discussions.

5 A very closely related view would have the requirement govern a disjunction of actions rather than a compound proposition. (See Kiesewetter 2017: 51–58 for discussion.) Such a view would be, as Alex Worsnip (2021: §6.3) puts it, ‘wide-scope in spirit.’ I have no objection to such views.

6 To save space, I’ll leave such application conditions out of my formulations below, but there would be no obstacles to including them.

7 For defenses of narrow-scope formulations based on such concerns, see Kolodny 2005, Lord 2014, and Schroeder 2014b. For responses available to wide-scopers and further discussion, see Way 2011, Broome 2013: 138­–143, Kiesewetter 2017: 138–44, and Brunero 2020: 76–88.

8 However, nothing hinges on this point in what follows. Also, if you do happen to think such asymmetry intuitions are present in this case, and think that an argument against the wide-scope anti-hypocrisy requirement can be developed based on these intuitions, then I would likely appeal to the standard replies that have emerged in the rationality literature. But it would take us too far afield to discuss these here.

9 Versions of such bootstrapping objections can be found in Bratman 1987 (which is the original source of the objection), Broome 2013, and Cullity 2008, among others.

10 This way of putting the point is indebted to Cullity’s (2008: 63) remarks on bootstrapping.

11 One might worry about cases in which it’s impossible for me to refrain from ϕ-ing. In such cases, there would be only one way of complying with the wide-scope anti-hypocrisy requirement (refraining from criticism) and plausible transmission principles would then generate a pro tanto requirement to refrain from criticism. (See Setiya 2007 for relevant discussion.) There are at least three replies available. One reply would be to hold that even if one cannot refrain from ϕ-ing (perhaps due to some compulsion), one could still openly disavow one’s ϕ-ing, and make efforts to regain the self-control that’s currently unavailable. Such behavior would, in my mind, make the charge of hypocrisy inappropriate, or at least severely diminish its force. A second option would be to take advantage of the application conditions of the wide-scope requirement and hold that the impossibility of refraining from ϕ-ing renders the pro tanto anti-hypocrisy requirement inapplicable. A third line of reply would be to bite the bullet, and emphasize that such cases are extremely rare, and that there would only be a pro tanto requirement to refrain from criticism in such cases, and so it still could come out that one ought to criticize, all things considered. I’m inclined toward a combination of the first two replies, but exploring these lines of reply would take us too far afield.

12 This second argument gets a grip only if one endorses both A-H NARROW₁ and A-H NARROW₂. If one instead accepted only one of these two requirements, there wouldn’t be mutually undermining requirements. However, it’s not obvious which of the two to give up. If one held that the anti-hypocrisy requirement is ‘really’ about what one practices, one might opt for keeping only A-H NARROW₁. And if one held that the anti-hypocrisy requirement is ‘really’ about what one preaches, one might opt for keeping only A-H NARROW₂. But defenders and critics (including Dover, whose views we’ll get to shortly) of the anti-hypocrisy requirement alike haven’t opted for understanding the anti-hypocrisy requirement along either of these lines. But, in any case, we should acknowledge that a defender of A-H NARROW₁ could avoid this second objection by rejecting A-H NARROW₂, and vice versa.

13 The anti-hypocrisy requirements I’ve been considering so far have been synchronic requirements. But working with diachronic formulations will provide little help to the narrow-scoper. Suppose that we consider:

A-H NARROW₁ DIACHRONIC If you criticize others for ϕ-ing at t₁, morality requires (pro tanto) that you yourself don’t ϕ at t₂.

But this view quickly runs into difficulty. For one thing, we could run versions of the two arguments we just considered (concerning bootstrapping and mutually undermining requirements) against this formulation as well. But it also generates new problems. Suppose that at t₁ I (rather stupidly) criticize someone for dancing at a party. According to A-H NARROW₁ DIACHRONIC, morality requires that I not dance at t₂. But suppose that in the interval between t₁ and t₂, or at t₂, I revise my stance about dancing, and apologize for such misguided criticism. Is it also true that I mustn’t dance at t₂? A-H NARROW₁ DIACHRONIC says so. But that doesn’t seem right. A wide-scope diachronic requirement generates better results. We could have:

A-H WIDE DIACHRONIC if at t₁ you both criticize others for ϕ-ing and ϕ yourself, then morality requires (pro tanto) at t₂ that you either revise your criticism of others or not ϕ yourself.

This view can allow that there is no pro tanto moral failure in revising my criticism of those who are dancing, and going on to dance myself, at t₂.

14 Dover’s introduction of the terminology of ‘hypo-criticism’ is done partly to register her skepticism about whether there’s any interesting unity across the kinds of failures condemned by the supposed requirement against hypocrisy. As she observes, some cases of hypocrisy will involve insincere ‘preaching’ while others will involve sincere ‘preaching’ but akrasia when it comes to one’s intentions and actions. And insincerity and akrasia seem to be very different kinds of failings. I’m somewhat sympathetic to Dover’s doubts about whether the concept of hypocrisy ‘corresponds to a unified moral kind’ (2019: 389). But we can put such concerns aside here, since even if the concept doesn’t correspond to a unified moral kind, there could still be a pro tanto moral prohibition on hypocrisy. (It might be worth noting that similar observations could be made with regard to promises: one may fail to keep one’s promises because one promised insincerely in the first place—what Kant called a ‘false promise’ (1785: 4: 429–30)—or because one promised sincerely but didn’t follow through due to akrasia. But that observation is perfectly compatible with the existence of a pro tanto requirement to keep one’s promises.) And the specific arguments from Dover that we’ll consider below don’t rely on her skepticism about whether the concept of hypocrisy corresponds to a unified moral kind.

15 See also Dover 2019: 405–6, fn. 20, for similar remarks.

16 It’s also worth noting that endorsing the Wide-Scope Thought doesn’t commit us to thinking that avoiding hypocrisy always amounts to a moral improvement. Suppose that with respect to some action ϕ, I both ought not preach in favor of ϕ-ing and I ought not ϕ, but, hypocritically, I preach in favor of ϕ-ing, but don’t myself ϕ. If I were to resolve my hypocrisy in the ‘wrong direction,’ by coming to ϕ myself, I would no longer violate the anti-hypocrisy requirement. But I would also come to violate another requirement: the requirement not to ϕ. So, I’ve just switched out one failure for another. And if we add in considerations about the relative weight or strength of these requirements, we could allow that I’m now in a worse moral position, all things considered.

17 We could even allow that Harold should be motivated both by the moral wrongness of hiring prostitutes and by the moral wrongness of hypocrisy (or perhaps by the facts which explain the moral wrongness of each). There are several possibilities available to the wide-scope theorist on this question. Thanks to an anonymous referee for helpful comments here.

18 This particular way of putting the point owes much to Jonathan Way’s (2012: 489) critique of a related kind of skepticism about wide-scope rational requirements.

19 Perhaps someone might not share this intuition that Harold faces two problems. Perhaps there’s just one problem, identified by your substantive views on the moral status of sex work. But, as a dialectical point, it’s worth observing that Dover herself doesn’t seem to want to say that settling those substantive questions about sex work will capture all the morally relevant features of Harold’s situation. After all, as I mentioned earlier, she wants to criticize Harold for his insincerity, and not his ‘hypo-criticism’. But that moral fault isn’t going to fall out of one’s substantive views on the moral status of sex work. So, I take it that Dover herself wouldn’t reject the intuition that Harold faces two problems.

20 Although I’m objecting to Dover’s particular arguments against the anti-hypocrisy requirement as applied to Harold, Harriet, and others, it’s open for me to accept Dover’s views about the nature and importance of criticism, and her objections to those who (following Wallace) think of criticism as a kind of ‘sanction’ to be avoided, rather than as a useful way of raising difficult but important moral questions. My defense of the anti-hypocrisy requirement doesn’t require me to adopt any particular conception of criticism or understanding of its importance.

21 This would be an instance of what Mark Schroeder (2014a) has called ‘the Standard Model’ of normative explanation.