Imperfect duties in current debates: supererogation, demandingness, and collective impact cases

Ananiev, Dmitry (2023) Imperfect duties in current debates: supererogation, demandingness, and collective impact cases. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

The concept of imperfect duty has become increasingly prominent in a wide range of debates in moral philosophy. However, many problems related to imperfect duties remain underdiscussed. This thesis aims to fill some of these gaps. Specifically, I focus on three issues. One is the compatibility of imperfect duties with supererogation. It has been argued that due to their limitless nature, if we accept imperfect duties in our moral theory, then we should abandon the category of supererogation. Contrary to this, I argue that imperfect duties are compatible with supererogation. The second issue is the connection between latitude permitted by imperfect duties and demandingness of morality. It is often claimed that this latitude implies that morality is moderately demanding. I argue, however, that there is no interesting connection between latitude and demandingness: the implication is true only if we already assume, on independent grounds, that morality is not overly demanding. The third issue is that imperfect duties seem to help us solve the ‘inefficacy problem’. I argue that imperfect duties fail in this respect. They fail primarily because judgments about one’s compliance with the requirements of an imperfect duty can only be made by assessing one’s life overall. However, on such a scope, it is overwhelmingly unlikely that agents who act in collectively harmful ways violate any imperfect duties in virtue of so acting. But the fact that imperfect duties do not solve the inefficacy problem might not be too regrettable. To demonstrate this, in the final part of my thesis, I discuss the nature of cases that generate the inefficacy problem. It is thought that in some such cases, individual agents make no moral difference whatsoever to the outcome. I argue that when the harms in question are purely experiential, there are good reasons to think that cases of this kind are impossible. Individual agents in such cases have at least a chance of making a morally significant difference.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2023 Dmitry Ananiev
Library of Congress subject classification:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics
Sets:	Departments > Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Supervisor:	Voorhoeve, Alex and Otsuka, Michael and Thoma, Johanna and Parry, Jonathan
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4675

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