Woods III, JE orcid.org/0000-0001-8144-0910 (2016) The Normative Force of Promising. In: Timmons, M, (ed.) Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics. Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, 6 . Oxford University Press ISBN 9780198790587
Abstract
Why do promises give rise to reasons? I consider a few possibilities which do not work, then outline a more plausible explanation of the normativity of promising—that it is constitutive of the practice of promising that promise-breaking implies blame-liability and that we take blame-liability to be an undesirable thing. This view, quasi-conventionalism, provides a reduction of the normativity of promising to conventionalism about liability and instrumental normativity. The result is an account of the normativity of promising that (a) explains the particularity of promissory reasons, (b) predicts that our reasons to keep our promises are often overdetermined, and (c) provides a natural explanation of fringe-cases of promissory reasons: deathbed promises, immoral promises, conflicting promises, and promises which no one expects you to keep. Meeting these three desiderata of an account of promissory reasons gives us good reason to take quasi-conventionalism seriously. The style of explanation can be extended to account for nearly all normativity—one notable exception being instrumental normativity. Success for the clearly conventional case of promissory reasons thus makes plausible a general reduction of normativity to conventions and instrumental normativity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Book Section |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016, The Author. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, volume 6 . Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | promising; blameworthiness; normativity; conventionalism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Mar 2017 16:23 |
Last Modified: | 08 Dec 2018 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Series Name: | Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198790587.001.0001 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:108341 |