Main authors discussed: Michael Bratman, John Broome, A.C. Ewing, Kieran Setiya

Schroeder’s main goal is to begin to develop an interesting view of the coherence requirements of rationality.  He focuses on two coherence requirements, the first of which is the instrumental requirement.  The naïve version of the instrumental requirement is Means-End:

Means-End:    Necessarily, if X intends to A and believes that B is a necessary means to A, then X ought to B.

Schroeder hypothesizes that the correct account of the instrumental requirement will also have the resources to account for a second coherence requirement, which holds that we ought to follow our conscience.  The naïve version is Conscience:

Conscience:    Necessarily, if X believes that she ought to A, then X ought to A.

Unfortunately, Means-End and Conscience are surely false.  For it might be that one ought not to A.  To use Schroeder’s example, B might be the act of paying an assassin, and A might be the act of killing one’s wife.  Surely it’s false that Zach ought to pay the assassin when he believes it’s necessary to killing one’s wife and he intends to kill his wife.  Moreover, it’s surely false that he ought to kill his wife because he believes he ought to.

A popular view about what is wrong with Means End and Conscience is that the ‘ought’ takes narrow scope over the consequent. Wide-scopers think the ‘ought’ takes wide-scope over the whole conditional.  Wide-scopers think  Means-End Wide and Conscience Wide are true:

Means-End Wide: Necessarily, X ought [to B if X intends to A and believes that B is a necessary means to A].

Conscience Wide: Necessarily, X ought [to A if X believes she ought to A].

Means-End Wide yields a disjunctive requirement.  One complies with Conscience Wide just in case one either As or disbelieves one ought to A.  Likewise, one complies with Means-End Wide just in case one Bs or doesn’t intend to A or doesn’t believe B is necessary for A. Thus, it’s not the case that Zach ought to kill his wife because he believes he ought to.  He simply must avoid believing he ought to kill his wife while failing do so. He can comply with Conscience Wide by giving up his belief or by killing his wife. The only way for Zach to comply with narrow-scope requirements like Means-End and Conscience, on the other hand, is to kill his wife or pay the assassin.

Schroeder thinks the wide-scope view has three fatal flaws. First, the wide-scope requirements are symmetric. The wide-scoper seems to hold that giving up one’s belief is just as rational as doing the thing one believes one ought to do. But if that’s true, then the wide-scoper thinks that following one’s conscience is rationally on a par with rationalization, or changing one’s beliefs about what one ought to do because one believes one won’t do it anyway.

Schroeder considers a response to this. The wide-scoper might maintain that even if one can comply with Conscience Wide by giving up one’s belief, one would necessarily violate some other requirement by doing so. Schroeder replies to this by pointing out—and this is the second fatal flaw—that if this is right then one’s belief about what one ought to do is infallible just so long as one holds the belief rationally.

The third fatal flaw has to do with Greenspan’s Principle: If one either ought to A or B, and one cannot A, then one ought to B. If Greenspan’s Principle is true and sometimes one cannot give up one’s belief that one ought to A, then in those cases it follows that one’s belief is infallible.

The rest of the paper is dedicated to working out a version of A.C. Ewing’s (1953) narrow-scope view. According to this view, there is a distinction between subjective oughts and objective oughts. The correct versions of Means-End and Conscience, according to Schroeder, maintain one subjectively ought to take the means to one’s ends and one subjectively ought to follow one’s conscience.

Schroeder’s first pass at fleshing out this idea is the Subjective Ought Test:

Subjective Ought Test:  X subjectively ought to do A just in case X has some beliefs which have the following property: the truth of their contents is the kind of thing to make it the case that X objectively ought to A.

This version gives a nice explanation of why one ought to follow one’s conscience: One ought to A when one believes one ought to A because if one’s belief were true, it would be the case that one objectively ought to A.

The problem is that the instrumental case isn’t like this. Zach can believe B is necessary to A without believing he ought to A. To solve this problem, Schroeder makes a distinction between subjective and objective reasons. Subjective Reason Test is his the way he fleshes out what subjective reasons are:

Subjective Reasons Test:  X has a subjective reason to A just in case she has some beliefs which have the property, if they are true, of making it the case that X has an objective reason to do A.

Schroeder then maintains one subjectively ought to A just in case one has decisive subjective reasons to A. Moreover, Schroeder holds that the weight of subjective reasons transfers over believed-to-be-necessary means. So, if X’s subjective reasons make it the case that X subjectively ought to A and X believes B is necessary to A, then X subjectively ought to B.

The final assumption that Schroeder makes is Nature of Intention:

Nature of Intention:    If you intend to do A, then you have some beliefs which are such that, if they are true, then you objectively ought to A.

Schroeder now has the resources to explain why one subjectively ought to take the means to one’s ends (the explanation of why we subjectively ought to follow our conscience remains essentially the same). By Nature of Intention, every time one intends to A, one believes things that make it the case, if true, that one objectively ought to A. Thus, when Zach believes he ought to kill his wife, he believes things that would make it the case, if true, that he objectively ought to kill his wife. He thus subjectively ought to kill his wife. Moreover, he believes paying the assassin is a necessary means to his end. Since the weight of  subjective reasons transfers from ends to means thought necessary to achieving them, he has decisive subjective reasons to pay the assassin. Thus, he subjectively ought to pay the assassin.

Reviewed by Errol Lord
Princeton University

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