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Promising, Expecting, and Utility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jan Narveson
Jan Narveson*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Extract

In this paper, I shall be concerned to explore the utilitarian account of promising, which for some time has had, in many circles, the status of a dead horse. My aim is not to flog it, however, but to show that perhaps it yet lives. At least, I hope to show that some prominent and apparently powerful objections to this account do not find their mark. In the course of this, several subjects of wider interest will come in for review as well, and it is hoped that some further light on the utilitarian position in general, as well as the concepts of expectation and obligation, may glimmer forth.

At the outset, some clarification of the question at issue about promising is essential. Briefly, the question is: why ought we to keep our promises? Less question-beggingly put: why, if at all, should we keep promises, and to what extent?; where by talk of ‘extent’ it is meant that the question of whether we sometimes should not keep them, of its being a matter of attaching a “degree of stringency” to the obligation, is to be kept open.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , December 1971 , pp. 207 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1971

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References

1 A considerably altered version of the paper of this title read at the Philosophical Society in Oxford, November 26th, 1970. Earlier presentations of these arguments have benefited from discussion at the Prairies Philosophy Conference in Regina, Sask., October 1968, The University of Toronto, Case Western Reserve University, and Carleton University.

2 Grice, G. R. The Grounds of Moral Judgment (Cambridge University Press, 1967), 84.Google Scholar All further references to Grice are to page numbers of this book.

3 Narveson, Jan. Morality and Utility (John Hopkins Press, 1967), 8–13.Google Scholar

4 This point was brought home to me by Peter Hacker.

5 Such is the view of Grice. it seems. See secs. 2.4, 2.6, 2.11, 2.12 of his book (cited in note 2 page 208).

6 See Ardal's, P. article, “And That's A Promise!” Philosophical Quarterly, 1968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Since the first writing of this paper, this analysis has been most lucidly pressed by Mr. Warnock in his The Object of Morality, (Methuen, 1971). Differences between the present account and that in my book (cited in footnote 3) are mainly to be found in the emphasis given to this point; see Morality and Utility, 185-200.

7 Hodgson, D. H. Consequences of Utilitarianism, (Oxford University Press 1967) 42–44.Google Scholar

8 Prichard, H. A. “The Obligation to keep a Promise”, re-printed in Moral Obligation (Oxford, 1949), 172Google Scholar. Mr. Warnock gives a couple of cases (op. cit., 99-101), but fails to see, I think, that his own positive account has the same consequences as mine by way of distinguishing reasonable from unreasonable expectations, as well as putting the real weight on just those expectations themselves.

9 See my account in Morality and Utility, 85-6. and in “The Desert island Case”, Analysis, 1963.

10 The main sources are Rawls, J. “Two Concepts of Rules”, Philosophical Review, 1955CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Searle's, “How To Derive an ‘Ought’ from an ‘Is'”, Philosophical Review, 1964CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which is substantially superseded by the account in Searle's, book, Speech Acts (Cambridge University Press, 1969), ch. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 The entire argument is on pages 39–42 of Hodgson's book. All bracketed references in this discussion are to page numbers therein.

12 Speech Acts, 59. Further references to Searle are to page numbers in that book.

13 True, Grice says also that “promising is, inter alia, the function of giving ourselves such a reason. Promising is the function whereby the promiser places himself under an abstract obligation, i.e. among other things, gives himself a reason for acting; a reason which is better than any in terms of his independent interest”. (77) But how do you simply give yourself a reason, make it in your (“non-independent”) interest? This is left mysterious in Grice, except insofar as it is implied that this reason is that one has bound oneself—the circularity of which would be evident enough.