Francesco Orsi

Frances Kamm argues that physical distance is per se relevant to our duty to give aid to strangers.
Her methods, however, fail to bring into light the relevance per se of distance. To understand the claim that
distance is per se morally relevant, it is helpful to use distinctions devised by Jonathan Dancy among
different roles a feature may play in the explanation of moral reasons, yielding thus different senses of
relevance. A feature can directly count in favor of an action, enable another feature to count in favor of an
action, or strengthen the favoring already done by another feature. For the relevance of nearness that is at
issue in Kamm's thesis, if nearness is relevant at all to our duty to aid strangers, it cannot be relevant in the
way Kamm takes it to be. It cannot directly count in favor of aiding or be a special reason to aid, someone
that non-near agents lack. Nor can physical distance be seen as a consideration that strengthens our
independently existing pro tanto duty to aid strangers, whenever we are near them.

In this paper I discuss and try to remove some major stumbling blocks for a Moorean buck-passing account of reasons in terms of value (MBP): There is a pro tanto reason to favour X if and only if X is intrinsically good, or X is instrumentally good, or favouring X is intrinsically good, or favouring X is instrumentally good. I suggest that MBP can embrace and explain the buck-passing intuition behind the far more popular buck-passing account of value, and has the means to avoid the wrong kind of reasons problem. Further, I counter the common suspicion that a Moorean account cannot make sense of deontological views such as Ross’s, and that it generally leaves no room for agent-relative reasons. In order to do this, I appeal to the idea that a Moorean account does not dictate the substantive view that values have to be maximized. In some cases, expressing them might be a better response. Finally I lay out and reply to a potentially devastating argument to the effect that a Moorean account makes oughts and reasons non-normative. I also criticize Scanlon’s attempt to favour his own buck-passing account via consideration of the open question argument. MBP thus emerges as a live option in the buck-passing debate

Sidgwick’s dualism of the practical reason is the idea that since egoism and utilitarianism aim both to have rational supremacy in our practical decisions, whenever they conflict there is no stronger reason to follow the dictates of either view. The dualism leaves us with a practical problem: in conflict cases, we cannot be guided by practical reason to decide what all things considered we ought to do. There is an epistemic problem as well: the conflict of egoism and utilitarianism shows that they cannot be both self-evident principles. Only the existence of a just God could, for Sidgwick, prevent the conflict and thus solve the dualism. The paper first explores in detail and rejects some reconstructions of the dualism: a purely logical account, and accounts whereby egoism and utilitarianism are principles of pro tanto reasons or of sufficient reasons. Then it proposes a better account, in which egoism and utilitarianism are logically compatible and yet conflicting principles of all things considered reason. The account is shown to fit with Sidgwick’s view of the dualism and of its practical and epistemic pitfalls. Finally, some views are discussed as to the wider positive significance of the dualism, regarded as a challenge to the rational authority of morality, or as indicating the structural opposition of agentrelative and agent-neutral reasons, or again as the imperfect yet amendable attempt at a comprehensive pluralist theory of practical reasons.