Joseph DeMarco

In order for a moral theory to support application it must be able to provide determinate answers to actual moral problems or, at the least, to significantly narrow acceptable options. It must also support the development of a genuine consensus, one that is disinterested, reasonable, and unbiased. I argue that theories concentrating on principles, or on rules, or on particular cases fail to meet these standards. A full coherence theory, taking into account principles, rules, practices, and judgments holds the greatest promise for successful application. I present a detailed outline of a full coherence theory that is principled, pluralistic, and comprehensive. This coherence theory includes three basic principles (expressed both negatively and positively), but binds these, in terms of their explication and application, to rules and practices. This theory respects current practices but also directs us to change practices and institutions and even the interpretation of basic moral principles. The theory includes ways to determine which aspect of moral experience should take precedence in given circumstances, ways to determine who has particular obligations, and how — by means of a mutuality principle — value may be enhanced under conditions of value conflict.

Do the conditions under which promises are made determine whether they ought to be kept? Philosophers have placed a number of conditions on promising which, they hold, must be met in order to make promise‐keeping obligatory. In so doing, they have distinguished valid promises from invalid promises and justified promises from promises that are not justified. Considering such conditions, one by one, we argue that they are mistaken. In the first place, the conditions they lay down are not necessary for either valid or justified promise‐making. In the second place, promises need not meet such conditions in order to create moral obligations. In general, such analyses of promising fail because they suffer from a confusion between promise‐making and promise‐keeping. Philosophers have wrongly supposed that obligations to keep promises are dependent upon, or derivable from, the quality of the promises themselves, at the time they are made, instead of focusing on conditions that must be satisfied at the time when promises are supposed to be kept. It is not the quality of a promise that determines an obligation to keep it but the rightness or wrongness of performing the promised act.