Subjectivism and Blame

My own conclusion is that "One ought to be moral" makes no sense at all unless the "ought" has the moral subscript, giving a tautology, or else relates morality to some other system such as prudence or etiquette. I am, therefore putting forward quite seriously a theory that disallows the possibility of saying that a man ought (free unsubscripted "ought") to have ends other than those he does have.²

– Philippa Foot

H.A. Prichard's "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?", like Descartes Meditations, is remembered better for the skeptical moment in the author's thinking than for its unskeptical conclusions. Prichard's paper is complicated, but the lore about its message is simple. The lore is that Prichard pointed out that in trying to vindicate the reason-giving power of morality we might do so by appealing to moral norms or to non-moral norms. If we appeal to moral norms, then we are only justifying a standard in terms of that standard and just about any old standard could survive such a test. But if we justify moral standards by appeal to other standards, such as self-interest, then we will not really have justified morality but have only shown that morality must borrow authority from some genuinely authoritative standard. In the former case the justification is question-begging and trivial. In the latter case the justification is not really a justification of morality but rather showing that behaving as morality requires is recommended by genuinely authoritative non-moral standards. Thus there is a puzzle about how we might vindicate the authority of morality itself.

What is less noted is that Prichard's dilemma is equally a problem for providing a justification for any normative system, including justifications for behaving self-interestedly. Thus it seems to me that Prichard's dilemma should not be thought to be a source of skepticism about morality any more than it is a source of skepticism about practical normativity generally. If Prichard's dilemma seems to raise especially troubling questions about why we should be moral, this must reflect our pre-existing anxiety about the authority of morality rather than a problem for morality that Prichard's dilemma generates.

But Prichard suggests another rationale for misgivings about the authority of morality, namely that its recommendations conflict with what we want to do. This rationale does have the potential to especially challenge the authority of morality. He writes, in addressing our need for an answer to the "Why be moral?" question,

The formulation of the question implies a state of unwillingness or indifference towards the action, and we are brought into a condition of willingness by the [self-interested] answer. And this process seems to be precisely what we desire when we ask, e.g. Why should we keep our engagements to our own loss?; for it is just the fact that the keeping of our engagements runs counter to the satisfaction of our desires which produced the question.³

That is, what prompts us to question morality's authority is that it bids us to do what we do not want to do. But Prichard offers this thought as an explanation, not vindication, for the concern about morality's authority. It is this thought, Prichard appears to suggest, that explains why the "Why be moral?" question is found to be so salient while the "Why be prudent?" is not. But even if we could show that being moral will reliably get us something that we want, Prichard tells us, this would not really address our normative question. "The answer is, of course, not an answer, for it fails to convince us that we ought to keep our engagements; even if successful on its own lines, it only makes us want to keep them."⁴ Prichard is highlighting the lack of connection between being able to be brought into a condition of being motivated to 0 and having a normative reason to 0. Thus Prichard is at least flirting with the view that Bernard Williams would label "externalism."

Prichard's main point is that, once we accept the need...