Method, Substance, and the Future of African Philosophy by Edwin E. Etieyibo

Author:Edwin E. Etieyibo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

6 Some Objections to My Account

There are probable reservations about this derivation . First, one might worry that the derivation so stated makes the first premise, the metaphysical statement about what persons are, irrelevant. Put differently, why should we begin at premise (1) and not (2), since the entire argument turns on collective acceptance and we can simply assert that (2) is collectively accepted. If this is true, it makes Metz’s earlier point all the more relevant—metaphysical assumptions about the self are irrelevant to establishing what obligations we have. On the model being employed here, however, steps (1) and (2) are equally crucial. The status of some entity within an institutional context depends in part (i.e., along with collective acceptance) on whether it satisfies some descriptive criteria (e.g., its physical attributes as with person and money or, as in chess, specific kind of board movements). Put differently, it is because some entity is constituted a certain way that it is said to have a certain status. Second, it might bother some people that premise (2) in the derivation (i.e., the status rule ) appears to be a normative statement. I have already said that it is true by definition. Also, although the statement mentions certain normative terms “entitlements” and “obligations,” we can make a legitimate distinction between mentioning such terms merely and using them in such statements.38 I suggest that they have only being mentioned here; whatever force they have in actually obligating emerges not from the statement itself but from the fact that the status account of the constitutive rule , that is, (1) and (2), is collectively accepted.

Much more troubling, then, is the notion of collective acceptance. An opponent might question whether collective acceptance can generate obligations at all without appeal to some abstract moral principle. To drive the point home, consider the case of promising. It would seem that the reason why one is obliged to do as one has promised is not simply because we collectively accept that uttering promise-making statements involves doing as one as stated. In addition, it might be said that collective acceptance of the status account of constitutive rule for promising has binding force because of some of the values or abstract moral principles we hold. For instance, the value of assurance held by each party to the promise makes it binding for the promisor to do as promised.39 This may also be the case with the institution of personhood . We owe persons certain obligations not simply because it is collectively accepted, but also because we share certain values with them. Notice that in the case of the institution of money, it is not clear that we need to appeal to some substantive moral principle to make sense of the normative power of money. All that needs to be shown, then, to ease this worry is that there are cases in which collective acceptance is sufficient for obligations to exist.

How might collective acceptance generate obligations ? The answer is that it involves shared or collective intention.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.