Oughts, Options, and Actualism

Abstract

W Am Be often approach the question of what to do by identifying a set of alternative possible actions available to us, our options, and designating the best as what we ought to do. Questions can be raised about this approach; for instance, what to say about supererogation. This paper, though, is concerned with two problems that arise within the option approach, and which remain however questions about that approach are resolved. It can hardly be supposed that the option approach is totally misconceived, and, as will be apparent, our problems would arise for any approach to what agents ought to do (in the action guiding sense) which incorporated a ranking of available alternatives. An option for an agent is an action or course of action possible for that agent. Our first problem is whether, in addition to what is possible for the agent, we sometimes need to take into account what the agent would actually do in certain circumstances. By Actualism we will mean the view that the values that should figure in determining which option is the best and so ought to be done out of a set of options are the values of what would be the case were the agent to adopt or carry out the option, where what would be the case includes of course what the agent would simultaneously or subsequently in fact do: the (relevant) value of an option is the value of what would in fact be the case were the agent to perform it. We will call the alternative view that it is only necessary to attend to what is possible for the agent, Possibilism. The main aim of this paper is to explore and defend Actualism. Our second problem is how to select the right set of options in order to answer a given question about what ought to be done. The option approach says that what ought to be done is the best (or one of the best, but let's leave this inessential complication to one side) out of a set of options-but which set for which question about what ought to be done? Suppose we want to know if A is something an agent ought to do. Clearly A must be an option for the agent at (or over) whatever time it is, as must each member of the set out of which A needs to be best if it is to be something the agent ought to

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