​The logic of permissible action

Katie Steele (ANU)

Abstract: For orthodox consequentialists, an act is permissible just in case it is morally best (say, relative to one¹s evidential standpoint). For deontologists, on the other hand, permissibility is a distinct category: An act is permissible just in case it is good enough, where some permissible acts are morally better than others. My starting point is that this latter, distinct notion of permissibility is important for any nuanced account of ethical action; so the relevant debates within deontology are instructive. One prominent dispute is whether permissibility is solely about the objective features of an act, or whether the reasoning of the actor herself affects whether her act is permissible. While the latter has some prominent defenders (esp. McMahan 2009), it is widely criticized for being mistakenly inward-looking or else focused on assessments of character rather than action. Here I defend a version of the Œinward looking¹ account of permissible action: In short, permissibility is conditional on an agent¹s particular epistemic and evaluative attitudes. More generally, I defend a Œsubvaluational¹ logic of permissible action.