Blaming Agents in Moral Dilemmas

Byron Williston

Accepted: 16 August 2006 / Published online: 24 October 2006# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006

Abstract Some philosophers – notably Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum and RuthBarcan Marcus – argue that agents in moral dilemmas are blameworthy whatever they do. Ibegin by uncovering the connection these philosophers are presupposing between theagent’s judgement of wrongdoing and her tendency to self-blame. Next, I argue that whiledilemmatic choosers cannot help but see themselves as wrongdoers, they both can andshould divorce this judgement from an ascription of self-blame. As I argue, dilemmaticchoosers are morally sui generis in that their actions result in a diminishment of theirpersonal integrity with no corresponding failure of character. It is this that makes them non-blameworthy wrongdoers. This way of seeing the problem should provide dilemmaticchoosers with a novel conception of their own moral psychology, one that allows them toview their actions in a manner that is given neither to moral insensitivity nor to pathologicalself-accusation.

Key words blame . character . integrity . moral dilemmas . wrongdoing

Some philosophers – notably Bernard Williams, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and MarthaNussbaum – argue that an agent in a moral dilemma is required to perform or refrainfrom performing both of two incompatible actions and that regardless of how she choosesshe is right to judge herself blameworthy, either for failing to perform the foregone action orfor performing the prohibited action she did choose.1 This claim has elicited strong reactionfrom others, in the form of both praise and criticism, and the debate shows no sign ofabating.2 However, although the issue has not been altogether ignored, the literature lacksan adequately nuanced approach to the role our blaming practices – and the moral emotions

Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2006) 9: 563–576DOI 10.1007/s10677-006-9036-4

1See Barcan Marcus (1980), Williams (1973) and Nussbaum (1986, 2001).2See, e.g., Stocker (1990), ch. 4; Sinnott-Armstrong (1988); Marino (2001); Hursthouse (1999), Part I; Foot(2002); Hart (1998); Rajczi (2002); Hansson (1998); Mason (1996); Gowans (1987).

B. Williston (*)Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3C5e-mail: bwillist@wlu.ca

attending them – should play in the assessment of agents’ actions in moral dilemmas. Thisfailing is a product of inattention to the closely related notions of integrity and character inour assessment of dilemmatic choosers. As I argue, dilemmatic choosers are morally suigeneris in that their actions result in a diminishment of their personal integrity with nocorresponding failure of character. It is this that makes them non-blameworthy wrongdoers.

My argument unfolds in four stages. In the first, I unpack the claim made by somephilosophers that agents in moral dilemmas ought to consider themselves blameworthy byuncovering the conceptual connection these philosophers presuppose between the agent’sjudgement that she has done wrong and her tendency to self-blame. In the second stage, Iargue that this connection does not hold for these agents, that while dilemmatic chooserscannot help but see themselves as wrongdoers, they both can and should divorce thisjudgement from an ascription of self-blame. If this is right, it will explain how such agentscan adopt the appropriate set of negative moral emotions – guilt, remorse, and so on – in anon-pathological manner, something which no other approach to this issue has explainedadequately. In the third stage, I provide some novel examples to vindicate my thesis.Finally, I show that there nevertheless remains a sense in which dilemmatic choosers mightbe blameworthy.

I

There is a good deal of consensus – though by no means universal agreement – on theclaim that there are genuine moral dilemmas. I therefore want to accept this claim at facevalue, focusing instead on the moral psychology of dilemmatic choosers. To begin, we needto say what a moral dilemma is and show that there is at least some reason – indeedrelatively strong prima facie reason – for thinking that agents ought to judge themselvesblameworthy for whatever choice they make in such a situation. There is a basic distinctionbetween a moral conflict, which is rationally resolvable, and a moral dilemma, which is not(thus all dilemmas are kinds of conflict though not all conflicts are dilemmatic). To be in asituation of rationally irresolvable conflict, three things must be true of an agent: (1) he isnot labouring under some form of motivated irrationality; (2) he is not making anunmotivated mistake in moral reasoning, by for instance failing to take account of whatmost rational observers would take to be morally salient facts; and (3), given that neither (1)nor (2) apply to him, he judges himself to be faced with genuinely incompatible actionalternatives, neither of which is overridden in any morally relevant way.

Cases surely exist where elements (1) and (2) are satisfied, although those who thinkthere are no genuine moral dilemmas will want to say that in all putative cases of dilemma,one of them – most likely (2) – is not. Proposition (3), however, is the most philosophicallyloaded of the three, and is the one that therefore requires the most careful attention. Itamounts to the claim that the key feature of the moral psychology of the agent who takeshimself to be in a moral dilemma is that he will judge himself to have done somethingwrong no matter how he chooses. Assuming that agents can sometimes be right about this,we need to reveal the connection between such wrongdoing and the tendency to self-blame.

An agent deliberating between action-options a and b is dilemmatically conflicted if sheis sure that the judgement in favour of a and that in favour of b ought to be affirmed. Bothoptions are thought of by the deliberating agent as requirements, as placing non-overriddenconstraints on what she must choose. Indeed, it is because this is how things look to suchagents that the ‘remainder thesis’ is said to apply to them. The agent who has chosen in adilemmatic situation is said to be subject to a moral remainder or residue: the moral force of

564 B. Williston

the required but foregone option or the prohibited choice remain, and ought to do so, tohaunt the conscience. The agent has failed morally, and ought accordingly to be blamed andto feel profoundly guilty.3 The agent comes to possess an objective moral taint after herchoice. Indeed, Hursthouse goes so far as to say that this choice should fill the agent withdespair, ‘mar [her] and even ruin [her] life.’4

Although those who argue that there are moral remainders for dilemmatic choosers havenot put the point this way, I suggest that what they are implicitly trading on in discussinghow we should appraise dilemmatic choosers is something like what Haji has called theepistemic dimension of blameworthiness. In morally appraising a person, we are makinginferences about the relative weights he has assigned to various reasons for action. Praiseinvolves a positive assessment of someone’s practical deliberations, blame a negative one.These considerations make an epistemic account of blame, one which focuses on an agent’sbeliefs about her action rather than its objective moral status, attractive. Take, for instance,the following formula, adapted from Haji:

An agent S is morally blameworthy for performing action A if S has the belief that it iswrong to do A and this belief plays an appropriate role in S’s A-ing.5

Two elements of this formula require comment. First, the idea that the belief in questionneeds to play an appropriate role in the agent’s relevant action requires merely that sheperforms that action in spite of her belief that it is wrong, as opposed either to her per-forming the action because she believes it to be wrong or the belief being subconscious.Second, the agent must believe that the action in question is objectively wrong, as distinctfrom believing that she merely believes it to be wrong. Thus elaborated, the epistemicaccount of blame appears both to capture a sound intuition and to fit dilemmatic choosersaccurately. If it were the last word about blame, and about appraisability generally, wewould be forced to conclude that agents in moral dilemmas are blameworthy for what theychoose.

The crucial feature of the view just elaborated is that there is an indissoluble conceptualconnection between an agent’s judgement that she has done wrong and the justifiability ofself-blame. But even if we are inclined to agree that these agents are wrongdoers, should weaccept this inference? I will argue that we should not, but that we should accept the agent’sclaim to have done something wrong. We can begin inserting the wedge between thejudgement of wrongdoing and that of blameworthiness by considering the role played bypersonal integrity in situations of moral dilemma.

A dilemmatic chooser is best understood as engaged in the sort of deliberation whoseoutcome will affect and alter her most fundamental self-conception. Stuart Hampshire hasargued that morality is born in conflict, and that conflict is rooted in our knowledge of thediversification and specialization in forms of love and friendship.6 Having committedmyself to this person or group of persons, that project, this aim or interest, it is not only thecase that I have thereby debarred myself from commitment to some other persons, projects,aims, and interests, but I am also aware of this fact. My awareness of it makes a degree ofrepression – i.e., unconscious or automatic filtering of action options – inevitable, but

3 Marino (2001), p. 206.4 Hursthouse (1999), p. 76.5 Haji (1997), p. 527.6 Hampshire (1983), pp. 140–169.

Blaming Agents in Moral Dilemmas 565

alternatives constantly impinge so I also require a conscious device for assessing andprioritizing them relative to my stock of commitments.

This is why all agents as such require some distinction between core and peripheralcommitments. Those commitments I define as core are those I could not lose withoutceasing to be the person I am (in a psychological rather than ontological sense), whileperipheral commitments can be lost or gained without this result. In Michael Sandel’sphrase, some commitments are me while others are merely mine.7 Notice how the basicdistinction between core and peripheral commitments allows an agent to manage conflict, toweather the storm of plural goods. Such goods are candidates for reasons for action. Whenone presents itself to an agent, she needs to assess whether it constitutes a threat to one ormore of her core commitments, whether it might enhance that core or whether it is neutralwith respect to it. This is not to imply that the core is forever fixed. It can itself undergochange over time, but not all at once and only in accordance with some overarching ideal ofwell-being endorsed by the agent herself. We need to allow for the possibility ofconversion, but such alterations in worldview can only be morally salutary if they answer tosome pre-existing pro-attitude held by the agent, however inchoately. To think otherwise isto endorse psychological change through mere causes rather than reasons.

To say that an agent ought to stand by her core commitments – or ought only tocountenance their alteration or abandonment insofar as she herself comes to accept reasonsthat allow for and explain this – is to say she ought to have integrity.8 And this just meansthat she ought to act in accordance with her non-overridden reasons. It would seem that themotivational economy requires some such structure – the agent needs to have integrity – ifthere is to be rational agency at all. So the struggle for integrity is deeply connected to theordering of reason candidates by agents. And the underlying goal of this activity is therational management of conflict.

Further, agents can act with integrity to a greater or lesser degree. At one extreme the idealagent will act unfailingly in accordance with her core commitments, at the other she willunfailingly violate them. These two possibilities are equally improbable, however: mostagents most of the time will find themselves somewhere between them. But notice that ourpractice of appraising an agent’s behaviour morally is intimately tied to our assessment of justhow close to the ideal, or far from the non-ideal, he is in acting the way he does. According tothe epistemic conception of appraisability employed above, a sufficient condition forblameworthiness is that the agent believes that his action is wrong, but performs it anyway. Inascribing blame, we are generally saying that in succumbing to some form of temptation anagent has failed to cleave fully to his own schedule of reasons, that he has violated one ormore of his reasons, either at the core or at the periphery. The closer these violations come tothe core, the more uncompromising is the inclination to blame.

For these reasons, it is tempting to conclude that in being forced into a choice-situationwhere she cannot act in accordance with a non-overridden reason, the dilemmatic deliberatorhas in effect been thrust outside the sphere of appraisability. And of course we are not nowtalking about non-overridden reasons at the periphery of her set of commitments. For theoptions a dilemmatic chooser faces go right to the core of who she is. She is being forced tosacrifice interpersonal relations or projects or commitments which define her in her own eyes.She is therefore being forced to relinquish her identity. But the existence of such an identity –which we manage in the face of conflict, negotiate in the face of alternatives, adding that bit

7 Sandel (1982), p. 53.8 Flanagan (1991), p. 81. See also Williams (1981), p. 49.

566 B. Williston

and taking away this bit – is presupposed when we make ascriptions of praise and blame.Absent an identity structured around a distinction between core and peripheral commit-ments irresolvable dilemmas would be the norm. In terms of their power to motivate,alternative goods would in this case strike the agent as more or less on a par. So, on thisanalysis, agents in moral dilemmas are not to be blamed for what they do just because theyare incapable of acting with integrity.

II

However, this way of seeing the problem is not fully adequate. We can, for instance,imagine an agent with two morally unworthy core commitments which, through the actionsof others, come into conflict with one another, such that the agent is forced to choose one ofthe two options. In this case, whatever the agent chooses will be wrong, but she will clearlynot be exempt from blame. Or again, take the example of Huckleberry Finn as analysed byJonathan Bennett. Huck has been brought up to think of slaves as property. He is then facedwith the choice whether or not to return Jim, an escaped slave, to his owner, and ultimatelydecides against this course of action.9 Clearly we want to say both that Huck has violatedhis personal integrity (or has been forced to violate it) and that he has nevertheless openedhimself up to moral appraisability, in this case praise. Therefore, being forced to act in sucha way as to violate one or more core commitments cannot be sufficient for absolving anagent from moral praise or blame.

Still, this should not force us to discard entirely the concept of personal integrity in ouranalysis of moral dilemmas. The concept is explanatorily useful in this area but requiressupplementation. Specifically, we need to make a distinction between cases in whichviolations of personal integrity absolve an agent from blame and cases in which they donot. We can mark this distinction by reference to the role played in moral choice bycharacter. According to Joel Kupperman, character can be defined as an agent’s ‘normalpattern of thought and action’, especially as regards the moral choices that agent makes,choices which impinge on the welfare of other people or the agent herself.10 Morespecifically, strength of character has to do with the degree of commitment or loyalty anagent displays over time and in a variety of contexts toward her core values. It is not mypurpose here to examine Kupperman’s definition carefully, or even to assess fully the extentto which the concept of character is distinct from that of integrity.11 Rather, I want to showthat the two concepts do play distinct roles in our moral vocabulary by highlighting the factthat violations of personal integrity can sometimes manifest weakness of character andsometimes not do so.

10 Kupperman (1991), p. 17.11 Though it is important to emphasize the fact that they are distinct concepts, especially since it is easy toconfuse what Kupperman calls ‘strength of character’ and integrity. As I am employing these terms ‘integrity’refers to the relation between an agent’s values, goals, purposes and commitments on the one hand and hisactions on the other. In assessing an agent’s integrity we are looking chiefly at the degree of coherenceactually obtaining between these elements. ‘Character’, on the other hand, is best thought of dispositionally.That is, it specifies a standing attitude one might have toward one’s integrity, in particular a commitment toresist temptations to violate the latter. The two concepts are thus distinct because one, strength of character, isa dispositional means for maintaining the other, integrity. I am grateful to an anonymous referee at ETMP forhelping me to clarify this point.

9 Bennett (1974).

Blaming Agents in Moral Dilemmas 567

I suspect that one of the reasons we are tempted to blame others (or ourselves) forviolations of personal integrity – i.e., why we implicitly accept the epistemic account ofblame – is because we assume that such violations usually manifest weak character. And withgarden variety violations of personal integrity this is no doubt the case. We need only think ofthe agent who succumbs to a second piece of chocolate cake in spite of his avowedcommitment to a strict no-fat diet, or the corporate executive who, though sincerelycommitted to promoting high ethical standards in her company, finds herself turning a blindeye to the corrupt financial practices of her colleagues. However we fill in the details of thetwo cases, and similar ones, we will say that the agents were either weak-willed or sufferedsome culpable failure of moral judgement, or both. This means that the agents have suc-cumbed to some form of temptation. The appeal to temptation is obvious where the moralfailing is due to weakness of will. But even where it is due to culpable failures of judgementwe often say that the agent’s attention has been withdrawn from morally salient facts tooeasily, or that her ability to process these facts cognitively has been too readily undermined,because of the influence of extraneous temptations. In other words, to say that a failure ofmoral judgment is culpable is to imply that it is motivated in some objectionable way.Uncovering the etiology of the failure will invariably lead us to a rogue desire, fear or hope.

But clearly it is possible to suffer a similar degree of diminishment of personal integrityas in the examples just cited without this manifesting weak character. For we do nottypically want to accuse dilemmatic choosers of succumbing to some form of temptation. Incontrast to the type of agent just analysed, such agents are not objectionably passive withrespect to the desires that would override their core commitments. In choosing the way theyultimately do, they display neither weakness of will nor failure of judgement: ex hypothesithey are not in the grip of rogue impulses or emotions, they see the moral facts clearly, andthey deliberate thoroughly. And the reason for this difference is clear. Agents in externallyenforced moral dilemmas are operating in what George Sher has called an “illegitimatelystructured choice situation.”12 In contrast, agents whose actions violate their personalintegrity in such a way as to reveal a (relatively) weak character are not so situated becausethey are capable of acting in a manner that preserves their personal integrity.

The distinction might also be put in terms of others’ future expectations of these twotypes of agents. One of the reasons character is an important term of reference for us is thatdeterminations of the relative strength of an agent’s character allow us to predict how thatagent will likely behave in the future. And such prediction is a key feature of complexcooperative activity among humans. Indeed as social contract theorists (among others) havenoted, achieving an adequate degree of interpersonal transparency and commitment withrespect to some of the future actions of a relevant subset of one’s moral peers is what makessuch activity possible. Hence the focus in contract theory on universal consent, whetherliteral or tacit, to specific principles of cooperation. The consent is meant to bind the will ofthe agent into the future, to provide her with ammunition against contrary temptations. Theproblem with the person of weak character is that she is not adequately trustworthy in this

12 Sher (1990), p. 45. As Michael Stocker has pointed out (Stocker 1990, p. 23), agents in moral dilemmascan typically be described as “being coerced to implement another person’s evil plans.” We can alsodistinguish between dilemmas simpliciter and dilemmas secundum quid (terminology originating withAquinas) along these lines. As Donagan puts the point (Donagan 1993, p. 9), an agent who has placedhimself in a dilemma faces a choice that “would not have come about except as a direct causal consequenceof some violation by [him] of [his] moral principles.” Such agents are, I take it, unproblematicallyblameworthy.

568 B. Williston

project. Her moral peers cannot say with confidence that she will (likely) withstandtemptations to break her word, thus threatening the cooperative venture. Her failings arefailings of will. But the person of strong character does not display this sort of inconstancy.Even if she has chosen wrongly because she has been placed in a moral dilemma, thefailure does not impugn her will, and it is this fact which makes her a reliable partner infuture cooperative enterprises with her moral peers. If they are themselves honest andreliable, they will point to the illegitimately structured choice situation, or those responsiblefor creating it, in laying blame for the sub-optimal moral outcome produced in moraldilemmas.

However, again following Kupperman, it is important to distinguish between strength (orweakness) of character and goodness (or badness) of character. The latter refers not to anagent’s wholeness but to the moral quality of his values. As we have seen, it is possible toblame an agent robustly for what he chooses, even if the choice takes place in a dilemmaticsituation, if the values guiding his choice are themselves morally bad. However, the sort ofagent with which the literature on dilemmas is overwhelmingly concerned is the one whosecore values are all morally salutary, or at least not obviously corrupt. If an agent’s characteris both strong and good, then so far as her actions are the product of that character, she willact blamelessly. Thus dilemmatic choosers are morally sui generis in that although theiractions involve a diminishment of personal integrity, their characters can still be describedas both strong and (at least moderately) good. This characterization allows us to insert fullythe wedge between wrongdoing and blame, to count dilemmatic choosers as blamelesswrongdoers.

It may be objected that the same result can be achieved more swiftly and elegantlysimply by invoking the Kantian principle that ought implies can. Bernard Williams hasargued that this principle does not apply to agents in moral dilemmas, but his way ofputting the point is contentious, so I do not want to rely on it.13 In any case, his argument –if it goes through – shows too much since he maintains that self-blame is appropriate fordilemmatic choosers. According to the Kantian principle, an agent in a moral dilemma isremoved from the sphere of appraisability however she chooses because the ought claimceases to have applicability where the agent could not have chosen in a way that fulfilled allof morality’s requirements. This much is unobjectionable. However, the principle isultimately based on the separation of all actions into two exhaustive categories, thepermissible and the non-permissible. Since the point of the principle is to show that agentsin enforced dilemmas do not perform non-permissible actions, it follows that what they dois permissible.

The category of the permissible is itself divided into actions that are obligatory and thosewhich are optional. Ought-implies-can is meant to show that the actions of dilemmaticchoosers are not obligatory, so they must be thought of as optional. But optional actions –whether supererogatory or not – can never be wrong. So if the Kantian principle is allowedto stand we should conclude that agents in moral dilemmas are not blameworthy becausethe action they perform is not wrong. The best way to counter this objection, and also tovindicate the general picture of dilemmatic choice I have offered, is to provide examples ofagents in dilemmatic situations, agents whose values seem to me to be in pretty good moralorder. So they have good characters, but they also have strong characters even though they

13 Williams (1973). A cogent criticism of Williams’ attempt to deny the applicability of ought–implies–canto dilemmatic situations can be found in Hart (1998).

Blaming Agents in Moral Dilemmas 569

have been forced into a violation of their personal integrity. Pace Kant, however, none ofthis should prevent us from thinking of them as wrongdoers.

III

The first example is Coleman Silk, the hero of Philip Roth’s novel, The Human Stain. Silkis a literature professor at a college in Massachusetts. He had been teaching a class offourteen students, and by the fifth week of the semester noticed that there were two studentson his roster that had not yet appeared in class. At the beginning of the sixth class, he askedthe others, “Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?” The twomissing students, both African–American, learn about this event and bring charges ofracism against Silk. Asked to explain his ‘racial epithet,’ Silk replied that his reference hadbeen only to the students’ ‘possibly ectoplasmic character’. The college’s administrationand its president, Haines, nevertheless insist that Silk issue an apology to the students.Recalling the incident some time later, Silk reflects:

These shenanigans were so much jockeying for power. To gain a bigger say in howthe college is run. They were just exploiting a useful situation. It was a way to prodHaines and the administration into doing what they otherwise would never have done.More blacks on campus. More black students, more black professors. Representation –that was the issue.14

Silk is therefore forced into the following dilemma: resign from his position or apologizepublicly for an offence he had not committed. Each course of action will result in theabandonment of a deeply held value or commitment: in the one case, the idea that the truthought not to be subordinated to political expediency; in the other, his commitment to thevocation of teaching. Moreover – and this is crucial – regardless of what he does, hebelieves that his decision is likely to have a negative effect on his (in this matter) sym-pathetic but frail ex-wife’s health, since she would suffer the strain of taking up his cause.Although he chooses to resign, from his perspective both options are thus wrong andneither is overridden by the other. So we should resist viewing his predicament as a mereconflict, wherein a single overriding reason for action prevails. He does not see it this wayand since he does not appear to be under the sway of a failure of moral rationality – eithermotivated or unmotivated – there is no non-question begging way of showing that he is justwrong about this.

Next, consider LGen. Roméo Dallaire’s account of his time as Force Commander ofUNAMIR, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda in 1993–1994. Toward theend of April, 1994, thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were being slaughtereddaily by extremist Hutu militias, most prominently the Interahamwe. The génocidaires wereactively encouraged by the interim government and abetted by a temporizing UnitedNations. With only a skeleton force, Dallaire was charged with protecting all the country’smissing persons, lost expatriates, and any other innocents seeking protection from theslaughter. But he and his staff could only save a few, so they were constantly faced with thedecision about whom to rescue. These were classically dilemmatic choices, where veryoften no clear prevailing reason would emerge in favour of rescuing one person or familyrather than another. Dallaire nevertheless thought he had a duty to save them all, which is

14 Roth (2001), p. 17.

570 B. Williston

one of the reasons he describes himself as “...filled with a sense of gross ineptness” and “...ripped apart by failure and remorse”.15 How ought Dallaire to have considered his troops’failure to rescue those in dire need? Are we really to believe that the thought that thisomission was permissible was or ought to have been available to him? To do so wouldappear to deny the moral facts in a fundamental way: Dallaire could not see his actions andomissions as morally neutral and we should rightly be appalled if he could have seen themthis way.

But if this is the case for extreme examples like Dallaire’s it should apply mutatismutandis to all moral dilemmas, including Coleman Silk’s. While the Kantian principlegives us part of what we want – it removes agents in enforced dilemmas from the sphere ofappraisability – it does so at too steep a cost to our understanding of the moral phenomena.As far as the moral psychology of agents is concerned, it would have us treat cases of moraldilemma as no more interesting than straightforwardly non-moral choices. So neitherColeman Silk nor Roméo Dallaire ought to be any more disturbed about how they choosethan someone who, after hours of deliberation, decides to tie his right shoe before his leftone. If we find this sort of equation unacceptable, we ought to leave the wedge betweenwrongdoing and blameworthiness firmly in place.

Where, finally, does all of this leave the remainder thesis? Neither intact nor overturned.Because they tie an agent’s self-blame to her judgement about her wrongdoing, those whohave argued in favour of the remainder thesis have no way of preventing the judgment ofself-blame from expressing itself pathologically. Blame ascription has necessarily to dowith revealing character flaws. So the target of the negative moral emotions in this case isbound to be the self. But since there may been no character flaw whatsoever, this will causethe agent to self-critically attack possibly unimpeachable aspects of her character.Retrospectively, she might for instance wrongly take herself to have been strangelyattracted by the adopted course because it was wrong, rather than in spite of that fact. Bycontrast, if the relevant negative moral emotions are directed at what the agent has donerather than who she is, these emotions are far less likely to take pathological forms.Recognizing this distinction in the targets of the moral emotions can make all the differenceto the agent’s future well-being.

This way of seeing things sheds real light on the moral psychology of agents like Silkand Dallaire. Silk’s wife dies shortly after the fiasco with the students, overburdened (hebelieves) by the strain of his battle with the College. Because of this result (among others),Silk is psychologically debilitated for two years after the event. A friend describes him asbeing ‘knee-deep in [his] own blood’ during that period.16 This is a picture of an agentmade less whole by being forced to do something wrong, but who allows himself to be thusfragmented as a tribute to his former commitments. He rages against those who imposedthis reality on him. To the extent that it involves a clear-headed perception of what he(forcibly) did, Silk’s reaction to the dilemma is praiseworthy, even though – indeed partlybecause – it involves rejecting the quick pill of forgiveness. Silk’s reaction to his choice isindeed quite subtle: he manages to combine the knowledge that he did something wrongwith the insight that blame should nevertheless be directed at the College administrators –as well as those among his colleagues who actively or passively supported them – ratherthan at his own character. He therefore suffers the breakdown of personal integrity, thoughin a decidedly non-pathological way.

16 Roth (2001), p. 19.

15 Dallaire (2003), p. 366.

Blaming Agents in Moral Dilemmas 571

The same is true of Dallaire. After the Rwanda mission he sank into despair, andalthough this state was precipitated by the thought that he had failed morally, he was finallyable to place the blame for his actions on the génocidaires themselves and, to a lesserdegree, on the UN. Moreover, Silk and Dallaire both articulate their experiences in the formof a memoir which is also a kind of apologia. In both cases, the agents engage in an act ofself-vindication which does not however amount to a personal whitewash. They recognizethe central role they played in the performance of actions that were wrong, while assigningblame only where it is warranted. This is the key to the non-pathological reaction todilemmatic choice. The problem with the account of dilemmatic choice offered byWilliams, Nussbaum, and Marcus is that by neglecting to notice the sense in which awrongdoer can avoid self-blame, they give the agent no way to set the moral recordstraight. This opens the door to pathological forms of self-criticism which can permanentlyimpair an agent’s ability to make rational moral choices in the future.

This is exactly what happens to (the much discussed example of) Sophie from Styron’snovel Sophie’s Choice. She is a determined self-blamer. Her feelings of guilt make itimpossible for her to assess what happened to her with any degree of objectivity. As aresult, her dilemmatic choice renders her incapable of genuine human attachment in thefuture. She distrusts her ability to make emotionally laden moral choices at all and thisreally does ruin her life. It may be that philosophers like Williams think that if we areinclined to criticize the moral psychology of agents like Sophie at all, we are on a slipperyslope to denying that they ought to feel any negative moral emotions, save perhaps adecorous dose of Rossian compunction. There is however a middle way betweeninsensitivity and pathology, but it is only open to dilemmatic choosers who are able toseparate the judgement of wrongdoing from that of self-blame.

IV

Hursthouse’s claim that the dilemmatic agent’s life ought to be entirely ruined by what shehas done might strike us as a failure to appreciate the distinction between pathological andnon-pathological expressions of the moral emotions. But even the agent’s judgement thatshe has done something wrong in a moral dilemma can have profound psychologicaleffects. Indeed it should have. The cost of our not allowing for this is an inability to makeimportant distinctions among kinds of dilemmatic choosers. Consider in this lightAeschylus’ tragedy, Agamemnon.17 Agamemnon is informed by the god Artemis that hemust kill his daughter Iphigenia or his troops will be stranded on the shores at Aulis bycontrary winds, unable to join the allies in battle. This would put the troops in directdefiance of the will of Zeus who commanded Agamemnon to undertake the expedition toTroy. Since their stores are running dry, it would also result in the death of the troops.

Martha Nussbaum has argued persuasively that the Chorus in the play upbraidsAgamemnon not for his choice, but for the manner in which he made it, and – moreimportantly – his attitude to affected others afterwards.18 He is described as failing to fullyappreciate the real horror of sacrificing his daughter to Artemis. And he returns home afterthe wars ready to re-assume his place as the household patriarch, oblivious to the possibility

17 Aeschylus (1956).18 Nussbaum (1986), p. 36. For criticisms of Nussbaum on this issue, see Hart (1998), pp. 615–618; andBaltzly (2000).

572 B. Williston

that from the standpoint of his wife, Clytemnestra, his actions at Aulis may have strippedhim of such authority. We know what she has in store for him, and she is the more steeledto her bloody purpose by what she takes to be his moral insouciance.

If this kind of criticism is ever appropriate for dilemmatic choosers then it looks asthough we should be able to account for it with a theory of blame directed at how agents inmoral dilemmas choose rather than at what they choose. However, the difference now isthat we will be concerned with features of character whose chief function is to open thedilemmatic chooser up to the reasons offered by specific others, those whose interests arelikely to be or have been affected by the choice in question. Thus in a moral dilemma, foran agent to be blameworthy for how he chooses – as distinct from what he chooses – itmust be the case that he deliberates with inadequate sensitivity to some relevant reason(s)for action offered by specific others.19 What does it mean to say that an agent might havedisplayed insensitivity to such reasons?

This question can best be approached by asking another: what stance toward herdiminished personal integrity will a dilemmatic chooser adopt insofar as she displays strongcharacter, both in the choice-situation itself and, more significantly, well beyond it? Isuggest that there is a necessary tension between these two personal ideals for agents inmoral dilemmas, a tension that should be cultivated rather than suppressed if the agent is toremain fully and relevantly reason-sensitive. But perhaps we can avoid this conclusion. Isthere is a way for such agents to retain psychic harmony without sacrificing any degree ofreason-sensitivity? Although not discussing moral dilemmas, Susan Stark has suggested anaffirmative answer to this question. She argues that an agent’s evaluation of a situation cangenerate a ‘reason for emotion’ which is not also a reason for action. For example, imaginea courageous person about to enter into battle:

[S]he sees that there is a threat and danger to herself, and so she feels fear. The threatand danger, however, do not generate even a motivating reason for the courageoussoldier to flee; rather they generate a reason for her to feel fear. So she is fully unitedin proceeding forward into battle. All normative and motivational considerations foraction point forward.20

Stark goes on to claim that “[a]n emotion can be fully experienced and the considerationthat generated it can fail to generate any reason ...for action.”21 Stark thinks that full reasonsensitivity can be preserved without a loss of psychological wholeness if we abandon thethesis of reasons internalism.

According to reasons-internalism there is a tight, though not necessarily indissoluble,connection between an agent’s judgement that a course of action ought to be pursued and hermotivation to pursue it.22 This is an attractive thesis, and ought not to be abandoned in theabsence of compelling philosophical reasons. And Stark fails to provide such reasons. Sheachieves her result only by employing an unacceptable view of how emotions areindividuated. Implicit in her argument is what we might call an a-behaviouristic conception

19 I say “relevant reasons for action” to exclude peripheral concerns that might demand attention while theagent is deliberating, like the sudden desire to smoke a cigarette. The relevant reasons are then those whichdefine the situation of moral conflict. Whether or not this formula can be generalized beyond cases of choicein moral dilemmas is not my present concern.20 Stark (2001), p 452.21 Stark (2001), p. 453, my emphasis.22 The classic statement of this position is in Williams (1981).

Blaming Agents in Moral Dilemmas 573

of the emotions according to which the latter are best understood as mere ‘feelings’, lackingutterly in the sort of propositional content that ties them to specific behaviouralmanifestations. Fear is, as Stark’s comments above make clear, just a subjectivelyexperienced sensation, lacking an intrinsic connection to specific forms of expression andbehaviour. However, it is more plausible to think that we feel fear because we judge that weare in genuine and imminent danger vis-à-vis some specific external object, and thatsomething specific must be done in order to avert this danger. This judgement then sets thewheels of the motivational economy working, a process that includes preparing the bodyfor a specific response. All of this is entailed by reasons-internalism.

This does not mean that a full-fledged behaviourism for the emotions, according towhich the latter are fully constituted by behaviour and expression, is apt.23 Rather (althoughI do not have the space to defend the claim fully here) the best approach to the emotionssees them as individuated on the one hand by the way they are experienced subjectively andon the other both by what objects or causes typically elicit them and by what they disposeus to do vis-à-vis those objects or causes.24 It is Stark’s inattention to the behaviouraldimension of the emotions that makes her account unsatisfactory as an explanation of thecomplex behavioural demands placed on agents in moral dilemmas.

If an act of evaluation – an agent’s recognition of a reason for action – is capable ofproducing an appropriate emotion, and emotions are at least partly constituted by the waysin which we are inclined to express them in behaviour, then we cannot reject reasons-internalism, as Stark wishes to do. So, assuming the truth of reasons-internalism, is therenot a sense in which Stark’s description of the soldier about to proceed into battle fails todescribe what is really disturbing about an emotion like fear? Fear is disturbing because ofwhat it disposes us to do: if we master it, engage in hand to hand combat with a terrifyingenemy or, if we fail to master it, flee the battle scene and incur the ensuing feelings ofshame and ignominy. Stark’s agent by contrast is only superficially or preciously conflicted.Oscar Wilde defined a sentimental person as someone who wants the luxury of an emotionwithout having to pay for it, a description which fits Stark’s agent nicely. In short, and paceStark, a reason for emotion just is (a kind of) reason for action.

My suggestion then is that what strong character requires in cases of moral dilemmas isthat, given the external assault on one’s personal integrity, one not seek too hastily to repairthe damage. For these agents there is a very real, though hopefully only temporary,incompatibility between personal integrity and the demands of character. It is the veryattempt to restore a sense of psychological wholeness that can result in a failure to respondmorally to those negatively affected by one’s choice. We want such agents to see that harmas deeply salient from the moral point of view, and this amounts to saying that the interestsof these others provide reasons for action to the deliberating agent. Notice that no question-begging appeal is being made here to problematically objective reasons for action. Theinterests being pointed to are those the agent herself had already recognized as compellingin the choice situation. She is in a quandary because she recognizes, or had recognized atsome point in her deliberations, the legitimacy of these reasons.

Again, given Hampshire’s laudable suggestion that moral conflicts are very often(though not always of course) rooted in choices we make about forms of love andfriendship, such reasons will be apprehended not just cognitively, but also emotionally. Our

23 For an interesting, though (I think) overly behaviourist, analysis of the emotions, see Campbell (1997).24 Something approaching this suggestion can be found in Stocker and Hegemon (1996).

574 B. Williston

most important moral relations are shot through with emotional content. This is why weneed to look, inter alia, at the sort of emotions and attitudes the agent experiences at themoment of conflict and beyond. Once we do so, we can make a clear distinction betweenways of being more or less reason sensitive. On the one hand an agent might approach thesituation whimsically, or she might attempt to resolve the dilemma in haste, following herstrongest inclination. She might look meekly to the determinations of authority figures or amoral or religious code, relinquishing the opportunity to see the situation clearly for herself.She might respond to the situation with a kind of moral bravado or in a spirit of world-weary resignation.25

All of these responses will, to one degree or another, incline her to fail to take full moralaccount of the pain she is causing those in her line of fire. Such responses, and the desperateattempt to restore a sense of personal integrity of which they are usually an expression, aremodes of moral-epistemic flight. Insofar as she is engaged in the denial of what shepreviously took to be morally salient, self-deception might moreover be a very powerful toolin this process. Lynne McFall captures these kinds of shortcoming well in arguing thatintegrity requires an agent to resist the ‘temptation to redescribe’ what one has done by, forinstance, ‘rewriting her principles’ or ‘retroactively canceling her subscription’ to them.26 Apraiseworthy dilemmatic chooser’s post-action stance toward relevantly affected others is akind of tribute to or tacit acknowledgement of the personal integrity she once had. So thereremains a sense in which she identifies with that self, and this is why we want to say thather character remains strong even while her sense of personal integrity is shattered. Bycontrast, to the extent that she is retroactively amending her principles, the blameworthyagent is refusing to identify with some of the commitments and projects that were once coreelements of her self-image. But since she herself once espoused them, she displays weakcharacter in abandoning them when, and only because, the moral going has gotten tough.

I close with a caveat. We can imagine situations in which embracing the loss of personalintegrity would in fact constitute a failure to respond well to the interests of those affectedby one’s choice, where acceding to the diminishment of one’s agency would be a form ofmoral self-indulgence. It may be the case that what those others require of the dilemmaticchooser is a kind or level of strength or courage which can perhaps be achieved only byemploying a retroactive revision of one’s principles. In that case, just such revision mightbe praiseworthy. Indeed, this may be the sort of reaction to moral dilemmas we expect frompolitical leaders, whose job it very often is to dirty their hands as the occasion requireswhile retaining the ability to move on to the next crisis, fortitude intact. This after all is howClytemnestra might have responded to Agamemnon. As regards her attitude to herhusband’s wrongdoing this would have made her a little less like the Clytemnestra ofAeschylus’s tragedy and little more like Lady Macbeth.

Acknowledgments In preparing this manuscript, I have benefited enormously from the comments of ananonymous reviewer at ETMP. Thanks for helpful comments are also due to Rocky Jacobsen, GeraldCallaghan, Tom Vinci, Peter Loptson and Sylvia Burrow.

25 Some of these types of responses are discussed by Hursthouse (Hursthouse 1999, pp. 125–126), though Ihave embellished her account substantially.26 McFall (1992), p. 81. While I agree with her way of putting the point I would argue that McFall wouldhave done even better to express it as a claim about character rather than integrity, as I have been doing inthis section.

Blaming Agents in Moral Dilemmas 575

References

Aeschylus A (1956) The Oresteian trilogy. Penguin, New YorkBaltzly D (2000) Moral dilemmas are not a local issue. Philosophy 75: 245–263Barcan Marcus R (1980) Moral dilemmas and consistency. J Philos 77(3): 121–136Bennett J (1974) The conscience of Huckleberry Finn. Philosophy 49: 123–134Campbell S (1997) Interpreting the personal: Expression and the formation of feelings. Cornell University

Press, Ithaca, New YorkDallaire R (2003) Shake hands with the devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda. Vintage Canada, TorontoDonagan A (1993) Moral dilemmas, genuine and spurious: A comparative anatomy. Ethics 104(1): 7–21Flanagan O (1991) Varieties of moral personality. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MassachusettsFoot P (2002) Moral realism, and moral dilemma and moral dilemmas revisited. In Moral dilemmas.

Clarendon, OxfordGowans CW (ed) (1987) Moral dilemmas. Oxford University Press, OxfordHaji I (1997) An epistemic dimension of blameworthiness. Philos Phenomenol Res 57(3): 523–544. (Sept.)Hampshire S (1983) Morality and conflict. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MassachusettsHansson SO (1998) Should we avoid moral dilemmas? J Value Inq 32: 407–416Hart WA (1998) Nussbaum, Kant and conflicts between duties. Philosophy 73: 609–618Hursthouse R (1999) On virtue ethics. Oxford University Press, OxfordKupperman J (1991) Character. Oxford University Press, OxfordMarino P (2001) Moral dilemmas, collective responsibility, and moral progress. Philos Stud 104: 203–225Mason HE (ed) (1996) Moral dilemmas and moral theory. Oxford University Press, OxfordMcFall L (1992) Integrity. In J Deigh (ed) Ethics and personality: Essays in moral psychology, University of

Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, pp 79–94Nussbaum M (1986) The fragility of goodness. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.Nussbaum M (2001) Comment. In J Jarvis Thompson (ed) Goodness and advice. Princeton University Press,

Princeton, New Jersey, pp 97–125Rajczi A (2002) When can one requirement override another? Philos Stud 108: 309–326Roth P (2001) The human stain. Vintage Books International, New YorkSandel M (1982) Liberalism and the limits of justice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UKSher G (1990) Desert. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New JerseySinnott-Armstrong W (1988) Moral dilemmas. Blackwell, Oxford, UKStark S (2001) Virtue and emotion. Noûs 35(3): 440–455Stocker M (1990) Plural and conflicting values. Clarendon, OxfordStocker M, Hegemon E (1996) Valuing emotions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UKWilliams B (1973) Problems of the self. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UKWilliams B (1981) Internal and external reasons. In Moral luck. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

576 B. Williston