Doing the Best We Can
(Feldman, 1986)
, volume thirty-five m the excellent D. Reidel Philosophical Studies in Philosophy series edited by Wilfrid Sellars and Keith Lehrer, is a significant contribution to ethics, practical reasoning, and deontic logic. Feldman's primary aim is to set out and defend a neo-utilitarian view of absolute moral obligation. According to this view, we morally ought to do the best we can; that is, we morally ought to do what we do in the intrinsically best possible worlds still accessible to us. Having articulated this conception in impressive detail through the first two chapters, Feldman then responds to a number of objections against utilitarian theories, including difficulties posed by Baier (1965), Goldman (1976), Sobel (1976), and Williams (1973). From here he offers a quite plausible solution to Castafieda's (1968) formal puzzle for any sort of utilitarianism. In Part Two --"Iffy Oughts" --Feldman seeks to relate absolute moral obligation to obligations involving conditionals. Here he insists on a basic division as between conditioned (absolute) moral obligation and conditional moral obligation. After cataloging three main sorts of conditioned absolute moral obligation, Feldman proffers a tantalizing agent-and-time relativized conception of conditional moral obligation. The latter affords a theoretically ingenious treatment of Chisholm's (1963) famous Contrary-to-Duty Imperative Paradox. Next, he delves into a sustained discussion of hypothetical imperatives, defeasible commitment and prima facie obligation. In Part Three, Feldman extends his approach to group, social, and civic obligation, supplies a tempting analysis of the ought-to-be and its relation to the ought-to-do, and articulates a laudable view concerning the nature of moral dilemmas and moral conflicts. To close out the book, Feldman includes a succinct review of the rich ethical and deontic theory contained therein.
In all of this, the presentation is lucid, informed, and replete with