It is a consensus among philosophers that moral obligation possesses some kind of special force in deliberation. Tomasello's interpretation of obligation ascribes three additional characteristics: He suggests that it is peremptory, that it is demanding, and that it is coercive or at least has a “kind of coercive quality” (target article's introduction, para. 1, item 1 [“Special Force”]). The idea of peremptoriness is not mentioned again in this connection and could have been explored further. But the rest of the interpretation will be contentious because there may be ways of apprehending obligation that do not represent it as demanding, peremptory or coercive. The suggestion that the conjunction of these traits forms a key explanandum within the theory of obligation will therefore attract the objection that Tomasello's theory of obligation is too restrictive, since it is designed to deliver the result that obligation is always all three.
Room for objection here is partly due to the possibility of alternative theories of obligation's special force. That obligation is always felt to be demanding or coercive is not a direct implication, for instance, of either the following theories: that a) obligation (perhaps in just one sense of “obligation”) is what one has decisive moral reason to do (Parfit Reference Parfit2011), or that b) obligation is just what one can be intelligibly blamed for violating or what one might intelligibly feel guilt for violating (Adams Reference Adams2002).
On the other hand, some cases of personal conviction provide apparent counterexamples to the claim that felt obligation is always demanding and quasi-coercive. Not everything that it feels necessary to do for moral reasons is felt to be coerced or demanded from one. Williams (Reference Williams1981; Reference Williams1993) illustrated how the performance of some obligations is felt to be expressive of character-constituting dispositions, so that someone refusing to betray their spouse may discover that they are literally unable to betray them and that that is a fact about their character. The fact that they would feel the obligation as a demanding one were they to be reluctant to discharge it does not show that, absent that reluctance, the obligation is felt to be demanding. Similarly, Tomasello's suggestion that a violation of obligation would disrupt one's identity focuses too much on the agent's relations to violation rather than successful performance; identity has affirmative aspects too, and it may be that the performance of obligation is felt necessary because that is who the agent feels they are. This is not an instance of feeling coerced.
There are two elements of Tomasello's theory on which this issue will generate pressure. The first is Tomasello's idea, drawn from Darwall (Reference Darwall2006), that apprehension of obligation involves the agent in an awareness of the demands placed on them by others who have the authority to make those demands. If our obligations are demanded of us, then the conclusion is inescapable that they will be felt to be demanding; conversely, a more expansive conception of how obligation may be felt will require an abandonment of the insistence that obligations are authoritative demands. Second, there is the proposal that the coerciveness of obligation originates in the existence of an implicit “threat – to my identity” (sect. 3, para. 6) from the partners who may reject me, breaking up the “we” which is part of my identity, if I do not play my part in the collaborative commitment that defines us. But even if such a threat is inescapable and omnipresent, it does not follow that it should exhaust every aspect of the special force of obligation. A noncoercive, nondemanding special force will require an independent explanation.
Thus this issue regarding a slight expansion in one explanandum touches on deep aspects of the theory. To the extent that Tomasello's theory is offered as a supplement to Darwall's theory of obligation's demandingness, explaining what the authority to make demands consists in, and how demands come to be seen as legitimate, these problems will loom large since they require a revision or extension of that very theory which is being supplemented. But the idea of the collaborative commitment that Tomasello contributes might alternatively bear development outside that heavy theoretical machinery.
The prospects for such a development are promising. The existence of a collaborative commitment does not directly entail the involvement of demands, directed by agents in that joint commitment on other agents within it, that they carry out that commitment. Rather, the issuing of demands, as it appears in the experiments Tomasello cites, evidently serves a regulatory purpose: agents who stray from what the collaborative commitment requires of them are brought back to the required behaviour. Even if the implicit issuing of demands is involved in all actual collaborative commitment behaviour, the connection here is contingent and not constitutive. The securing of compliance through the coercion of an implied threat of deprivation of group membership, too, acts as a second-order compliance mechanism. On some occasions these mechanisms may be neutralized or weakened; although such situations may disrupt the ability to ensure compliance with the commitment, the inoperativeness of the compliance mechanisms would not render the shared commitment itself inert. When this potential complexity in the relation between commitment, demand, and threat is registered, room is made for a more flexible treatment of the various, possibly heterogenous, ways in which obligations may figure within deliberation and be felt emotionally.
The basic phenomenon, shared commitment, may make its own contribution to the way in which the obligations of that commitment are felt. Distinctive in Tomasello's posited we > me motivation is the notion of a commitment that agents themselves identify with insofar as they share in the collaborative project that constitutes the relevant aspect of in-group membership. If an agent identifies with this commitment deeply enough, they will ipso facto be motivated to discharge it, but the fact that the commitment originated externally will make a difference to the kind of force the obligation has for them. That it is possible to develop the idea of commitment without recourse to the notion of demand shows that Tomasello's theory is not quite as close to Darwall's theory as he thinks it is.
It is a consensus among philosophers that moral obligation possesses some kind of special force in deliberation. Tomasello's interpretation of obligation ascribes three additional characteristics: He suggests that it is peremptory, that it is demanding, and that it is coercive or at least has a “kind of coercive quality” (target article's introduction, para. 1, item 1 [“Special Force”]). The idea of peremptoriness is not mentioned again in this connection and could have been explored further. But the rest of the interpretation will be contentious because there may be ways of apprehending obligation that do not represent it as demanding, peremptory or coercive. The suggestion that the conjunction of these traits forms a key explanandum within the theory of obligation will therefore attract the objection that Tomasello's theory of obligation is too restrictive, since it is designed to deliver the result that obligation is always all three.
Room for objection here is partly due to the possibility of alternative theories of obligation's special force. That obligation is always felt to be demanding or coercive is not a direct implication, for instance, of either the following theories: that a) obligation (perhaps in just one sense of “obligation”) is what one has decisive moral reason to do (Parfit Reference Parfit2011), or that b) obligation is just what one can be intelligibly blamed for violating or what one might intelligibly feel guilt for violating (Adams Reference Adams2002).
On the other hand, some cases of personal conviction provide apparent counterexamples to the claim that felt obligation is always demanding and quasi-coercive. Not everything that it feels necessary to do for moral reasons is felt to be coerced or demanded from one. Williams (Reference Williams1981; Reference Williams1993) illustrated how the performance of some obligations is felt to be expressive of character-constituting dispositions, so that someone refusing to betray their spouse may discover that they are literally unable to betray them and that that is a fact about their character. The fact that they would feel the obligation as a demanding one were they to be reluctant to discharge it does not show that, absent that reluctance, the obligation is felt to be demanding. Similarly, Tomasello's suggestion that a violation of obligation would disrupt one's identity focuses too much on the agent's relations to violation rather than successful performance; identity has affirmative aspects too, and it may be that the performance of obligation is felt necessary because that is who the agent feels they are. This is not an instance of feeling coerced.
There are two elements of Tomasello's theory on which this issue will generate pressure. The first is Tomasello's idea, drawn from Darwall (Reference Darwall2006), that apprehension of obligation involves the agent in an awareness of the demands placed on them by others who have the authority to make those demands. If our obligations are demanded of us, then the conclusion is inescapable that they will be felt to be demanding; conversely, a more expansive conception of how obligation may be felt will require an abandonment of the insistence that obligations are authoritative demands. Second, there is the proposal that the coerciveness of obligation originates in the existence of an implicit “threat – to my identity” (sect. 3, para. 6) from the partners who may reject me, breaking up the “we” which is part of my identity, if I do not play my part in the collaborative commitment that defines us. But even if such a threat is inescapable and omnipresent, it does not follow that it should exhaust every aspect of the special force of obligation. A noncoercive, nondemanding special force will require an independent explanation.
Thus this issue regarding a slight expansion in one explanandum touches on deep aspects of the theory. To the extent that Tomasello's theory is offered as a supplement to Darwall's theory of obligation's demandingness, explaining what the authority to make demands consists in, and how demands come to be seen as legitimate, these problems will loom large since they require a revision or extension of that very theory which is being supplemented. But the idea of the collaborative commitment that Tomasello contributes might alternatively bear development outside that heavy theoretical machinery.
The prospects for such a development are promising. The existence of a collaborative commitment does not directly entail the involvement of demands, directed by agents in that joint commitment on other agents within it, that they carry out that commitment. Rather, the issuing of demands, as it appears in the experiments Tomasello cites, evidently serves a regulatory purpose: agents who stray from what the collaborative commitment requires of them are brought back to the required behaviour. Even if the implicit issuing of demands is involved in all actual collaborative commitment behaviour, the connection here is contingent and not constitutive. The securing of compliance through the coercion of an implied threat of deprivation of group membership, too, acts as a second-order compliance mechanism. On some occasions these mechanisms may be neutralized or weakened; although such situations may disrupt the ability to ensure compliance with the commitment, the inoperativeness of the compliance mechanisms would not render the shared commitment itself inert. When this potential complexity in the relation between commitment, demand, and threat is registered, room is made for a more flexible treatment of the various, possibly heterogenous, ways in which obligations may figure within deliberation and be felt emotionally.
The basic phenomenon, shared commitment, may make its own contribution to the way in which the obligations of that commitment are felt. Distinctive in Tomasello's posited we > me motivation is the notion of a commitment that agents themselves identify with insofar as they share in the collaborative project that constitutes the relevant aspect of in-group membership. If an agent identifies with this commitment deeply enough, they will ipso facto be motivated to discharge it, but the fact that the commitment originated externally will make a difference to the kind of force the obligation has for them. That it is possible to develop the idea of commitment without recourse to the notion of demand shows that Tomasello's theory is not quite as close to Darwall's theory as he thinks it is.