Genuine Dilemmas

The case for genuine dilemmas—a position that, following Thomson (2008),8 I will callthe Dilemmist—is most clearly seen in cases of homogeneous dilemmas, dilemmas in which both oughts are of the same normative kind. The primary example of homoge- neous dilemmas are moral dilemmas. In this discussion of the dilemmist—who answers the flowchart as follows, Q1: Y, Q2, N, Q4, Y—I will begin by briefly sketching the ap- peal of the dilemmist position with regard to homogeneous dilemmas and then we can see if it carries over to the case of heterogeneous dilemmas, i.e., dilemmas in which the oughts are not of the same normative kind.

Consider an agent, Ginny, who is torn between two incompatible options. She has promised Fred she’d see the new Marvel movie with him and only him (A), but she also promised George that she’d see the new DC movie with him and only him (B). Looking at her busy schedule she notices that she can only either keep her promise to Fred and do A or she can keep her promise to George and do B. That is, there is no way for her to do both. Ginny finds herself torn between two incompatible options—A and B—and asks “What ought I do? A or B?” Let us imagine that she shouts out this question to the universe, and while she’s shouting a dilemmist happens to be walking by. The dilemmist, noting Ginny’s dilemma, helpfully answers, “Well, you ought to do A and you ought to B”. We could reasonably expect Ginny to reply reminding the dilemmist that she can’t do both and she wants to know which she ought to do. If the dilemmist were again to simply reply that she ought do A, and she ought do B. Perhaps she shouldn’t do either until she flips a coin.

But, why agree with the dilemmist? Following a line presented by Williams (1965), Thomson (2008) notes that in the case of moral dilemmas you might think that whatever Ginny does, she’ll feel regret at not having done the other. If she breaks her promise to George and goes to the movies with Fred, she’ll feel the need to make it up to George. Seeing that both incompatible acts are required does justice to why we would feel this regret. If the dilemma could be solved by a flip of a coin, we would fail to do justice to the fact of this regret.9

So now let us reconsider the heterogenous dilemma that has been our focus and see whether this fact of regret carries over. As Gendler (2011) introduces one of the cases that has been our focus, Social Club, let us reconsider what she says. Gendler suggests

8_{Although I am using Thomson (2008) to present the dilemmist position, Thomson herself rejects the}

dilemmist position.

9_{Thomson (2008) contrasts this kind ofhard dilemmist with a soft dilemmist who argues that what Ginny}

ought to do is ambiguous. This would be compatible the pluralist and permissivist accounts will be laid out.

that given that we live in a society structured by racial categories we simply face a tragic irresolvable dilemma. She presents the case of Social Club as one in which we face the following dilemma: we must either (a) pay the epistemic cost of failing to encode certain sorts of base-rate or background information about cultural categories (i.e., encoding the information that a minuscule fraction of club members are black whereas all the staff members are black) or (b) we must actively believe against the evidence and work at reg- ulating the inevitable associations which that information gives us. In other words, we must choose between doing what we epistemically ought (encode the base-rate informa- tion about the race of the staff members) and what we morally ought (not use someone’s race as a determiner for whether they are staff even when it’s the determiner that is highly correlated with correctly picking out a staff member). This, she argues, places us in a tragic irresolvable dilemma. Not only can we not do both what morally ought and what we epistemically ought, there is no way to resolve this conflict.

Now, is it the case that as with Ginny’s dilemma a simple coin flip could settle for Agnes or Spencer what they ought believe? I do not think so. Imagine Agnes approaching John Hope Franklin as though he were a staff member, being corrected, and then replying “Well I was torn between what I morally ought do and what I epistemically ought do, so I flipped a coin and went with what I epistemically ought do.” From Chapter 2, it seems that John Hope Franklin can rightly feelwronged by that, and in general, when you’ve wronged someone you generally feel regret about it. So, this fact of regret carries over to the case of heterogeneous dilemmas. That there is this feeling of regret, this feature than an agent would be wronged if one simply flipped a coin to make a decision concerning whether they are a staff member, suggests that perhaps we a face a genuine dilemma in these cases. If either option was permissible and the dilemma could be settled by flipping a coin, then John Hope Franklin wouldn’t be in a position to feel wronged. Notice that we can avoid these grounds for regret by refraining from belief (as suggested by moral encroachment). The dilemmist, however, seems committed to saying that you should both believe and not believe.

As we’ll see, however, there is a defusing move that is available if we take a slightly different track on the flowchart. The pluralist, whose account I will expand upon in Sec- tion 4.3.3, notes that given the plurality of oughts, these oughts are constantly in conflict. There is nothing special to lose sleep over with regard to conflicts between moral oughts and epistemic oughts any more than we should lose sleep over conflicts between athletic oughts and aesthetic oughts. No standard is more normatively important. As we’ll fur- ther see in Section 4.3, all of these accounts that emerge from a skepticism concerning ought simpliciter result in this kind of pessimistic conclusion. Spencer, our supposedly

rational racist, will always end up doing something right, even if he also does something else wrong. This is unsatisfying, and I will explain why.