LessonsObligation Beyond Capacity: Possibility, Ability, and Moral JudgmentQuiz

Good and bad have several technical senses which should not be conflated.

1. Perfection and deficiency: knowledge as excellence, ignorance as defect.
2. Suitability to an aim: what serves or frustrates someone’s purpose.
3. Worthiness of praise, blame, reward, or punishment: a normative judgment about an act and its agent.

One may admit that reason recognizes the first two senses while disagreeing about reason's authority over the third. Consequently, the bare statement “reason knows moral value” is ambiguous until its meaning is specified.

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Three meanings of good and bad

Obligation Beyond Capacity: Possibility, Ability, and Moral Judgment

Good and bad have several technical senses which should not be conflated.

1. Perfection and deficiency: knowledge as excellence, ignorance as defect.
2. Suitability to an aim: what serves or frustrates someone’s purpose.
3. Worthiness of praise, blame, reward, or punishment: a normative judgment about an act and its agent.

One may admit that reason recognizes the first two senses while disagreeing about reason's authority over the third. Consequently, the bare statement “reason knows moral value” is ambiguous until its meaning is specified.