I’m working on a revise and resubmit, and there’s an interesting issue that I’m going to have to deal with. So let me begin with a question. Is it possible to forgive someone for an action, but fail to believe that the action was wrong?
I’m inclined to say yes. Here’s three potential motivations.
Moral Skepticism
Suppose someone is a moral skeptic and they actually don’t believe that actions are morally right or wrong. It would be odd to say that it is metaphysically impossible for them to forgive someone. Surely, Walter Sinnot-Armstrong is capable of forgiving people.
Permissible Harm
Suppose someone revealed information about you that hurt you in someway, but you thought that they were well within their rights to reveal that information (suppose lives were at stake). You might be hurt or damaged by that revelation, fail to believe that the revelation was wrong, but it still seems possible for you to forgive the person for that revelation. (HT: Sarah came up with this one)
Moral Uncertainty
Forget someone who is a global moral skeptic. Suppose you’re simply unsure whether or not a particular action against you (that harmed you) was wrong or right. This seems like a perfectly intelligible thing to say “You hurt me. I’m not really sure whether it was permissible or not, but whatever the case – I forgive you” (and then proceed to act in whatever ways one should act if they have actually forgiven someone)
Anyway, those are three possible motivations for the claim that it is possible to forgive someone without believing that they have wronged you. I’d appreciate any thoughts on this.
Those motivations are pretty good, I think. But, the main worry would be that in those cases, the people are saying that they forgive someone, but really aren’t because they just can’t. We need some account of forgiveness that doesn’t make it analytic that if A forgives B for X, A thinks that B’s X-ing was wrong.
For the case where you think B was well within their rights to reveal the harmful information, one may say that you don’t really forgive B for revealing the information, but just sort of realize that you shouldn’t be upset with them in the first place.
I think the case of the moral skeptic is a strong one. If I were going to argue against you there, I’d look at other ways to think about someone doing something wrong (an action which flies in the face of social norms, etc. I think Steve Finlay has some stuff about that) or other ways to think about resentment which do not involve full on moral judgments. So, though you don’t have to think the person did something MORALLY wrong to forgive them, you do have to think they did something wrong*, where `wrong*’ is the moral skeptics replacement for `wrong’.
I’d be happy to look at the paper if you want, and even if you aren’t particularly interested in comments, I wouldn’t mind having a look.
Hey Justin,
Thanks for the comments. These are helpful. That point about how one might respond to the moral skepticism case seem promising.
I wonder what wrong* would amount to. Here’s one option…
An action A is wrong* = df.) A would be wrong if there were moral facts.
I’ve sometimes heard moral skeptics talk this way. They’ll say things like – “I don’t think there are moral facts, but if there were – they would be…”
I’m not sure how to make sense of that counterfactual, but the intelligibility of the counterfactual need not matter for the response to go through. All that matters is that moral skeptics believe the action have some property like wrong* (it doesn’t matter whether it’s a possible property or not).
I’ll have to think more about the other cases. I can send you a copy of the paper.
I’m not sure that you can’t forgive B for X while not believing that X was wrong. First, you can apologize for doing X even if you don’t believe that X was wrong. You can say, if X offended you, I apologize for that. So your apology is conditional on X actually being wrong. Why couldn’t you say, on your death bed, if there is anyone remaining that I have not forgiven, I forgive you now. In this case, you don’t believe there is an action that is wrong and unforgiven, but only that there might be one.
Mike,
Both the analogy and the deathbed case seem pretty good to me.
“Is it possible to forgive someone for an action, but fail to believe that the action was wrong?”
Yes, I agree this is certainly possible. Scanlon’s account of blame may explain why: we blame someone insofar as we negatively revise our relationship due to their violating a norm of that relationship. This may be the baseline ‘moral relationship’ that all persons hold with each other, or it may be something more personal — e.g. friendship. And of course we may violate some norm of friendship (and so be either blamed or forgiven by our friend) without thereby violating any moral requirements.
P.S. I don’t think your ‘moral skepticism’ argument is a good one, because moral skeptics merely profess to not believe in morality. Despite this meta-ethical belief, they still have first-order moral beliefs. I doubt anyone has fully internalized this theoretical position to the extent that they no longer moral judgments in their day to day lives (e.g. resenting people who treat them badly). But all this is moot if my above suggestion is correct.
Hey Richard,
Thanks for the tip on Scanlon. I’m going to look into that.
Regarding your first point. It looks like you have cases in mind where someone violates a norm of friendship (without violating a moral norm) and we forgive them for violating that norm.
Do you think forgiveness might require that you believe that some norm or other has been violated?
I guess I’m wondering if you can forgive someone without believing that any norms have in fact been violated – that’s why the skeptic line was attractive.
Andrew’s point is attractive.
I am only going to offer an inquiry based on what I know about ethics and moral judgement. To the extent of my knowledge and good common sense, would forgiveness even become a question if the said forgiver was without moral judgment? Doesn’t it depend on the evaluation of the deed against his person? Has the forgiver attained nirvana? Hah. Good to start on the unintended and intended consequences of actions- what would Cicero think?
“I guess I’m wondering if you can forgive someone without believing that any norms have in fact been violated”
Oh, okay, once we extend it beyond just moral norms, I no longer think that’s possible. To forgive someone is to (i) believe that they are blameworthy (transgressed a norm of your relationship), and yet (ii) choose to (attempt to) restore rather than downgrade the relationship.
What then do I say about conditional forgiveness (“I’m not sure whether you betrayed me but if you did, I forgive you anyway.”)? Maybe that’s not yet to forgive, but simply a promise that one will (automatically, no further action required) forgive in the event that one acquires the prerequisite belief?
Richard,
Thanks again for these comments – this is helpful.
First, it might be odd to say that the moral skeptic doesn’t have any moral beliefs – despite their own sincere protests to the contrary.
But doesn’t it seem metaphysically possible for there to be one case where a person is skeptical about whether a particular action violated any norms, be upset about that action, and yet choose to restore the relationship?
Consider the moral uncertainty case. Revise it so that it is a norm uncertainty case.
In this revised case the person would say,
“You hurt me. I’m not really sure whether you violated any norms of morality or friendship or not, but whatever the case – I forgive you” (and then proceed to act in whatever ways one should act if they have actually forgiven someone – e.g., seek to restore the relationship)
It’s tricky, but I think I’d just repeat my above account of ‘conditional forgiveness’.
Here’s a related question: do you think it’s possible to blame someone without making any normative judgment? E.g. “You hurt me. I’m not really sure whether you violated any norms of morality or friendship or not, but whatever the case – I can’t forgive you.”
(I’m not sure if that’s really blame, or if it’s merely to report one’s own irrational inability to maintain the friendship. The case is also complicated by the fact that there surely *is* a norm against hurting your friends, so it’s hard to take the claims of normative uncertainty seriously.)
I suppose I’m inclined to think that blaming someone requires thinking that they have violated a norm. In fact, this seems to be part of the concept of blame. To blame someone for P just is to adopt the attitude that they are responsible for P.
It does seem, though, that one can consistently adopt this analysis of blame and the view that forgiveness doesn’t entail normative judgment.
Regarding your other point…
The case is also complicated by the fact that there surely *is* a norm against hurting your friends, so it’s hard to take the claims of normative uncertainty seriously
I don’t see why. It may be true (and indeed obviously true to most people) that there is a norm against hurting your friends. But surely it’s still possible for someone to be skeptical or uncertain about whether some norm has been violated when they are hurt by a friend – they would just need to have confused/false views about norms of friendship.