We have already seen an introduction about the notion of moral impact, the normative impact of non-physical events, and what can be called legal(ly proper) impact, as well as an interinstitutional application of the common law principle of legality as an example of moral impact outside the context of lawmaking.
In this third and final post, I will examine another example of moral impact of the non-lawmaking kind. By “non-lawmaking”, I refer to cases of practices whose normative output, so to speak, does not consist of producing new, legally enforceable norms.
More precisely, I will focus on promise-making as an instance of social normativity. In this case, linguistic events involving the formation of certain more or less stylized utterances (i.e., “I hereby promise to Φ”) result in the existence[1] of a specific class of states of affairs (i.e., a promisor’s Φ-ing or promisor’s intending to Φ) whose obtaining is pro tanto right for practice-immanent reasons and pro tanto good for practice-transcendent reasons.[2]
The practice of promise-making
The prevailing practice among group members is to adhere to a policy of performing the specified act Φ[3] unless certain recognized extenuating circumstances apply. This policy is typically observed in instances where members are expected to utter the formula, “I hereby promise to do Φ.”
Partly because of the practice of adhering to a policy of making and fulfilling promises the following complex fact obtains:
The promisor utters the formula “I hereby promise to Φ”. Thanks to the practice’s constitutive rule that ‘In social context S, the utterer of the formula ‘I hereby promise to’ or a semantic equivalent thereof counts as a promisor’, the person who uttered this sentence becomes (or, more accurately, “counts as” or “constitutes”) a promisor.
Upon the making of a promise, it becomes pro tanto right that the following state of affairs obtains:
(1) Other things being equal, the promisor fulfils their promise.
The Rightness of Keeping Promises
A possible explanation of the rightness of the obtaining of this state of affairs is the practice-immanent principle of fidelity.[4] Because the practice partly exists only because others do their part by adhering to a policy of fidelity (i.e., the policy of acting on bona fide undertaken commitments), the promisee has a reason to expect that the promisor will act as promised. The fact that this expectation is produced in a proper way[5] triggers an independent principle of social fidelity that prohibits the betrayal of expectations unless certain exceptional circumstances obtain. By virtue of this triggering the promisor acquires a duty to act as promised and, accordingly, the promisee acquires a claim against the promisor with respect to the promised act.
In general and regardless of the preferred specification[6] of the principle that purports to govern the practice of doing what one is committed or has committed oneself to do, the mechanism of moral impact remains unaltered in all requisite respects: facts about the sayings, doings, thinkings and feelings of practice participants are relevant in explaining what makes it right that a certain states of affairs obtain.
The Goodness of Keeping Promises
Moreover, and in virtue of the same event (i.e., the promissory utterance) taking place, it also becomes pro tanto good that the same state of affairs obtains, namely, that, other things being equal, the promisor fulfils their promise.
It is pro tanto good that the promisor fulfils their promise because seeing to it that this happens is conducive to securing or fostering social cooperation even in cases where participants have no prior moral or prudential reasons to acquire a commitment to perform.[7]
By “prior”, we mean reasons that one has or reasons that exist independently of the fact of having made a promise. Individual moral antecedent reasons include one’s “deontological” concern not to deceive others, one’s virtuous motives or one’s mere sense of duty. Individual prudential antecedent reasons include considerations that represent one’s acting in conformity with what has been promised as good for the promisor in some way (e.g., preserving one’s reputation or good name, or the fact that acting on one’s promises is somehow appealing, pleasing, or preferable to the promisor).
Consequently, and most significantly, it is precisely the centrality of such prior, individual reasons that both conventionalist and, as here outlined, moral impact accounts of the normativity of promises are keen on deflating. Conventionalist accounts resist the centrality of individual prior reasons for keeping a promise on the grounds that the utility of promise-induced assurances resides in their independence of the motivational makeup of promisors.[8] Moral impact accounts also resist its centrality on the grounds that the warrantedness[9] (rather than utility) of promise-induced assurances is a function of the propriety of the promisor’s moral or prudential motivation.
The moral impact approach adopted here posits that the value of securing or fostering social cooperation, irrespective of the existence of prior reasons that favour this cooperation, is practice-transcendent in the sense that its normative appeal does not depend on the specific qualities or properties of the conventional means by which such cooperation is achieved on different occasions.
In addition to the social practice of making and keeping promises, there are other social practices of “agreement-making” or “self-binding”, in which participants adhere to a policy of doing what they are committed or have committed themselves to do. Examples of the former type of practice include contracts and communal codes (e.g., King Arthur’s Round Table or a university’s code of conduct). Examples of the latter type of practice include wedding and religious vows as well as profession (e.g., the Hippocratic Oath), office (e.g., the swearing-in of a judge, a parliamentarian or a minister) or testimonial oaths.
My work on this blogpost has been supported by Grant RYC2023-043621-I funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and by the FSE+.
SUGGESTED CITATION: Gkouvas, Triantafyllos: “The Impact of Moral Impact (Part III)”, FOLBlog, 2025/7/11, https://fol.ius.bg.ac.rs/2025/07/11/the-impact-of-moral-impact-part-iii/
NOTES
[1] It is important to distinguish between the existence of a state of affairs and its obtaining. The state of affairs of ‘a promisor’s P Φ-ing’ or ‘a promisor’s P intending to Φ’ exists insofar as the property Φ-ing or intending to Φ is predicable of an object that actually exists, namely, a person who in a certain context counts as a promisor. But the actual promisor need not be such that they actually Φ or intend to Φ. All that is needed for the state of affairs to exist is for the entity (the “predicand”) on which it depends to exist (namely, the actually existing promisor). By contrast the same state of affairs obtains if and only if a promisor’s P Φ -ing or John’s intending to Φ is a way for the actual world to be. For this distinction see (Textor 2021).
[2] For the distinction between practice-immanent and practice-transcendent reasons see The Impact of Moral Impact: Part I.
[3] Φ need not be understood as a variable whose values are specific act types like returning a book or telling the truth. Cast at the level of a policy of fidelity Φ can be shorthand for ‘doing what is promised’.
[4] My talk of “practice immanence” is not irreconcilable with Thomas Scanlon’s (1990: 208) invocation of the same principle of fidelity in the context of his anti-conventionalist, expectationalist account of the normativity of promises. To recall, a principle that is practice-immanent is such that it both has normative weight independently of its conventional acceptance and is only applicable if properly triggered by the sayings and doings of members of a social practice.
[5] In the case of promising an expectation on the part of the recipient of the promise is induced in a proper way if the promissory utterance warrants its uptake by the promisee. The promisor can assure the promisee without deception even in situations in which the promisor has no prior moral or prudential reason to act as promised. A promissory expectation is warranted because and insofar as there exists a generally (i.e., for the most part or, in the Aristotelian jargon, ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ /hōs epi to poly) upheld practice of adhering to a policy of doing what is promised.
[6] A more general yet equally applicable to promises, practice-immanent principle could be the principle of fairness. This principle could read as ‘do not free-ride on other participants’ felicitous (i.e., practice-conformant) performances’. Furthermore, Niko Kolodny and R.J. Wallace (2005: 146) contemplate a stronger principle of veracity to the effect that ‘simply by communicating to B that A will do X, A is obligated to make this communication true’. The latter principle is stronger in the sense that, regardless of whether the communicative act of the promisor succeeds in inducing reliance or assurance, the promisor ought to see to it that the content of their communication becomes true.
[7] As John Rawls (1971: 345) puts it, the social practice of promise-making and promise-keeping is ‘a rational means whereby men can enter into and stabilize cooperative agreements for mutual advantage’.
[8] A pithy illustration of this line of reasoning is provided by David Hume in his discussion of the value of promising. In the example he offers, farmer A endeavours to persuade another farmer B to assist with A’s harvest on a specific day in exchange for B’s assistance with A’s harvest on a subsequent day. However, A faces an impediment: B is cognizant that A will have no incentive to provide assistance the following day, as A has already reaped the anticipated benefits from their agreement. As Hume observed, the value of promising lies precisely in its ability to provide assurance to B that A will fulfil his obligations, even in the absence of independent incentives to do so. For an analysis of the centrality of this conventionalist objection to the moral foundations of promising see also Niko Kolodny and R.J. Wallace (2005: 120-3, 141-44).
[9] See supra note 5.