Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 13.07.1981, Page 245

Promises and Games
235
I furthermore share with Hume and Prichard11 their puzzlement
about the concept of ‘the will obligating itself’. If our obligation to play
a game fairly, or use language responsibly, depends upon our will as
individual speakers, can we not get out of this obligation by willing the
obligation away?
IV
Perhaps one can establish what one ought to do in a particular case, by
reference to strategic rules or maxims. But, the strategic rules or maxims
applied within a game derive their value from the point of the game,
and we saw that the so called ‘promising game’ does not seem to have
a point of the right kind. Whether or not one ought morally to do a
certain deed, always refers to the character of the total situation, and
this is true, even in the case of the playing of a game, where one might
not play to win, because one thinks it would upset one’s opponent too
much. Compassion may also lead us to break a promise. To make
promises and to play games are practices we engage in as moral beings.
Put, here we are not being determined by our appeal to the maxim of
any game. These maxims are purely theoretical, and it is owing to this
that Max Black’s derivation of ‘ought’ or ‘should’ from ‘is’ looks so
irrelevant to the question of establishing that one ought to do a particu-
lar action on a particular occasion, our initial question.
Max Black’s derivation is this:
(1) “Fischer wants to mate Botvinnik
(2) The one and only way for Fischer to mate Botvinnik is to move the
Queen
(3) Therefore Fischer ought to move the Queen.”
But the ‘ought’ involved here is either a purely self-interested pruden-
hal one, based upon Fischer’s desire to achieve a certain objective, or it
can be thought of as entirely theoretical. In respect of the same position
°n the board, a chess book might advise “Black ought to move the
Queen”. This remains true whether or not anyone ever gets into this
situation in actually playing chess. But, a man might not be doing some-
thing morally wrong in deliberately not acting in conformity with this
11 H. D. Prichard, The Obligation to Keep a Promise in Moral Obligation, Ox-
t°rd, 1929 and David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part II,
Section V.