This paper argues that promises are proposals in joint practical deliberation, the activity of deciding together what to do. More precisely: to promise to ϕ is to propose (in a particular way) to decide together with your addressee(s) that you will ϕ. I defend this deliberative theory by showing that the activity of joint practical deliberation naturally gives rise to a speech act with exactly the same properties as promises. A certain kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding (...) one's own actions turns out to have the very same normative effects, under the very same conditions, as a promise. I submit that this cannot be a coincidence: we should conclude that promises and the relevant kind of proposals in joint practical deliberation are one and the same. (shrink)

Sometimes individuals act together, and sometimes each acts on his or her own. It's a distinction that often matters to us. Undertaking a difficult task collectively can be comforting, even if only for the solidarity it may engender. Or, to take a very different case, the realization (or delusion) that the many bits of rudeness one has been suffering of late are part of a concerted effort can be of significance in identifying what one is up against: the accumulation of (...) grievances (no doubt well catalogued) is seen, not as an unfortunate coincidence of affronts stemming from various quarters, but as itself a product of a unified exercise of agency. A paranoid conspiracy theorist is not usually to be taken seriously. But he does get right that it certainly would be awful, for example, if everyone were out to get him and were working together to do so. After all, the stability and impact of agency that's shared can be expected to be more serious than the effects of a mere collection of individual acts.[1.. (shrink)

It’s possible to accept or to reject a promise. According to a new proposal by Abraham Roth, accepting a promise involves intending that the promisee perform the promised action. According to Roth, this view is supported by rational symmetries between promissory acceptance and intention. Here, I show how these symmetries actually generate two problems for the view.

Abraham Roth argues that to accept a promise is to intend the performance of the promised action. I argue that this proposal runs into trouble because it makes it hard to explain how promises provide reasons for the performance of the promised action. Then, I ask whether we might fill the gap by saying that a promisor becomes entitled to the reasons for which her promise is accepted. I argue that this fix would implausibly shrink the class of binding promises (...) and suggest that similar difficulties may arise for any theory that casts promises as an exercise of shared agency. (shrink)

Many people attempt to give meaning to their lives by pursuing projects that they believe will bear fruit after they have died. Knowing that their death will preclude them from protecting or promoting such projects people who draw meaning from them will often attempt to secure their continuance by securing promises from others to serve as their caretakers after they die. But those who rely on such are faced with a problem: None of the four major accounts that have been (...) developed to explain directed promissory obligation (the Authority View, the Trust View, the Assurance View, and the Reliance View) support the view that we are obligated to keep our promises to persons who are now dead. But I will provide hope for those who wish to use such promises to protect the meaning with which they have endowed their lives. I will argue that while we cannot wrong a person who is now dead by breaking a promise made to her during her life, we could wrong the living by so doing. We thus (might) have reason to keep the promises that we made to those who are now dead. (shrink)

What is it for a duty or obligation to be directed? Thinking about paradigmatic cases such as the obligations generated by promises will take us only so far in answering this question. This paper starts by surveying several approaches for understanding directed duties, as well as the challenges they face. It turns out that shared agency features something similar to the directedness of duties. This suggests an account of directedness in terms of shared agency – specifically, in terms of the (...) so-called practical intimacy that holds between individuals when they act together. The final section addresses a challenge to the shared agency approach posed by legal wronging in tort law. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

I present a novel way to think about promising: Promising as Doxastic Entrustment. The main idea is that promising is inviting another to entrust her belief to you, and that taking a promiser’s word is freely choosing to accept this invitation. I explicate this through considering the special kind of reason for belief issued by a promiser: a reason whose rational status depends both on the will of the promiser to provide it, and on the will of the promisee to (...) accept it. Though this may seem to raise worries about believing at will, I show how such concerns can be navigated. I then argue that the view provides a rich, attractive understanding of the interpersonal bond forged through promising. According to the Doxastic Entrustment view, that bond results from freely given trust, in exchange for freely assumed responsibility for what is entrusted: namely, a bit of the promisee’s own mind. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 150-170, January 2022.

Conventionalism about promising is the view that the power to make binding promises depends essentially on the existence of a social practice or convention of promising. This paper explores an objection to conventionalism that says that—(allegedly) contra conventionalism—there is no morally acceptable world in which we lack the power of promise. Instead, normative powers theorists claim that our power of promise is morally basic or necessary. I argue that the conventionalist need not deny this claim. There are several ways to (...) develop a noncontingent conventionalism: a version of the view that can accommodate the insight that the power of promise is indispensable to morally acceptable lives. Then, I argue that the conventionalist is indeed on the hook for accommodating this insight. I wrap up by considering the state of play in the debate over conventionalism about promising. Once we note the theoretical possibility of noncontingent conventionalism, it looks like the theatre of battle shifts to the difficult question of whether “natural” morality always provides “moral necessities.”. (shrink)

If I promise to pick you up at the airport, I thereby become obligated to do so. But this is not the only way I could undertake this obligation. If I offer to pick you up, and you accept my offer, I become obligated to pick you up in much the same way. I would also undertake similar obligations if you asked me to pick you up and I accepted your request, or if we made an agreement that I will (...) pick you up at the airport and in exchange you’ll buy me dinner. Why are the normative effects of accepted offers, accepted requests, and agreements so similar to those of promises? I argue that theorists of promising need to answer this question, and so they need to pay attention to offers, requests, and agreements. On the theory I defend, promises, offers, requests, and agreements have such similar normative effects because they all result in joint decisions between the relevant parties. I argue that this ‘joint decision view’ provides an attractive explanation of the similarities and differences between promises, offers, requests, and agreements. (shrink)