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  1. The zetetic turn and the procedural turn.David Thorstad - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    Epistemology has taken a zetetic turn from the study of belief towards the study of inquiry. Several decades ago, theories of bounded rationality took a procedural turn from attitudes towards the processes of inquiry that produce them. What is the relationship between the zetetic and procedural turns? In this paper, I argue that we should treat the zetetic turn in epistemology as part of a broader procedural turn in the study of bounded rationality. I use this claim to motivate and (...)
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  • Logical norms as defeasible obligations: disentangling sound and feasible inferences.Matteo De Benedetto & Alessandra Marra - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
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  • Law, ‘Ought’, and ‘Can’.Frederick Wilmot-Smith - 2023 - Ethics 133 (4):529-557.
    It is commonly held that “ought implies can.” If so, what constraints does that place on the law? Having provided an argument which allows the maxim to be used by lawyers, I consider the application of that argument to both primary and remedial legal duties. This, it turns out, gives us some reason to reconsider whether the maxim is sound. Further, even if the maxim is sound, it has less purchase on remedial duties than is commonly supposed.
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  • Conceptual limitations, puzzlement, and epistemic dilemmas.Deigan Michael - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (9):2771-2796.
    Conceptual limitations restrict our epistemic options. One cannot believe, disbelieve, or doubt what one cannot grasp. I show how, even granting an epistemic ought-implies-can principle, such restrictions might lead to epistemic dilemmas: situations where each of one’s options violates some epistemic requirement. An alternative reaction would be to take epistemic norms to be sensitive to one’s options in ways that ensure dilemmas never arise. I propose, on behalf of the dilemmist, that we treat puzzlement as a kind of epistemic residue, (...)
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  • Überforderungseinwände in der Ethik.Lukas Naegeli - 2022 - Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
    Gibt es überzeugende Überforderungseinwände gegen anspruchsvolle moralische Auffassungen? In diesem Buch werden Überforderungseinwände präzise charakterisiert, systematisch eingeordnet und argumentativ verteidigt. Unter Berücksichtigung der wichtigsten philosophischen Beiträge zum Thema wird gezeigt, weshalb gewisse Moraltheorien und -prinzipien dafür kritisiert werden können, dass sie zu viel von einzelnen Personen verlangen.
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  • (1 other version)The problem of insignificant hands.Frank Hindriks - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):829-854.
    Many morally significant outcomes can be brought about only if several individuals contribute to them. However, individual contributions to collective outcomes often fail to have morally significant effects on their own. Some have concluded from this that it is permissible to do nothing. What I call ‘the problem of insignificant hands’ is the challenge of determining whether and when people are obligated to contribute. For this to be the case, I argue, the prospect of helping to bring about the outcome (...)
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  • Determinism, ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’ and Moral Obligation.Nadine Elzein - 2020 - Dialectica 74 (1):35-62..
    Haji argues that determinism threatens deontic morality, not via a threat to moral responsibility, but directly, because of the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. Haji’s argument requires not only that we embrace an ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle, but also that we adopt the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’. I argue that we have little reason to adopt the latter principle, and examine whether deontic morality might be destroyed on the basis of the more commonly embraced ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (...)
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  • Ought Implies Can Or Could Have.Andrew Dennis Bassford - 2022 - Review of Metaphysics 75 (4):779-807.
    The moral principle that Ought Implies Can (“OIC”) is often assumed without argument in normative discourse. Is this assumption defensible? Some would argue that it is not, as there are many purported counterexamples against it in the literature. However, OIC is not so much a single principle as rather a family of them. In this paper, I will argue that, while not every OIC-type principle is defensible, at least one of them may be. I defend the cognate moral principle that (...)
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  • Obligations of feeling.Mario Attie-Picker - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (4):1282-1297.
    Moral obligation, according to one influential conception, is distinct among other moral concepts in at least two respects. First, obligation is linked with demands. If I am obligated to you to do X, then you can demand that I do X. Second, obligation is linked with blame and the rest of our accountability practices. If I am obligated to you to do X, failure to do so is blameworthy and you may hold me accountable for it. The puzzle is the (...)
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  • ‘Must’ implies ‘can’.Miklós Kürthy, Fabio Del Prete & Luca Barlassina - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (3):620-643.
    An open question in the semantics of modality is what relations there are among different modal flavours. In this article, we consider the thorny issue of whether ascribing to an agent the obligation to φ implies that it is possible for the agent to φ. Traditionally, this issue has been interpreted as whether ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. But another linguistic interpretation is available as well, namely, whether ‘must’ implies ‘can’ (MIC). We show that ‘must’ does imply ‘can’ via a convergent argument. (...)
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  • (1 other version)The problem of insignificant hands.Frank Hindriks - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):1-26.
    Many morally significant outcomes can be brought about only if several individuals contribute to them. However, individual contributions to collective outcomes often fail to have morally significant effects on their own. Some have concluded from this that it is permissible to do nothing. What I call ‘the problem of insignificant hands’ is the challenge of determining whether and when people are obligated to contribute. For this to be the case, I argue, the prospect of helping to bring about the outcome (...)
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  • The Radical Behavioral Challenge and Wide-Scope Obligations in Business.Hasko von Kriegstein - 2022 - Journal of Business Ethics 177 (3):507-517.
    This paper responds to the Radical Behavioral Challenge to normative business ethics. According to RBC, recent research on bounded ethicality shows that it is psychologically impossible for people to follow the prescriptions of normative business ethics. Thus, said prescriptions run afoul of the principle that nobody has an obligation to do something that they cannot do. I show that the only explicit response to this challenge in the business ethics literature is flawed because it limits normative business ethics to condemning (...)
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  • Perceptualism and the epistemology of normative reasons.Jean Moritz Müller - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3557-3586.
    According to much recent work in metaethics, we have a perceptual access to normative properties and relations. On a common approach, this access has a presentational character. Here, ‘presentational’ specifies a characteristic feature of the way aspects of the environment are apprehended in sensory experience. While many authors have argued that we enjoy presentations of value properties, thus far comparatively less effort has been invested into developing a presentational view of the apprehension of normative reasons. Since it appears that this (...)
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  • Ought implies can, asymmetrical freedom, and the practical irrelevance of transcendental freedom.Matthé Scholten - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (1):25-42.
    In this paper, I demonstrate that Kant's commitment to an asymmetry between the control conditions for praise and blame is explained by his endorsement of the principle Ought Implies Can (OIC). I argue that Kant accepts only a relatively weak version of OIC and that he is hence committed only to a relatively weak requirement of alternate possibilities for moral blame. This suggests that whether we are transcendentally free is irrelevant to questions about moral permissibility and moral blameworthiness.
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  • To be able to, or to be able not to? That is the Question. A Problem for the Transcendental Argument for Freedom.Nadine Elzein & Tuomas K. Pernu - 2019 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 15 (2):13-32.
    A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not (...)
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  • Theoretical Motivation of “Ought Implies Can”.Wesley Buckwalter - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (1):83-94.
    A standard principle in ethics is that moral obligation entails ability, or that “ought implies can”. A strong case has been made that this principle is not well motivated in moral psychology. This paper presents an analogous case against the theoretical motivation for the principle. The principle is in tension with several foundational areas of ethical theorizing, including research on apologies, excuses, promises, moral dilemmas, moral language, disability, and moral agency. Across each of these areas, accepting the principle that obligation (...)
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  • The Duty to Join Forces: When Individuals Lack Control.Frank Hindriks - 2019 - The Monist 102 (2):204-220.
    Some harms are such that they cannot be prevented by a single individual because she lacks the requisite control. Because of this, no individual has the obligation to do so. It may be, however, that the harm can be prevented when several individuals combine their efforts. I argue that in many such situations each individual has a duty to join forces: to approach others, convince them to contribute, and subsequently make a coordinated effort to prevent the harm. A distinctive feature (...)
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  • Global obligations, collective capacities, and ‘ought implies can’.Bill Wringe - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (6):1523-1538.
    It is sometimes argued that non-agent collectives, including what one might call the ‘global collective’ consisting of the world’s population taken as a whole, cannot be the bearers of non-distributive moral obligations on pain of violating the principle that ‘ought implies can’. I argue that one prominent line of argument for this conclusion fails because it illicitly relies on a formulation of the ‘ought implies can’ principle which is inapt for contexts which allow for the possibility of non-distributive plural predications (...)
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  • Inability and obligation in intellectual evaluation.Wesley Buckwalter & John Turri - 2020 - Episteme 17 (4):475-497.
    If moral responsibilities prescribe how agents ought to behave, are there also intellectual responsibilities prescribing what agents ought to believe? Many theorists have argued that there cannot be intellectual responsibilities because they would require the ability to control whether one believes, whereas it is impossible to control whether one believes. This argument appeals to an “ought implies can” principle for intellectual responsibilities. The present paper tests for the presence of intellectual responsibilities in social cognition. Four experiments show that intellectual responsibilities (...)
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  • “Ought” Implies “Can” but Does Not Imply “Must”: An Asymmetry between Becoming Infeasible and Becoming Overridden.Peter Vranas - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (4):487-514.
    The claim that (OIC) “ought” implies “can” (i.e., you have an obligation only at times at which you can obey it) entails that (1) obligations that become infeasible are lost (i.e., you stop having an obligation when you become unable to obey it). Moreover, the claim that (2) obligations that become overridden are not always lost (i.e., sometimes you keep having an obligation when you acquire a stronger incompatible obligation) entails that (ONIM) “ought” does not imply “must” (i.e., some obligations (...)
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  • Reasons why in normative explanation.Pekka Väyrynen - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (6):607-623.
    Normative explanations, which specify why things have the normative features they do, are ubiquitous in normative theory and ordinary thought. But there is much less work on normative explanation than on scientific or metaphysical explanation. Skow (2016) argues that a complete answer to the question why some fact Q occurs consists in all of the reasons why Q occurs. This paper explores this theory as a case study of a general theory that promises to offer us a grip on normative (...)
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  • Evolutionary models and the normative significance of stability.Arnon Levy - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (5-6):33.
    Many have expected that understanding the evolution of norms should, in some way, bear on our first-order normative outlook: How norms evolve should shape which norms we accept. But recent philosophy has not done much to shore up this expectation. Most existing discussions of evolution and norms either jump headlong into the is/ought gap or else target meta-ethical issues, such as the objectivity of norms. My aim in this paper is to sketch a different way in which evolutionary considerations can (...)
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  • Ability, Responsibility, and Global Justice.Wesley Buckwalter - 2017 - Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 34 (3):577-590.
    Many have argued we have a moral obligation to assist others in need, but given the scope of global suffering, how far does this obligation extend? According to one traditional philosophical view, the obligation to help others is limited by our ability to help them, or by the principle that “ought implies can”. This view is primarily defended on the grounds that it is a core principle of commonsense moral psychology. This paper reviews findings from experimental philosophy in cognitive science (...)
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  • Normative Transmission and Necessary Means.Jakob Green Werkmäster - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (2):555-568.
    This paper focuses on the interaction of reasons and argues that reasons for an action may transmit to the necessary means of that action. Analyzing exactly how this phenomenon may be captured by principles governing normative transmission has proved an intricate task in recent years. In this paper, I assess three formulations focusing on normative transmission and necessary means: Ought Necessity, Strong Necessity, and Weak Necessity. My focus is on responding to two of the main objections raised against normative transmission (...)
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  • If You Can't Change What You Believe, You Don't Believe It.Grace Helton - 2018 - Noûs 54 (3):501-526.
    I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary (...)
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  • I Ought, Therefore I Can Obey.Peter Vranas - 2018 - Philosophers' Imprint 18.
    According to typical ought-implies-can principles, if you have an obligation to vaccinate me tomorrow, then you can vaccinate me tomorrow. Such principles are uninformative about conditional obligations: what if you only have an obligation to vaccinate me tomorrow if you synthesize a vaccine today? Then maybe you cannot vaccinate me tomorrow ; what you can do instead, I propose, is make it the case that the conditional obligation is not violated. More generally, I propose the ought-implies-can-obey principle: an agent has (...)
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  • Agent-Relativity and the Foundations of Moral Theory.Matthew Hammerton - 2017 - Dissertation, Australian National University
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  • Is Agent-Neutral Deontology Possible?Matthew Hammerton - 2017 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 12 (3):319-324.
    It is commonly held that all deontological moral theories are agent-relative in the sense that they give each agent a special concern that she does not perform acts of a certain type rather than a general concern with the actions of all agents. Recently, Tom Dougherty has challenged this orthodoxy by arguing that agent-neutral deontology is possible. In this article I counter Dougherty's arguments and show that agent-neutral deontology is not possible.
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  • ‘Ought implies Can’ and the law.Chris Fox & Guglielmo Feis - 2017 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):370-393.
    In this paper, we investigate the ‘ought implies can’ thesis, focusing on explanations and interpretations of OIC, with a view to clarifying its uses and relevance to legal philosophy. We first review various issues concerning the semantics and pragmatics of OIC; then we consider how OIC may be incorporated in Hartian and Kelsenian theories of the law. Along the way we also propose a taxonomy of OIC-related claims.
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  • An Analysis of Recent Empirical Data on ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’.Yishai Cohen - 2018 - Philosophia 46 (1):57-67.
    Recent experimental studies dispute the position that commonsense morality accepts ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’, the view that, necessarily, if an agent ought to perform some action, then she can perform that action. This paper considers and supports explanations for the results of these studies on the hypothesis that OIC is intuitive and true.
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  • Culpability and Irresponsibility.Martin Montminy - 2018 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 12 (1):167-181.
    I defend the principle that a person is blameworthy for her action only if that action was morally wrong. But what should we say about an agent who does the right thing based on bad motives? I present three types of cases that have these features. In each, I argue, the agent is not culpable for her action; however, she violates the norm of moral responsibility, and thus acts in a morally irresponsible way. This analysis, I show, has several virtues. (...)
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  • What Kind of Perspectivism?Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2018 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 15 (4):415-443.
    According to perspectivism about moral obligation, our obligations are affected by our epistemic circumstances. But how exactly should this claim be understood? On Zimmerman’s “Prospective View”, perspectivism is spelled out as the thesis that an option is obligatory if and only if it maximizes what Zimmerman calls “prospective value”, which is in turn determined by the agent’s present evidence. In this article, I raise two objections to this approach. Firstly, I argue that spelling out the difference between perspectivism and anti-perspectivism (...)
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  • The Sellarsian Dilemma.R. M. Farley - 2017 - Southwest Philosophy Review 33 (1):115-123.
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  • Intuitions, reflective judgments, and experimental philosophy.Michael Hannon - 2018 - Synthese 195 (9):4147-4168.
    Experimental philosophers are often puzzled as to why many armchair philosophers question the philosophical significance of their research. Armchair philosophers, in contrast, are often puzzled as to why experimental philosophers think their work sheds any light on traditional philosophical problems. I argue there is truth on both sides.
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  • ‘Ought Implies Can’: Not So Pragmatic After All.Alex King - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (3):637-661.
    Those who want to deny the ‘ought implies can’ principle often turn to weakened views to explain ‘ought implies can’ phenomena. The two most common versions of such views are that ‘ought’ presupposes ‘can’, and that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. This paper will reject both views, and in doing so, present a case against any pragmatic view of ‘ought implies can’. Unlike much of the literature, I won't rely on counterexamples, but instead will argue that each of these views fails (...)
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  • Moderate scientism in philosophy.Buckwalter Wesley & John Turri - 2018 - In Jeroen de Ridder, Rik Peels & Rene van Woudenberg (eds.), Scientism: Prospects and Problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Moderate scientism is the view that empirical science can help answer questions in nonscientific disciplines. In this paper, we evaluate moderate scientism in philosophy. We review several ways that science has contributed to research in epistemology, action theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. We also review several ways that science has contributed to our understanding of how philosophers make judgments and decisions. Based on this research, we conclude that the case for moderate philosophical scientism is strong: scientific (...)
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  • What ability can do.Ben Schwan - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (3):703-723.
    One natural way to argue for the existence of some subjective constraint on agents’ obligations is to maintain that without that particular constraint, agents will sometimes be obligated to do that which they lack the ability to do. In this paper, I maintain that while such a strategy appears promising, it is fraught with pitfalls. Specifically, I argue that because the truth of an ability ascription depends on an (almost always implicit) characterization of the relevant possibility space, different metaethical accounts (...)
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  • Perspectivism and the Argument from Guidance.Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (2):361-374.
    Perspectivists hold that what you ought to do is determined by your perspective, that is, your epistemic position. Objectivists hold that what you ought to do is determined by the facts irrespective of your perspective. This paper explores an influential argument for perspectivism which appeals to the thought that the normative is action guiding. The crucial premise of the argument is that you ought to φ only if you are able to φ for the reasons which determine that you ought (...)
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  • Reasons, Determinism and the Ability to Do otherwise.Sofia Jeppsson - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5):1225-1240.
    It has been argued that in a deterministic universe, no one has any reason to do anything. Since we ought to do what we have most reason to do, no one ought to do anything either. Firstly, it is argued that an agent cannot have reason to do anything unless she can do otherwise; secondly, that the relevant ‘can’ is incompatibilist. In this paper, I argue that even if the first step of the argument for reason incompatibilism succeeds, the second (...)
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  • Blame, not ability, impacts moral “ought” judgments for impossible actions: Toward an empirical refutation of “ought” implies “can”.Vladimir Chituc, Paul Henne, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Felipe De Brigard - 2016 - Cognition 150 (C):20-25.
    Recently, psychologists have explored moral concepts including obligation, blame, and ability. While little empirical work has studied the relationships among these concepts, philosophers have widely assumed such a relationship in the principle that “ought” implies “can,” which states that if someone ought to do something, then they must be able to do it. The cognitive underpinnings of these concepts are tested in the three experiments reported here. In Experiment 1, most participants judge that an agent ought to keep a promise (...)
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  • Will the Real Principles of Justice Please Stand Up?David Wiens - 2017 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates. New York, NY: Oup Usa.
    This chapter develops a ``nesting'' model of deontic normative principles (i.e., principles that specify moral constraints upon action) as a means to understanding the notion of a ``fundamental normative principle''. I show that an apparently promising attempt to make sense of this notion such that the ``real'' or ``fundamental'' demands of justice upon action are not constrained by social facts is either self-defeating or relatively unappealing. We should treat fundamental normative principles not as specifying fundamental constraints upon action, but as (...)
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  • How reasons are sensitive to available evidence.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2018 - In Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting (eds.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 90-114.
    In this paper, I develop a theory of how claims about an agent’s normative reasons are sensitive to the epistemic circumstances of this agent, which preserves the plausible ideas that reasons are facts and that reasons can be discovered in deliberation and disclosed in advice. I argue that a plausible theory of this kind must take into account the difference between synchronic and diachronic reasons, i.e. reasons for acting immediately and reasons for acting at some later point in time. I (...)
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  • Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic Approach.Pablo Gilabert - 2017 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates. New York, NY: Oup Usa. pp. 95-126.
    It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination and dynamic (...)
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  • What 'we'?Holly Lawford-Smith - 2015 - Journal of Social Ontology 1 (2):225-250.
    The objective of this paper is to explain why certain authors - both popular and academic - are making a mistake when they attribute obligations to uncoordinated groups of persons, and to argue that it is particularly unhelpful to make this mistake given the prevalence of individuals faced with the difficult question of what morality requires of them in a situation in which there's a good they can bring about together with others, but not alone. I'll defend two alternatives to (...)
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  • Kant and 'Ought Implies Can'.Markus Kohl - 2015 - Philosophical Quarterly 65 (261):690-710.
    Although Kant is often considered the founding father of the controversial principle ‘Ought Implies Can’ (OIC), it is not at all clear how Kant himself understands and defends this principle. This essay provides a substained interpretation of Kant's views on OIC. I argue that Kant endorses two versions of OIC: a version that is concerned with our physical capacities, and a version that posits a link between moral obligation and a volitional power of choice. I show that although there are (...)
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  • (1 other version)Three Cheers for Double Effect.Samuel C. Rickless Dana Kay Nelkin - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (1):125-158.
    The doctrine of double effect, together with other moral principles that appeal to the intentions of moral agents, has come under attack from many directions in recent years, as have a variety of rationales that have been given in favor of it. In this paper, our aim is to develop, defend, and provide a new theoretical rationale for a secular version of the doctrine. Following Quinn (1989), we distinguish between Harmful Direct Agency and Harmful Indirect Agency. We propose the following (...)
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  • Motivational Limitations on the Demands of Justice.David Wiens - 2016 - European Journal of Political Theory 15 (3):333-352.
    Do motivational limitations due to human nature constrain the demands of justice? Among those who say no, David Estlund offers perhaps the most compelling argument. Taking Estlund’s analysis of “ability” as a starting point, I show that motivational deficiencies can constrain the demands of justice under at least one common circumstance — that the motivationally-deficient agent makes a good faith effort to overcome her deficiency. In fact, my argument implies something stronger; namely, that the demands of justice are constrained by (...)
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  • Ought, Can, and Presupposition: An Experimental Study.Moti Mizrahi - 2015 - Methode 4 (6):232-243.
    In this paper, I present the results of an experimental study on intuitions about moral obligation (ought) and ability (can). Many philosophers accept as an axiom the principle known as “Ought Implies Can” (OIC). If the truth of OIC is intuitive, such that it is accepted by many philosophers as an axiom, then we would expect people to judge that agents who are unable to perform an action are not morally obligated to perform that action. The results of my experimental (...)
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  • ‘Ought’, ‘Can’, and Fairness.Rob van Someren Greve - 2014 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (5):913-922.
    According to the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, it is never the case that you ought to do something you cannot do. While many accept this principle in some form, it also has its share of critics, and thus it seems desirable if an argument can be offered in its support. The aim of this paper is to examine a particular way in which the principle has been defended, namely, by appeal to considerations of fairness. In a nutshell, the idea (...)
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  • ‘Ought’ Does Not Imply ‘Can’.Moti Mizrahi - 2009 - Philosophical Frontiers 4 (1):19-35.
    According to the Ought-Implies-Can principle (OIC), an agent ought to perform a certain action only if the agent can perform that action. Proponents of OIC interpret this supposed implication in several ways. Some argue that the implication in question is a logical one, namely, entailment. Some think that the relation between ‘ought’ and ‘can’ is a relation of presupposition. Still others argue that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. Opponents of OIC offer a variety of counterexamples in an attempt to show that (...)
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