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590 DOHRN
attached to John before John came into existence. But from an epistemic position which
includes her attachment to John, she ought to have conceived John.
However, I do not think the relevant distinction is an epistemic one, at least epistemic in the
sense intended by Hare. It is not Mary’s learning something about John that brings about her
John-centred feelings. It is no peculiar intrinsic property of John as opposed to some other
possible child of Mary’s which makes him the appropriate target of her emotions. Moreover,
Mary could have perfectly anticipated that whoever would be her child would be the subject of
her feelings. So it is neither her ignorance of John’s specific properties nor her ignorance of
the nature of her attachment that explains why she ought MR not to have conceived John.
I use Hare’s own idea of an omniscient observer to shed further doubt on the idea that the
problem is an epistemic one. The omniscient observer knows everything about the
consequences of Mary’s actual actions. Assume Mary (like Frank Jackson’s Mary) is an
extremely efficient learner. Before she conceives John, the omniscient observer has told her
everything about her future child John, including Mary’s special affection for John and so on.
Say she is provided with a complete description of the future situation. If we frame the
distinction of two kinds of ought as an epistemic one, Mary’s position at t1 (even before she
has conceived John) should now be characterized by ought OD . Still I do not think that this
enforces a change in Mary’s obligations or values. Judging from her own vantage point before
she conceives John, she still ought to have waited, although she is in the very same epistemic
position she will be after giving birth to John. In sum, Hare’s epistemically based distinction
of two kinds of ought does not dissolve the puzzle.
Before proceeding with my criticism of Hare, I briefly sketch my own preferred solution: the
change in Mary’s valuation is not brought about by her learning something but by becoming
emotionally acquainted with John (cf. Velleman 2006: 269). Acquaintance is not understood
in informational terms but in the sense of intimacy between mother and child. There is
nothing Mary could not have known in advance about her attachment to John, except,
perhaps, what it is like to feel acquaintanted with John. We cannot feel the same for John.
Thus we retain our judgement. But we acknowledge that it is appropriate for Mary to adopt
her new feelings upon becoming acquainted with John. In contrast to Velleman, I do not
claim Mary to judge at t 2 that she should not have conceived John (except in the non-default
reading exposed above). Thus, I do not have to accept inconsistent valuations in claiming
Mary to judge at t 2 that she should not have conceived John.
3. Criticism of Hare’s Counterfactual Account
I criticize Hare’s counterfactual account of the different senses of ‘ought’ he distinguishes.
Assume you may spin a wheel of fortune. If it were spun with a force of 15.88348N, it would
show red, if it were spun with 15.88349N, it would show black. You do not spin the wheel.
Arguably it is indeterminate what would have happened if you had spun the wheel. Hare
contends that in general, such indeterminacy is resilient under embedding. Now consider a
varied case: let S stand for ‘the wheel is spun’, R for ‘it shows Red’. S → R is by assumption
indeterminate. Assume S and R obtain. Moreover, outcome R actually leads to a loss but the
expected value of spinning was positive. As a test what one ought OD to have done (whether
one ought to have spun the wheel), Hare imagines an omniscient being who knows that S
actually leads to the unfortunate outcome R. From the perspective of this being, one ought OD
not to have spun the wheel. In order to figure out what one ought MR to have done, Hare
suggests, one should ask what would have happened if one had not spun the wheel by an
embedded counterfactual. If one had not spun, then if one had spun, would the outcome have
been positive? Since S → R is indeterminate, Hare argues, so is ¬S →(S → R). As a
consequence, to figure out what one ought MR to have done, one must resort to a weaker