Michael St. Jules on Good Thoughts

[Michael St. Jules]

"(2) I worry that Frick's conditional approach presupposes rather than justifies the asymmetry. After all, it seems a general feature of "conditional obligations" (like promises) that violating them is bad, whereas satisfying them is merely neutral rather than good. [Cf. https://www.philosophyetc.net/2021/10/puzzling-conditional-obligations.html ]"

I'm not sure either way if I would say it presupposes ethical asymmetry, but that falls out basically immediately, so I guess it's at least "close" to presupposing it. Like with actualism in my other reply, if you tried to reverse Frick's conditional reasons, what you get wouldn't capture any kind of view of existence being prior to welfare, so it's hard to interpret it in person-affecting or non-absolute terms: "I have reason to do p and do q". p and q can be switched in that statement without affecting its truth value, but you can't do that for Frick's original "I have reason to (if I do p, do q)".

So, among person-affecting views and other views that reject absolute value, the asymmetry seems significantly more plausible than the reverse asymmetry, because reverse asymmetric views are harder to interpret as person-affecting or as rejecting absolute value than standard asymmetric views. Of course, this doesn't mean much if you're pretty sure of absolute value, as you seem to be.