There is an age-old debate with regard to ethical decision making. It goes like this: suppose there is a teacher—Mr. Gray—who is asked to write a letter of recommendation for an amazing student of his, Asher. Mr. Gray is faced with three options: he can A) accept Asher’s request and write the letter, B) accept Asher’s request and not write the letter, or C) decline Asher’s request, and Asher will ask some other teacher to write the request. Here’s the catch. Even though Asher is a superb student, Mr. Gray hates writing letters of recommendation and likely will not write a letter for Asher. So, the choice seems clear. If Mr. Gray likely will not write a letter for Asher, even though he is Asher’s first choice for a letter of recommendation, the actualist would posit that he should still deny Asher’s request. The possibilist, on the other hand, would say that Mr. Gray should accept Asher’s request because he has the ability to write a letter for Asher, and he was Asher’s first choice.

Possibilism is this view: that one’s moral actions should be determined by what they could/can do. Actualism in ethics is precisely the opposite. It says that one’s moral actions should be determined based on what they would/will do, not what they could/can do. I think that the majority of people are actualist in reality. Intuitively, it seems correct for Mr. Gray to deny Asher’s request, as that result would provide the best consequence for Asher. Many of us primarily consider the outcome of an action, which would lead us to this pragmatic view. If there was only a 10 percent chance Mr. Gray would write a letter for Asher, Asher would receive a greater expected outcome if he asked, say, Mr. Green (even if the letter he received was not as good).

But what about duty? After all, this blog is named after Kant. A Kantian deontological approach would probably support a possibilist conclusion. Consider this scenario under the guise of the categorical imperative, especially the maxim that we should act in such a way as though it could become a universal law. Mr. Gray has a duty to fulfill Asher’s request, as if he, or more probably his kids, asked for a letter of recommendation, he would probably want teachers to accept their requests. Kant would implore that one ought to intend to write a letter of recommendation. Yet this seems to miss the key aspect of the problem. This debate is less of an issue of the best possible action than the most realistic action. One could argue that duty might actually force Mr. Gray to give the letter to someone else: by recognizing his shortcomings with completing letters, he would be enforcing a law that could be universal. One could even argue that while it would look better for Mr. Gray if he in fact wrote the letter, he would be doing a greater duty by passing it off to a more reliable letter writer, and writing it himself would be self-centered and focused on the consequences, not the reason.

So the real issue with actualism, in my opinion, is that it somewhat absolves people of responsibilities. It is great to think rationally and have the knowledge of oneself to take a step back and take a hard look at what the true outcome of a moral decision would be, but it also risks furthering a defeatist attitude. It takes out the “striving” in morality. I think anyone can agree that we should strive to act with the maximum level of morality, whatever that version of morality means to you. But if we simply say, in the letter of recommendation example, “I wouldn’t actually end up doing this, so I should pass it off to another person,” it can seem like we are making excuses for ourselves. It’s like saying, “Don’t promise something if you are just going to flake.” While this may seem prudent, it’s undeniable that by taking an actualist approach, we’re giving ourselves more permission to not even try. We are effectively surrendering to our own unreliability instead of challenging ourselves to do better.

So while actualism may in fact be the more accurate position, we cannot let it absolve us of our attempts to do better. If we use actualism in this way, we are just making excuses. But if Mr. Gray thinks critically and realizes that he, for example, simply does not have enough time to write Asher’s letter, it makes sense. Since we are the only people who can truly know the “would” factor, or how realistically an action will actually be done, we need to be honest with ourselves in order to properly be actualists.