Attitudinal Obligations and the Control Problem

Abstract Attitudes and emotions are commonly taken not to be under our direct voluntary control. Thus, it also seems impossible for there to be obligations to have certain attitudes. Against this, proponents of attitudinal obligations argue that we have sufficient, even if not voluntary, control over our attitudes to be appropriately held responsible for them and that this implies that there are attitudinal obligations. Call this the Responsibility Argument for Attitudinal Obligation s. In this paper, I discuss the Responsibility Argument as a response to the Control Problem. I argue that the Responsibility Argument fails. Its main problem is that the type of control that we have over our attitudes and emotions, according to its proponents, is always indirect. Accordingly, there can only be obligations to perform certain actions that tend to bring about certain attitudes, but no obligations to have certain attitudes.