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Fittingness
 Fittingness
Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity

Edited by
C H R I S T O P H E R HOWA R D
AND
R . A . R OW L A N D
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 Contents

List of Contributors vii

1. Fittingness: A User’s Guide 1
Christopher Howard and R. A. Rowland

SE C T IO N O N E : T H E NAT U R E A N D E P I S T E M O L O G Y
OF FIT TINGNESS
2. The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting 23
Selim Berker
3. Against the Fundamentality of Fit 58
Thomas Hurka
4. What Is Evaluable for Fit? 80
Oded Na’aman
5. Fitting Emotions 105
Justin D’Arms
6. Intuitions of Fittingness 130
Philip Stratton-­Lake

SE C T IO N T WO : F I T T I N G N E S S , R E A S O N S ,
N O R M AT I V I T Y
7. Reasons and Fit 151
Garrett Cullity
8. Value-­First Accounts of Normativity 176
R. A. Rowland
9. Feasibility and Fitting Deliberation 200
Nicholas Southwood
10. In Defence of the Right Kind of Reason 221
Christopher Howard and Stephanie Leary
vi Contents

SE C T IO N T H R E E : F I T T I N G N E S S A N D
VA LU E T H E O RY

11. Value and Idiosyncratic Fitting Attitudes 245

Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way
12. Well-­Being as Fitting Happiness 267
Mauro Rossi and Christine Tappolet
13. The Things We Envy: Fitting Envy and Human Goodness 290
Sara Protasi
14. Response-­Dependence and Aesthetic Theory 309
Alex King

SE C T IO N F O U R : F I T T I N G N E S S A N D
R E SP O N SI B I L I T Y
15. Fittingness as a Pitiful Intellectualist Trinket? 329
Michael McKenna
16. Blame’s Commitment to Its Own Fittingness 356
Rachel Achs
17. Making Amends: How to Alter the Fittingness of Blame 380
Hannah Tierney

Index 405
 List of Contributors

Rachel Achs, University of Oxford

Selim Berker, Harvard University

Garrett Cullity, Australian National University

Justin D’Arms, Ohio State University

Thomas Hurka, University of Toronto

Christopher Howard, McGill University

Alex King, Simon Fraser University

Stephanie Leary, McGill University

Conor McHugh, University of Southampton

Michael McKenna, University of Arizona

Oded Na’aman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Sara Protasi, University of Puget Sound

Mauro Rossi, Université de Montréal

R. A. Rowland, University of Leeds

Nicholas Southwood, Australian National University

Philip Stratton-­Lake, University of Reading

Christine Tappolet, Université de Montréal

Hannah Tierney, University of California, Davis

Jonathan Way, University of Southampton

 1
Fittingness
A User’s Guide
Christopher Howard and R. A. Rowland

1.1 Introduction

This volume explores the nature, roles, and applications of the notion of fitting-
ness in contemporary normative and metanormative theory. The fittingness rela-
tion can be glossed as the relation in which a response stands to a feature of the
world when that feature merits, or is worthy of, that response. It is thus the rela-
tion in which each of our responses stand when I admire an admirable effort, you
laud a laudable performance, Beri believes a credible proposition, and Dhitri
desires a desirable outcome. Likewise, it is the relation that fear stands in when its
object is fearsome, that love stands in when its object is lovable, and that blame
stands in when its object is blameworthy. Across these cases, the relevant attitudes
or responses are merited by, and hence fitting with respect to, their objects.1
In the late nineteenth and mid-­twentieth centuries, this normative notion of
fittingness occupied a prominent place in the theoretical toolkits of the period’s
most influential ethical theorists. Then, up until the early aughts, discussion of
the relation all but disappeared from the discourse of ethical theory. Today, the
notion has regained prominence, promising to enrich the theoretical resources of
contemporary normative theorists and taking centre stage in many debates in
normative and metanormative philosophy. For example, the ‘fitting-­ attitude’
analysis of value is now perhaps the most well-­known and most discussed account
of value and the notorious ‘wrong kind of reason problem’ (WKR problem) has
emerged from discussion of this analysis. And there is now also great momentum
behind the ‘fittingness-­first’ research programme, which tries to understand all of
normativity ultimately in terms of fittingness. Still, despite its historical significance
and the recent revival of interest, there has been no central discussion of the
notion of fittingness to date. The present volume aims to fill this gap.
The chapters to follow cover a range of topics including the nature and epis­
tem­ ol­
ogy of fittingness, the relation(s) between fittingness and reasons, the

1 For a similar gloss on fittingness, see Howard (2018).

Christopher Howard and R. A. Rowland, Fittingness: A User’s Guide In: Fittingness: Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity.
Edited by: Christopher Howard and R. A. Rowland, Oxford University Press. © Christopher Howard and R. A. Rowland 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192895882.003.0001
2 Fittingness

normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness
in theorizing about responsibility. This introduction surveys these issues and
­highlights the chapters in which they’re discussed. We conclude with a brief dis-
cussion of issues to do with fittingness that aren’t covered extensively or at all by
the contributions to the volume in order to indicate avenues for further research.
This highlights our view of the volume as a conversation starter rather than as a
comprehensive guide to, or exhaustive analysis of, all things related to fit. This
volume’s chapters collectively if tacitly support the hypothesis that the notion of
fittingness has great theoretical utility in grappling with a range of normative
matters. We thus think that further study and application of the relation is called
for, and we hope this volume helps to motivate this.

1.2 The Nature and Epistemology of Fittingness

It’s sometimes supposed that the normative domain divides neatly into two broad
kinds of normative categories: deontic ones (e.g. rightness, requiredness, and per-
missibility) and evaluative ones (e.g. goodness, badness, and betterness). The
question of which of these fittingness falls under has been a matter of debate,
though it’s often assumed that the relation is deontic (see, e.g. Rabinowicz and
Rønnow-­Rasmussen 2004). Thus, fitting-­attitude analyses of value are sometimes
held to involve a commitment about the relation of priority between the right and
the good, taking the former to be prior to the latter. In his contribution to the
volume, however, Selim Berker challenges this picture by arguing that fittingness
is neither deontic nor evaluative but of its own normative kind with its own
­distinctive nature (Chapter 2). The result is a call to restructure historically
entrenched thinking about the normative domain itself and our inquiry into it; this
domain has more texture than is often thought, with fittingness occupying a sui
generis and ineliminable place within it. An upshot, according to Berker, is that the
traditional question of priority between the right and the good should be reframed
as a question about the priority between the right, the good, and the fitting.
Although fittingness is often taken to be a deontic category, the idea that the
relation is sui generis within this category, and unanalysable in other normative
terms (whether deontic or evaluative), has strong historical roots. Indeed, starting
with Brentano (1889/1969), there’s a venerable tradition of taking fittingness not
only to be unanalysable in other normative terms, but of holding that all other
normative entities, whether deontic or evaluative, can be analysed in terms of it
(see also Ewing 1947). Within the last decade there’s been a resurgence of interest
in this ‘fittingness-­first’ approach to normativity, with several authors advancing
different versions of it (Chappell 2012; McHugh and Way 2016, forthcoming;
Cullity 2018; Howard 2019). This is partly a response to the rise in the early
aughts of the ‘reasons-­first’ approach to normativity, which holds that normative
 A User ’ s Guide 3

reasons are the fundamental normative entities in terms of which all others can be
explained (Scanlon 1998; Schroeder 2007; Skorupski 2010; Parfit 2011; Rowland
2019). Many contemporary fittingness-­firsters have argued that their view has
important advantages over this rival reasons-­first view, particularly given its
fittingness-­based account of value which, unlike a reasons-­based account, seems
to avoid the famous ‘WKR problem’ (more on which below; see also McHugh and
Way’s Chapter 11). However, despite its seeming advantages, the fittingness-­first
approach isn’t without its critics. In his contribution to the volume (Chapter 3),
Thomas Hurka considers and rejects recent arguments in favour of fittingness-­
first and develops new arguments against it. Instead, Hurka defends the view that
there is no single, normatively fundamental entity in terms of which all others
can be accounted for and argues for a ‘two-­concept’ view, according to which
rightness and goodness are equally normatively basic, unable to be explained in
terms of each other or in terms of normative entities of any other kind.
Regardless of whether fittingness is normatively first or constitutes a sui generis
normative kind, other questions about its nature are pressing. One such question
concerns what kinds of things are evaluable for it, i.e. what kinds of things are
assessable as fitting or unfitting. Common to the contemporary and historical lit-
erature is the idea that attitudes, or intentional mental states, are assessable for
fittingness, where this includes states like beliefs, emotions, desires, and inten-
tions. And some have held that actions, too, are assessable for fittingness (see
Section 1.6 below). Oded Na’aman’s contribution to the volume, however, pro-
poses a radically liberal conception of what’s fit-­evaluable, according to which not
only actions and attitudes are fit-­assessable but also physiological conditions such
as headaches and heartrates (Chapter 4). According to Na’aman, this view not
only aligns with our actual evaluative practices but is also supported by powerful
theoretical considerations.
Although the fit-­evaluability of certain types of human response is up for
debate, it’s generally regarded as uncontroversial that emotions, at least, can be
assessed as fitting or unfitting. Equally uncontroversial is the idea that the fitting-
ness of every fitting emotion corresponds (extensionally) to some evaluative qual-
ity as possessed by the emotion’s object. It’s fitting to love someone, for instance,
just in case they’re lovable, to deplore something just in case it’s deplorable, to
contemn someone just in case they’re contemptible, and to adore something just
in case it’s adorable.2 Moreover, it’s widely held that the fitting intensity of an emo-
tion is constrained by the degree of the evaluative quality to which it’s a fitting
response. For instance, how much adoration it’s fitting to feel towards Alan is
constrained by how adorable Alan is (for discussion, see esp. Maguire 2018 and
Berker’s Chapter 1). Thus, in terms made famous by Justin D’Arms and Daniel

2 For discussion, see, e.g. Brandt (1946), Schroeder (2010), Way (2012), and Howard (2018).
4 Fittingness

Jacobson (2000), whether a token emotion is fitting (or how fitting it is) turns not
only on whether it’s fitting in shape, i.e. whether it’s a response to an evaluative
quality that renders emotions of its type fitting, but also on whether it’s fitting in
size, i.e. whether its intensity is proportionate to the degree of the quality in
­question. In his contribution to the volume, Justin D’Arms proposes that the
­connections between the fittingness of certain emotions and the presence of
­certain evaluative qualities can be explained by appeal to the natures of the
relevant emotions themselves (Chapter 5). Further, D’Arms suggests that we
can gain insight into certain evaluative qualities by interrogating the natures of
the emotions whose fittingness those qualities correspond to. For example, we
can learn what sorts of non-­evaluative features make for shamefulness, or
ground our judgements about this evaluative quality, by investigating the nature
of shame.
Turning from issues to do with the nature of fit and its explanatory role within
the normative domain, we might also wish to know how we can know what’s
­fitting to what, or how we can gain knowledge of facts involving fittingness more
generally. In principle, any moral epistemology might be applicable here, though
of course some may be more plausible than others depending on our view about
the metaphysics of fittingness. In his Foundations of Ethics, Ross suggests in sev-
eral places that at least certain fittingness-­involving propositions—­for instance,
that admiration is fitting towards what’s intrinsically good—­are self-­evident and
that our knowledge of such a priori truths (and how we acquire it) is analogous to
our knowledge of a priori truths in other domains, e.g. mathematics. In his con-
tribution to the volume (Chapter 6), Philip Stratton-­Lake explores the prospects
for this epistemology of fit, applying the specific rationalist epistemology of the a
priori that he defends in other work (Stratton-­Lake 2016). Stratton-­Lake argues
that this approach to the epistemology of fittingness is at least as promising in
accounting for our knowledge of facts involving fit as it is in accounting for our
knowledge of other kinds of normative facts, for example, facts about oughts
and values.

1.3 Fittingness, Reasons, Normativity

In the last several decades of normative philosophy, normative reasons have been
all the rage. In What We Owe to Each Other, Scanlon famously suggests that the
reason relation can’t be analysed or accounted for in more basic terms, but that it
can only be glossed in terms of ‘favouring’ such that reasons ‘count in favour’ of
what they’re reasons for. Unsurprisingly, Scanlon’s claim that facts about reasons
are unanalysable resulted in many philosophers attempting to analyse them. And
in recent years, several philosophers have attempted to explain facts about ­reasons
in terms of facts about fittingness specifically (see, e.g. Danielsson and Olson
 A User ’ s Guide 5

2007; Chappell 2012; Sharadin 2015; McHugh and Way 2016; Whiting 2022; and
Howard 2019). One motivation for this, beyond the aspiration to analyse a philo-
sophically interesting category, is to explain a putatively necessary connection
between fittingness and reasons, viz. that facts that contribute to the fit of a
response seem also to provide pro tanto reasons for it. For example, facts that
contribute to a person’s admirability, and thus the fittingness of admiring them,
seem also to provide reason to admire them. Likewise, facts that contribute to
something’s fearsomeness, and thus the fittingness of fearing it, seem also to pro-
vide reasons to fear it. The hope is that a fit-­based analysis of reasons could pro-
vide an explanation of this and other interesting links between the two relations.
Of course, a reasons-­based analysis of fit might be similarly explanatory, and
some authors have attempted precisely this (e.g. Schroeder 2010; Rowland 2019).
In his contribution to the volume, however, Garrett Cullity joins the former camp,
advancing a new account of reasons in terms of fit (Chapter 7). Cullity argues that
his fit-­based account of reasons is extensionally and explanatorily superior to
existing accounts of the relationship between the two relations.
An alternative approach to explaining the connections between fittingness and
reasons appeals not to an analysis of one in terms of the other, but rather to ana­
lyses of each in terms of some third factor. One version of this approach appeals
specifically to facts about value, or goodness, in order to explain facts about
­reasons and fit. A virtue of this approach is that it stands to explain not only facts
about the relationship between fittingness and reasons, but also the connections
between each of these and value. And there do seem to be connections here that
call for explanation. For example, something’s being valuable seems both neces-
sary and sufficient for its being fitting to value, and at least sufficient for there
being reasons to value it. And value-­based accounts of each of reasons and fit
might explain these connections. For instance, a value-­based account of fitting-
ness might explain why something has value if and only if it’s fitting to value by
appeal to the hypothesis that a thing’s being fitting to value consists in its being
intrinsically valuable to value, plus the substantive, axiological claim that some-
thing is valuable if and only if it’s intrinsically valuable to value it (Hurka 2001).
A value-­based account of fittingness might thus explain the above connection
between what’s valuable and what’s fitting to value, by explaining fittingness
directly in terms of the value of valuing responses that stand in this relation.
Alternatively, a value-­based approach might explain facts about fittingness and
reasons not in terms of facts about the value of responses that stand in these rela-
tions but rather in terms of facts about the value of the objects of such responses.
For instance, a value-­based account of reasons that explains facts about reasons to
value things fully in terms of facts about the value of those things might explain
why there are always reasons to value valuable things (see, e.g. Orsi 2013b).
Common to these different value-­based views is a commitment to the idea that
facts about reasons and fittingness can be explained directly in terms of facts
6 Fittingness

about the value of either the responses that stand in these relations or the objects
of those responses. Also common to these views is that they seem to face power-
ful criticisms (see, e.g. Way 2013, Howard 2018, Rowland 2019, Kiesewetter 2022,
and McHugh and Way’s Chapter 11). However, as R. A. Rowland argues in their
contribution to the volume, a distinct, indirect value-­based view is also in the off-
ing (Chapter 8). On this view, both facts about reasons and fit are explained by
facts about the value of being guided by certain normative standards. Rowland’s
chapter introduces and explores a version of this view, argues that it seems able to
avoid the problems that direct value-­based views face, and compares the view
against competing ones that would reverse the order of explanation, explaining
facts about value in terms of facts about reasons or fit (more on which in Section
Three of the volume; see esp. McHugh and Way’s Chapter 11).
Discussions concerning the nature of reasons, value, and fittingness, and the
relationships between these normative properties, are by this point familiar in the
normativity literature. And, as was indicated above, it’s increasingly common
today to hold that fittingness plays an important role in accounting for facts about
reasons and value. In his contribution to the volume, Nicholas Southwood puts
fittingness to work in a further, less explored but complementary way, arguing for
a fit-­based account of a property that’s central to normative theorizing, viz. feasi­
bil­ity (Chapter 9). Building on recent work, Southwood develops and defends an
account of feasibility in terms of fitting deliberation specifically.3 On this view,
what makes an action feasible, roughly, is its being a fitting subject of deliberation
about what to do. In addition to providing a novel account of a theoretically and
practically important property, Southwood’s contribution thus demonstrates yet
another way in which fittingness might be profitably appealed to in explaining
properties of clear and central normative significance.
In the wake of Scanlon’s reasons-­based account of value—­the ‘buck-­passing’
account of value—­came the notorious WKR problem (D’Arms and Jacobson
2000; Rabinowicz and Rønnow-­Rasmussen 2004). On the buck-­passing account,
something has value if and only if there are reasons to value it. The WKR problem
is the problem that, in some cases, there seem to be reasons to value things that
have no value—­for example, if a demon threatens to kill me unless I value a sau-
cer of mud (Crisp 2000).4 These reasons are of the ‘wrong kind’ to figure in the
buck-­passing account: they’re reasons to value something that don’t also make the
thing valuable, and hence constitute counter-­examples to the view. ‘Right-­kind’

3 Southwood introduces his fit-­based account of feasibility in Southwood (2022).

4 In addition to there being cases in which there seem to be reasons to value something of no value,
there are also cases in which there seems to be no reason to value something that is of value (see, e.g.
Bykvist 2009 and Reisner 2015). Putative counter-­examples of this second sort are sometimes taken to
be instances of the WKR problem, but are other times characterized as exemplifying the ‘wrong kind
of value’ problem. For critical discussion of this latter problem, see esp. Orsi (2013a), Elliott (2017),
and Rowland (2019: ch. 7).
 A User ’ s Guide 7

reasons to value something are reasons that do make the thing valuable and hence
figure properly in the account. This is the origin of the right-­/wrong-­kind reason
distinction in recent normative philosophy (for more on which, see esp. Gertken
and Kiesewetter 2017).
One response to the WKR problem is to try to distinguish between reasons of
the right and wrong kind in a way that doesn’t make the buck-­passing account
circular, and to revise the account such that it references only right-­kind reasons.
A second response is to reject the counter-­examples that constitute the problem,
i.e. to deny that putative wrong-­kind reasons for attitudes are genuine reasons for
those attitudes. Following Jonathan Way (2012), call this latter response ‘WKR
skepticism’. For a time, WKR skepticism was a dominant view (Skorupski 2010;
Parfit 2011; Way 2012; Rowland 2015). Wrong-­kind reasons make good or bene-
ficial the attitudes they seem to favour. But according to many philosophers, it’s
not sufficient for a fact’s being a reason for an attitude that it makes the attitude
good to have (see, e.g. the long line of skeptics about pragmatic reasons for belief).
However, in recent years, many authors have come not only to reject WKR
­skepticism, but to defend an ethics of attitudes on which wrong-­kind reasons are
the only genuine, authoritative reasons for attitudes there are (see esp. Côté-
Bouchard and Littlejohn 2018; Rinard 2019; and Maguire and Woods 2020).
These philosophers are thus ‘RKR skeptics’: they deny that right-­kind reasons are
genuine ­reasons for attitudes. In their contribution to the volume, Chris Howard
and Stephanie Leary argue that RKR skepticism fails to capture intuitions about
which attitudes we authoritatively ought to (or may) adopt and that existing argu-
ments that right-­kind reasons aren’t reasons, or that they’re at best formally nor-
mative, are unsound; hence, we should accept that right-­kind reasons are genuine
reasons for attitudes, i.e. that they can contribute to determining which attitudes
we authoritatively ought to have (Chapter 10). On the popular and plausible
assumption that right-­kind reasons are facts that contribute to the fittingness of
the attitudes they favour,5 it follows that fittingness itself is an authoritatively
­normative relation. Hence, Howard and Leary’s argument doubles as an argu-
ment for the authoritative normativity of fit.

1.4 Fittingness and Value Theory

The plausible idea that right-­kind reasons for attitudes contribute to the fitting-
ness of the attitudes they favour suggests a promising solution to the WKR prob-
lem. Rather than explaining facts about value in terms of facts about reasons for
valuing, we might instead explain the former facts in terms of facts about the

5 There are too many authors to cite here, but see, inter alia, Danielsson and Olson (2007), Chappell
(2012), D’Arms and Jacobson (2014), Sharadin (2015), McHugh and Way (2016), and Howard (2019).
8 Fittingness

fittingness of valuing. On this fit-­based account of value, for something to be

good or valuable is for it to be fitting to value. As noted above, this view, unlike a
reasons-­based account, doesn’t seem to face the WKR problem. For although the
fact that a demon will kill you unless you value a saucer of mud may give you a
reason to value the mud, this fact doesn’t make the mud fitting to value since it’s
not a fact in virtue of which the mud merits, or is worthy of, a valuing attitude.
Fittingness-­based accounts of value thus look to have an advantage over
reasons-­based accounts in answering the WKR problem (cf. Rowland 2017).
However, reasons-­based views may seem to have an advantage over fit-­based
accounts when it comes to answering a different problem, viz. the problem of par-
tiality (Ewing 1939; Bykvist 2009). Suppose there are two possible outcomes: one
in which your friend is saved and a stranger dies and one in which the reverse
occurs. And suppose also that, beyond this difference, all else is equal. Then
assuming that being valuable or good (simpliciter) is an agent-­neutral evaluative
notion, the two outcomes seem equally good. But intuitively, the balance of
­reasons supports your preferring the former. In addition, and crucially, it can
seem fitting for you to have this preference (cf. Olson 2009). This data rules out a
natural reasons-­based account of betterness on which one outcome’s being better
than another consists in the balance of reasons supporting just anyone’s prefer-
ring it. Likewise, it rules out a fit-­based view on which an outcome’s being better
than another consists in its being fitting for just anyone to prefer it. This is the
problem of partiality.
As Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way make clear in their contribution
(Chapter 11), reasons-­based views have a plausible answer to this problem.
Relying on the well-­founded distinction between agent-­neutral and agent-­relative
reasons, proponents of reasons-­based views might restrict the reasons in terms of
which they analyse facts about what’s better than what to agent-­neutral reasons
specifically, claiming that one outcome’s being better than another consists in the
balance of agent-­neutral reasons supporting just anyone’s preferring it (Stratton-­
Lake and Hooker 2006; Rowland 2019). This revised view is consistent with our
intuitions about cases like the above: since the outcome where your friend lives is
equally as good as the outcome where the stranger does, the balance of agent-­
neutral reasons supports being indifferent, but the balance of all the reasons,
including agent-­ relative ones, supports your preferring the former. Hence,
reasons-­based accounts have an elegant solution to the problem of partiality
which draws on an independently motivated distinction between neutral and
rela­tive reasons; hence, such views may seem to have an advantage over fit-­based
views in answering this problem. However, McHugh and Way argue in their con-
tribution that a broadly similar solution is available for fit-­based views, one which
relies not on distinguishing between types of fittingness—­neutral and relative—­
but rather between types of valuing attitudes. Thus, McHugh and Way argue,
insofar as their solution is equally as plausible as that offered by proponents of
 A User ’ s Guide 9

reasons-­based accounts, reasons-­based views have no advantage over fit-­based

accounts in answering the problem of partiality.
In addition to figuring in an attractive metaphysical account of the nature of
goodness (and betterness), fittingness can also be put to work in first-­order value
theory, as Mauro Rossi and Christine Tappolet demonstrate in their contribution
(Chapter 12). Rossi and Tappolet marshal fittingness specifically to provide a
first-­order account of goodness-­for, or well-­being, according to which what’s
basically good for people is fitting happiness. Rossi and Tappolet argue that this
view avoids the standard objections to more traditional happiness-­based theories,
while maintaining the intuitive, close connection between well-­being and happi-
ness. One important feature of their proposal is a view of happiness as consisting
in a complex of affective states including emotions, moods, and sensory pleas-
ures, which, they claim, can themselves be assessed as fitting or unfitting; hence,
the fit-­evaluability of happiness itself. In addition to contributing to the debate
about what makes lives go well, Rossi and Tappolet thus also take a meaningful
stand on the issue of what kinds of states can be assessed for fit.
In addition to being profitably deployed to investigate different varieties of
goodness, fittingness has also traditionally been appealed to in order to explicate
more specific evaluative properties, such as that of being lovable, despicable,
adorable, pitiful, delightful, and amusing. Indeed, as indicated above, and going
as far back as Brandt (1946), it’s been widely held that such properties are at least
equivalent to, if not analysable in terms of, the fittingness of various types of
human response (see Berker’s Chapter 1 and D’Arms’s Chapter 5). Importantly,
fit-­based analyses of these properties are compatible with the possibility that their
analysanda are never instantiated, and hence that the responses in terms of which
they’re analysed are never fitting. Historically, even realists about various other
evaluative properties have found this thought tempting regarding certain ‘nega-
tive’ evaluative properties—­in particular, that of being enviable. Indeed, it may
seem that envy, no matter the circumstances, could never be a merited response.
However, in her contribution to the volume (Chapter 13), Sara Protasi resists this,
arguing not only that envy can be fitting—­and hence that the property of being
enviable can be instantiated—­but that it often is. Indeed, Protasi argues, envy’s
central concern—­relative positioning—­is connected intimately and sys­tem­at­ic­
al­ly with our flourishing as human beings.
Among the specific evaluative properties that might be explicated by appeal to
fit are aesthetic properties, such as that of being delicious, charming, and beauti-
ful. Fitting attitude theories of various aesthetic properties have been suggested in
recent years by philosophers including, among others, Daniel Jacobson (2011)
and Keren Gorodeisky (2021). Alex King, in her contribution to the volume
(Chapter 14), argues that such theories can be helpfully classified as a kind of
response-­dependence theory, where a response-­dependence theory of a property F
claims that a thing’s F-ness depends on its bearing a certain relationship to a
10 Fittingness

certain sort of human response (see also D’Arms’s Chapter 5; cf. Berker’s
Chapter 1). According to fitting attitude theories, the relevant relationship to
human responses is normative: something has a certain aesthetic property when,
and because, a certain response is merited by—­or fitting with respect to—­the
relevant thing. But on a different kind of response-­
­ dependence theory—
dispositionalism—­the relationship in question is purely descriptive. For example,
a dispositionalist theory of a certain aesthetic property might claim that some-
thing has the property when and because, as a purely descriptive matter,
humans are disposed to respond to it in a certain way. Historically, response-­
dependence views of aesthetic properties have skewed dispositionalist (see, e.g.
Hume 1740/1975 and Kant 1790/2000). However, King argues that, in fact,
­fitting attitude theories have several important advantages over dispositionalist
views. She highlights the versions of fitting attitude theories she takes to be
most promising for explaining aesthetic value, but also raises several new
­challenges for theories of this kind. King’s contribution thus constitutes a
­thoroughgoing assessment of the prospects for response-­dependence views of
aesthetic properties.

1.5 Fittingness and Responsibility

Fittingness has a chequered history in the moral responsibility literature. It fea-

tures prominently and helpfully in Joel Feinberg’s ‘Justice and Personal Desert’,
for example, but is characterized (only a year earlier) as a ‘pitiful intellectualist
trinket’ by P. F. Strawson in his seminal ‘Freedom and Resentment’. In the last
decade, however, fittingness has assumed an increasingly visible and important
role in work on moral responsibility. David Shoemaker (2017), for example, has
recently defended a normative response-­dependence theory of blameworthiness,
according to which someone is blameworthy if and only if, and because, they’re
fitting to blame. This contrasts with (a possible interpretation of) Strawson’s view
that amounts to a dispositionalist response-­dependence account, and with other
normative response-­dependence theories of blameworthiness which specify a
distinct normative relation that blame must stand in to its object for its object to
be blameworthy (see, e.g. Wallace 1994). The final chapters of this volume investi-
gate and discuss this and other ways in which fittingness may be a the­or­et­ic­al­ly
useful concept in theorizing about moral responsibility.
Michael McKenna’s contribution to the volume (Chapter 15) interrogates
Strawson’s belittling remarks about fittingness, argues that a normative in­ter­pret­
ation of Strawson’s view of responsibility is required, and that in fact Strawson
ought to have appealed in his own account to the very notion of fittingness that
he seems to deride. In the course of making this case, McKenna also defends a
Feinberg-­inspired account of desert as a species of fittingness and offers a novel
 A User ’ s Guide 11

account of what differentiates deserved responses from merely fitting ones, drawing
out the implications of this analysis for debates concerning free will and moral
responsibility: although deserved blame might require the satisfaction of a strong
freedom requirement, merely fitting blame does not. Normative response-­
dependence theories of blameworthiness that appeal to desert over and above
mere fittingness may in this way be more metaphysically committal than those
that appeal only to fit.
Beyond the task of elucidating the nature of blameworthiness, a second and
similarly important project, central to discussions of moral responsibility, is to
investigate the nature of blame itself. One question is whether there’s anything
important enough in common to blame responses to justify our theorizing about
blame as such. As Rachel Achs makes clear in her contribution to the volume
(Chapter 16), this question is pressing given the impressive diversity of blame
responses. For example, one might blame by withdrawing care, verbally scolding,
silently stewing, or via a critical subtweet. What, if anything, is distinctive of all
these responses such that they’re worthy of investigation as kinds of blame?
Insofar as our theorizing about blame presupposes a single uniform subject, an
answer to this question seems necessary to vindicate it. And, according to Achs,
the notion of fittingness can be fruitfully appealed to here, in order to provide
such an answer. On Achs’s view, blame essentially involves a kind of reflexive
endorsement, i.e. a commitment to its own fittingness and to its being fitting
directly on the basis of the target’s having done something wrong, and this is why
blame, as such, is worthy of investigation as a unified phenomenon. In addition to
identifying an essential feature of blame, Achs argues that this view also helps to
explain certain other of blame’s marks—­namely, its directedness, and the felt
character of blame common to many of its varied manifestations.
Recent work in the ethics of attitudes has drawn attention to a puzzle concern-
ing the fitting duration of attitudes (see esp. Marušić 2018, 2020; Na’aman 2021).
Roughly: it seems fitting for certain attitudes to fade with time, for example, grief
and regret. But it can seem that, in many cases, the facts that make these attitudes
fitting persist. But if the facts that make an attitude fitting persist, then how can it
be fitting for the attitude to fade? In short: why shouldn’t the attitude stay fitting
forever? This is the puzzle, that of explaining how certain attitudes can fittingly
fade over time. This puzzle applies widely, but can seem especially pressing in the
case of blame (Callard 2018; Hieronymi 2001; Na’aman 2020). According to a
common view, agents are blameworthy when and because they’ve culpably per-
formed a wrongful act. But if an agent culpably performs a wrongful act, then it
will always be true that they did. Hence, if an agent is blameworthy in virtue of
culpably performing a wrongful act, then they’re blameworthy forever. Hence, if
it’s fitting to blame the blameworthy, blame is forever fitting. But this seems
­intuitively false, and so something must give. In her contribution to the volume
(Chapter 17), Hannah Tierney proposes a novel solution to this puzzle,
12 Fittingness

spe­cif­ic­al­ly as it applies to blame. Tierney rejects the view that culpable wrongdoing
suffices to make agents blameworthy over time, and instead proposes a reparative
view of diachronic blameworthiness, on which agents stay blameworthy, and so
fitting to blame, only insofar as their reparative duties to their victims go unful-
filled. Notably, although Tierney’s proposal stands to explain why fitting blame
needn’t stay fitting forever, it entails that it could, insofar as blameworthy agents
fail to satisfy their reparative duties.

1.6 The Future of Fit

The discussion of fittingness in the twenty-­first century is still in its infancy. In

closing this introduction, we want to highlight several potential avenues of fur-
ther research concerning the nature of fittingness and its possible applications in
philosophical theorizing. Some of these issues are touched on by contributions to
the volume, but have yet to be fully pursued; others are wholly uncharted.

1.6.1 Fittingness and Correctness

One important question concerns the relationship between fittingness and cor-
rectness. Many contemporary authors gloss if not analyse the fittingness of an
attitude as a matter of the attitude’s satisfying a standard of correctness that is
internal to or constitutive of it (McHugh and Way 2016; Schroeder 2010; Sharadin
2015). Some historical precedent for equating fittingness with a kind of correct-
ness comes from Brentano (1889/1969), who uses the language of correctness in
formulating his fitting attitude account of value: for something to be of value is
for it to be ‘correct’ to love (16, 100). Brentano clarifies that ‘[o]ne loves or hates
correctly provided that one’s feelings are adequate to their object—­adequate in
the sense of being appropriate, suitable, or fitting’ (48). And it’s independently
intuitive to think that there’s a close link between fittingness and correctness. It
seems correct to admire admirable people, but incorrect to admire evil demons
and deplorable dictators; and it may seem incoherent to claim, for example, that
friendship is desirable but incorrect to desire. Furthermore, for any attitude, it
seems quite natural to call it ‘correct’ insofar as it’s fitting
However, there is more work to be done in clarifying the relationship between
fittingness and correctness. For one, there are several senses in which an attitude
might be ‘correct’. For example, an attitude’s being ‘correct’, in one sense, amounts
to its satisfying a standard or norm, but ‘correct’ can also mean accurate or true.
And indeed, although many philosophers have suggested that fittingness amounts
to correctness in the first sense, some also suggest, instead, that fittingness is cor-
rectness in the second sense (e.g. Tappolet 2011; Rossi and Tappolet, this volume).
 A User ’ s Guide 13

On this latter view, sometimes called the ‘alethic view’ (Rosen 2015), for an
a­ ttitude to be fitting is for it to correctly, i.e. accurately, represent its object. But
this view is rejected by many if not all those who hold that fittingness is correctness
in the first sense, i.e. in the sense that amounts to norm satisfaction. One reason
for this is that it’s not clear that attitudes that are correct in the norm-­satisfying
sense always represent their objects accurately (or at all), and so the view that
­fittingness is correctness in the norm-­satisfying sense is at odds with the alethic
view (Schroeder 2010; McHugh and Way 2016).6 But even among those who
reject the alethic view and hold that fittingness is correctness in the sense of norm
satisfaction, there is also a debate about whether the norms in question are
­internal to, constitutive of, or external to, the attitudes they seem to govern (on
this, see D’Arms’s Chapter 5 and Howard and Leary’s Chapter 10).
Considering the relationship between fittingness and correctness also leads to
a further question about the nature of fit, viz. whether the relation is gradable.
Goodness and badness are gradable properties—­something can be more or less
good or bad—­and so too are the weights of reasons—­a reason can be more or less
weighty. According to some, fittingness is also gradable, e.g. it can be more fitting
to desire one thing than to desire another (Howard 2019). But according to
­others, fittingness is not a gradable property and is instead an all-­or-­nothing sta-
tus, like requirement or permission (McHugh and Way 2016, this volume;
Maguire 2018). Whether fittingness is gradable has implications for how it relates
to non-­gradable deontic properties such as permissibility (see Berker’s Chapter 2
and Hurka’s Chapter 3) and may also be relevant to how we should formulate fit-
ting attitude accounts of comparative evaluative properties, such as that of being
better or worse. The possible equivalence of fittingness and correctness is relevant
here since, on the face of things, correctness seems to be an all-­or-­nothing status
rather than a gradable one: something can’t be more or less correct (cf. Wedgwood
2013). So, settling how fittingness relates to correctness may also involve settling
whether fittingness is gradable.

1.6.2 Fitting Action

Most discussions of fittingness in the last twenty years have focused on the fit-
tingness of attitudes. But might actions be fit-­assessable too? As Hurka’s Chapter 3
and Stratton-­Lake’s Chapter 6 discuss, the idea that actions are fit-­assessable was
common among philosophers writing about fit in the mid-­twentieth century:
C. D. Broad (1930) claimed that we could understand Ross’s prima facie duties in
terms of fittingness and Ross embraced this view in his Foundations of Ethics.

6 For further criticism of the alethic view, see especially Svavarsdóttir (2014) and Naar (2021).
14 Fittingness

And indeed, it can seem hard to deny that actions are fit-­assessable. It seems
­fitting to praise the praiseworthy, for instance, and to discuss what’s worthy of
discussion (Gertken and Kiesewetter 2017). Likewise, it seems fitting to punish
those who merit punishment, and unfitting to reward them. Furthermore, one of
the most influential accounts of the right-­/wrong-­kind reason distinction, due to
Mark Schroeder (2010), holds that this distinction arises in any domain that’s
constitutively governed by a standard of correctness (see also Sharadin 2015). On
this view, since there’s a constitutively correct way to set the table for a royal din-
ner and to execute the Queen’s Gambit, there can be right-­kind reasons to set the
royal table in a certain way and to move one’s chess pieces. So, assuming that
right-­kind reasons for a response explain or indicate the response’s fit, it follows
that at least some types of acts can be fitting.
But what might it take for an act to be fitting? If we accept a Schroeder-­style
view, then our answer should differ depending on the type of act at issue, given
that different types of act are constitutively governed by their own, differing stand-
ards of correctness. However, this may ultimately seem like a reason to reject the
Schroeder-­style analysis. For as Howard and Leary suggest in Chapter 10, it seems
that an act could be correct by its own standard, but unfitting—­for example, a
­correctly executed pirouette might be unmerited and hence unfitting in the ­context
of a funeral.
An alternative view is that the fittingness of acts is similar to the fittingness of
attitudes in the following way. The fittingness of an attitude is unaffected by facts
about the good or bad consequences of having the attitude: the good conse-
quences of admiring an evil demon can’t make the demon fit to admire since they
don’t make them admirable, or worthy of admiration. Likewise, we might think
that the fittingness of an act is determined by considerations other than those to
do with the good or bad consequences of performing the act. Instead, we might
say that the fittingness of an action is similarly determined entirely by facts about
whether the action is merited by the situation, or by certain features of it. This
seems to be the view espoused by Broad (1930/1956: 221).
But this view faces some difficulties, one of which is pointed out by Ross
(1939/1949: 81–2). Contrary to Broad, Ross saw no reason why the goodness of
an act’s outcome couldn’t affect whether the act is fitting to a situation. After all,
one feature of your situation might be that if you were to act in a certain way,
you’d produce a good outcome. So, why couldn’t this feature of your situation
even in principle merit the performance of the act? On Ross’s view, then, the
goodness of an act’s outcome is among the factors that can contribute to its fit-
tingness. If this view is right, then there is an important difference between the
fittingness of acts and attitudes: the goodness of performing an act can contribute
to its fit, whereas the fittingness of an attitude is unaffected by its goodness.
One issue for the Rossian view is this. Consider acts of praise and blame. It
seems fitting to praise only the praiseworthy and to blame only the blameworthy.
 A User ’ s Guide 15

Yet the view that the goodness of an act’s consequences can affect the act’s fit seems
in tension with these claims. For example, if this view is right, then presumably
there are possible scenarios in which it’s fitting to praise someone who is not praise-
worthy, viz. scenarios in which the consequences of doing so are sufficiently good.
Worries like this may lead us back to a Broadian view on which the fittingness of
actions is similar to the fittingness of attitudes in being unaffected by considerations
to do with their good consequences. Hence, the question of what it might take for
an action to be fitting remains unsettled. And indeed, it remains open whether acts
are fit-­assessable at all.7 This area is thus ripe for further research.

1.6.3 New Applications

The chapters in the fourth part of this volume explain how fittingness can be
appealed to in order elucidate properties and attitudes of central significance to
the moral domain, viz. responsibility and blame. And other work on fittingness,
including Alex King’s contribution to the volume (Chapter 14), has explored the
utility of fittingness for understanding the normativity of aesthetic properties. A fur-
ther avenue for future fittingness research concerns whether fit can be ­pro­duct­ive­ly
appealed to in investigating various other domains and their normativity.
Nicholas Southwood’s contribution to the volume articulates an account of
feasi­bil­ity in terms of fit (Chapter 9). One of the main drivers behind Southwood’s
project is to understand the nature and role of feasibility in politics since feasibil-
ity is an especially politically significant property. But fittingness might have other
applications in political philosophy too. For example, some political theorists
have suggested that political normativity is importantly distinct from moral nor-
mativity (Williams 2005; Rossi and Sleat 2014; cf. Maynard and Worsnip 2018).
Since the normativity of fittingness isn’t always moral, one possibility is that fit
could be appealed to in elaborating this hypothesis. For instance, some suggest it
can be fitting to be amused by immoral jokes insofar as they’re amusing (D’Arms
and Jacobson 2000); and it might be fitting to envy someone even if envying them
is overall morally bad (see, e.g. Protasi’s Chapter 13). Hence, given that the nor-
mativity of fit seems already to extend beyond moral normativity, we might pos-
tulate a form of fit-­related normativity that extends beyond the moral in the
political realm. Indeed, some moves in this direction have already been made by
political theorists attracted to related ideas. For example, Michael Walzer (1980)
appeals to the ‘fit’ between a state’s government and its community to explain
why, on his view, the moral benefits of humanitarian intervention inside a nation
state’s territory don’t always override states’ rights to political sovereignty.

7 For reasons to doubt that actions per se can be fitting, as opposed to intentions to perform them,
see McHugh and Way (2022, forthcoming); see also Rowland.
16 Fittingness

Fit might be put to use to explain concepts and properties in social philosophy,
too. For instance, we might appeal to it in order to understand certain identities.
People who have a gender identity at odds with the gender they were assigned at
birth often explain that they experience the latter gender as not fitting them, or
judge that it’s not fitting to treat them as having that gender (e.g. Serano 2016:
226; Weiss 2018). One possibility is that the notion of fit at issue here is purely
descriptive—­corresponding to the relation that obtains, for instance, when a puz-
zle piece fits into place—­and is hence distinct from the notion of fit that’s the
subject of this volume’s investigation, i.e. the notion that can be paraphrased in
terms of merit and worthiness. But another possibility is that the sense of ‘fit’ that
figures in claims like the above in fact refers to our target relation, and could thus
be usefully appealed to in order to shed light on gender concepts and our judge-
ments about them (Rowland forthcoming).
These are just some of the avenues of future fittingness research that seem
interesting and important to us. We hope this introduction, and the diverse and
wide-­ranging contributions to this volume, will encourage readers to think more
about fittingness and its potential to shed light on various normative matters,
across a variety of domains. We’re excited to see what the future of fit might hold.

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 SECTION ONE

T HE NAT U RE A ND
EPIST E MOLO GY OF F I T T I NG NE S S
 2
The Deontic, the Evaluative,
and the Fitting
Selim Berker

2.1 Introduction

The normative categories can be split up into several distinct families.1 The most
familiar of these are the deontic and the evaluative categories, or ‘the right’ and
‘the good’ as they are commonly known. The members of each family of cat­egor­
ies (i) resemble each other in certain ways and (ii) bear certain relationships to
each other that they don’t bear to non-­family members. Think here of the ties
between required, permitted, and forbidden, on the one hand, and between good,
better, and best, on the other. It is these interconnections that make it so natural to
split up the deontic and the evaluative into separate families and then ask that
well-­worn question, ‘Is the good prior to the right, or the right prior to the good?’
Where do the fittingness categories—­fitting, apt, warranted, admirable, fear-
some, shameful, and the like—­fit into this familiar taxonomy? The overwhelming
tendency among contemporary philosophers has been to shoehorn them into the
standard bipartite framework. Most authors assume that the fittingness categories
are deontic categories, and hence are forms of either requiredness or permissibil­
ity (although it is usually left unclear which). Other authors go the other way and
assume that the fittingness categories are evaluative categories, and hence are
types of goodness and badness, of value and disvalue.
The purpose of this chapter is to argue that both of these tendencies are a mis­
take. The fittingness categories are neither a subclass of the deontic categories nor
a cross section of the evaluative categories. Rather, they constitute a separate fam­
ily of normative categories, with their own distinctive interrelations, their own
distinctive logic, and their own distinctive nature. There are at least three major

1 As is by now customary, I use ‘normative’ as an umbrella term referring to anything having to do

with oughtness, value, virtue, merit, and so on. I use ‘category’ as a term of art that encompasses not
just properties and relations but also entities, quantifiers, connectives, and anything else that is the
worldly analogue of words or concepts, in the way in which the property being red is the worldly
analogue of the predicate ‘is red’ (a piece of language) and the concept is red (a vehicle of thought).
I use italics to designate categories, and I occasionally drop the copula ‘being’ when referring to
properties and relations, if no confusion results.

Selim Berker, The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting In: Fittingness: Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity.
Edited by: Christopher Howard and R. A. Rowland, Oxford University Press. © Selim Berker 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192895882.003.0002
24 Fittingness

families of normative categories, and we should resist the urge—­tempting

though it is—­to treat the fitting as simply another variety of the deontic or the
evaluative.2

2.2 The Deontic and the Evaluative

It will help to begin with a review of the deontic and the evaluative categories, and
of why it is customary to see them as forming distinct families.
The deontic categories include at least the following:

required/obligatory/mandatory ought to/should/must/have a duty to

permitted/permissible/allowed may/can (on a deontic reading)
forbidden/impermissible/prohibited
optional/merely permitted (i.e. permitted
but not required)

The evaluative categories, by contrast, include at least the following:

good better than strongly best (i.e. better than all the rest)
bad worse than weakly best (i.e. at least as good as all the rest)
neutral/indifferent equal in value to strongly worst
on a par with (?) weakly worst
at least as good as second best
no worse than good enough
at least as bad as better than most
no better than

Note that both families of categories might come in various ‘flavours’. For instance,
maybe we can distinguish moral, legal, prudential, epistemic, all-­things-­considered,
and so on varieties of the deontic categories. Note, also, that various distinctions
can be made within a given category. For instance, maybe we can distinguish
final and instrumental badness, attributive and predicative goodness, basic and
derivative requirements, directed and undirected duties, and so on.
Corresponding to each of these families of categories (properties, relations,
entities, etc.) is a family of terms and a family of concepts. So in addition to
de­ontic categories such as being required, there are deontic terms such as ‘required’
and deontic concepts such as required, and in addition to evaluative categories

2 Where do reasons fit into my proposed three-part taxonomy? I turn to that issue in §2.7, below.
 The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting 25

such as being good, there are evaluative terms such as ‘good’ and evaluative con­
cepts such as good. For the most part I shall conduct my inquiry in a meta­phys­
ic­al mode and formulate my claims in terms of categories rather than words or
concepts, because I hold that ethics is primarily concerned with investigating the
nature of, say, requiredness itself, not with investigating the nature of a certain
word in English or of a certain vehicle of thought, and similarly for other normative
disciplines. But readers who prefer to approach normative subjects in a semantic
(or conceptual) key can feel free to translate most of my claims about categories into
analogous claims about words (or concepts) via semantic (or conceptual) ascent.
There are myriad structural and substantive differences between the deontic
and the evaluative categories that justify grouping them together into separate
families. I mention here five.3
The first difference: requiredeness and permittedness are duals of one another,
but no such relation exists among the evaluative categories. This relation of
duality takes several forms. On the one hand, requiredness and permittedness
are extensional duals, in that the following biconditional—­or something close
to it—­holds:

B1. ϕ-ing is required iff not-ϕ-ing is not permitted.4

But we do not have:

B1ʹ. x is good iff not-x is not E,

3 See also Smith (2005: §3) and Tappolet (2013). There is one commonly cited difference between

the deontic and the evaluative on which I do not focus, because I think it is a mistake to take this to be
genuine difference: I have in mind the claim that deontic categories such as ought and required are
connected to voluntary choice or action in a way that evaluative categories are not. But this alleged
distinguishing feature is spurious: there can be things we ought to believe or intend despite belief and
intention not being under our direct or even indirect voluntary control (Feldman 2008; Hieronymi
2008; Chuard and Southwood 2009; McHugh 2017).
4 I add the ‘or something close to it’-qualifier to allow that B might not be the best way of formu­
1
lating extensional duality. One variant formulation adds in a requirement that ϕ-ing be the sort of
thing to which norms of the relevant flavour—­whether moral, or legal, or whatever—­apply:

B1*. If ϕ-ing is subject to norms of variety x, then (ϕ-ing is requiredx iff not-ϕ-ing is not permittedx).

(An advantage of this formulation: it allows moral error theorists to say both that nothing is morally
required and that nothing is morally permitted.) A second variant formulation replaces the appeal to
ϕ-ing’s negation with a quantification over ϕ-ing’s alternatives:

B1**. ϕ-ing is required iff every alternative to ϕ-ing is not permitted.

(An advantage of this formulation: it allows one to countenance relations of extensional duality even if
one holds, say, that the positive state believing that p is deontically assessable whereas the negative
state not believing that p is not.) Analogues of every argument I go on to make for B1 could also be
made with B1* and B1**, so I stick with the more familiar formulation in the main text.
26 Fittingness

where ‘E’ refers to some other evaluative category. For one thing, we need not
hold that the sorts of things that can be good are also the sorts of things that can
be negated, so ‘not-x’ might not make sense for some relevant values of x. And for
another, even when ‘not-x’ does make sense (as it arguably does when x is an
action or a state of affairs), that x is good is compatible with not-x being good or
bad or neutral: sometimes it is good both to do something and not to do it, and
other times it is good to do something without its being actively bad or actively
good to refrain from doing it.
Because of their extensional duality, requiredness and permittedness bear
certain logical relations to each other that have no analogue for the evaluative
cat­egor­ies. But there is another form of duality that leads to an even deeper
difference. Requiredness and permittedness are also definitional duals, insofar as
they are interdefinable via their relation of duality, like so:

D1. ϕ-ing is required =df not-ϕ-ing is not permitted.

D2. ϕ-ing is permitted =df not-ϕ-ing is not required.5

Some authors act as if we must choose between these two definitions: either
requiredness is defined in terms of permittedness, or permittedness is defined in
terms of requiredness, but we cannot have both. I myself am suspicious of this
commonly held thought. There is a deep-­rooted symmetry between requiredness
and permittedness, and to say that one is more fundamental than the other strikes
me as unacceptably arbitrary, in the way in which it is unacceptably arbitrary to
hold that possibility is more fundamental than necessity or disjunction more fun­
damental than conjunction. It is far better, I would say, to hold onto the intuitive
thought that these two deontic categories are interdefinable—­or, more precisely,
are interdefined—­and hence to hold that D1 and D2 are both true.6 And regardless
of whether we accept both D1 and D2 or only one of them, the crucial point is that no
analogous definition of goodness, badness, or any other evaluative category exists.7
I have been focusing on the duality of requiredness and permittedness, but
this is just one among a number of similar relations that hold among the

5 I leave it open whether these definitions are semantic, conceptual, metaphysical, or some

combination thereof (maybe each is a semantic definition that entails a corresponding metaphysical
definition). For more on metaphysical definition, see Rosen (2015).
6 If doing so is in tension with the sorts of foundationalist assumptions usually made by philosophers

when they theorize about definitions, then so much the worse for those assumptions, I would say.
7 What about strong and weak bestness? Aren’t they evaluative categories that are duals of one

another? That is far from clear. To get them to be extensional duals, we need to make contentious
assumptions either about the range of ϕ-ing’s alternatives or about how the value of not-ϕ-ing relates
to the value of more specific ways of not-ϕ-ing. (The basic problem: how do we establish the right-to-
left direction of <ϕ-ing is strongly best iff not-ϕ-ing is not weakly best> if ϕ-ing has alternatives other
than not-ϕ-ing?) Moreover, even if strong and weak bestness turn out to be extensional duals, it is not
plausible that they are definitional duals: a thing’s being better than all the rest cannot be defined as its
negation’s not being at least as good as all the rest.
 The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting 27

traditional deontic categories of requiredness, permittedness, and forbiddenness

(i.e. impermissibility). Forbiddenness is related to the other two like so:

B2. ϕ-ing is forbidden iff not-ϕ-ing is required.

B3. ϕ-ing is forbidden iff ϕ-ing is not permitted.

Moreover, although it is commonly overlooked and lacks a natural prefix-­less

term in English, there is a fourth central deontic status—­ let us call it
‘unrequiredness’8—­that is the dual of forbiddenness and bears corresponding
relations to requiredness and permittedness:

B4. ϕ-ing is unrequired iff not-ϕ-ing is not forbidden.

B5. ϕ-ing is unrequired iff not-ϕ-ing is permitted.
B6. ϕ-ing is unrequired iff ϕ-ing is not required.

B1–B6 give us the logical relations that make up the traditional square of op­pos­
ition. And underwriting these biconditionals are a raft of definitional intercon­
nections beyond D1 and D2, such as:

D3. ϕ-ing is forbidden =df not-ϕ-ing is required.

D4. ϕ-ing is required =df not-ϕ-ing is forbidden.
D5. ϕ-ing is forbidden =df ϕ-ing is not permitted.
D6. ϕ-ing is permitted =df ϕ-ing is not forbidden.9

We find nothing like this structure within the evaluative categories.

A second difference: goodness and badness are non-­privative opposites of a
certain sort, but no deontic categories are related in this way. Permittedness and
forbiddenness are privative opposites (or complements): each is the absence or lack
of the other. To be forbidden is to be non-­permitted, and to be permitted is to be
non-­forbidden. By contrast, goodness and badness are what I call polar opposites:
each is the inversely charged flipside of the other, not its mere lack or absence. To
be bad is to be anti-­good, not to be non-­good, and to be good is to be anti-­bad, not
to be non-­bad.10 No deontic categories are opposites of this sort. Forbiddenness is

8 Paul McNamara (2019) calls this fourth deontic status ‘omissibility’, but I have reservations about

his terminology that will emerge in due course.

9 I omit here six additional definitions linking unrequiredness to the other three traditional deontic

categories. So in total we have four deontic categories tethered together by six biconditionals and
twelve definitions.
10 Here the prefix ‘anti-’ must here be understood as expressing inversion, as in ‘antihero’ or ‘anti­

climax’, not as expressing adversariality, as in ‘anti-aircraft’ or ‘anti-Semite’. Compare Ibram X. Kendi’s

(2019) notion of an anti-racist, who is not merely someone who opposes racists, but rather is a kind of
inverse racist who actively works to level the playing field among the races. Indeed, Kendi’s central
distinction between an anti-racist and a non-racist is exactly the distinction I mean to be invoking in
distinguishing anti-goodness from non-goodness.
28 Fittingness

neither anti-­requiredness nor anti-­permittedness; rather, it is related to requiredness

via D3 and to permittedness via D5. Just as duality is a distinctive relation that we
find among the deontic categories but not among the evaluative categories, good­
ness and badness’s polar opposition is a distinctive relation that we find among
the evaluative categories but not among the deontic categories.
A third difference, which perhaps is the most obvious: goodness and badness
are gradable, but the traditional deontic categories are not. The evaluative properties
being good and being bad are gradable, which involves a package of three related
features: first, they have comparative forms (being better than, being worse than,
etc.); second, they have superlative forms (being best, best worst, etc.); and, third,
they can be acted on by very, somewhat, and other grading modifiers (so there exist
the properties being very good, being somewhat bad, etc.). By contrast, all of the
deontic categories we have considered so far are not gradable. It is never the case that
one action is ‘more required’ than another, or that one of the avail­able actions is ‘the
most permitted’, or that another of the available actions is ‘somewhat forbidden’.11
A fourth difference, closely related to the previous one: in addition to the
­properties being good and being bad, there is a third, in-­between property being
neutral,12 but no analogous neutral status exists for the deontic categories. The
closest candidate here is being merely permitted (i.e. being permitted but not required),
but that isn’t a true neutral, in-­between status. Goodness and badness fall on a
(perhaps non-­scalar, perhaps multidimensional) spectrum with neutrality lying in
between, but requiredness and forbiddenness do not fall on a spectrum with
mere-­permittedness lying in between. If I can save someone’s life by giving them
either antidote A or antidote B, we would never say, ‘Giving that person antidote A is
neither required nor forbidden but in between,’ in the way in which we might say of
a different situation, ‘That outcome is neither good nor bad but in between.’13

11 Two comments about gradability. First, my central claim here is about the gradability of

categories—­of the properties themselves—­not about the gradability of words or other linguistic items.
Gradability is a metaphysical phenomenon, in addition to being a semantic phenomenon that can be
studied by linguists. Second, although philosophers and linguists often implicitly assume otherwise,
being gradable is not the same as coming in degrees. Degreedness entails gradability, but gradability
does not entail degreedness. If being F is gradable but being more F than allows cycles, then it will not
make sense to reify a thing’s F-ness into degrees. (I owe this point to Angel Navidad.) If being F is
gradable but being more F than is a massively partial ordering, so that there are a large number of cases
in which some x is neither more F than, nor less F than, nor equal in F-ness to some y, then it will also
not make sense to reify a thing’s F-ness into degrees. And so on.
12 Other common names for this status: ‘being indifferent’ and, especially in the case of attributive

goodness, ‘being average’ (as in: ‘He’s neither a good nor a bad free throw shooter, but merely average’).
13 That the deontic categories are non-gradable and lack a neutral middle state might seem obvi­

ous, but these points are not always appreciated. In a study with over 1,000 citations, psychologists
Fiery Cushman, Lianne Young, and Marc Hauser asked their subjects to rate a number of actions
‘on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 labeled “Forbidden,” 4 labeled “Permissible,” and 7 labeled “Obligatory”’
(2006: 1083). Even if we set aside the worry that obligatoriness entails permissibility and interpret
‘Permissible’ here as meaning ‘Merely Permissible’, it is difficult to make sense of what Cushman et al.
were asking their subjects. What does 3 on their scale signify? A little bit forbidden? What does 5 sig­
nify? Permissible but not quite obligatory?
 The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting 29

Finally, a fifth difference: something’s deontic status depends on what the

alternatives are in a way that its goodness or badness doesn’t. Permittedness and
requiredness have a property that I shall call alternatives dependence: whether ϕ-
ing is permitted or required depends, in part, on the normatively relevant proper­
ties of all the alternatives to ϕ-ing.14 What matters is not just the case that can be
made for ϕ-ing, but also how that case stacks up in comparison to the case that
can be made for each alternative to ϕ-ing. So an action that is required in one
situation might have the same (non-­comparative) properties and yet be forbidden
in another, because certain additional courses of action are available. Goodness
and badness, by contrast, are not alternatives dependent in this way.15
Let us take stock. We have uncovered five key differences between the core
deontic properties required, permitted, forbidden, and unrequired and the core
evaluative properties good, neutral, and bad:

Required/permitted/ Good/neutral/bad
forbidden/unrequired

Duality? Yes No
Polar opposition? No Yes
Gradable? No Yes
Neutral state? No Yes
Alternatives dependent? Yes No

These differences show why requiredness and permittedness are not forms of
goodness and goodness not a form of requiredness or permittedness, and similarly
why forbiddenness and unrequiredness are not forms of badness and badness
not a form of forbiddenness or unrequiredness. Thus we can rule out the most
straightforward way of viewing deontic properties as evaluative properties, or
vice versa. But we have left open the possibility of other, more complex pro­posals.
For instance, what if we take requiredness to be a form of bestness? Would such a
proposal show that the deontic categories and the evaluative categories are not
separate families after all?
No, it wouldn’t. To see why, let us consider one salient group of views on which
it might be thought that requiredness turns out to be a kind of bestness, namely
maximizing forms of consequentialism. It follows on such views that requiredness
is co-­extensive with some manner of (strong) bestness, so that something like the
following biconditional holds:
14 Johann Frick’s (MS) term for much the same thesis is ‘comparativism’ (about a given category).
15 It might seem that at least some first-order moral theories deny that an action’s deontic status is
necessarily an alternatives-dependent matter; think here of the ‘absolutist’ view on which intentionally
killing another innocent person is always impermissible, even if every available alternative would lead
to billions of deaths. Personally I find absolutism so outrageously implausible that I am happy to set it
aside. But for those who do not wish to rule it out, a version of my fifth difference can survive. Even if
something’s deontic status is not always an alternatives-dependent matter, it typically is, but the same
is not true of a thing’s goodness.
30 Fittingness

C1. ϕ-ing is required iff ϕ-ing leads to the (strongly) best outcomes.16

But this biconditional on its own is not enough to establish that requiredness is a
form of bestness, for biconditionals are cheap. Instead, we need something
stronger. What might that stronger thesis be? I have argued elsewhere (Berker
2018, 2019) that we do best to see maximizing consequentialists as committed to:

C2. Necessarily, ϕ-ing is required iff, and because, ϕ-ing leads to the best
outcomes.

However, C2 is not a view on which requiredness turns out to be an evaluative

category after all; rather, it is a view on which requiredness turns out to depend on
an evaluative category, and dependence is irreflexive. So on the most natural way
of understanding maximizing consequentialism, it does not lead to a collapse of
the deontic into the evaluative.
What, though, about other ways of interpreting maximizing consequentialism?
Suppose that instead of C2 we have one or more of the following:

C3. The property being required = the property leading to the best outcomes.
C4. The concept is required = the concept leads to the best
outcomes.
C5. The phrase ‘is required’ means ‘leads to the best outcomes’.

Now to start with, I think these are all implausibly strong ways of interpreting the
consequentialist’s commitments (Berker 2018: §3). But even if we were to accept
one or more of these theses, I don’t think we would stop distinguishing deontic
categories (or concepts, or terms) from evaluative categories (or concepts, or terms):
we would simply come to see the former as a particularly interesting subset of the
latter. The deontic and the evaluative would remain distinct in one sense—­they

A different sort of objection: if to be good is to be better than most of the items in some contextually
salient comparison class (as some linguists propose), does this mean that goodness is alternatives
dependent after all? No, for that comparison class need not consist in the alternatives to the thing
being evaluatively assessed. Moreover, even if being good does turn out to be alternatives dependent for
this reason, a version of my fifth difference remains, for being better than would still be an alternatives-
independent matter: that x is better than y does not depend on the normatively relevant properties of
the alternatives to x and y.
16 The details of this biconditional will of course vary depending on the variety of maximizing

consequentialism at issue. (See Berker 2013: §2 for a survey of the possibilities; there I use the term
‘teleology’ where I now prefer ‘consequentialism’.) Henceforth by ‘best’ I mean ‘strongly best’ unless I
specify otherwise.
 The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting 31

are different families—­while not being distinct in another sense—­they overlap

with one another.17

2.3 The Fitting

Let us turn now to our main topic: the fitting. The fittingness categories include at
least the following:

the thin (or basic) fittingness categories:

fitting/appropriate/apt/warranted/justified/merited/deserved/worthy/suitable/
­proper/correct (?)/called for/to be done (or felt, or held)
unfitting/inappropriate/inapt/unwarranted/unjustified/unmerited/undeserved/
un­worthy/unsuitable/improper/incorrect (?)/uncalled for/not to be done (or
felt, or held)

the thick (or derivative) fittingness categories:

(un)acceptable/admirable/(dis)agreeable/contemptible/credible/deplorable/
(un)desirable/(un)enviable/(in)excusable/lamentable/(im)plausible/preferable/
(un)reliable/(ir)responsible/etc.
awful/disgraceful/dreadful/shameful/useful/etc.
(un)amusing/annoying/disgusting/(un)interesting/(un)surprising/etc.
(un)attractive/(in)offensive/(un)persuasive/repulsive/suggestive/etc.
bothersome/fearsome/gruesome/irksome/worrisome/etc.
blameworthy/choiceworthy/noteworthy/praiseworthy/(un)trustworthy/etc.
(un)funny/scary/tasty/etc.

17 A similar result holds if we accept

C6. It is part of the essence of being required that something which is required leads to the best
outcomes
together with
E. If category x features an evaluative category in any part of its essence, then x is itself an
evaluative category.
But, once again, I think this possibility need not overly concern us, since neither C6 nor E strike me as
particularly plausible. (Concerning C6: I do not see why our consequentialist thesis is part of the
essence of being required on its own, rather than part of the collective essence of being required and
being best, taken together, or not an essential truth at all, as Kit Fine and his followers hold. Concerning
E: that a category features a logical [or natural] category within its essence does not thereby make that
category a logical [or natural] one, so why should things be any different with evaluativeness? Why
does the taint of the evaluative spread through essences, but the taint of the logical [or the natural]
does not?) And whether a similar result holds if we have
C7. ϕ-ing is required =df ϕ-ing leads to the best outcomes
will depend on whether we are working with a conception of definition on which it entails C2 or
instead entails one of C3–C5.
32 Fittingness

As with the deontic and evaluative categories, each of these categories might come
in different ‘flavours’: moral appropriateness, epistemic warrantedness, and so on.
Some authors use ‘fittingness’ only to refer to varieties of the above normative
categories that hold in virtue of the internal or constitutive standards of the item
being assessed. That is not how I am using the term. An inappropriate comment
need not be inappropriate in virtue of violating ‘the constitutive standards of
comments’ (whatever those might be) in order for its inappropriateness to qualify
as a fittingness category—­to qualify as being concerned with how that comment,
as it were, fits the situation. This metaphor of fit, of something matching or suit­
ing a given circumstance or object, links all of these categories together and
makes it natural to view them as a unified group that it is handy to label with the
term ‘fitting’.
I have split up these categories into two groups, the thin (or basic) ones and the
thick (or derivative) ones.18 The properties apt, appropriate, merited, deserved,
called for, etc. are all, broadly speaking, forms of thin fittingness, in the way that
obligatory, mandatory, ought, should, must, etc. are all, broadly speaking, forms of
requiredness. Some of these may even be the same category picked out in differ­
ent ways: it is not clear there is a difference between being appropriate and being
apt, in the way that it is not clear there is a difference between being required and
being mandatory. But in other cases, there obviously are differences. For instance,
to say that something is warranted is not the same as saying that it is deserved;
believing some proposition might be warranted, given one’s evidence, but no
proposition deserves to be believed (Howard 2018: 7). However, a similar thing is
also true in the case of the deontic categories: to say that one ought to ϕ is not the
same as saying that it is obligatory for one to ϕ. But this difference between ought
and obligatory is no bar to classifying both as forms of requiredness—­to classify­
ing both as boxes, not diamonds, in the familiar notation. Similarly, the fact that
being warranted and being deserved are not mutually entailing is no bar to classi­
fying both as forms of thin fittingness. ‘Warranted’ and ‘deserved’ can both be
thin fittingness terms without being synonyms.
The thick fittingness properties are analysable in terms of the thin ones, as was
pointed out by Richard Brandt (1946) three quarters of a century ago. Brandt only
explicitly applies his analysis to fittingness properties picked out by adjectives
ending in ‘-able’/‘-ible’, but his analysis can be straightforwardly extended to all
thick fittingness properties, like so:

18 My primary labels for these two groups are ‘thin’ and ‘thick’, but I use those terms with some

trepidation, because it is controversial whether admirable, shameful, and the like are thick con­
cepts in the sense made popular by Bernard Williams (1985). Some authors deem them to be
(Anderson 1993: 98; Tappolet 2004; Kyle 2020), others deem them not to be (Gibbard 1992; Suikkanen
2009: 778, n. 20), and yet others express uncertainty (Väyrynen 2021). I am happy to switch to a differ­
ent pair of labels if the doubters are right.
 The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting 33

x is admirable =df it is fitting to admire x.

x is contemptible =df it is fitting to have contempt for x.
x is desirable =df it is fitting to desire x.
x is reliable =df it is fitting to rely upon x.19
x is annoying =df it is fitting to be annoyed by x.
x is attractive =df it is fitting to be attracted to x.
x is fearsome =df it is fitting to be afraid of x.
x is trustworthy =df it is fitting to trust x.

I have formulated these analyses using the word ‘fitting’, but I just as easily could
have used a number of other thin fittingness terms instead: for something to be
admirable is for it to merit admiration, or for it to be worthy of admiration, or for
admiring it to be apt, or for it to call out for admiration, or . . . Often our term in
English for a given thick fittingness property is derived via suffixation from a
noun or verb in English expressing the reaction whose fittingness is at issue, but
not always. Sometimes the process of suffixation occurred in another language
without the root being passed along to English as well, as in the case of ‘risible’
(‘that which merits laughter’, from the Latin ‘ridere’ meaning ‘to laugh at’) or ‘cul­
pable’ (‘that which deserves blame’, from the Latin ‘culpare’ meaning ‘to blame’).
And in a few cases, we have no ready way to characterize the relevant reaction
except via the thick fitting property being analysed. For instance, although ‘plau­
sible’ originally referred to that which it is fitting to applaud, that meaning is
obsolete, and ‘plausible’ now refers to that which it is fitting to . . . well, find
plausible.
In an important and influential series of articles, Justin D’Arms and Daniel
Jacobson call those who advocate analyses of the above sort ‘neo-­sentimentalists’
(D’Arms and Jacobson 2000a, 2000b, 2006a, 2006b, 2017; D’Arms 2005), but in
my opinion that is a regrettable piece of terminology which should be avoided.
Brandt-­style analyses of thick fittingness properties are entirely independent of
the sentimentalist programme in metaethics, for two reasons. First, a similar
analysis holds for various thick fittingness properties that have nothing to do with
the sentiments, such as:

x is punishable =df it is fitting to be punished for x.

x is hirable =df it is fitting to hire x.
x is credible =df it is fitting to believe x.

19 Note that this analysis shows that ‘reliable’ is a normative term that is part of the fittingness family.

So when epistemologists treat ‘reliable’ as a non-normative term meaning ‘truth-conducive’, they are
using ‘reliable’ as a technical term, not using it in its ordinary sense. (In everyday speech, to say that
Boston’s subway system is unreliable is to normatively assess that subway system, not to say something
about whether it promotes true belief.)
34 Fittingness

x is useful =df it is fitting to use x (for such-­and-­such purpose).

x is persuasive =df it is fitting to be persuaded by x.
x is choiceworthy =df it is fitting to choose x.
x is seaworthy =df it is fitting to sail x.

Hence definitions of this sort are not distinctively sentimentalist in any way.
Second, even those Brandt-­style analyses that do appeal to sentiments are com­
patible with facts about the fittingness of sentiments being fully grounded in facts
having nothing to do with the sentiments, such as facts about the on-­average pro­
motion of pleasure and pain or facts about the import of the actions those senti­
ments dispose us to perform. But a metaethical view whose appeal to sentiments
is itself explained in terms of something deeper is not one that is aptly described
as sentimentalist, I would say.20
Not all ‘-ible’/‘-able’ adjectives in English are normative terms that pick out
thick fittingness properties. Some are descriptive terms that pick out potentiality
properties, such as:

x is visible =df x is able to be seen.

x is detachable =df x is able to be detached.

And some ‘-ible’/‘-able’ adjectives can be used to denote either a thick fittingness
property or a descriptive potentiality property. ‘That sentence is unprintable’ can
mean ‘That sentence is not fit to be printed’ (because, say, it is too offensive), and
it can mean ‘That sentence is not able to be printed’ (because, say, it is too long to
write down using existing technology).21
Interestingly, negative prefixes work differently for some thick fittingness terms
than others. Often the negative prefix acts as a wide-­scope negation:

x is unacceptable =df it is not the case that (it is fitting to accept x).

Or perhaps instead:

20 D’Arms and Jacobson also call properties amenable to Brandt-style analyses ‘response-dependent

properties’, and others have followed them in this practice (Tappolet 2013; Shoemaker 2017), but in
my opinion that is another regrettable piece of terminology which should also be avoided. To say that
something is dependent on which of our responses are merited is very different from saying that it is
dependent on our responses, and ‘response-dependent’ only makes sense as a label of the latter, not the
former. No one would ever say that punishable offenses have a ‘punishment-dependent’ property
because they merit punishment.
21 See Kjellmer (1986). There is also a third class of meanings for ‘-ible’/‘-able’ adjectives: a small

number of them refer to a certain ready tendency. For example, ‘knowledgeable’ means ‘tends to read­
ily know things (about the domain in question)’, and ‘perishable’ means ‘tends to perish quickly’.
 The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting 35

x is unacceptable =df x is the sort of thing that can be accepted, and it is not
the case that (it is fitting to accept x).22

But sometimes the negative prefix acts as a narrow-­scope polarity-­flipper:

x is undesirable =df it is fitting to be adverse to (i.e. to anti-­desire) x.

Not all non-­desirable outcomes are undesirable; what makes an outcome undesir­
able is that it positively calls out for a negative orectic attitude, not that it fails to
call out for a positive one.
A large percentage of the normative terms that we use on a daily basis are thick
fittingness terms formed via suffixes like ‘-able’, ‘-ible’, ‘-ing’, ‘-ive’, etc. and their
analogues in other languages: these terms are everywhere, which makes it all the
more surprising how under-­theorized they are. Moreover, thick fittingness terms
and the properties they pick out are all over the place in philosophy: we regularly
appeal to them in our theories (some examples: accountable, admissible, an­swer­able,
attributable, culpable, eligible, excusable, liable, reasonable, reliable, choiceworthy),
and we constantly use them to evaluative each other’s arguments and proposals
(some examples: [im]plausible, [un]compelling, [un]convincing, fas­cin­at­ing, inter-
esting, [un]promising, surprising, impressive, [un]persuasive, suggestive). But since
thick fitting properties can be analysed in terms of thin fittingness properties, I will
primarily be focusing on the thin ones in what follows.

2.4 Fittingness Is Not Deontic

Here is a common thought: the thin fittingness properties such as fitting, apt, war-
ranted, merited, and the like are themselves deontic properties, and in particular
are a type of permittedness or requiredness. This thought is probably the most
widespread assumption made about the typology of fittingness categories. For
instance, it is simply baked into the literature on so-­called ‘fitting-­attitude the­or­
ies of value’, insofar as that label is standardly taken to apply equally well to views
that analyse (or explain, or otherwise account for) goodness in terms of what one
ought to value (or favour, or desire) and to views that analyse (or explain,

22 A reason to prefer this analysis over the former one: then we need not say that rocks and other

things that cannot be accepted are unacceptable. Alternatively, that x is the sort of thing that can be
accepted might be an enabling condition for or presupposition of unacceptability, without being part
of its definition. But regardless of how we implement this thought, that some such qualifier is needed
seems to be a general feature of negative prefixes that act as wide-scope negations, regardless of
whether they are applied to normative or non-normative terms. Even though rocks are not afraid, it
doesn’t follow that rocks are unafraid.
36 Fittingness

otherwise or account for) goodness in terms of what it is fitting to value (or favour,
or desire).23 I myself used to hold this common thought, but I now believe it to be
mistaken. I present here five reasons to deny it.
First of all, fittingness and requiredness have different guiding metaphors.
(This is a warm-­up reason that on its own is not probative.) The guiding meta­
phors behind requiredness or oughtness—­which also happen to be linked to
these terms’ etymological origins—­concern a person being bound, tied, or forced
to do something. When we are required to do something, it is as if there is a magic
bond to that thing which compels us to do it, and when we are permitted not to
do that thing, no such bond is present. Compulsion, bondage, being forced: these
are all natural metaphors to reach for when discussing requirements. But not so
in the case of fittingness; here the guiding metaphors are quite different. One nat­
ural metaphor for fittingness: a puzzle piece locking into place. Another natural
metaphor: a key fitting into a lock. These are powerful images that are easily asso­
ciated with all of the standard locutions used to pick out fittingness properties.
When a certain emotional reaction is merited, it is the edge piece that fits the
current situation. When some action is called for, it is the key that goes into the
current lock. And so on. But neither of these metaphors—­the puzzle piece and
the key—­are natural ones to invoke when discussing duties, requirements, per­
missions, and other uncontroversially deontic categories. Why would that be so,
if fittingness were simply a form of permittedness or requiredness?
A second, more substantive reason to deny our common thought is this. When
the time comes to decide whether fittingness is a form of permittedness or instead
a form of requiredness, we find that neither proposal quite works: in some cases,
taking fittingness to be a type of permittedness seems too weak a proposal, and in
other cases, taking fittingness to be a type of requiredness seems too strong.
When I do something shameful, shame on my part is fitting or called for. When
you hear a persuasive argument, it is fitting or appropriate for you to be persuaded
by it. When a trustworthy person tells you something, it is fitting or apt for you to
trust what they say. In none of these cases is it plausible to interpret the normative
category at issue as being a form of permission. It is far too weak to say that we are
simply permitted to be ashamed at our shameful conduct, to be persuaded by per­
suasive arguments, or to trust what trustworthy people tell us. To say that shame
is fitting is not merely to say that being ashamed is allowed—­is not forbidden—­
but rather to say something more.

23 Authors that follow this terminological convention include Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen

(2004), Danielsson and Olson (2007), Bykvist (2009), Suikkanen (2009), Jacobson (2011), Tappolet
(2013), Gertken and Kiesewetter (2017), and Schroeder (2021), among others. Many of these authors
also explicitly tell us that fittingness is a deontic category (see, for example, Rabinowicz and Rønnow-
Rasmussen 2004: 391–2, 422; Bykvist 2009: 2–3; Jacobson 2011: §1; Tappolet 2013: 1792; and
Schroeder 2021: §3.2).
Another random document with
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 (Larger)
ST. JAN HERTOGENBOSCH
28TH. SEPTR. 1872.

ROTTERDAM.
GROOTEKERK (St. Lawrence).—At the west end stands a very
large organ. The centre tower, which is ninety feet high from the
ground, and is crowned with an angel holding a trumpet, has two
tiers of pipes, the lower containing fifteen, and the upper nineteen.
On each side is a flat with three tiers of pipes; then a flat of four tall
pipes; and at each end a tower surmounted with a vase, containing
five pipes, belonging to the thirty-two feet stop, and which look very
long and thin, as they have a rather narrow scale. On a bracket,
outside the north tower, is an angel playing on the lute; on the south
side, one who plays on the flute. The buffet, or lower part of the
case, rises in a curve to the centre; the Choir Organ in front, has its
tallest tower in the centre, surmounted by three angels; next to which
is a flat of two tiers of pipes, seven in each; then a flat of four pipes,
and at each end a tower of seven pipes. The organ loft is white, and
supported by eight Ionic columns, with bronze capitals, and the culs-
de-lampe of the three towers of the Choir Organ are also bronze.
The pipes had gilt mouths, the wood-work was all brown oak, much
carved with festoons of flowers, and sham curtains for claires-voies. I
heard the organ at a week-day evening service, the tone was good,
but wanting in fulness. I suspect I did not hear the full power. 1872.
 (Larger)
ST. Lawrence (Groote Kerk) Rotterdam.
17TH. SEPT. 1872.

UTRECHT.
THE CATHEDRAL (St. Martin).—The organ stands where the
nave of the Cathedral, which has fallen down, commenced, and
beneath it is a pulpit with a square sounding-board. It is a new
instrument, of a light yellow colour, in modern German Gothic. The
great case consists of three equal towers, of seven pipes each, the
centre surmounted by King David, and the others by pinnacles of
open-work; and an open-work gallery joins these together, beneath
which are two flats, the upper part of which is an elaborate Gothic
window, the background of dark blue, with four and twenty pipes in
each, divided by the mullion of the window. The Choir Organ
consists of a large gable, of open Gothic work, between two
pinnacled towers of seven pipes each. In the centre is a sort of
Gothic window, with two flats of twelve pipes, and on each side, a flat
with a double tier of pipes, adjoining the towers. A gallery, decorated
with quatre-foils, connects the two organs. The mouths of the pipes
are gilt, and there is some gilding about the case, which cannot be
called a handsome one, as it violates all the rules of what a good
organ case should be. 1872.
ST. NICOLAS.—At the west end is a very curious little old organ,
with a quaint Choir Organ in front, supported by a single square
column. It consists of two flat overhanging towers, with an angular
centre tower, rather taller, all crowned with Gothic pinnacle work. The
flats joining these towers, which rise to the centre tower, have each
fourteen pipes, above which are a set of pipes with two bodies, two
mouths, and two feet; in fact two pipes joined together at their feet. I
could not see how they could be supplied with wind. The Choir
Organ in front has three angular towers, with no flats between them;
the centre, the tallest, has seven pipes; the others have five pipes on
their outer side, and on their inner side pipes similar to those in the
upper part of the flats of the Great Organ. A small curved
compartment on each side, completes this case. The mouths of the
pipes are gilt, and there is some gilding about the case. It was dusk
when I saw this organ, which I am sure is worth a careful
examination, as there is much about it that is old and curious. 1872.
In the museum of the Archbishop are some painted shutters
belonging to some old organ, the bass being David playing before
the Ark, and the treble, David playing before Saul. 1872.
 NOTES ON GERMAN ORGANS.

COBLENTZ.
T. CASTOR.—A west end organ, with a rather elaborate
case, which has the German peculiarity of the Great
Organ case having, under the usual pipes, pipes as of a
Choir Organ. I imagine this organ was played from the
side. 1869.

COLOGNE.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The organ stands in a wooden gallery at
the end of the north transept. The case, which is of a confused
design, is not good; part of the work is old. The Choir Organ pipes
show, after the German manner, in the lower part of the Great Organ
case. The tone was fair, but it was not sufficient for the building, and
there was no striking quality about it. 1869.
This organ is to be replaced by an enormous instrument, with at
least 100 registers.
THE MINORITES.—At the west end stands a large organ, said
to be the best in the city, and the little I heard at vespers was good.
The pipes were very dull and dirty. The case, painted white, and
relieved with gilding, is very curious. It stands right across the
church, flush with the front of the gallery, on which it stands. At each
end is a projecting tower, supported by figures, and containing seven
pedal pipes. In the middle of the gallery is the Choir Organ, the
centre tower of which is supported by a figure. Arches are thrown
from this organ to the towers on each side, on which, and above the
Choir Organ, stands the Great Organ case, a confused mass of
angular and round towers, curved and broken pediments, &c.
The player sat under the arch on the north side, but I could not
see the precise position of the key-board. The case was broad and
shallow, and stood about one bay clear of the west window, which
was large and handsome. 1869.

FRANKFORT.
THE CATHEDRAL.—When I saw this church, it was under repair
after the fire, and the only organ in it was a small modern Gothic
instrument, which was evidently a temporary erection. 1869.

FREIBURG-IM-BRESGAU.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The Great Organ is a hanging one, and is
pendent above a pillar half way down the north side of the nave. It
was built in 1515, and repaired in 1818. It has two flat towers of
seven pipes each, the largest being outside, with a V flat of 20 pipes
between, above which is a statue of the Virgin and Child, with scroll
work all gilt. The towers overhang the base on each side. The Choir
Organ, which consists of a flat of nine pipes, between two flat towers
of five pipes each, hangs in front of the organ gallery, which is a
semi-octagon, with gilt open-work, and its corbel terminates in an
angel playing a trombone. This organ is only played at the great
festivals; the tone is said to be good. Showing under the south-east
arch of the choir, is an organ placed on a platform, which fills up one
bay of the south aisle. Its date is about 1700. It has three flat towers
of five pipes each, the smallest in the centre with one pipe in each
angle, so as to make the towers project slightly in front of the two
flats, which contain ten pipes each. On each side of the case is a
wooden screen containing a wheel window. The towers are crowned
with open Gothic pinnacles, and the style is a mixture of Gothic and
Renaissance. The organ gallery has open wood work about it. Three
bellows stand in a loft on a level with the organ pipes. The blower
stands on a floor level with the organ gallery, and works the bellows
by means of ropes coming through the floor, as if he were ringing
bells. The organ has but one manual, C C to f3 fifty-four notes, and a
pedal from C C C to D, fifteen notes. Its naturals are black and its
sharps white. Its contents are:

Principal 4
Viole de Gambe 8
Quinte 3
Octave 2
Fagot Man. bass 8
Waldfloete disct 8
Octav bass 8
Sub-bass 16
Principal 8
Cornet (Qy.) 8
Bourdon 8
Floete 4
Mixtur 5 ranks
1}
2 } Draw stops without names.
3}

The Nave Organ in this Church is a very good specimen of a

hanging organ. 1869.
 (Larger)
FREIBURG IM BRESGAU
21ST. SEPTR. 1869.

ST. ——.—A Church (near the statue of Schwartz) the name of

which I omitted to learn. At the west end in a very deep gallery,
supported by many columns, is an organ of brown wood, in the
Teutonic taste of the seventeenth century. It has a large centre tower,
with a small flat of little pipes on each side; then a painted tower,
beyond which is a wing of pipes, looking like the open shutter of a
tryptich, the largest pipe being outside. The Choir Organ, which
stands well away from the great case, has three towers, the least in
the centre, with flats between. All the ornaments are painted white,
and the pipes stand their natural heights, with carved work so fitted
as to stand clear of them. The irregular effect is peculiar. 1869.

INNSBRUCK.
HOFKIRCHE.—In the Silver Chapel is an organ said to have
belonged to Philippina, who died in 1580. It is a curious old
instrument, with a montre of cedar, and all the work is very rough
and clumsy. 1855.
THE JESUITS’ CHURCH.—At the west end stands an organ in a
heavily designed case, painted white, with a very small Choir before
it, not higher than the front of the gallery. In the centre of the Great
Organ is a fanciful arrangement of pipes, forming a perspective. I
may mention that this Church has its flat roof painted so as to
represent three domes, a clever deception on first entering the
Church. In the Tyrol flat towers with seven pipes are common. 1855.

MAGDEBURG.
 THE CATHEDRAL.—At the west end is an organ having plain
metal pipes, and decorated with much bad modern Gothic
work. 1863.

MAYENCE.
THE CATHEDRAL.—In the north gallery of the western transept,
stands a small organ of last century work. It has two fronts, the chief
looking towards the west, and the other to the north. The case, which
is white, has much ornament about it. As the Cathedral was under
repair at the time I saw it, there may be some larger instrument in it
which I did not see. 1869.

MUNICH.
THE JESUITS’ CHURCH.—The only note I took of the organ
was that it had a very low Choir Organ, not higher than the front of
the gallery. 1863.

PRAGUE.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The organ at the west end is very much
divided. In the lowest gallery stands a sort of Choir Organ, above
which in another gallery stands a still smaller case, and again, above
this, is the Great Organ, which is a divided one. On the right of the
entrance, in a small side chapel, is the rudest organ I have yet met
with. It is closed with shutters, and a sort of screen of wood pipes
stands behind the player. 1863.
THE MONASTERY OF STRAHOW.—The organ stands at the
west end of the Church, and another at the north side of the choir, to
match which on the south side is a painting of a similar organ. 1863.

SCHWARZ.
PFARRKIRCHE.—This is a curious double Church, with two
naves and chancels, standing side by side. The organ stands at the
west end, and the Choir Organ in front goes round the pillar common
to both naves. 1863.
 NOTES ON SWISS ORGANS.

BERNE.
HE CATHEDRAL.—The organ stands at the west end. It
was originally built in 1727, and was repaired and greatly
enlarged in 1847 by F. Hass. It contains fifty-six stops and
has four rows of keys. I did not like the tone of the
instrument, it was loud and hard, the reeds and mixtures
too prominent, the trumpet stops but ordinary, and the vox humana
bad. The organ was played well by the organist, who gave us but a
short exhibition of his skill. The old case is retained, and consists of
five towers of seven pipes each, separated by flats of four pipes
each. The largest tower is in the centre, surmounted with a large
vase and many carved flowers. The next towers in size are at the
extremity of the instrument, surmounted by angels playing on
musical instruments. The least towers stand in the centre of the
intermediate spaces, surmounted by large vases and carvings of
musical instruments. The gallery in which it stands is modern
Gothic. 1863.

COIRE.
THE DOM (St. Lucius).—At the west end is an organ, erected in
1815, containing thirteen stops, one manual, and a pedal. The case
is painted brown, picked out with green, and is certainly ugly. It
stands before a plain round-headed window, and may be called a
divided organ. At each end of the case is a compartment with an
ogee top, containing seven pipes, next to which is a compartment
with a curvilinear top and fourteen pipes, leaving the centre of the
organ above the impost clear for about the width of the window,
except for a small frame, with double ogee top, containing a single
row of small pipes. On the north side of the case are posted wooden
trumpet tubes, and the tubes of a similar stop appear over the
smaller case on the north side. The bellows are in a chamber on the
north side of the organ, and a wooden tube brings the wind down to
it. I was told that behind the high altar was a very old small organ,
but I could not see it as the Church was under repair. 1869.

FREIBURG.
ST. NICOLAS.—This famous organ stands in a modern Gothic
gallery at the west end of the Church. The outline of the case (which
is also modern Gothic) is a large gable, having in the centre a tall
tower, with two tiers of seven pipes each. The compartments on
each side of this have each two tiers of pipes, between which is
wood work, containing a rose of Gothic tracery. Beyond this is a tall
tower of five pipes, then a flat of tall pipes, and the organ terminates
at each end with a tower of five pipes. All the work is crowned with
pinnacles and tabernacle work, the wood-work is pale oak, with
gilding about it. Although intended to be a handsome case I do not
quite like it. The tone of the organ is good, especially the echo, and
the vox humana has a great renown. 1868.

GENEVA.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The Great Organ, at the west end of the
building, has a modern Gothic case, with five towers, the largest in
the centre, and the least at the ends. It is not handsome. This organ
was built by Merklin and Schulse, of Brussels and Paris. It has forty-
six stops, three manuals, and pedal. Its quality was loud, and
wanting in diapason tone. The reeds are monotonous, and the vox
humana bad. The organist was a pupil of the late Herr Vogt, the
organist at Freiburg, who was one of the best of European
organists. 1868.
THE ENGLISH CHURCH has, in its west gallery, a poor-toned
organ, in a dingy-coloured Gothic case, consisting of three towers,
the largest in the centre, separated by flats, with two tiers of
pipes. 1868.

THE GREAT ST. BERNARD.

THE HOSPICE.—The organ, which stands at the west end,
appears to have been brought forward, as the colour of the wood-
work at the side shows, the front panels looking older than those
behind. The bellows stand in a high box on the north side of the
instrument, and are dated 1812, which I fancy must mean the date of
some reparation, as the case looks older. The front consists of three
flat towers, of five pipes each, with flats between. On the centre
tower, which is the tallest, is a standing figure, and above the side
towers are seated figures. It has black naturals, and the sharps have
an ivory line down them. The key-board has four octaves and two
notes, C C to D, no lower, C C#. The pedal-board is one octave and
four notes, C C C to E, no lower, C C C#, with an iron bar for a rest
over them. When I heard the organ it was much out of order, and the
wind was leaky. The full organ tone was still good.

CONTENTS.
 Prestant.
Bourdo’.
Nasard.
Viole.
Tierce.
Tromp.
Basse.
Cornet.
Flute.
Doublet.
Viole.
Tromp.
Clarion.
Trembt.

The gallery which holds the above is supported by pillars, and

the paintings in the compartments, beginning from the left, are a Pot
of Lilies, a Pelican and her Piety, King David, Instruments of Music
(this is the centre compartment), St. Cecilia, a Burning Cloud and a
Pot of Lilies. 1868.

LUCERNE.
HOFKIRCHE, CHURCH OF ST. LEODEGAR (St. Leger).—The
fine old organ of this Church stands at the west end, and was greatly
added to and repaired, by M. Hass, who lives close to the Church,
and who completed his work in 1862. It now contains seventy
sounding stops, all of which are throughout, none of the metal stops
having the lowest octave in wood, nor are closed pipes used instead
of open. There are four manuals and a pedal. The case consists of
five compartments. The centre, which is by far the largest, holds the
five lower pipes (of pure tin) of the thirty-two foot open, which have
very short feet. On each side of this, is a compartment of nine pipes
with very long feet. The outer flats have nine good-sized pipes, with
feet of average length. These two last compartments stand at an
angle with the other three compartments. All the pipe-work is bright
tin; the wood-work brown oak, with a quantity of fantastic carving.
There is a peculiar look about this front, it is a Screen, not a case to
the organ. The Great Organ has a good tone, the old tone, without
the bray of the reeds, which one so often gets in modern
instruments. The imitation of thunder is fair, the full power of the
organ good, the trumpets telling well, without being overpowering.
The vox humana was very good: “Quelle soprano!” exclaimed a
French lady behind me, as the organist was showing it off. When the
swell of the vox humana is closed, and the tremulant drawn, it makes
an excellent vox angelica, very soft and good, but trembling a little
too much, and the tone is so hushed, that people must be very quiet
in the Church to hear it. The organist, when I heard this instrument,
was a showy player, but he accompanied the Mass in a very efficient
manner, and with great judgment. A fugue he played at the end of
the service had only one fault, that was, its shortness. 1863, 1869.
THE ENGLISH CHURCH has a modern Gothic organ at its west
end. At each end of the case is a tall tower, of seven pipes, with
pinnacles of open work. Next is a gabled compartment, and the
centre consists of two flats, having a horizontal cornice. Much tawdry
gilt-work is spread about the case. The Choir Organ has three
compartments, with a flat cornice and much gilded carvings. I expect
this case is a sham, and is merely a buffet for the keys, as on the top
of it was a music-desk, and the player sat with his back to the Great
Organ. I did not like the tone of the instrument, which was but
fair. 1869.
 NOTES ON ITALIAN ORGANS.

BELLAGGIO.
RIVATE CHAPEL OF VILLA MELZI.—Just inside the
chapel, is a “grinder” with four or five stops, in a cabinet
case. 1869.

CHIAVENNA.
SAN LORENZO.—At the west end is an organ of pale-coloured
varnished wood, with gilt ornaments. It consists of a round arched
centre, with flat wings. The gallery in which it stands, is level with the
capitals of the nave arches, and is carried out on each side as far as
the first pillars, making two excellent side galleries for a divided
choir. 1869.

COMO.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The two organs stand under the eastern
arches of the nave, in galleries, which stand on elliptical arches,
borne on four columns. Their cases, the whole of which are gilt and
burnished, consist of two Corinthian or composite columns, bearing
a broken pediment. The pipe-work is covered with a blue curtain. A
statue of the Virgin forms the centre ornament of the north organ,
and on the southern instrument is one of a bishop. The back of this
latter instrument has a Renaissance screen, of curious lattice-work,
brightly gilt. That of the north organ is simply plain wood. There are
seats and music desks in the gallery in the front of each organ for
the choristers. For antiphonal music, nothing can be better than the
arrangement of these instruments. The position at Milan is good, but
this is preferable. 1869.

ISOLA BELLA.
IN THE CHURCH (not in the Chapel of the Palace), in a gallery
at the west end, stands an organ, in a white painted case, picked out
with colour, consisting of merely two pilasters, supporting a low
pediment. The pipes, which looked quite new, are bright tin, the
tallest standing in the centre, and the smallest half-way between the
centre and the sides of the case, against which stand tall pipes, so
that the arrangement is somewhat like a W. The pipes show their
real heights, their tops all being below the top of the case, without
any bad effect from want of symmetry; if anything, the effect is good.
Some wood bourdons, standing outside the instrument on each side,
show that at some time or other additions have been made to it. I
may mention that it is common in Italy for the pipes to show their real
heights, and for the montre to be covered with curtains or blinds, or
sometimes with pictures, when the instrument is not in use. 1869.

MADONNA DI TIRANO.
IL SANTUARIO.—An organ with a very fine case, well carved on
both sides, stands across the transept, the montre covered by a
large picture.
 MILAN.
IL DUOMO (the Cathedral).—On each side of the choir stand
two fine organs, externally both alike; the back and front of each is
very similar, the latter having more ornaments. Their bases on the
choir side, are faced with dark wood, that facing the aisle is marble.
Their montres are closed with painted shutters, their choir front has
two Corinthian or composite columns, with a flat entablature. The
front towards the aisle, has similar columns, and a broken carved
pediment. Each organ is surmounted with a circular temple, with
statues in the niches, and covered with a dome, with a statue on its
summit. All the work about the instrument is gilt, the pipes are left
their natural colour and their correct heights, and their tops do not
reach the carved work among which they stand. The five largest are
arranged in the centre, and the compartment on each side of these
has two tiers, with nine pipes each. Beyond them is an outer
compartment of five pipes. I did not think the quality of these
instruments so good as Mr. Hopkins states them to be in his work on
“The Organ.” The quality of the northern organ was sweet, but
lacking in power. The voicing of the flute was very good. The vox
humana (said to be a flute stop, as reeds are not permitted by the
Ambrosian rite) was very suggestive, and had a peculiar intonation,
which was very pleasant, although not a good imitation of the human
voice. The player’s style was very operatic, and the singing
resembled the old Madrigal style. I like the full tone of the southern
organ, rather better than that of the northern one. It was weak for the
large building in which it stands, and more diapason and pedal work
was much wanted. I did not hear the solo stops of this organ, but
there was “the old tone” in the instrument, which was pleasant to
hear. 1869.
SAN AMBROGIO.—The organ has a long low case of several
compartments painted white, and the montre is covered with dark
blue curtains. It stands close to the dome, over the south transept, in
what was originally the women’s gallery. 1869.
SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERAN.—The organ in a case, consisting
of two pilasters with entablature over a round arch, with a curtain