"The Slow Clap Phenomenon"
Abstract: Some behaviors are such that expressions of approval, pride, or smugness regarding their performance elicits irritation or mild exasperation -- the sort of reaction that one might express with a roll of the eyes or, if one is inclined toward cheeky sarcasm, with a slow clap and a blank expression. I call this the slow clap phenomenon. Slow-clap behaviors, I argue, are behaviors with a peculiar status: their nonperformance can be blameworthy but their performance cannot be praiseworthy. We can think of them as setting the baseline of minimal moral decency. Since these behaviors' performance is not praiseworthy, regardless of how clear it is that the behavior is morally required and regardless of how well-motivated the agent is, they constitute counterexamples to a broad swath of contemporary theories of moral worth. In this talk I explain all the above and offer a diagnosis of the slow clap phenomenon: slow-clap behaviors are those such that anyone with a minimally adequate quality of will would experience the decision to perform them as a no-brainer. Along the way, I comment on the relationship between slow-clap behaviors and supererogatory behaviors, offer accounts of what it is for a decision to be a no-brainer and of what it is for an agent to experience it as a no-brainer, and propose some ways of precisifying the quality-of-will view by specifying what I call the standards for adequate caring.
Zoe Johnson King is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Harvard.
