Suppose that you have been invited to attend an ex-partner’s wedding and that the best thing you can do is accept the invitation and be pleasant at the wedding. But, suppose furthermore that if you do accept the invitation, you’ll freely decide to get inebriated at the wedding and ruin it for everyone, which would be the worst outcome. The second best thing to do would be to simply decline the invitation. In light of these facts, should you accept or decline the invitation? (Zimmerman 2006: 153). The answer to this question hinges on the actualism/possibilism debate in ethics, which concerns the relationship between an agent’s free actions and her moral obligations. In particular, it focuses on whether facts about how an agent would freely act in certain contexts play any role in determining the agent’s moral obligations. Historically, the debate has primarily arisen in the work of impartial consequentialists with an interest in deontic logic. However, its relevance is not limited to such versions of consequentialism. The debate concerns the scope of acts that are relevant options for the agent, which is an issue that cuts across, and has substantive implications for, a wide range of normative ethical views. As such, the debate brings into focus issues of central importance for any normative ethical theory.
