Often these purely philosophical articles are so obtuse I can't make heads nor tails of them. Not this one. And thank God we didn't have to handle the mineshafts in last year's Sept-Oct!
What exactly do we mean when we ask the deliberative question, "What should I do"? It's surprisingly elusive. With a bit of work, we can pin down a behaviouristic kind of answer -- specifying when it's appropriate to offer and to challenge various responses to the question. But I suspect that in a more fundamental/philosophical sense, it isn't really a well-formed, determinate question at all.
First, note that we're not asking what would be objectively best. (Consider Parfit's Mineshafts case. You know that one of option A or B will save all ten lives, but the other will save none, and you don't know which is which. Option C is guaranteed to save nine lives. Clearly, the answer to the deliberator's question is "choose option C", even though this is the one option we can know is not objectively best.) More...
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