Everyday Ethics

Anyone hoping to attend a PhD program in philosophy this fall is familiar with the date of April 15th.  This is the day that funded offers must be either accepted or rejected, and as I write this, that day is tomorrow.  As of two weeks ago, I was fairly certain of my fate.  I had a funded offer in hand from a program that I was very excited to be going to, and no prospects on the horizon that might have trumped it.  My journey appeared to be over, and I was grateful.

Fast-forward to April 14th.  I still have the aforementioned funded offer in hand, but have refrained from formally accepting.  Why, you might ask?  Because somehow, my top choice, where I was a depressing 19th on the waiting list, has emerged as a legitimate alternative.  I am now 3rd, with what has been described as a “decent” chance of getting an offer, whatever that means.  In a matter of days, I went from a certain future to the painful burden of waiting-list purgatory.  The good news:  I know I am going to a program that I can feel good about.  The bad:  I don’t yet know which one.

It has been amusing to watch the role of the blogosphere in all of this.  Many angry individuals have posted threatening comments to persons like myself, alternately begging or threatening us to accept or decline our funded offer.  Personally, I find my position to be a perfectly reasonable one.  I am holding out for one legitimate possibility that would without question trump my funded offer.  If that doesn’t happen, I’m taking what I’m holding.  However, those who have been sitting on multiple funded offers for months because they “just can’t decide between Rutgers and Princeton” are truly jackasses, and I fully support telling them so.

In the background of this anxious scenario is a looming moral dilemma that I find myself struggling with.  It is possible, as often occurs, that my wait-list possibility will be unable to give me a definitive answer on the 15th, and I may have to accept my funded offer in the meantime in order to secure it.  Even then, it is possible that I will eventually be accepted off the wait-list at the other program, in which case my desire would be to accept this new, better offer.  However, I would also likely feel that my initial acceptance of the first offer constituted a contractual agreement with the other school, and that I have a duty to honor this agreement.

I am told that it is not at all uncommon, nor deeply frowned upon, for people to initially accept an offer and then retract this acceptance after April 15th has passed, in order to accept a late-blooming better offer.  There is something reasonable about this.  After all, the decision about where to earn your PhD affects the next several years of your life, as well as your potential future prospects.  It seems silly to let something like a sense of duty override such an important life decision.

On the other hand, there does seem to be something objectionable about making a commitment that you only intend to keep if it ends up being in your interest to do so.  This is not how contractual agreements generally work, and it would be a huge problem if contracts did function this way.  Further, being someone who keeps his word is important to how I define my deepest self, and it is troubling to even consider acting in opposition to that ideal.  Breaking my word would be akin to denying an essential part of who I am.

Thus, the seeds of a moral dilemma are planted, and everyday stress is made worse by a dose of moral stress.  In some sense, this is simply a clash of difficult normative questions.  Are duties absolute, or are there instances where self-interest can be overriding?  Is there even anything wrong with acting in one’s self-interest when external circumstances (like a deadline) are what prompted the possibility of moral indiscretion in the first place?  Are contractual agreements binding even when they are coerced (again, by a deadline requiring an answer)?

Thankfully, I do not need to resolve these questions in order to make a decision about where to seek my PhD in philosophy, though I may have to think about them later in order to feel comfortable with some of my possible choices.  The irony is that being a decent philosopher is a big part of why this potential dilemma is even a possibility, yet it is also what makes it such a troubling scenario.  I guess it’s simply the price one pays for trying to live ethically, rather than merely studying ethics.

About the Author

Elijah Weber is a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He holds a Master's degree in philosophy from Colorado State University, and Bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy from Chapman Univerity. He currently lives in Bowling Green, Ohio with his wife Laura, his newborn son Brandon, and his feline life-partner Monte.