objective rightness In ethics, an action is objectively right for a person to perform (on some occasion) if the agent’s performing it (on that occasion) really is right, whether or not the agent, or anyone else, believes it is. An action is subjectively right for a person to perform (on some occasion) if the agent believes, or perhaps justifiably believes, of that action that it is (objectively) right. For example, according to a version of utilitarianism, an action is objectively right provided the action is optimific in the sense that the consequences that would result from its performance are at least as good as those that would result from any alternative action the agent could instead perform. Were this theory correct, then an action would be an objectively right action for an agent to perform (on some occasion) if and only if that action is in fact optimific. An action can be both objectively and subjectively right or neither. But an action can also be subjectively right, but fail to be objectively right, as where the action fails to be optimific (again assuming that a utilitarian theory is correct), yet the agent believes the action is objectively right. And an action can be objectively right but not subjectively right, where, despite the objective rightness of the action, the agent has no beliefs about its rightness or believes falsely that it is not objectively right.
This distinction is important in our moral assessments of agents and their actions. In cases where we judge a person’s action to be objectively wrong, we often mitigate our judgment of the agent when we judge that the action was, for the agent, subjectively right. This same objective–subjective distinction applies to other ethical categories such as wrongness and obligatoriness, and some philosophers extend it to items other than actions, e.g., emotions.
See also ETHICAL OBJECTIVISM , SUBJEC- TIVISM , UTILITARIANIS. M.C.T.