The many faces of obligation

Abstract

My response to the commentaries focuses on four issues: (1) the diversity both within and between cultures of the many different faces of obligation; (2) the possible evolutionary roots of the sense of obligation, including possible sources that I did not consider; (3) the possible ontogenetic roots of the sense of obligation, including especially children's understanding of groups from a third-party perspective (rather than through participation, as in my account); and (4) the relation between philosophical accounts of normative phenomena in general - which are pitched as not totally empirical - and empirical accounts such as my own. I have tried to distinguish comments that argue for extensions of the theory from those that represent genuine disagreement.