ABSTRACT
The justification of statements of obligation must be a primary concern of any general inquiry into justification procedure. They are put forward as complementary procedures as a part of the effort of co-ordinating axiological, deontological, and agent morality approaches to moral theory. The procedures take one from the valuation of conduct options through their evaluation, is through the balancing of goods and bads to determine which conduct options are right to do. Professor Searle's admirable article outlines a procedure for such inferences very carefully. Obligations may conflict in the sense that two or more institutions by which one's options are bounded entail conflicting ought statements. It is convenient to begin with the personalness feature; for its function here is the clearest model for the way the other two functions. Whatever value priorities are operative in the purposiveness of life also translate directly into presumptive criteria. But moral scepticism cannot survive on occasional impasses, no matter how poignant they are.
