One of the things that we're doing a fair bit of here at the NEH summer institute is playing tennis.
Yesterday at lunch before our afternoon match, I made the following comment about playing tennis to one of the other institute's participants (who is not among the subset of participants who plays tennis):
"I ought to be more competitive than I am."
It may be trivial for me to say what immediately follows the comma, but I think that this statement is true. If one reads the 'ought' here as a pragmatic modality, then I think the statement comes out true. If I were to care more about winning, I'd be more likely to play better. So in order to play better, I should become more competitive. There is a large body of psychological and performative literature that supports the pragmatic reading.
But I think that the above statement is also true if one reads the 'ought' as a moral ought. That is, I take it that my undercompetitiveness is (or at least can be) a moral failing. My guess is that many of you, like my conversation partner yesterday, will find this to be implausible. But let me try and motivate the claim, with some qualifications.
First qualification: if my playing partners were equally noncompetitive, then I think my undercompetativeness would not be a moral failing. But insofar as my partners care about the game--rather than just, say, the exercise involved--then I think that I'm harming those that I'm playing with (to an admittedly minor degree) by not caring more, and thus not playing better. Insofar as I ought to care about those relevant things that my partners care about (including playing a good match, winning, etc...), then I ought morally to be more competitive.
Second qualification: if my playing partners are hypercompetitive--that is, competitive to a moral fault, caring about winning more than other things they ought to care about more--then I think I needn't put any moral weight on how much they care about playing--and so I do not have the moral obligation in question.
Finally, let me say that I grant that on the scale of moral failings, this one (if in fact it is one) is a comparatively minor one. But being a comparative minor moral failing is still a moral failing.
I don't suspect you'd find too much support for this position among major contemporary moral theorists. But one person who just might go along with it is Adam Smith. For Smith, moral judgments are a product of sympathy. Sympathy, in turn, is an ability to harmonize with the sentiments of another when we imaginatively place ourselves in their situation. If I put myself in your situation and feel the same thing that you appear to be feeling, I sympathize and therefore approve of your sentiments. If there's a failure of sympathy, that leads to disapproval.
Now, I don't know about tennis. But there are a few points at which Smith says that a failure to experience a 'negative' emotion can lead to a failure of sympathy and thus a proper negative moral evaluation. Someone who is unjustly insulted, for instance, and fails to become angry would not gain our sympathy - for *we* would be angry in his situation, and think he ought to as well. His failure to do so seems a sign of a pusillanimous character.
You really should read his Theory of Moral Sentiments sometime! It's a very pleasant and pretty easy read, and an important book for anyone with interests in moral psychology.