Chapter 3 Three Dogmas about Promising Margaret Gilbert Abstract Philosophers who discuss everyday promises (as opposed to legal con- tracts) generally make the following three assumptions: when one who makes a promise is thereby obligated to do what was promised, that obligation is a matter of his (or her) being morally required to act as promised, this requirement deriving from a general moral principle or principles; the obligation of a promise cannot simply be willed into being; promises whose content is such that one is morally required not to act as promised are not obligating. I argue that these three assump- tions are problematic, given two intuitive points: every promise obli- gates the promisor; the obligation in question is directed in a sense I elaborate. I sketch an account of promising that respects these intuitive points, among others, and which does not support any of the three assumptions. According to this account, roughly, promisor and prom- isee together create—by virtue of mutual expressions of the will to do so—a joint commitment which obligates the promisor to act as promised, irrespective of the content of the promise. The kind of obliga- tion in question is not a matter of moral requirement derived from a general moral principle but is a function of the existence of any joint commitment as such. The topic of promising connects with several broader issues. Among these is the question of how human beings can constrain or bind themselves with respect to their future actions. By promising, one binds oneself in a particu- larly intractable way: one who promises another that he (or she) will do something cannot unilaterally unbind himself but awaits release from the person to whom he has promised, his “promisee.” 1 There is a vast and expanding philosophical literature on promising. My main negative aim here is to highlight and question the three interrelated 80