Right-making features: Do they speak?

I have been reading and submitting ideas, gaining feedback in the last few weeks. This has led me to decide that I am going to focus upon a metaphysical idea of what a principle is, and how it makes actions right or wrong. This idea is a big part of Dancy, but it is something which has also been discussed by a little by Shafer-Landau in his paper moral-rules. I am going to explore an aspect of this idea which I find both interesting and slippery.

If actions are made right by their non-moral features, or the non-moral features of the situation they occur within, then these features are right-making. It seems easy to point to cases where a non-moral feature of an action makes that action right: the generosity of the action of buying a hot drink for a homeless person in the wintertime makes the action good. It is harder to point to a non-moral feature of situations which are right-making more generally. Generously giving out the stolen goods you have acquired rather than returning them to their owners is not a better act because it is generous.

Dancy makes much of this kind of distinction. In Ethics Without Principles He discusses the difference between two interpretations of holism: the thesis in the theory of reasons that a feature that is a reason in one case may be no reason at all, or an opposite reason, in another. The first interpretation might be of the kind he calls a 'Brandom-style approach. Robert Brandom gives a holistic outline of reasons which Dancy calls 'non-monotonic. Brandom gives these conditions:

1. If I strike this dry, well-made match, then it will light. (p -> q)
2. If p and the match is in a very strong electromagnetic field, then it will not light. ((p&r)->¬q)
3. If p and r and the match is in a Faraday cage, then it will light. ((p&q&r)->q)
4. If p and r and s and the room is evacuated of oxygen, then it will not light. ((p&q&r&s&t)->¬q)

This set of conditionals offers a different approach to how reasons might operate together than Dancy sees himself as advocating. Dancy believes this to be a different kind of holism than his, because each combination of features (p, p&r, p&r&s, p&r&s&t) speaks in favour of the match lighting or not lighting. Dancy wants to say that a single feature may in one situation be a reason in favour of one outcome in one situation, and in another situation be a reason against the same thing occurring. In one case it is right to do X because of feature Y, and another case it is wrong to do X because of Y. When the features add up they retain their identity, but they might change their weight and force.

Interesting distinction. My first impression is that it might not quite add up, but I am taking Dancy with a pinch of salt at the moment.