A Quick Look: The Debate Surrounding Ethical Vegetarianism

Singer’s Utilitarian Defense of Ethical Vegetarianism

Perhaps the most publicly vocal philosopher in favor of vegetarianism (and veganism) is Peter Singer. Singer, a utilitarian, once stated that he is a vegetarian in virtue of his utilitarian views.^[1] Utilitarianism is the view that the best moral action to perform is the one that maximizes net utility, net pleasure over pain, all things considered. Thus, if animals are due moral consideration, they are to be included in the utilitarian calculus about choosing one’s diet. Singer, of course, thinks that animals are due moral consideration, that is, the underlying principle that grounds human equality should be extended to include equal moral consideration for all animals.^[2]

According to utilitarianism, the moral consideration of animals corresponds with animals’ experiences of pleasure and pain. Due to the treatment of animals farmed for food, it seems largely clear that this treatment is not morally best. In other words, the morally best option is at least vegetarianism (but probably veganism, or “flexible veganism). But as Singer points out, condemning these practices might not entail the endorsement of a vegetarian diet.^[3] So, Singer’s strategy is to argue that the ways in which condemning meat-farming practices might not entail a vegetarian diet, are wrong. 

First, one might think revising our meat-farming practices can undermine the possible moral requirement of vegetarianism. But Singer thinks that even if such revisions were made, there is a significant “danger of our sliding back into the methods of treating animals in use today.”^[4] That is, any morally important change to our utilitarian calculus will inevitably be reversed over time in returning to our old practices. So, presumably one cannot use this route for severing the connection between condemning our present meat-farming practices and the demand of vegetarianism.

Second, we do not appear to have any actual idea if the utilitarian calculations work out all things considered. That is, while the pain produced by meat-farming practices is obvious, we do not know whether this “is enough to outweigh both the pleasures people get from eating animals and the disruption that abolishing factory farming would cause to the lives of those dependent on raising animals for food.” Singer thinks, however, that these calculations are mostly worked out already. In Animal Liberation, Singer discusses in detail the pain that animals experience under our typical farming methods^[5] and the likely trivial changes in pleasure between eating meat and switching to a vegetarian diet.^[6] What has not been addressed is “the loss of utility to people involved in raising animals likely to result from our all becoming vegetarians.”^[7] But Singer thinks that these losses can be far outweighed by the reduction of meat-eating in the western world. Redirecting food for animals to “hungry and malnourished humans who cannot afford to pay the prices paid for these crops by factory farmers,”^[8] vegetarianism’s health benefits, and a reduction of animal waste altogether, the utilitarian calculations will likely produce an endorsement of vegetarianism.

The third and final way condemning animal farming practices might not entail vegetarianism is that there is no utilitarian connection between abolishing factory farming and an obligation to becoming vegetarians. Singer tries to establish this connection in various ways. I will only prevent one, that vegetarianism establishes a more legitimate platform to condemn the exploitation of animals.^[9] For example, an animal rights lobbyist may have some success in progressing animal rights but can also be taken far less seriously when not adhering to a vegetarian diet. Thus, a vegetarian diet better serves the purposes of condemning our meat-farming practices, and subsequently should adopt a vegetarian diet.

A Virtue Ethics Stance on Vegetarianism

Other arguments, however, argue for vegetarianism in different ways. Due to the space limitations of this paper, I will only briefly mention two others: virtue ethics and rights-based accounts. Those that argue from virtue ethics typically think that utilitarian (and rights-based) arguments are not sufficient for establishing an obligation to adopt vegetarianism. For instance, Rosalind Hursthouse thinks that adopting a vegetarian diet is something a virtuous person would do. Given the factory farming practices as they are, Hursthouse asks if we can deny that these practices are callous and cruel, or that eating meat strictly for our pleasure (not needing meat) is greedy or self-indulgent.^[10] The response is that we cannot deny these claims. The literature on the suffering inflicted on animals in factory farming practices are irreconcilable with practicing the virtue of compassion. The same is true with the literature on living healthy lifestyles without meat consumption, or not needing to eat meat. 

It is true, then, that practicing the virtues would ultimately lead to adopting a vegetarian diet. By extension, the same may also perhaps apply to adopting a vegan lifestyle. Hursthouse makes mention, however, of instances where politeness and consideration may perhaps permit one eat meat dishes from well-meaning, but meat-eating friends. That is, at least until most or all of one’s friends are eventually aware their vegetarian habits. So, as Hurstshouse suggests, virtue ethics can be the grounds for reaching “roughly the same practical conclusions” as utilitarian arguments for vegetarianism.^[11] It is also bears similarities to Cora Diamond’s argument on the matter, who claims that, roughly, respect for animals is due and we should not eat animals because a virtuous person would not do so, just as a virtuous person would not eat a human corpse.^[12]

Regan’s Rights-Based Account and Vegetarianism

Still, others employ a different strategy, such as grounding vegetarianism in some account of rights. Tom Regan uses this strategy, first assuming that “all humans possess an equal natural right to life.”^[13] This natural equal right to life is possessed by humans because “the life of every human being has ‘intrinsic worth,’” or inherent value.^[14] Inherent value is grounded in the satisfaction of desires, the pursuit of interests, which add value to one’s life, and such satisfaction is equally good among all humans.^[15] According to Regan, all beings that are experiencing subjects of a life possess inherent value.^[16] Despite the fact that this approach will adequately account for all humans, a natural consequence is that it will also include animals. Many non-human animals are also experiencing subjects of a life, i.e., they have interests, the satisfaction of which bring value to their lives. Since those with inherent value have a right to be treated in ways that respect that value, any experiencing subject of a life has a negative right to not be harmed; harming these rightsholders would disrespect their inherent value. Factory farming, however, does not respect the inherent value of animals, i.e., they wrongly deprive animals from pursuing their interests, the same reason why killing humans is wrong. There may be ways in which rights to life may be overridden, but overall, the equal natural right to life of animals entails that factory farming is morally wrong, given the significant harms imposed on animals. Of course, people are not purchasing experiencing subjects of a life at the grocery when they purchase lifeless meat. But by purchasing and eating animals (or other animals-based products), one is actively participating in a practice that systematically exploits and violates the rights of animals. So, purchasing and eating animals (and other animals-based products) is also morally wrong.

Some Defenses of Meat-Eating

Arguments for adopting vegetarian or vegan diets can take a variety of different routes. As has been shown, while some use utilitarian considerations, others have used virtue ethics or rights-based approaches. The fact that many differing ethics approaches have provided strong arguments that conclude similar things, that we ought to adopt ethical vegetarianism or veganism, many view this large consensus as a strong mark in favor of such diets and lifestyles. But there are others that, despite a significant consensus on the issue, provide arguments for the permissibility of eating meat. The permissibility of eating meat, however, should be qualified in one of two ways before discussing specific arguments. The permissibility of eating meat could take the form of the strong claim that it is always permissible to eat meat. Virtually no one in the ethics literature on the topic hold this strong claim. Instead, many hold the weaker claim that it is at least sometimes permissible to eat meat. But this may possibly be held by many ethical vegetarians when there are exceptional circumstances, say a survival situation. Thus, many of the arguments for the moral permissibility of eating meat are understood as holding the weaker claim in otherwise normal, or non-exceptional, circumstances. It is to these arguments I know turn.

Arguments for vegetarianism, especially pertaining to factory farming, are charged with not taking conclusions to their necessary ends. Donald Bruckner holds that the force of even basic arguments for vegetarianism^[17] depend on the premise that “it is wrong (knowingly) to cause, or support practices that cause, extensive, unnecessary harm to animals.”^[18] Presumably, this is supposed to lead to a vegetarian diet. But Bruckner thinks that vegetarianism is one of two conclusions one can make in condemning factory farming. That is, there is an alternative to eating a completely plant-based diet, eating roadkill. There is no harm caused in picking up and processing road killed meat for consumption, “perfectly nutritious meat.”^[19] Considering the massive quantity of roadkill reported from automobile accidents, such meat would provide a significant supply of meat products. Some vegetarians agree that such practices are permissible, that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with merely eating meat as such.

Bruckner goes further, though, and holds that the argument not only entails that eating roadkill is permissible, but that it is morally required. Crop agriculture results in the deaths of significant amounts of rabbits, field mice, birds, etc. While there is debate as to whether factory farming or crop agriculture causes more harm to animals, harvesting roadkill causes no harm to animals. Therefore, according the previously mentioned premise of extensive, unnecessary harm to animals, factory farming arguments entail “an obligation not to be strict vegetarians but to eat some roadkill.”^[20]Arguments that appeal to environmental harm, will similarly lead to the same conclusion. That is, “collecting roadkill likely produces less CO2 than vegetable farming.”^[21] The same is true of other gases and chemical compounds used in both factory farming and vegetable farming. Therefore, both arguments lead to an obligation to consume some roadkill and reject strict vegetarianism.

Earlier I mentioned that virtually no ethicists hold the strong claim that eating meat is always permissible. Timothy Hsiao, however, comes close. Because Hsiao does not think animals are due moral consideration, stronger claims about meat eating can be made. First, why are animals not granted moral status? Hsiao’s reason is that animals lack rational agency.^[22] None of what has been claimed argues that animals do not experience pain or that such pain is not bad. Hsiao holds that animal pain is in fact bad, but not in any morally important way. The pain inflicted on animals for meat consumption is justified because of two important reasons: i) our nutritional interest in eating meat “is a moral welfare interest,” and ii) the superiority of moral over non-moral welfare interests.^[23] So, since animals do have welfare interests, they are not moral, and as humans, our moral welfare interests take priority. Thus, in rejecting the moral status of animals, Hsiao’s view entails a critique of both utilitarian and rights-based arguments for vegetarianism. 

Hsiao has a separate argument, however, that is problematic for arguments appealing to virtues. That is, factory farming practices no doubt cause harm to animals. But does inducing harm entail a wrong? Hursthouse thinks yes, such harm is a form of cruelty, while Hsiao is suspicious of harm entailing a wrong. Since Hsiao thinks animals lack moral status, factory farming might be cruel if “it is through harming animals that persons are wronged.”^[24] So, in our western world where dogs are seen as human companions, treating dogs as factory farms treat livestock would be cruel. For pets are granted “the role of an honorary family member.”^[25] Cruelty here is derived from significant harm done to a member of the family unit. But the same would not be true in cultures where dogs are not granted this role. Similarly, livestock in factory farms are also not granted this role. So, the industrial farming of non-pet animals (cows, pigs, chickens, etc.) is not cruel, for it does not wrong humans, but contributes to our welfare. 

References

Bruckner, D. W. 2015. “Strict Vegetarianism is Immoral,” in The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat, Ben Bramble and Bob Fischer (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press.

Diamond, C. 1978. “Eating Meat and Eating People,” Philosophy, 53(206): 465-479. 

Hsiao, T. 2015. “In Defense of Eating Meat,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 28(2): 277–291.

Hsiao, T. 2017. “Industrial Farming is Not Cruel to Animals,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 30(1): 37–54.

Hursthouse, R. 2006. “Applying Virtue Ethics to Our Treatment of the Other Animals,” in The Practice of Virtue, J. Welchman (ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Rachels, J. 2004. “The Basic Argument for Vegetarianism,” in Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat, Steve F. Sapontzis (ed.), Amherst: Prometheus Books.

Regan, T. 1975. “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 5(2): 181- 214. 

Regan, T. 1985. “The Case for Animal Rights.”

Singer, P. 1974. “All Animals Are Equal,” Philosophical Exchange, 5(1): 103-116. 

Singer, P. 1977. Animal Liberation, New York: Harper Collins.

Singer, P. 1980. “Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 9(4): 325-337.

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^[1] Singer (1980) “Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism”

^[2] Singer (1974) “All Animals are Equal”

^[3] Singer (1980: 330-331)

^[4] Ibid., 331

^[5] Singer (1974) especially chapter 3.

^[6] Singer (1974) especially chapter 4.

^[7] Singer (1980: 333)

^[8] Ibid., 333-334

^[9] Ibid., 334-337

^[10] Hursthouse (2006) “Applying Virtue Ethics to Our Treatment of the Other Animals”

^[11] Ibid., 143

^[12] Diamond (1978) “Eating Meat and Eating People”

^[13] Regan (1975: 205) “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism” 

^[14] Ibid., 206

^[15] Ibid., 208

^[16] Regan (1985)

^[17] For examples, see Singer (1977) Animal Liberation and Rachels (2004) “The Basic Argument for Vegetarianism”

^[18] Bruckner (2015: 31) “Strict Vegetarianism is Immoral” 

^[19] Ibid., 34

^[20] Ibid., 36

^[21] Ibid., 39

^[22] Hsiao (2015: 279-280) “In Defense of Eating Meat”

^[23] Ibid., 280

^[24] Hsiao (2017: 49) ““Industrial Farming is Not Cruel to Animals”

^[25] Ibid., 50

A Quick Look: The Moral Equality of Combatants in War

Michael Walzer holds the view that combatants have an equal right to fight, whether or not their state is pursuing a just cause.^[1] This is one part of a larger view called the moral equality of combatants, which extends beyond the scope of rights to fight or kill to equal moral status as such. In other words, the moral equality of combatants (MEC) holds that “combatants on all sides must have the same moral status, hence the same moral rights, immunities, and liabilities.”^[2]

Walzer’s Moral Equality of Combatants

Why is this of any import? Because there are two sides in war, a just side and an unjust side. Typically, the aggressor of a war is the unjust side, and the just side engages in combat for self-defense or perhaps some other humanitarian reason. But this sense of just and unjust sides of war pertain to reasons for war, or jus ad bellum conditions. There are other conditions, jus in bello conditions, that pertain to the means by which a war is fought.^[3] Presumably, combatants on either side of war should not be judged according to jus ad bellum conditions, for combatants have little power in decisions about one’s military going to war. That is, it is military leaders, and not combatants, that are responsible for initiating a war.^[4] Instead, they ought to be judged according to their conduct in war, that is, according to jus in bello conditions.^[5]

At this level, however, what distinctions are there between unjust and just combatants? With the exception of fighting for either a just or unjust side of a war, combatants on both sides appear to be behaving in the same way. That is, combatants follow the commands of their authority to fight and protect their comrades from continuous threats of an enemy attack. Barring cases in which a combatant commits war crimes, each set of combatants is threatened by the other. As mentioned earlier, Walzer ultimately thinks that this entails an equal right to fight. If all combatants share this equal right, however, it seems that just and unjust combatants are morally on a par. Thus, we have a basic account of the moral equality of combatants. The attraction to MEC, then, just is that all combatants have an equal right to life, a natural right held by all persons, but also an equal right to fight, given the nature of war. There does not appear to be any obvious way in which just and unjust combatants are morally distinct. For this reason, each respective side of war is permitted to fight in self-defense against the threats of the enemy side.

McMahan’s Objection From Liability

The most prolific critic of MEC, Jeff McMahan, holds that there are moral differences between just and unjust combatants. The morally relevant difference is derived from McMahan’s account of liability. The idea here is that one is made liable to attack in war if one is morally responsible “for an objectively unjustified or wrongful threat.”^[6] On one interpretation, “a wrongful threat is a threat of wrongful harm – that is, harm to which the victim is not liable – posed by action that is objectively wrong.”^[7] Under this interpretation, unjust combatants pose wrongful threats when attacking just combatants, since their reason for war is objectively unjustified according to jus ad bellum conditions. But just combatants are not liable since their threats are objectively justified. Thus, just and unjust combatants do not share an equal moral status, for unjust combatants are liable to attack while just combatants are not. 

On a different interpretation, a ‘wrongful threat’ is a threat of wrongful harm regardless of the action that poses that threat. Here, just combatants can be made liable if their attacks threaten any non-combatants, such as innocent civilians within a blast radius of an enemy military base. While this may occur occasionally within war, McMahan thinks that such threats are negligible. That is, drivers pose negligible threats of wrongful harm to innocent bystanders despite not being liable to defensive harm. Similarly, just combatants do not aim to harm non-combatants, but threats of war will at times threaten non-combatants as mere side effects. So, on one hand, just as drivers are not liable to defensive harm because of negligible threats, so just combatants are also not liable. On the other hand, “the threat, either to just combatants or to others, posed by a particular unjust combatant at any time during war is generally quite serious.”^[8]Therefore, according to this interpretation, just combatants are not liable to defensive harm during war, while unjust combatants are liable. 

Thus, McMahan’s account of liability attempts to show that there is at least one morally important difference between just and unjust combatants. That is, just combatants are not liable to be attacked (unless they violate jus in bello rules), and consequently unjust combatants never gain the self-defensive right to kill just combatants. Since just combatants do maintain this right to self-defense, they do no wrong when killing unjust combatants in a defensive war. Since MEC allows unjust combatants to attack non-liable agents, just combatants that maintain their right to life, we should reject MEC.

Renzo’s Middle-ground Response to McMahan

It appears then, that the difference between Walzer and McMahan’s view is how jus ad bellum conditions affect combatants’ permissibility to fight in war. As we have seen in McMahan’s critique of Walzer, unjust combatants’ liability to attack, that is, being a legitimate target of attack, is due to the fact that unjust combatants are fighting on objectively unjustified grounds. Critics of McMahan, however, disagree that unjust combatants do not have justification for fighting in war. Massimo Renzo argues that combatants have a pro-tanto obligation to obey orders.^[9]

Just as it is generally accepted that legitimate political authorities can place us under pro-tanto obligations to obey that authority, Renzo holds that this general principle carries over into the obligations of combatants. That is, combatants gain a presumptive duty to obey the order to fight in a war.^[10] So, this pro-tanto obligation to obey is what justifies and permits unjust combatants to fight in war. But Renzo also deploys some constraints on such obligations; for even unjust combatants have a duty to determine whether or not their state is requiring them to act unjustly.^[11] Therefore, what Renzo coins as his “Presumptive Reasons Model,” can be understood as the following: We have presumptive reasons for action that grant us a pro-tanto obligation to obey orders unless (i) those orders are not given by a legitimate state, or (ii) we have good reason, or enough evidence, to think that we are being ordered to act unjustly.^[12]

So, according to Renzo, so long as unjust combatants satisfy these conditions, they are justified in fighting in war. The important difference, then, between just and unjust combatants (that satisfy Renzo’s conditions) will preliminarily be that unjust combatants happen to be working towards an unjust cause, whereas just combatants are not. Thus, contra Walzer, jus ad bellum conditions at least sometimes affect combatants’ permissibility to fight –either (i) or (ii) of the presumptive reasons model. Contra McMahan, jus ad bellum conditions do not always forbid unjust combatants to fight.

Zohar’s Collectivist Approach

While McMahan offers an individualist approach to the moral status of combatants, Noam Zohar takes a more collectivist approach. For Zohar, war is not merely a confrontation between individuals, but primarily a confrontation between nations.^[13] Why this move from the individualistic to collectivist approach? Because “from the individual perspective, even the enemy soldiers ought not to be killed.”^[14] In other words, from an individual perspective, unjust combatants are mostly innocent. So, instead of viewing war as mere sets of just and unjust combatants fighting, we can view war as being fought between a collective defender and a collective aggressor respectively. Thus, the morality of war “must be weighed on the great collective scale.”^[15]

The idea here is that it is not necessary under Zohar’s account to determine each combatant’s guilt or innocence. It is presumed that doing so would be impossible.^[16] But defending against a collective aggressor can permit killing combatants, “for in fact we cannot act against the enemy as a collective without killing particular persons.”^[17] In this sense, combatants can sometimes be viewed as mere instruments used to pursue a collective cause. But this is no protection for unjust combatants. Zohar holds that unjust combatants, as part of the collective aggressor, are liable to attack in virtue of the collective aggressor’s aims. So, just as with individual self-defense, just combatants are not liable to attack, for they are part of the collective defender and collectives under attack do not become liable in their defense efforts.

Hurka’s Mutual Liability Account

While both Walzer and Zohar begin with collectivist approaches, others still think that MEC can be derived from individualist approaches. On one such account, belonging to Thomas Hurka, both just and unjust combatants are liable to attack. But this is not because of any countervailing reason outside of each combatants control. That is, “by voluntarily entering military service, soldiers on both sides freely took on the status of soldiers and thereby freely accepted that they may permissibly be killed in the course of war.”^[18] Such acceptance not only entails the permissibility of being killed during the course of war, but specifically being killed by enemy combatants. This just is the issue at hand, how can unjust combatants be liable to attack, but do something wrong when they attack just combatants? Hurka’s view simply holds that both just and unjust combatants voluntarily make themselves liable to attack. 

Hurka’s view entails a version of MEC with respect to the relevant features discussed by critics, that is, permissions to fight and liability to be attacked. Hurka admits that there may be differing degrees of proportionality in attacks. But, as it pertains to the aforementioned relevant features for just and unjust combatants alike, “insofar as they target each other, both act permissibly and neither’s acts are wrong.”^[19] So, while McMahan and Zohar have derived the liability of unjust combatants in different ways, Hurka’s individualist account of combatant consent seems to entail that just combatants are also liable to attack during war, as are unjust combatants, by voluntary joining their respective militaries.   

References

Benbaji, Y. 2008. “A Defense of the Traditional War Convention,” Ethics, 118(1): 464-495.

Hurka, T. 2007. “Liability and Just Cause,” Ethics & International Affairs, 21(1): 199-218.

Lazar, S. 2010. “The Responsibility Dilemma for Killing in War: A Review Essay,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 38(2), 180-213.

McMahan, J. 2009. Killing in War, Oxford University Press.

Renzo, M. 2019. “Political Authority and Unjust Wars,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 99(2), 336-57.

Walzer, M. 1977. Just and Unjust Wars, New York: Basic Books. 

Zohar, N. 1993. “Collective War and Individualistic Ethics: Against the Conscription of ‘Self-Defense,’” Political Theory, 21(4): 606-622.

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^[1] See Walzer (1977: 34-44) Just and Unjust Wars

^[2] This conception of MEC found in McMahan (2009: 4) Killing in War is how McMahan represents Walzer’s view. See Walzer (1977: 34-47).

^[3] Walzer (1977: 21)

^[4] Ibid., 37-38. Also see Benbaji (2008) “A Defense of the Traditional War Convention”

^[5] Walzer (1977: 38-39)

^[6] McMahan (2009: 38)

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Ibid., 40

^[9] Renzo (2019) “Political Authority and Unjust Wars”

^[10] Ibid., 343-353 

^[11] Ibid., 346-349.

^[12] Ibid., 348-349.

^[13] Zohar (1993: 616) “Collective War and Individualistic Ethics: Against the Conscription of ‘Self-Defense’”

^[14] Ibid., 619

^[15] Ibid., 615

^[16] Ibid., 615-616

^[17] Ibid., 616

^[18] Hurka (2007: 210) “Liability and Just Cause”

^[19] Ibid., 216

A Quick Look: Philosophical Views on Early-Term Fetal Rights

The role of fetal rights in arguments about abortion largely ends up depending on whether a fetus is a person.^[1]That is, those that hold that a fetus is a (human) person will maintain that the rights other persons enjoy, such as a right to life, will also be obtained by a fetus.^[2] On one hand, this view is often associated with arguments against the permissibility of abortion. On the other hand, those that defend abortion tend to hold that a fetus is not a person and consequently does not have a right to life. Since personhood and fetal rights are closely connected, my discussion in this paper may at times lead to discussion on whether a fetus is a person. 

Relevant Terminology

Within the relevant literature there are also different terms used to reference the fetus earlier on in a pregnancy, such as an embryo or a zygote. A zygote can be understood as an egg fertilized by a sperm cell prior to attachment to the uterine wall. Once the fertilized egg attaches to the uterine wall it is known as an embryo. The embryonic stage is when many human organs are formed despite not fully developing. A fetus, then, is the result of the embryonic stage, in which most organs and appendages are formed and is somewhat recognizable as a small human form. Of course, things are much more complex than this characterization [see image above], but these explanations will sufficiently describe the biological substance referenced in differing philosophical positions on fetal rights. 

Because some arguments use these other terms instead of fetus, I may at times engage in discussions about embryos or zygotes. The reason being that if an embryo or zygote is said to have a right to life, the later fetus will similarly have a right to life. So, while these terms are not synonymous, some arguments for embryonic rights will entail that the later fetus has rights as well. In a similar way, some arguments against fetal rights entail that the earlier zygote and embryo do not have rights either. 

Regardless of which side of the abortion debate a philosopher holds, it is generally accepted that if x is a person, then x is due moral consideration and respect. I will refer to this as the claim of personhood for the sake of simplicity. Thus, the views that I engage with often ground the right to life in whether the argument makes the claim of personhood for a fetus (or zygote or embryo). But it should be noted that both being a person and having a right to life does not mean abortion will be wrong in all circumstances. There may be exceptional circumstances which serve as first order reasons to justify abortion just as there are reasons that sometimes can justify killing adult humans. For example, pregnancy caused by rape,^[3] lethal danger to the mother, and other hard cases^[4] are reasons that could reasonably justify an abortion regardless of the rights a fetus might have.

J.J. Thomson’s Argument from Analogy (Against Fetal Rights)

One argument against fetal rights holds that when an unborn human life form becomes a person is difficult to determine, but it at least seems clear that an embryo is not person. Judith Jarvis Thomson claims that a zygote and embryo are “no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree.”^[5] The analogy is intended to point out that while an acorn is the starting point of the growing process of a tree, there is no exact moment when the acorn becomes a tree. But it would be inaccurate to call an acorn a tree and the same holds for a zygote and an embryo eventually becoming a person. Thus, the analogy is supposed to show that an embryo is not a person and is not due a right to live. 

Critics of this view charge the analogy with being faulty on several accounts. If the analogy is interpreted as holding that an embryo and an adult person are two different kinds of things simply because an acorn and a tree are two different kinds of things, then it is objected that the analogy begs the question. That is, the “issue is whether the human embryo is the same kind of thing, substantially and ethically, as a human being at later developments of life.”^[6] Since this is the issue at hand, we should not simply insist that an embryo and an adult person just are two different kinds of things because a non-germinated acorn is different from a living oak tree. 

If the analogy treats the acorn as a developmental phase of an oak tree and similarly for an embryo as a phase of development, then the analogy fails to compare the relevant features of personhood. That is, if the use of “person” is intended to mean “mature human being,” then only mature human beings are persons and not embryos, newborn babies, toddlers, or even children. These matters are then reduced to matters of biological maturity, but critics hold that “differences in maturity are not significant to personhood.”^[7]

Potentiality, Symmetry, and Tooley’s Argument For Fetal Rights

Arguments in favor of fetal rights have often appealed to the potentiality principle. As a precursor to the principle, it is generally accepted that adult humans are in fact persons and have a right to life. The potentiality principle then holds that any organism that potentially possesses the property of personhood also has a right to life prior to its personhood in “virtue of that potentiality, where an organism possesses a property potentially if it will come to have that property in the normal course of its development.”^[8] Thus, whether a fetus is a person does not matter so long as it will come to be a person after normal development. Unlike unfertilized eggs, the same can be said for both embryos and zygotes, since they too will come to be a person with normal development. 

Others, however, disagree due to the “symmetry principle” of action and inaction. The symmetry principle holds that “if it is not seriously wrong to refrain from initiating such a causal process, neither is it seriously wrong to interfere with such a process.”^[9] Tooley uses an example of a kitten that is injected with a chemical that will develop the kitten’s brain into a brain equivalent to that of human brains. Here, other than the injection, the fully mature cat would not be morally different than human moral agents. At this point Tooley claims that there is nothing seriously wrong with not injecting the kitten in the first place.

This example is supposed to show that just because the kitten could develop into a moral person, doesn’t mean that as a kitten it already is a moral person or is due some right to life in virtue of its potential personhood. Thus, interfering with the kitten’s brain development process, whether by a counteracting chemical or killing the kitten, is not wrong. So, since there is no significant moral difference between acting and omission as defined by the symmetry principle, “there is no duty to turn potential rational beings into actually rational beings.”^[10] This rejection of the potentiality principle does not lead directly to defending abortion wholesale though. It only holds that the right to life cannot be grounded in the potentiality principle. 

If Tooley is right, then where can a right to life be grounded? Some pro-choice philosophers think that it can be grounded in self-awareness.^[11] Tooley, for instance, thinks that the right to life is not a matter of continuing as a biological entity, but a matter of continuing as a subject of experiences. Here, rights are understood as coming from desires. As an example, no right is violated if one takes the possessions of someone who desires their belongings to be shared. But if that person does not wish to share, taking their possessions will violate their rights. So, if one has a right to life, one must similarly hold a desire to continue as a subject of experiences. Desires, however, require the use of concepts. Thus, an organism has a right to life only when it “possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences…and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity.”^[12] The matter of when human beings begin forming concepts is debated, but some (not Tooley) think concepts are not formed until one begins using language. This would mean that zygotes, embryos, fetuses, and even newborn infants do not have a right to life according to this view. 

Objections to Tooley’s Account

Some have called Tooley’s account a desire account since desires are tied so closely with rights.^[13] An obvious criticism, then, is that there are many instances when it is wrong to kill those with no desire (or minimal desire) to live, such as unconscious or sleeping persons who do not actively hold such desires or those that are mentally ill who have desires to not live.^[14] But Tooley took notice of these cases as exceptions to the connection between rights and desires, as well as those with distorted desires.^[15] In these exceptional cases, a lack of desire or distorted desire does not simply remove one’s rights, say a right to life. It would be wrong to intentionally kill an unconscious patient undergoing surgery on account of their lacking desires in that moment. 

Critics, however, argue that there is an even larger problem with Tooley’s account; namely that fulfilling our desires is not what we take to be valuable, but the “goodness of life” is what matters to us.^[16] It is the goods in life that are being deprived from someone when they die, and this explains why premature death is so painful. If it was only a matter of desires, then this pain could be eliminated “by an appropriate alteration in the configuration of one’s desires.”^[17] On the critic’s account, then, it is being deprived of one’s future that makes killing any human wrong, including fetuses since a fetus can also achieve a future like ours. I will not go any further into the future-like-ours argument, however, since it steers the conversation away from the right to life and instead turns to the right of having a future like ours. 

References

Kaczor’s, C. 2011. The Ethics of Abortion, New York: Routledge.

Marquis, D. 1989. “Why Abortion is Immoral,” The Journal of Philosophy, 86(4): 183-202. 

Singer, P. 1994. Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Thomson, J.J. 1971. “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(1): 47-66. 

Tooley, M. 1972. “Abortion and Infanticide,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2(1): 37-65. 

Wilkins, B.T. 1993. “Does the Fetus Have a Right to Life?” Journal of Social Philosophy, 24(1): 123-137. 

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^[1] Wilkins (1993: 123) “Does the Fetus Have a Right to Life?” 

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] See Thomson (1971) “A Defense of Abortion,” especially the violinist example.

^[4] See Kaczor (2011) The Ethics of Abortion, especially chapter 8.

^[5] Thomson (1971: 48)

^[6] Kaczor (2011: 123) The Ethics of Abortion

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Tooley (1972: 55-56) “Abortion and Infanticide” 

^[9] Ibid., 61

^[10] Kazcor (2011: 17)

^[11] See Tooley (1972) and Singer (1994) Rethinking Life and Death

^[12] Tooley (1972: 62)

^[13] See Marquis (1989) “Why Abortion is Immoral”

^[14] Ibid., 195-196

^[15] Tooley (1972: 47-48)

^[16] Marquis (1989: 196)

^[17] Ibid.

A Quick Look: Some Moral Justifications of Legal Punishment

In one way or another, legal punishment often results in the deliberate infliction of harm on certain persons, usually guilty criminals and sometimes convicted innocents. Most people, however, believe that legal punishment is morally justified. The purported moral grounds for such justification vary between views. Given such competing views, it is worth mentioning that no moral justification has cornered the market and punitive justice has also been criticized on moral grounds as well. In an effort to better understand the debate between these views, I will present consequentialist, retributive, and mixed justifications for legal punishment.

Consequentialist Justification: Defenses and Criticisms

One way of justifying legal punishment holds that a consequentialist evaluation of legal punishment as such can serve as sufficient justification for the practice. That is, the practice of legal punishment, if found to produce greater benefits than costs to society, is justifiable as a social practice in virtue of its corresponding consequences.^[1] In these cases, the brunt of the cost is bore by those sentenced to their respective punishments, whether it be a fine, community service, time in prison, or some other presumably unpleasant punishment issued by the relevant authorities. There may also be other, perhaps less stringent costs, bore by law-abiding citizens, such as a some percentage of taxes allotted for the infrastructure of the legal institutions that enforce laws and determine punishment for violation of these laws. 

According to consequentialist accounts, there is a variety of benefits to be realized in the practice of legal punishment. One of these benefits, is that of deterrence of crime.^[2] The idea here is that punishing those that violate laws will ultimately deter others from violating those same laws. It is not, however, generally agreed that this works in the case of every punishment (i.e. murder rates have shown little difference between states whether using capital punishment or not).^[3] Typically, then, deterrence is only one benefit among others. Another factor said to benefit society is education of the public, namely educating citizens as it pertains to crime and punishment. There are many ways in which this can be interpreted, but one interpretation suggests that the varying degrees of charges associated with respective crimes and punishments are to inform public opinion about how the legal system operates.^[4] Other benefits include removing criminal offenders from society either by execution for serious crimes or incarceration for others, and the correction of offenders insofar as their criminal behavior has been “corrected” after serving their sentence.^[5] Taken as a collection of benefits, the utilitarian scales can arguably tip in favor of practicing legal punishment. 

There are, however, objections worth considering that pose problems for the consequentialist account, whether the account appeals to specific acts or rules in justifying punishment. The first objection, punishing the innocent, is a problematic, yet presumably powerful objection.^[6] This objection holds that an innocent person may be punished according to the consequentialist justification (if the consequences are great enough), and such a conclusion is morally unacceptable. One example of this would be “an innocent person who is widely believed to be guilty in order to prevent a riot from occurring if he is acquitted.”^[7] The problem posed by this objection seems massively counter-intuitive since legal punishment is intended to be inflicted only on those who are found guilty. One cannot simply bite the bullet and accept the punishment of innocents.^[8] But even further, if the consequentialist account provides justification for legal punishment that sometimes deliberately punishes innocents, then the account “does not justify punishment in the first place, even of those who are guilty.”^[9] Another related objection is that the consequentialist account will sometimes lead to not punishing a guilty person. I will not discuss this objection further, however, due to space concerns. 

Presumably the ‘punishing the innocent’ objection can be overcome with a rule-consequentialism approach. That is, a society with the practices of punishment and telishment has worse consequences than a society with only the practice of punishment.^[10] Thus, the practice of punishing an innocent person, telishment, would be rejected, while maintaining consequentialist grounds for the practice of punishment. The ‘rule worship’ problem, however, is an objection that holds adopting a rule at one time on consequentialist grounds, does not entail that it will be consequentially best at another time.^[11] So, one can still charge the rule consequentialist approach as failing to dismiss the punishing the innocent objection, since this defense seeks to engage in and not just establish punishment without telishment, establishing the practice “entails that judges should nonetheless engage in punishment plus some form of telishment.”^[12]

Retributive Justification: Defenses and Criticisms

While consequentialist accounts provide an instrumental justification for legal punishment, retributivist accounts cite intrinsic justification. In other words, it is intrinsically good to ensure that guilty parties receive their just deserts.^[13]In general, retributivism holds “that we ought to punish offenders because and only because they deserve to be punished.”^[14] So, whether there are any instrumental benefits of legal punishment, as with consequential accounts, legal punishment is justified solely in virtue of just deserts. If no punishment is deserved, say an innocent person, then that punishment is not justified. 

There is also an important distinction for these views in that just deserts do not mean any punishment. For the punishment (suffering imposed on the guilty) must match the crime, or wrongdoing. Often this is understood as avoiding the violation of “any non-forfeited [emphasis added] rights of an offender.”^[15] For example, while reckless driving that only caused property damage may constitute grounds to revoke a driver’s license, the court may not also infringe the driver’s right to own a home, indefinitely incarcerate the driver, or chop off the driver’s index finger. Thus, the idea here is that punishment must be appropriate for the given offense. In other words, one can derive an appropriate punishment from a detailed account of the criminal offense. One example of this appropriate punishment side-constraint holds that the punishment should rectify the “unfair advantage” that a criminal gains over citizens whenever that criminal breaks a law.^[16]

While there may be other accounts of the degree of punishment one may impose on a criminal, such other accounts do not directly address the purpose of this paper: presenting ways in which the practice of legal punishment as such is justified. For this reason, I do not add further variations to the retributive view (such as punishment as communication, instrumental retributivism, or other variations), nor do I add any further side constraints.

There are two objections to the retributivist account that I will mention, one is worth spending time explaining and the other is not. The first objection deals with the side constraints about the appropriateness of punishment that is required for a complete retributive account of punishment. That is, if legal punishment is justified on account of guilty persons justly deserving punishment, or suffering, then that justification must account for which punishments are appropriate for each respective crime. One common way to handle this is an unfair advantage theory mentioned earlier.^[17] This theory holds that deserved punishment will directly correspond to the unfair advantage gained by the criminal. Some have considered this a rectification of wrongs or putting things back as they were prior to a criminal offense.^[18]

But critics of retributivism suggest that establishing a metric of severity for both crimes and punishment will largely be arbitrary and cannot be derived from deserts. For instance, why think that committing the most (or least) serious wrong deserves the most (or least) severe punishment? In the words of Scheid, “Certainly, the worst my child can do does not ‘deserve’ the worst I can do to her.”^[19] This lack of rationale seems to be grounds for thinking that determining appropriate punishment by way of some metric of severity is arbitrary. But even further, there doesn’t appear to be “anything in the concept of desert, as such, to determine the appropriate punishments for the most and least serious crimes.”^[20] In other words, the principle of desert provides no reason to punish in and of itself. 

The other objection that I will only briefly mention is the charge that retributivism just is a form of consequentialist justification for legal punishment.^[21] The idea here is that there are additional, albeit less weighty, instrumental reasons or conditions that determine whether one ought to be punished, such as the non-forfeited rights of criminals. Since this debate is largely an internal debate within contemporary retributivism, I will not discuss it any further, particularly because it is not an objection to retributivism wholesale. But given its significance for the adaptation of retributivism it was worth mentioning briefly. 

Mixed Accounts of Justification: Defenses and Criticisms

Other accounts that attempt to justify legal punishment are mixed accounts that incorporate both consequential and retributive aspects. Hart famously points out two important issues about legal punishment, the general justifying aim of punishment and the distribution of punishment.^[22] The former is the question of whether the state should practice punishment and the latter pertains to who should be punished. In answering this, Hart holds that the general justifying aim of punishment is largely consequentialist, justified by how the practice benefits society, but holds that punishment should be distributed according to retributive principles. These retributive principles function as various constraints on punishment, such as not punishing the innocent or not punishing criminals more harshly than their respective offense. Given the nature of this paper, there is not adequate room to discuss the further complexities of Hart’s theory beyond the general framework.

While there are many kinds of mixed accounts that have been developed, Hart’s general framework reveals an important insight about mixed accounts: that a purely consequentialist or purely retributive justification cannot address all the important issues that a theory of punishment should. For this reason, more contemporary mixed accounts have carefully defined technical terms such as the “institutional concept of desert,” “just treatment,” or “personal responsibility.”^[23]  

Despite the large acceptance of Hart’s two-question approach to punishment, the view faces objections similar to those faced by other mixed accounts. The common objection is that mixed accounts attempt to combine both consequential and deontological principles, but such a task will be unsuccessful because the two are inconsistent.^[24] That is, retributive principles will limit the achievement of consequential goals. Similarly, consequential principles are doing most of the justifying of punishment and end up reducing retributive principles to “lesser roles” or do not take retributive principles seriously enough.^[25] Since Hart bifurcates the questions about punishment, the mixed-account is supposed to have avoided this objection. 

Kaufman argues, however, that Hart was unsuccessful. Hart coins ‘general justifying aim’ and ‘distribution’ as the two issues punishment theories are faced with. The former is intended to justify punishment as a practice and the latter is intended to give guidance to as to how to go about punishing. This bifurcation was supposed to resolve countless issues faced by pure consequential or retributive theories. But we cannot call the general aim (a consequentialist aim) ‘justified’ “if it is clearly not justified without the limits imposed by the Distributive principles.”^[26] These need not be consequential and retributive respectively. For we could also have “a retributive General Justifying Aim and a [consequential] principle of Distribution.”^[27] So, the objection goes, Hart has not resolved anything with this two-question approach. Hart has instead restated the problem of punishment by expressing some “logical gap” between consequentialism and retribution.^[28]

Restitution as an Alternative to Punitive Justice

In the little space I have left, I will recognize an objection to all of these punishment theories: that intentionally harming (punishing) guilty parties is not justified at all.^[29] The idea here is that if we have no justification for intentionally harming people in ways that are otherwise wrong, we should abolish punishment until we do have good justification. We should instead practice victim restitution or something like it. This means that the state’s role is instead forcing an offender “to compensate his victims for the harms that he has wrongfully caused them, but it should do nothing more.”^[30]

References

Berman, M. 2011. “Two Kinds of Retributivism,” in Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law, R. A. Duff and S. P. Green (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Boonin, D. 2008. The Problem of Punishment, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Davis, M. 1992. To Make the Punishment Fit the Crime, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Hart, H. L. A. 1968. Punishment and Responsibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Kaufman, W. 2008. “The Rise and Fall of the Mixed Theory of Punishment,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 22: 37–57.

Moore, M. S. 1997. Placing Blame: A Theory of Criminal Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rawls, J. 1955. “Two Concepts of Rules,” The Philosophical Review, 64: 3–32.

Scheid, D. E. 1995. “Davis, Unfair Advantage Theory and Criminal Desert,” Law and Philosophy, 14: 375–409.

Scheid, D. E. 1997. “Constructing a Theory of Punishment, Desert, and the Distribution of Punishments,” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 10: 441–506.

Walker, N. 1991. Why Punish? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wood, D. 2002. “Retribution, Crime Reduction, and the Justification of Punishment,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 22: 301–21.

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^[1] Rawls (1955: 5) “Two Concepts of Rules” 

^[2] See Walker (1991: 13-20) Why Punish?

^[3] Ibid., 15-16

^[4] Ibid., 22-24

^[5] Ibid., 34-49

^[6] Boonin (2008: 41-42) The Problem of Punishment

^[7] Ibid., 41. A relevant cinematic version of the ‘punishing the innocent’ objection can be found in The Life of David Gale (2003).

^[8] Boonin (2008: 48-50).

^[9] Ibid., 51

^[10] Rawls (1955: 11-12) 

^[11] Boonin (2008: 70)

^[12] Ibid., 70-75

^[13] Moore (1997: 157) Placing Blame: A Theory of Criminal Law, and especially chapter 5

^[14] Ibid., 153

^[15] Ibid., 173 

^[16] Scheid (1995: 375-376) “Davis, Unfair Advantage Theory and Criminal Desert” 

^[17] See Davis (1992) To Make the Punishment Fit the Crime

^[18] Scheid (1995: 397-398)

^[19] Ibid., 408.

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] See Berman (2011) “Two Kinds of Retributivism”

^[22] Hart (1968: 8-9) Punishment and Responsibility

^[23] See Scheid (1997) “Constructing a Theory of Punishment, Desert, and the Distribution of Punishments”

^[24] Kaufman (2008: 45-49) “The Rise and Fall of the Mixed Theory of Punishment”

^[25] Wood (2002) “Retribution, Crime Reduction, and the Justification of Punishment”

^[26] Kaufman (2008: 48)

^[27] Ibid., 51

^[28] Ibid.

^[29] See Boonin (2008), especially chapter 5

^[30] Ibid., 215-216

A Quick Look: The Ideal of Liberal Neutrality

There is not any one well-accepted and particularly clear conception of liberal neutrality due to the claims that competing accounts of neutrality make. What can be said is that liberal neutrality holds that the state should not promote any particular conception of the good, i.e., the state should be neutral with respect to conceptions of the good. Endorsement of liberal neutrality stemmed from the continued acceptance and recognition of pluralism and reasonable disagreement within society.^[1] In other words, the wide range of conceptions of the good are viewed as tenable positions. The state, then, should be neutral towards these conceptions because the state will govern persons supporting just as many views about well-being as there are conceptions of the good. I will present one specific argument for this later.

Subsequently, the lack of consensus mentioned earlier is not regarding that the state should be neutral towards conceptions of the good; instead, the discussion is about in what sense the state should be neutral. Three distinctions, then, posit different senses in which the state should remain neutral about conceptions of the good: regarding the state’s goals (neutrality of aim), outcomes (neutrality of effect), or procedures (neutrality of justification).^[2]  Neutrality of effect, however, is not a position held by any defenders of liberal neutrality so far as I can tell.^[3] Because of this, I will not address the details of this view, only that neutrality of effect holds that the state must refrain from any action that has as an effect the promotion of any particular conception of the good over others.

On one hand, neutrality of aim holds that the state “must not aim at advantaging or disadvantaging any particular conception of the good.”^[4] On the other hand, neutrality of justification holds that any legislation (or other political activities) of the state should be justified without appealing to any particular conception of the good. In exploring these two senses of neutrality, it is contended that they are actually inconsistent since the “state must be neutral only between permissible conceptions of the good.”^[5] Roughly, it is argued that the state should aim at disadvantaging impermissible conceptions of the good (e.g., eugenics), since such conceptions would not be consistent with principles of justice that are neutrally justified. So, despite the fact that neutrality of aim and neutrality of justification “may be contingently compatible from time to time, then, they will often conflict.”^[6] In light of this, neutrality of justification is viewed as the correct sense of liberal neutrality by many. For the purposes of this paper, any mention of liberal neutrality will only refer to neutrality of justification, unless indicated otherwise.

In Favor of Neutrality

Liberal neutrality is famously found at work within Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Rawls does not argue that the principles of justice must be established in a way such that the principles are devoid of any ideas of good. Some ideas of good are allowed, “so long as they belong to a reasonable political conception of justice,” or “are shared by citizens and do not depend on any comprehensive doctrine.”^[7] Effectively, these ideas are formalized to reflect political virtues and not virtues that pertain to other non-political areas of life. Rawls mentions the virtues of toleration and mutual trust as an example in which the state would be justified in disadvantaging certain impermissible conceptions of the good. 

A more contemporary defense of liberal neutrality is advanced by Steven Lecce. Lecce expresses democratic equality as a “relational rather than a distributive ideal.”^[8] So, if we accept that the state ought to promote equal relations between persons, then we should accept “a democratic politics tempered by contractually generated principles of justice.”^[9] The fact of pluralism (about conceptions of the good) along with the ideal of equal respect will then discount contentious ethical principles and conceptions of the good. The idea here is that those contentious principles or conceptions can be reasonably rejected. But since contentious conceptions of the good can be reasonably rejected, we also ought to reject perfectionist principles because of “their (dubious) epistemic status.”^[10] The same cannot be said for Lecce’s contractualism, and defense of neutrality, since “epistemology plays no role in the contractual derivation of reasonable principles.”^[11] Thus, uncontroversial principles cannot be reasonably rejected, rather they can be seen as a common ground, or mutual consensus, for principles of justice.^[12] In short, reasonableness and pluralism about conceptions of the good will ultimately lead to accepting liberal neutrality. 

Against Neutrality

Despite the rivalry between perfectionism and liberal neutrality, there are many other non-neutralist positions one can occupy. Given that much of the critical discussion of neutrality does stem from perfectionist standpoints, I will only address two of those perfectionist arguments. George Sher lists four ways to ground neutralism: “the value of autonomy, respect for autonomy, the dangers of a nonneutral state, and skepticism about the good.”^[13]

Arguments grounding neutralism in respect for autonomy are said to hold (i) that “each person must be treated as a rational agent, capable of shaping his own destiny,” and (ii) that (i) is violated when the state acts non-neutrally.^[14] Thus, arguments of this type must show that autonomy actually is violated even if the state publicizes various options (of the good) and their merits.^[15]

According to Sher, the works of Rawls and Dworkin have the greatest chance of showing this, consequently grounding neutrality with respect for autonomy. After thoroughly evaluating each of their arguments, however, Sher concludes that neither succeed. Since the strongest arguments for this way of grounding neutralism fail to establish a plausible respect for autonomy constraint, neutralism will need to be grounded in another way. 

In evaluating the dangers of a non-neutral state as grounds for neutrality, Sher holds that we must determine “whether neutrality is the most promising way of preventing oppression, instability, or error.”^[16] In preventing oppression, liberal neutralists would likely appeal to liberal rights for protection. But, as Sher points out, such rights do not and cannot make the state neutral. For a state’s neutral treatment of the good, if it is truly neutral for all state actions, “a scheme of rights would have to be so extensive as to prevent the state from functioning at all.”^[17] Sher argues that this is the case because liberal rights “standardly rule out certain ways in which governments or individuals might treat (other) people.”^[18] Thus, rights cannot be overridden “for any reason unless certain conditions are met.”^[19] What this means is that in order for a state to truly be nonneutral, that state is prohibited from treating people in certain ways for any nonneutral reason. But this is tantamount to developing a scheme of rights that “block all the laws and policies that [the state] might enact on nonneutral grounds.”^[20] Given the degree of protection against nonneutrality, a truly neutral state would be rendered useless, or at least paralyzed.

To prevent instability, liberalism must hold that members of society will be aware of the facts that the neutral justification of the principles of justice is supported by the implicit ideas in public culture, and that “our own basic political framework conforms [emphasis mine] to those neutrally justified principles.”^[21] Sher argues, however, that this awareness is tantamount to inchoately accepting the fundamental components of Rawls’ theory of justice. Despite offering no alternative positive way to prevent instability, Sher thinks that the implausibility of accepting a common basic political structure fails to establish the necessary support for neutrality’s prevention of instability. 

The final concern, that the state may unintentionally promote an erroneous conception of the good, is presumably resolved if the state is neutral towards any conception of the good. Sher contends that this is too strong for addressing concerns about error and a more reasonable principle yields more promising results for avoiding error and promoting greater freedom of intellectual expression. This more reasonable principle “permits us to base political decisions only on conceptions of the good that we have critically scrutinized.”^[22] Such a principle results in more accessible inquiry for both the state and its citizens, hence its close ties with freedom of intellectual expression. 

Sher’s admits that these dangers are genuine concerns for any state, but he also holds that neutralism is not the only successful way to address those concerns. Various other methods of avoiding these dangers leave plenty of room for a nonneutral state. Comparatively, the state’s actions to “strengthen the national defense or improve economic productivity,” is on a par with similar actions that provide “support of excellence, virtue, or the good.”^[23] Thus, neutrality is not necessary or sufficient for addressing concerns of autonomy or the risks of oppression, instability, or error.

References

Arneson, R., 2003, “Liberal Neutrality on the Good: An Autopsy,” in Perfectionism and Neutrality, S. Wall and G. Klosko (eds.), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Larmore, C. 1987. Patterns of Moral Complexity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lecce, S. 2008. Against Perfectionism: Defending Liberal Neutrality, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 

Rawls, J. 1993. Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press.

Scanlon, T.M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Sher, G. 1997. Beyond Neutrality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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^[1] Larmore (1987: 40-68) Patterns of Moral Complexity

^[2] See Larmore (1987: 44) for these three original distinctions. A more formalized distinction using the terms in parentheses can be found in Arneson (2003: 193) “Liberal Neutrality on the Good: An Autopsy” or Lecce (2008: 235) Against Perfectionism: Defending Liberal Neutrality. There is also literature that uses the terms consequential (for effects), intentional (for aims), and justificatory for the three senses of neutrality.

^[3] Richard Arneson also concludes as much in Arneson (2003: 193) but adds that Joseph Raz holds “that neutrality should incorporate neutrality of effect,” despite Raz being a critic of liberal neutrality.

^[4] Lecce (2008: 235)

^[5] Ibid., 237

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Rawls (1993: 194) Political Liberalism

^[8] Lecce (2008: 228)

^[9] Ibid., 229

^[10] Ibid., 230

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] This draws on the work of at least Rawls and Scanlon. See Rawls (1993) esp. Lecture V, 173-211, and Scanlon (1998) What We Owe to Each Other esp. Ch. 5, 189-247.

^[13] Sher (1997) Beyond Neutrality

^[14] Ibid., 72

^[15] Ibid., 73

^[16] Ibid., 108

^[17] Ibid., 114

^[18] Ibid., 115

^[19] Ibid.

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] Ibid., 124

^[22] Ibid., 138

^[23] Ibid., 139

A Quick Look: The Mere Addition Paradox

Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit is perhaps the most notable book to influence contemporary discussions on ethics. In his book, Parfit presents a paradox for population ethics, the mere addition paradox. The mere addition paradox is the result of three inconsistent beliefs that, according to Parfit, “imply contradictions.”^[1] These beliefs pertain to comparisons between alternative societies (see Figure 1). Each alternative is expressed by two important factors, quality of life and population size (quantity of life). To keep things simple, I will use ‘quality of life’ and ‘happiness’ interchangeably in this discussion on the paradox. 

Figure 1*

How We Reach the Paradox

We first compare A and B, in which B has more people (and thus more total happiness) than A, but “that this is not a way in which B is better than A.”^[2] Why? Because the happiness in B is below the “Valueless Level,” that is, “lives in B are below the level where quantity has value.”^[3] In other words, the happiness in B is sufficiently low enough to conclude our first belief, “that B is worse than A.”^[4]

A different alternative, A+, has the same features from A, the population and happiness of A, with the exception that A+ merely adds a separate group of “extra people.” This instance of mere addition consists in the original population (from A) and the extra people being divided in A+ such that neither group affects the other, there is no social injustice, and the extra people have lives worth living.^[5] So, no one from A is worse off in A+, there has simply been a mere addition of extra people (see Figure 1). 

One difference between A and A+, then, is that the average quality of life is lower in A+. Parfit thinks the average principle, that lower average happiness is worse than higher average levels, is implausible since it leads to absurd conclusions (i.e. Parfit’s cases of ‘How Only France Survives’ and ‘Hell Three’).^[6] Another difference between A and A+ is that “natural inequality” exists in A+, where the quality of life is inequal between the two groups. Parfit also rejects this appeal to inequality, though, given the constraints of mere addition (neither group affects the other, no social injustice, and the extra people have lives worth living).^[7] Thus, given the rejection of both the average principle and inequality, we can arrive at our second belief, that A+ is no worse than A.

In comparing A+ with B, Parfit conceives of another alternative, Divided B, to use for ease of comparison. That is, Divided B just is “where the two halves of B’s population cannot communicate,” and is just as good as, or equally good to B.^[8] Since the groups are divided, do not affect each other in any way, any change that causes A+ to become Divided B would not be due to redistribution efforts, but of “natural events, affecting the environment.”^[9] In this sort of change, “the worse-off half would gain more than the better-off half would lose.”^[10] In other words, there is a net gain of happiness from A+ to Divided B. This net gain implies that Divided B just is better than A+. Since Divided B is equally good to B, we can arrive at our third belief that B is better than A+.

The implied contradiction of the paradox is that if we hold the beliefs that ‘A+ is no worse than A’ and ‘B is better than A+’, then holding both beliefs will “imply that B is not worse than A”^[11] or ‘it is not the case that B is worse than A’. It seems that the implication of these beliefs just is a contradiction, ‘p &~p’, where ‘p’ is the proposition ‘B is worse than A’. If Parfit is correct, then there really is a contradiction. According to Parfit, this just is the mere addition paradox (although others take it to include the repugnant conclusion as well). That is, the paradox comes from the difficulty in determining which of the three beliefs to reject to avoid a contradiction. This task is difficult because each seems well supported by sound reasoning.

At this point in discussion, we are not forced into the repugnant conclusion. That is, if B is not worse than A, then we cannot yet reach the repugnant conclusion, that population Z, an immense population whose lives are barely worth living, is better than A.^[12] The reason being is Parfit rejects ‘not worse than’ transitivity. But this is overcome with ‘better than’ transitivity along with the same reasoning that led to the contradiction. If A+ is no worse than A, then A+ is at least on a par with A. If B is better than A+, something that is at least on a par with A, then it seems that B must be better than A. One can then start with B, compare it with C in the same way, and conclude that C is better than B, so on and so forth until one reaches the repugnant conclusion, that Z is better than A. Without discussing the repugnant conclusion in any further detail, I will now discuss some responses to the mere addition paradox. While some of these responses are also attempting to avoid the repugnant conclusion, in doing so they also manage the mere addition paradox in their own respective ways. 

It must be first pointed out that the notable difference between A and B is that A has higher total quality of life whereas B has higher average quality of life. Thus, a standard way to resolve the mere addition paradox is to choose either the total or average principle of well-being. Given the direct approach of these responses, each principle has its own drawbacks. On one hand, accepting the total principle just will lead to the repugnant conclusion, and will demand a further response. Some have argued that we should ultimately accept the repugnant conclusion. I discuss this more in later parts of my paper. On the other hand, accepting the average principle leaves room for objections that appeal to utility monsters, that is, a single individual with a higher quality of life than any alternative. Due to these seemingly more problematic implications, some philosophers have attempted to resolve the paradox and avoid the repugnant conclusion in other ways.

The Paradox and Rejecting Transitivity

The first of these views is that we should reject “better than” transitivity.^[13] That is, the mere addition paradox (and the repugnant conclusion) rely on transitivity. So, if p is better than q, and q is better than r, then r is better than p. This just is the transitivity principle and is a crucial aspect of how Parfit reaches the mere addition paradox. Denying transitivity, that is, denying the consequent of the transitivity principle (that r is better than p), will dissolve the mere addition paradox and similarly will avoid the repugnant conclusion. For some, this rejection stems from the following intuition: “if the difference in quality gets big enough, it cannot be outweighed by greater quantity.”^[14] For others, the principle of transitivity isn’t necessarily true.^[15] Why could the transitivity principle not be necessarily true? Because what is being compared may utilize different factors and significance.^[16] Stuart Rachels holds that the comparisons differ in significance because “pleasure intensity is relevant in comparing [alternative populations].”^[17]

Others think the rejection of transitivity cannot resolve the mere addition paradox. Gustaf Arrhenius has argued that we can arrive at the mere addition paradox in a normative way, without appealing to ‘better than’ transitivity, but what ‘ought to be chosen’.^[18] On this view, each population is viewed as possible outcomes of actions, where “the only actions available to a certain individual or group of individuals are the actions with [only each possible population] as outcome.”^[19] But, according to Arrhenius’ normative reconstruction, each possible action, when comparing between any two population outcomes, is wrong. That is, when comparing A with B, A is wrong according to normative principles. Compare B with C, and B is wrong. Compare C with A, and A is wrong. Since these populations involved a mere addition of people, but every possible action is wrong, we are faced with the mere addition paradox derived from normative principles.

The Paradox and Egalitarian Considerations

Another response to the mere addition paradox appeals to more egalitarian considerations. It is not necessarily an appeal to maximin reasoning, but instead that inequality corresponds with the number of worse off people.^[20] Thus, the claim that ‘A+ is no worse than A’ is false. That is, there exist no worse-off people in A, while there are worse-off people in A+. For Temkin, the fact that Parfit considers such inequality to be “natural” inequality makes little difference for egalitarian considerations. In other words, egalitarianism is committed to the claim “that it is bad (unfair or unjust) for some to be worse off than others through no fault of their own [emphasis mine].”^[21] It is then because of the inequality between the two groups in A+, not mere addition, that we can hold that A+ is worse than A, consequently dissolving the mere addition paradox. 

While Parfit thinks such considerations fail, namely because the worse off cannot perceive that there are others better off than themselves,^[22] there are other objections to the egalitarian appeal.^[23] One common example is while A+ is worse than A regarding inequality, A+ is no worse than A all things considered. That is, A+ at least has higher total quality of life, and this should be included in our all things considered judgment. It is for this reason that Arrhenius thinks that “egalitarian concerns can hardly give us any reason to change our all things considered ranking.”^[24]

Accepting the “Repugnant” Conclusion

One final response to the mere addition paradox is to adopt the total principle, which results in accepting the repugnant conclusion. Since the repugnant conclusion is often used in arguments against the total view, I will present one argument for accepting it. This view indicates that we often view the repugnant conclusion as having welfare equivalent to the lives of those in concentration camps or the apocalypse, lives barely worth living. On the other hand, we view our own lives as more than well worth living. But given that we live most of our lives in constant waiting for countless things and experiences, perhaps not ultimately netting pleasure over pain, “many people probably live lives that, on the whole, are worth not living.”^[25] Even further, the line “between a life just worth living and a life just worth not living is trivial.”^[26] If this is true, the repugnant conclusion doesn’t seem very repugnant at all, after all, we choose to keep on living in such circumstances.

A criticism of this view is that the same principles used in arriving at the repugnant conclusion can be used to arrive at a stronger claim, the very repugnant conclusion.^[27] The very repugnant conclusion states that “a population consisting of the lives with negative welfare and lives with very low positive welfare…is better than the high welfare population.”^[28] The idea here is that if we start with A, there is some population with greater total welfare where a significant amount of people (with very low quality of life) would gain more than population A would lose (by now holding very negative quality of life). Even if the repugnant conclusion is accepted and not considered repugnant, the very repugnant conclusion is significantly more difficult to accept. This criticism poses problems not just for the acceptance of the original repugnant conclusion, but for the endorsement of the total principle that is intended to dissolve the mere addition paradox.

References  

Arrhenius, G. 2004. “The Paradox of Future Generations and Normative Theory”, in The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, J. Ryberg and T. Tännsjö (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Arrhenius, G. 2009. “Egalitarianism and Population Change” in Intergenerational Justice, A. Gosseries & L. Meyer (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Arrhenius, G. 2011. “The Impossibility of a Satisfactory Population Ethics,” in Descriptive and Normative Approaches to Human Behavior, H. Colonius & E. Dzhafarov (eds.), Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. 

Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Persson, I. 2004. “The Root of the Repugnant Conclusion and its Rebuttal,” in The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, J. Ryberg and T. Tännsjö (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

Rachels, S. 2004. “Repugnance or Intransitivity: A Repugnant but Forced Choice,” in The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, J. Ryberg and T. Tännsjö (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Tännsjö, T. 2002. “Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion,” Utilitas, 14, 339–359. Reprinted in (2004) The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, J. Ryberg and T. Tännsjö (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Tännsjö, T. 2008. “Egalitarianism and the Putative Paradoxes of Population Ethics,” Utilitas, 20: 187–198.

Temkin, L.S. 1987. “Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 16: 138–187.

Temkin, L.S. 1993. Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press. 

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* This graph was pulled directly from Parfit (1984: 419) Reasons and Persons

^[1] Parfit (1984: 426) Reasons and Persons

^[2] Ibid., 419

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Ibid., 420

^[6] Ibid., 420-422

^[7] Ibid., 422-425

^[8] Ibid., 425

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Ibid. 426

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Ibid., 388, 430-432.

^[13] See Temkin (1987) “Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox”, Persson (2004) “The Root of the Repugnant Conclusion and its Rebuttal”, and Rachels (2004) “Repugnance or Intransitivity: A Repugnant but Forced Choice”

^[14] Persson (2004: 191) 

^[15] Rachels (2004: 179-182)

^[16] Ibid., 180

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] Arrhenius (2004) “The Paradox of Future Generations and Normative Theory”

^[19] Ibid., 213

^[20] Temkin (1993: 200-202) Inequality

^[21] Ibid., 200

^[22] Parfit (1984: 422-425)

^[23] See Tännsjö (2008) “Egalitarianism and the Putative Paradoxes of Population Ethics,” and Arrhenius (2009) “Egalitarianism and Population Change”

^[24] Arrhenius (2009: 342)

^[25] Tännsjö (2002: 223) “Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion”

^[26] Ibid.

^[27] Arrhenius (2011) “The Impossibility of a Satisfactory Population Ethics”

^[28] Ibid., 

A Quick Look: Consequentialism and the Problem of Alienation

Some philosophers have argued that standard forms of consequentialism do not allow room for genuine loving relationships and personal friendships. Why? Because our commonsense understanding of genuine relationships and friendships implies something beyond weighing the consequences of our actions, i.e., love and friendship entails more than just calculating the best outcomes, they are good in themselves. In this post, I present this problem, the problem of alienation, and explore how philosophers have criticized consequentialism on account of alienation and how defenders of consequentialism have responded.

The Problem of Alienation Concerning Love

The problem of alienation is concerned with how moral theories view personal relationships whether they are romantic relationships or friendships. These relationships are understood to be fundamentally good, that they are ends in themselves. So, moral theories that hold other reasons for holding and acting for relationships, reasons not constitutive of relationships being ends in themselves, “will alienate us from and undermine our achieving the fundamental human good of personal love.”^[1]

For instance, Michael Stocker holds that utilitarianism necessarily leaves no room for love. Why? Because whomever the utilitarian has a relationship with, such relationship is not valued for the sake of the person; instead, the relationship is valued for securing some other good, pleasure.^[2] Thus, in a friendship one’s commitment is not to their friend, but pleasure, some other good, or even goodness itself. For this reason, it is that friend that is replaceable when someone or something else will better maximize the good. This impersonality towards the actual friend as a person seems to be incompatible with our normal understanding of friendship. That is, according to Stocker the person must be valued, “not merely the person’s general values nor even the person-qua-producer-or-possessor-of-general-values.”^[3] The valuing of persons as persons, then, extends not only to friends and those that are beloved, but also to ourselves as persons. 

The problematic features of consequentialism will then boil down to not valuing persons as such. In other words, the persons that occupy positions of friend, lover, or family are essentially replaceable, “mere instruments or repositories of general and non-specific value.”^[4] Despite the fact consequentialism in general does not make specific claims of value, the same criticism applies since consequentialism values consequences and not persons, as such. This also brings to light a dehumanizing feature of consequentialism, that all we are to others is essentially replaceable too, mere instruments instead of ends in ourselves. Since it is generally accepted that persons are ends in themselves, for it is an important part of our humanity,^[5] consequentialism is charged with dehumanizing us not simply because it allows persons to not be treated as ends in themselves, but the even stronger claim that the value of persons is not as ends but as some means to some other end.^[6] So, consequentialism’s failure to include “the notion of a person-as-valuable” necessarily leaves no room for personal relationships.^[7]

The Sophisticated Consequentialist Response

Responses by consequentialists to this type of criticism have expressed that one can maintain a commitment to consequentialism as guiding one’s actions while still treating persons as ends. Peter Railton’s sophisticated consequentialism is an example of such a response. Railton first offers reasons to think that not treating friends as ends, as such, is not necessarily problematic.^[8] What is at issue is a matter of drawing a distinction between commitments to persons as ends and overriding commitments. That is, while commitments to ends are understood as having action-guiding reasons that are not derived from elsewhere, “it does not follow that these reasons must always outweigh whatever opposing reasons one may have.”^[9] In other words, we often may not enter certain friendships and personal relationships unless we think they are good for us, nor do we sustain such relationships if we later think those relationships are no longer good for us. But this does not undermine our commitments to such relationships as ends in themselves.

Railton then makes distinction between objective consequentialism, that an action’s rightness is determined by “whether it in fact would most promote the good,” and subjective hedonism, that in considering which action to perform one should use a consequential perspective for trying to determine and perform what best achieves the good.^[10] A sophisticated consequentialist will then commit oneself to objective consequentialism but does not commit to any one specific decision making procedure, or need not commit to subjective consequentialism.^[11] So, in recognizing that the lives with the most good treat friends as ends as such, the sophisticated consequentialist would act in the same manner knowing that it will lead to the most good in their life. If, over time, this behavior did not lead to the most good for one’s life, then the sophisticated consequentialist would change to a more promising course of action. But if Stocker is correct in holding that the value of friendship is best found in treating friends as ends in themselves, then sophisticated consequentialism can accommodate such behavior. That is, holding a commitment to the best consequences serves as a guiding principle for an agent, not a constraint on decision-making for every action. Even further, if sophisticated consequentialism allows genuine friendships in this way, then there doesn’t appear to be any dehumanizing features found in sophisticated consequentialism.

Alienation, the Personal Perspective, and Revising Consequentialism

Samuel Scheffler has a criticism similar to Stocker’s, but instead of claiming that whatever relationships consequentialism allows are necessary not love, Scheffler holds that the “impersonal calculus” of consequentialist theories does not give proper weight to the personal perspective.^[12] Given the fact that people normally make commitments to projects and other people independent of metrics of impersonal value, consequentialism “requires the agent to allocate energy and attention to the projects and people he cares most about in strict proportion to the value from an impersonal standpoint.”^[13] Thus, according to consequentialism, an agent’s friendships and relationships should be neglected (or abandoned altogether) when doing so “would have the best overall outcome impersonally judged.”^[14] This incompatibility between how people actually form commitments and what consequentialism requires is how Scheffler thinks consequentialism alienates agents from their commitments and actions. 

Scheffler does not think one needs to give up consequentialism wholesale though, only that there ought to be agent-centered prerogatives that resolves this issue of neglecting personal relationships and commitments when it produces the best overall consequences according to the impersonal calculus. That is, while Scheffler thinks agents may give more weight to their own commitments than the commitments of others from the impersonal perspective, being liberated from the impersonal perspective, Scheffler holds that an agent-centered prerogative “would not permit one to pursue one’s own projects at all costs.”^[15] This is further discussed in Scheffler’s rejection of agent-centered restrictions.^[16] Scheffler, however, does not provide an account that determines the specific degree, that is, how much one may give more weight to their own interests. This constraint on prerogatives, then, maintains some consequentialist features –giving agent’s interests a weighted value while not giving up weighing those interests against the interests of others according to the impersonal perspective– which prevents the theory from collapsing into a form of egoism. This allows agent’s to also give special weight to the interests of those closest to them, understood as an invested self-interest in friendship and personal relationships.

It may appear that Scheffler’s prerogatives pose problems for Railton’s sophisticated consequentialism since the sophisticated consequentialist is still subjected to the impersonal perspective found within the commitment to objective consequentialism. Railton, however, thinks that his sophisticated consequentialism “shows there to be a firm place in moral practice for prerogatives that afford such room even if one accepts a fully consequentialist fundamental moral theory.”^[17] In other words, Railton thinks that sophisticated consequentialism can permit some prerogatives without departing from basic consequential commitments. There are other responses to Scheffler worth considering that differ from both Railton’s view and other responses appealing to indirect consequentialism.^[18]

An Objection to Accommodating the Personal Perspective

Shelly Kagan finds Scheffler’s liberation strategy wanting. That is, Scheffler’s strategy for liberating agents from the impersonal perspective is inadequate because the importance of persons being independent of the impersonal “is conceived as stemming primarily from its impact on the character of human agency and motivation.”^[19] This aspect of Scheffler’s view amounts to a characterization of what people usually do and how they typically view things from a personal, not impersonal, point of view. Kagan thinks this reasoning is a significant problem for the liberation strategy. 

Describing the problem more straightforwardly, Kagan says, “faced with the fact that people typically don’t promote the overall good, the liberation strategy responds that morally they’re not required to.”^[20] Kagan points out that not only is this contentious, but we are given no good reason to think that personal independence ought to do more than motivateacceptance of moral permissions. That is, the fact that it can motivate such acceptance, cannot itself be the very grounds for why we should accept moral permissions. Kagan, then, takes the position that “Scheffler provides no genuine rationale at all for the liberation strategy.”^[21] What people typically do cannot, by itself, count as a “genuine” rationale for Scheffler’s liberation strategy. So, unless Scheffler offers us good reason that it should, it seems that the liberation strategy is resting on shaky ground.

References

Cocking, D. 2013. “Friendship” in The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Hugh LaFollette (ed.).

Kagan, S. 1984. “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 13(3): 239-254.

Kant, I. 1996. Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, Mary Gregor (tr. and ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mason, E. 1998. “Can an Indirect Consequentialist Be a Real Friend?” Ethics, 108(2): 386-393.

Railton, P. 1984. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 13(2): 134-171.

Scheffler, S. 1994. The Rejection of Consequentialism, Oxford: Clarendon.

Scheffler, S. 1985. “Agent-Centred Restrictions, Rationality, and the Virtues,” Mind 94(375), 409-419.

Scheffler, S. 1992. “Prerogatives Without Restrictions,” Philosophical Perspectives 6, 377-397.

Stocker, M. 1976. “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” The Journal of Philosophy, 73(14): 453-466.

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^[1] Cocking (2013) “Friendship” in The International Encyclopedia of Ethics

^[2] Stocker (1976: 458-461) “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories” 

^[3] Ibid., 459

^[4] Ibid., 460

^[5] See Kant (1996) Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy

^[6] Stocker (1976: 460)

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Railton (1984: 141) “Alienation, Consequentialism, and Morality”

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Ibid., 152

^[11] Ibid., 153

^[12] Scheffler (1994) The Rejection of Consequentialism

^[13] Ibid., 9

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Ibid., 21

^[16] See the following appendices in Scheffler (1994) The Rejection of Consequentialism: “Agent-Centred Restrictions, Rationality, and the Virtues,” and “Prerogatives without Restrictions” or their previously published versions in Scheffler 1985 and Scheffler 1992 respectively.

^[17] Railton (1984: 163)

^[18] Railton (1984: 156) considers “the seeming ‘indirectness’ of objective consequentialism” in his view distinct from indirect consequentialism. For a version of indirect consequentialism, see Mason (1998) “Can an Indirect Consequentialist Be a Real Friend?”

^[19] Scheffler (1982: 94)

^[20] Kagan (1984: 253) Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?

^[21] Ibid.

A Quick Look: Exploring Objective List Theories of Well-being

You may have heard about different countries’ GDP, but have you heard about GNH (Gross National Happiness)? GNH is generally understood as the measure of how happy on the whole a country’s citizens are, or the general well-being of citizens. Such a value cannot usually be measured unilaterally; so, GNH and many similar concepts often create lists of items that contribute to happiness or well-being. In other words, these concepts produce objective lists as theories of well-being. Some philosophers have also proposed that objective list theories are how we should make sense of well-being, or what is good for persons. In this post, I will explore different philosophical perspectives on objective list theories of well-being and present some criticisms of objective list theories.

What Are Objective List Theories?

Broadly speaking, objective list theories of well-being have been used in a categorical way to distinguish between two other theories of well-being: hedonism and desire-fulfillment theories. But due to the lack of consensus about what objective list theories are specifically, this paper will use a general characterization of the theories.^[1] This characterization is that objective list theories of well-being hold that non-instrumental goods must be attitude-independent. More formally, objective list theories “are all and only those that specify particular things as non-instrumentally prudentially good (or bad) for people whether or not they have any pro (or con) attitude towards them.”^[2] This allows what are referred to as monistic objective list theories, such as hedonism, to be categorized as objective list theories. 

The scope of this paper will be limited to only that of pluralistic objective list theories of well-being. The reason being those monistic theories, such as hedonism, have their own distinct bodies of literature that vary in important ways from the literature on pluralistic objective list theories. Therefore, any mention of ‘objective list theories of well-being’ shall be read as implying only pluralistic objective list theories of well-being unless clearly stated otherwise. An example of objective list theories of well-being would then look something like Finnis’ list, “life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability (friendship), practical reasonableness, ‘religion’’’ or Fletcher’s list, “achievement, friendship, happiness, pleasure, self-respect, virtue.”^[3]

It is also perhaps important to distinguish objective list theories from success theory since there is some similarity between the theories. The similarity exists because lists produced by each theory’s strategy will sometimes coincide. Global success theory holds that prudential goods depend “on what I would prefer, now and in the various alternatives, if I knew all of the relevant facts about these alternatives.”^[4] If the relevant facts just are what are in fact good for someone, then the two theories will hold the same things as being prudentially good. But the two theories are distinct in that success theory derives value from an agent’s preference in accounting for self-interest, whereas objective list theories explain an agent’s preference as stemming from objective values. So, the former theory “does not appeal to facts about value,” while the latter theory “appeals directly to facts about value.”^[5]

Arguments for Objective List Theories

Some of the ways objective list theories of well-being have been argued for is from pre-theoretical judgments, too few prudential goods, too many prudential goods, arguing for specific goods, and from the nature of prudential value.^[6] An argument from pre-theoretical judgments holds that our “judgments reflected in the prudential choices we make, the way in which we give prudential advice, and the way in which we care for family and friends – are defeasible evidence in favor of objective list theories.”^[7] But for many this evidence is not strong enough to support objective list theories by itself. 

Other arguments, then, are taken to be stronger such as Nozick’s objection to hedonism, that pleasure is not the only prudential good,^[8] or Overvold’s objection to desire-fulfillment theories, that an excess of prudential goods (as fulfilling our desires) makes it “logically impossible that there are ever genuine instances of self-sacrifice.”^[9] Both arguments from too few and too many prudential goods have left philosophers in a middle ground that just is some form of an objective list theory.  

Arguing for specific prudential goods has also gained some traction in the literature on objective list theories. These arguments tend to avoid desire and pleasure in arguing for some specific good, for instance, knowledge.^[10] The idea of these arguments is that if there exists a prudential good besides pleasure, then hedonism fails to include a comprehensive list of what is prudentially good. This style of argument, however, might include, but is distinct from, that of too few (or many) prudential goods, since arguing for specific goods need not include pleasure (or what is desired). That is, it is at least plausible that pleasure (or desires as such) can be left out of a list of prudential goods, while ‘too few’ arguments simply argue that there should be more prudential goods, or less prudential goods in the case of ‘too many’ arguments. This style of argument also functions similarly against desire-fulfillment theories such that there is some prudential good besides what is desired. This is one reason among others that objective list theories are often categorized as a catch all for theories of well-being that are neither hedonism nor desire-fulfillment theories, as well as part of my reason for excluding monistic objective list theories in my discussion.

Why Objective List Theories?

While there are other arguments that have aided in the development of objective list theories of well-being, there are also important objections worth considering. I will only present two kinds of objections: lacking sufficient explanation (arbitrariness) and alienation.^[11] For the former, consider Ben Bradley’s charge against objective list theories:

Whatever the composition of the list, we can always ask: why should these things be on the list? What do they have in common? What is the rational principle that yields the results that these things, and no others, are the things that are good?^[12]

This objection points to a difficult challenge posed for objective list theories. Any objective list theory will need to further explain i) what the “good-maker” is for each of the specific goods listed under the theory (as opposed to other candidate goods) and ii) what each good has in common with the other goods in the set. 

One response to (i) is that while objective list theories will need to explain why each good listed is prudentially good and not others, the same holds for all theories of well-being.^[13] This kind of companions in guilt response does not mean objective list theories are off the hook. But this response holds that the objection is a general challenge to any theory of well-being, such that objective list theories are “no more burdened by these challenges than any other theory of well-being.”^[14]

Part (ii) of the objection can be understood as meaning either any common property between the goods on the list or properties shared by the listed goods excluding the property of “enhancing well-being.”^[15] If the former, the response can appeal to enhancing well-being as the common property, which would then lead back to objection (i), why do these items on the list enhance well-being and not others? If the latter, then one response is that there are commonalities that exist between certain subsets of goods.^[16] From Fletcher, an example of this response is that the distinct goods of pleasure and happiness will have “the commonality that these two goods enjoy, namely experiential quality.”^[17] Similar strategies can then be used to identify commonalities between different goods.

One further charge from Bradley is that objective list theories also lack explanation for how to weigh the various goods on the objective list.^[18] That is, objective list theories should explain how each good is distinct from the others and how those distinctions affect weighing one good against another. Here, objective list theories can use a ‘companions in guilt’ style response similar to the earlier response to (i). These responses show that we can ask similar questions about other theories of well-being. For example, how does one weigh the degree of one pleasure/pain against that of another pleasure/pain (for hedonism), or which desires have greater weight than others or other non-desires (for desire-fulfillment theories)?^[19] Similar to the caveat in the first response, objective list theories will need to address this issue of weighing prudential goods, but hedonism and desire-fulfillment theories must also address comparable relative weight issues.

How Do Objective List Theories Account for Subjectivity?

A further kind of objection for objective list theories is a worry of alienation. Typically, this objection holds an initial claim that theories of well-being should be subject-relative, or subject-dependent.^[20] This initial claim presumably is entailed from the nature of well-being. That is, “well-being has to do with how people’s lives are going for them,” instead of from an objective moral standpoint.^[21] Thus the charge against objective list theories is this: “It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any way to engage him.”^[22] One interpretation of this is that while objective list theories are intended to be an account of what is good for someone, the account could fail to engage with “a person’s affective states and volitions.”^[23] This interpretation intentionally excludes attitudes as such, since this would lead to begging the question against the core claim of objective list theories, attitude-independence. 

Objective list theories can respond to this interpretation of the alienation worry by using a constitutive strategy, “objective list elements are (necessarily) constituted by the agent’s affective states and volitions.”^[24] So, experiencing pleasure just is being in an affective state constituted by pleasure and the same goes for other goods on the list. With this constitutive strategy, objective list theories are presumably not failing to engage with the affective states or volitions of an agent. 

References

Bradley, B. 2009. Well-Being and Death, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Finnis, J. 1980. Natural Law and Natural Rights, 2^nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Fletcher, G. 2012. “The Locative Analysis of Good For Formulated and Defended,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 6(1): 1-26.

Fletcher, G. 2013. “A Fresh Start for the Objective-List Theory of Well-Being,” Utilitas, 25(2): 206-220.

Fletcher, G. 2016. “Objective List Theories,” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, Guy Fletcher (ed.), New York: Routledge.

Hall, A. and V. Tiberius. 2016. “Well-Being and Subject Dependence,” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, Guy Fletcher (ed.), New York: Routledge.

Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Overvold, M. C. 1980. “Self-Interest and the Concept of Self-Sacrifice,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 10(1): 105-118.

Parfit, D. 1984. “What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best,” in Reasons and Persons, New York: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Ethical Theory, 2^nd Edition (2013), Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.

Railton, P. 1986. “Facts and Values,” Philosophical Topics, 14(2): 5-31. 

Sumner, L.W. 1996. Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press

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^[1] This follows from Fletcher’s (2016: 148-152) “Objective List Theories” discussion of the lack of consensus in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being.

^[2] Ibid., 151

^[3] See Finnis (1980) Natural Law and Natural Rights and Fletcher (2013) “A Fresh Start for the Objective-List Theory of Well-Being.” These two merely demonstrate that this is not a new discussion, but has been underway for a while.

^[4] Parfit (1984: 499) Reasons and Persons

^[5] Ibid., 499-500. Parfit makes this explicit distinction in his writing on objective list theories.

^[6] Fletcher (2016: 152-154) lists these arguments in favor of objective list theories.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] See Nozick (1974: 42-45) Anarchy, State, and Utopia for the experience machine objection to hedonism.

^[9] Overvold (1980: 106) “Self-Interest and the Concept of Self-Sacrifice” in Canadian Journal of Philosophy

^[10] See Finnis (1980: 74-75)

^[11] See Fletcher (2016: 154-158)

^[12] Bradley (2009: 16) Well-Being and Death

^[13] Fletcher (2016: 154)

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] See Fletcher (2016: 155) for this interpretive distinction.

^[16] This exact response is argued for in Fletcher (2012) “The Locative Analysis of Good For Formulated and Defended”

^[17] Fletcher (2016: 155)

^[18] Ibid.

^[19] Ibid., 155-156

^[20] See Sumner (1996) Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics and Hall & Tiberius (2016) “Well-Being and Subject Dependence”

^[21] Hall & Tiberius (2016: 175)

^[22] Railton (1986: 9) “Facts and Values” 

^[23] See Fletcher (2016: 156) for this interpretation.

^[24] Ibid., 157

Disambiguating Common Sense: Destruction and Creation

In her paper “The Minimal A-Theory,” Meghan Sullivan argues against temporaryism in favor of permanentism. Both of Sullivan’s reference to these positions fall under varieties of A-theories about time. Sullivan contends that the Moorean commonsense argument for temporaryism is unsound. The central premise that Sullivan disputes is that temporaryism best generalizes our commonsense beliefs about creation, destruction, and related concepts. Instead, Sullivan claims that no position can accommodate most of our ordinary beliefs. So, the first premise of the Moorean commonsense argument is false because our commonsense views about destruction and related concepts do not entail temporaryism. 

In this paper, I argue that Sullivan relies on incomplete descriptions about our commonsense beliefs about creation and destruction. In completing the commonsense descriptions of creation and destruction, we can better evaluate the alleged contentious premise of the Moorean commonsense argument for temporaryism. Using our more complete description, Sullivan’s charge against temporaryism is weakened. I leave it open to whether her positive argument for permanentism would be enough to convince readers that her minimal A-theory is preferrable to the temporaryist position. Following my argument, I present one objection and reply in addition to some concluding remarks.

Preliminaries About Time

Briefly, Sullivan is concerned with positions pertaining to A-series conceptions of time. The A-series is one of two options provided my McTaggart’s timeless argument, concluding that time does not exist.^[1] While the details of McTaggart’s argument are not important for this paper, explaining the difference between the A-series and B-series is important. The A-series is a series of events ordered by various properties, such as being in the past, present, or future. The B-series pertains to ordering events with reference to relations, such as x was before y or z is after x. So, it can be noted that the A-series allows for change (in properties over time) whereas the B-series does not. 

The positions that Sullivan is interested in are temporaryism and permanentism. So, what is temporaryism? Temporaryism can be expressed as the following claim of temporary existence: “some objects change with respect to existence.”^[2] In this sense, temporaryism clearly belongs to the A-series, i.e., temporaryism holds that the existential properties of some objects change over time. Permanentism, however, entails that “everything always exists.”^[3] Classically, permanentism has been understood as belonging to the B-series. In other words, since the B-series does not allow for change in properties over time, everything that exists, exists eternally, we need to only distinguish between events by use of relations. Sullivan, however, is primarily concerned with a niche view about permanentism, i.e., A-theoretic permanentism. I will not address the various motivations for A-theoretic permanentism, but I will briefly present one version of this view, namely Sullivan’s minimal A-theory. According to the minimal A-theory, objects never cease to exist; instead, objects gain or lose various other properties over time.^[4] For instance, my childhood home might lose the property of being structurally sound, then gains the property of being on fire, and finally loses the property of being house-shaped, but my childhood home never ceases to exist. So, on one hand the minimal A-theory is permanentist on account of permanent properties of existence, and on the other hand the view is an A-theory since it allows for change in some properties over time. Before Sullivan argues for the minimal A-theory, however, she first argues that one argument for temporaryism is unsound. In the next section I present her argument.

The Moorean Commonsense Argument and a Mushy Alternative

Sullivan first presents the Moorean commonsense argument for temporaryism. The argument runs as follows:

M1) Highly plausible, commonsense beliefs about temporary objects (M_E) can be appropriately paraphrased in logical form such that this logical paraphrase (M_L) entails the temporary existence principle that some objects change with respect to existence over time.

M2) There is no other paraphrase of M_E as plausible as M_L. 

M3) There are no philosophical principles that are as plausible as M_E and contradict the temporary existence principle.

M4) If the temporary existence principle is entailed by M_E, the principle is undefeated, and it is not threatened by competing explanations, then the principle is very likely to be true.

C) The temporary existence principle is very likely to be true.^[5]

The Moorean premise that Sullivan disputes is (M1). Sullivan contends that “temporaryists have no right to claim that their logical paraphrase strategy best captures commonsense reasoning about creation, destruction, coming to be, and passing away.”^[6] To disambiguate the type of A-theories Sullivan is concerned with, Sullivan claims that “neo-Quinean A-theorists are committed to interpreting change in existence as always, necessarily a determinate matter,” ^[7] or that such objects never enter indeterminate penumbral states, hereafter Sullivan’s Determinacy Claim (DC) about temporaryism. 

To argue that the temporary existence principle of A-theorists is false, Sullivan holds that the temporaryist Moorean claim, that “a large, highly plausible body of beliefs about creation, destruction, coming to be, and passing away entail temporary existence,”^[8] leads to a contradiction. This contradiction results from two seemingly innocuous claims: the necessary determinacy of temporary existence found in DC and that some objects never exit penumbral states. The former is a consequence of holding the neo-Quinean view that Sullivan engages with. So, it is only the latter claim that I will present Sullivan’s further support. 

Sullivan demonstrates that some objects never exit penumbral states by describing possible worlds that are identical to our world in every way except that the possible world ends during a penumbral state, hereafter penumbral worlds. Consider Sullivan’s snowman case:

MUSHY’S TALE: There is a world where every object of common sense is an eternal being except for a lone snowman, Mushy. Mushy determinately exists at the first moment of time (January). But in March, he begins a gradual process of melting… The world ends half-way through the melting.^[9]

In this case, Mushy never exits the penumbral state of being destroyed by melting, i.e., “in the last moments of Mushy’s world, it is indeterminate that Mushy is destroyed.”^[10] On account of this indeterminacy, the determinacy of temporary existence is false in Mushy’s penumbral world. But, Sullivan contends, our common sense about Mushy must match that of other snowmen, say Frosty, in other non-penumbral worlds that don’t end, say, our world. So, just as our common sense about Mushy does not entail temporaryism, our common sense about Frosty cannot entail temporaryism in our world either. Hence Sullivan’s conclusion, (M1) is false and the Moorean commonsense argument for temporaryism is unsound.

So Long Frosty: Disambiguating Destruction

I argue that Sullivan’s argument relies on incomplete descriptions about our commonsense beliefs about creation and destruction. First, consider again the two seemingly innocuous claims that allegedly lead to contradiction: the necessary determinacy of temporary existence found in DC and that some objects never exit penumbral states. While I grant Sullivan’s former claim for sake of argument, I reject that both claims jointly entail a contradiction. The claim that some objects never exit penumbral states confuses two senses of destruction (creation, coming to be, or passing away), both of which are compatible with our commonsense views about destruction (creation, coming to be, or passing away).

Sullivan’s exact formulation of the falsity of determinate temporary existence in penumbral worlds is as follows:

“There are worlds and times where objects undergo creation and destruction, come to be and pass away in just the way they do in our world. But in these worlds, determinate temporary existence is false because objects never exit the penumbral phase.”^[11]

First, what does it mean for an object to have determinate temporary existence? Temporary existence, at least the A-theorist version that Sullivan engages with, simply means that some objects change with respect to existence. Tacking on ‘determinate’ merely adds the neo-Quinean A-theorist sympathy that “objects that change with respect to existence never go through a penumbral state such that it is indeterminate whether the change has happened (emphasis mine).”^[12] In other words, existence is an all-or-nothing feature, either an object exists, or it doesn’t. The feature of determinate temporary existence that Sullivan is most concerned with pertains to our commonsense understanding of creation and destruction. For example, Frosty the snowman undergoes melting in March (and is significantly disfigured!), but it is not clear, argues Sullivan, that Frosty is determinately destroyed or determinately survives. Thus, it is indeterminate that Frosty is destroyed or survives during this penumbral state.

For Sullivan’s argument to have significant force against temporaryism, she must show that there is an instance, in this world or some other metaphysically possible world, in which it is indeterminate whether some object has undergone change, where the change Sullivan appeals to is one of the following: creation, destruction, coming to be, or passing away. It is also important that whichever example Sullivan provides, that it appeals to our commonsense views about creation, destruction, coming to be, or passing away, or so Sullivan suggests. Here, Sullivan claims that the temporaryist view of, say, destruction is binary – an object is either destroyed or it is not. Common sense, says Sullivan, views destruction as a penumbral state, gradual destruction over time where it is unclear and indeterminate whether an object is destroyed. 

My claim, however, is that destruction in either case is referring to different aspects of our commonsense views about destruction. Sullivan at least confuses two senses of destruction. On one hand, destruction is a process, and on the other hand, destruction is a determinate state or property. When we ordinarily discuss destruction, we sometimes refer to a process in saying, for instance, our oceans are being destroyed by pollution. Here, being destroyed is understood as a process without need to further clarify the point. If we pressed for further clarification, we might ask, “Have our oceans been destroyed?” Any competent speaker would respond to this question with a crystal clear “No.” This just is the result of our commonsense view about destruction. Hence, being destroyed is not equivalent to having been destroyed.^[13]  To further disambiguate the two senses of destruction, we can say that having been destroyed is a property resulting from the process of being destroyed. In other words, having been destroyed is always preceded by a process of being destroyed, or if some object has been destroyed, then that object has undergone a process of being destroyed. 

These two different senses of destruction, however, still need to be applied to Sullivan’s argument against (M1). First, take Sullivan’s example of Frosty the snowman. Here, melting just is what can (and will) destroy Frosty. So, when Frosty starts melting, Frosty undergoes a process of being destroyed. Suppose Frosty significantly melts to half his size. While it is accurate to say that Frosty is severely disfigured and no longer man-shaped, we do not say that Frosty has been destroyed. After all, Frosty still stands as pitiful his appearance may be. What I mean by this is that the object referred to as Frosty still satisfies the neo-Quinean sympathy with respect to penumbral states that are not indeterminate. For a penumbral state to be indeterminate, it must be unclear whether an object is destroyed, where “is destroyed” refers to the determinate feature of having been destroyed. But it seems very clear that Frosty has not been destroyed in this determinate sense despite having melted to half his size. 

To Sullivan’s credit, it is true that Frosty is in a penumbral state of destruction, i.e., undergoing the process of being destroyed. But Sullivan’s claim is not just that Frosty is in some penumbral state. The claim is that it is indeterminate whether Frosty is destroyed or not. How, though, can this be? Our severely disfigured Frosty still stands, and it is clear that Frosty is not destroyed. Insofar as Frosty is in the penumbral state, Frosty cannot satisfy the determinate condition that Frosty has been destroyed or is destroyed. So, at least for Frosty, our commonsense view is coherent with the inequivalence between Frosty’s penumbral state and the concluding of that penumbral state in having been destroyed. 

What about Mushy in the penumbral world? Mushy never exits the penumbral state because the world ends. But just as I have previously shown with Frosty being halfway melted during the penumbral state, Mushy is similarly in the penumbral state and has not determinately been destroyed. So, even in Mushy’s world, determinate temporary existence is true. 

Despite my argument’s exclusive reference to destruction, we can similarly disambiguate creation in the two senses of process and a state or property. Therefore, temporaryism can maintain (M1) on account of Sullivan’s argument failing to show that the penumbral states are indeterminate. There is perhaps more that could be said pertaining to penumbral states and indeterminacy, but I take it that my examples are enough support for my claims, given that Sullivan is concerned with commonsense views. It appears, at least to me, that common sense follows the disambiguating process I presented and, consequently, no penumbral states are indeterminate. 

A Partially Destroyed Frosty

One potential objection to my argument is that even though Frosty is not completely destroyed while in the penumbral state, Frosty is partially destroyed by his loss of certain properties. Here, this partial destruction is why Frosty’s penumbral state is indeterminate. For instance, I claim that when Frosty is halfway melted, it is clear that Frosty has not been destroyed, hence my claim of Frosty’s determinant existence. But if Frosty is partially destroyed, say because he loses his properties of being frozenand being man-shaped, then some parts of Frosty are determinately destroyed and other parts are not determinately destroyed. This aligns with Sullivan’s assessment of Frosty according to her minimal A-theory.^[14] In this case, since it is unclear whether Frosty is determinately destroyed simpliciter, it is indeterminate whether Frosty has been destroyed. 

In response, it is important to not deny the intuitive features of partial destruction since such features are why the objection coheres with common sense. That is, common sense affirms that my childhood home is partially destroyed when, say, the living and dining rooms are burnt down but the remaining rooms are left intact. But upon closer inspection, we can see why this specific description is problematic; it merely breaks down the object (my childhood home) into its constituent parts (the various rooms that compose my childhood home). This move is misguided since temporaryism will simply move down a level and make lower-level temporary existence claims, i.e., the living room and dining room are completely destroyed while the other rooms are completely undestroyed. The stronger position is instead a mere loss of properties, not a loss of constituent parts. This too, however, faces problems. 

Consider Frosty’s loss of the properties of being frozen and being man-shaped. If these are essential properties that make Frosty the object that he is, then the objection begs the question against temporaryism. In other words, a loss of any property presupposes that it is indeterminate whether Frosty is destroyed. If, however, the properties of being frozen and being man-shaped are nonessential properties, then temporaryism can still point to a halfway melted and severely disfigured Frosty and claim that that object still exists or is not determinately destroyed. In either case, temporaryism still stands on account of the determinacy of the penumbral state.

Concluding Remarks

In summary, I have argued that the Moorean commonsense argument for temporaryism is not unsound on account of Sullivan’s argument. On the contrary, the two senses of destruction (creation and other related concepts) bring to light why the determinacy of neo-Quinean A-theories can satisfy the first premise of the Moorean argument. While my conclusion is a counterargument to Sullivan’s critique of temporaryism, it is left open whether her minimal A-theory is to be preferred over temporaryism. Evaluating which position makes better sense of our views about destruction and other related concepts is beyond the scope of this paper. 

References

McTaggart, J. M. E. 1908. “The Unreality of Time,” Mind 17(4): 457–474. Reprinted in Le Poidevin and McBeath 1993: 23–34. 

Sullivan, M. 2012. “The Minimal A-Theory,” Philosophical Studies 158(1): 149-174.

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^[1] See McTaggart (1908) “The Unreality of Time”

^[2] Sullivan (2012: 152) “The Minimal A-theory”

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid., 165-167

^[5] Ibid., 154-157. This simpler reconstruction of the Moorean argument is adapted from Sullivan’s more complex expressions of the same premises, with the exception of directly quoting (M3).

^[6] Ibid., 157

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Ibid., 159

^[9] Ibid., 162

^[10] Ibid., 163

^[11] Ibid., 159

^[12] Ibid., 157

^[13] As a further point of clarity, I am using being destroyed as a reference to any process of destruction, but this is not intended to confuse tenses since “destroyed” is in the past tense. By employing the term “being destroyed” I refer to an active tense where a process of destruction is presently occurring. Similarly, has been destroyed is a reference to any final state of destruction where the process completely and there is no more “destroying” that can be done.

^[14] See Sullivan (2012: 165-167)

A Quick Look: Defenses and Criticisms of Metaethical Constructivism

Metaethical constructivism is sometimes presented as an alternative to moral realism and anti-realism that can presumably avoid both the metaphysical commitments of moral realism and the skepticism characteristic of moral anti-realism.^[1] While this has been debated,^[2] presenting metaethical constructivism as an alternative to other metaethical views will be a useful starting point. That is, constructivism in its general form is distinct from both realism and anti-realism. In this paper we will take a quick look at two versions of metaethical constructivism, Kantian constructivism and Humean constructivism. Following the presentation of these views, I also point out some extant objections.

A General Framework for Metaethical Constructivism 

The general thesis of metaethical constructivism is that “normative truth consists in what is entailed from within the practical point of view.”^[3] While this characterization is only one way of viewing constructivism, the other being a procedural characterization (more on this later), there is no decisive consensus on which characterization best fits constructivism. Due to this lack of consensus, I will assume the practical point of view characterization unless otherwise noted.

First, I must briefly note that the practical point of view is the perspective occupied by any creature that judges something to be valuable. Starting from the practical point of view is important for metaethical constructivism since the question of what value is cannot be answered immediately. For positing an answer to “What is value?” from the onset is begging the question. But we can, however, occupy the practical point of view, or understand an attitude of value, that is, judging something to be valuable. So, the constructivist holds that it is from this point of view that entail normative truth.

Kantian Constructivism

John Rawls paved the way for Kantian constructivism, preliminarily in A Theory of Justice, and with greater detail in The Dewey Lectures of 1980.^[4] Generally, Kantian constructivism holds that there are moral conclusions that follow from the practical point of view. Some consider Rawls’ constructivist view to be procedural in nature. That is, the procedural characterization of constructivism depends on some hypothetical procedure for determining normative truth.^[5] Since Rawls’ original position is a kind of hypothetical procedure that leads to accepting principles of justice, it is clear why some take the procedural characterization to best describe constructivism in Rawls’ theory of justice. There is, however, debate about this interpretive point. 

Under a different interpretation, what is important for constructivism is not the claim that there is no normative truth without any procedure; instead, the important claim is that there is “no normative truth independent of the practical point of view,” or from the perspective of valuing creatures.^[6] This interpretation is compatible with viewing Rawls conception of the original position as a practical point of view. That is, the original position is a heuristic device used to derive the principles of justice from a limited, or restricted, practical point of view. So, those in the original position hold “the evaluative standpoint shared by those of us who accept liberal democratic values such as freedom and equality of persons.”^[7] This interpretation, then, is largely substantive in that “certain normative judgments implicit in the public political culture of a liberal democratic society” are embedded in the original position.^[8] Since this version of constructivism only starts with a subset of normative claims (as opposed to any normative claim), this is viewed as a restricted version of Kantian constructivism.

One of Rawls’ students, Christine Korsgaard, is recognized as the most notable defender of Kantian constructivism in the broader sense. This broader version of Kantian constructivism characterizes the practical point of view formally in order to account for any normative claim, or “normative judgment as such.”^[9] Korsgaard’s view is that Kantian constructivism is a kind of procedural realism.^[10] Procedural realism holds that “there are answers to moral questions because there are correct procedures for arriving at them.”^[11] So, starting from the practical point of view, Korsgaard intends to show that moral values are entailed from within that agent’s standpoint in a way that is otherwise not obvious. That is, moral values are entailed from within an agent’s standpoint of valuing regardless of the content of that agent’s initial normative judgments. So, all rational agents, agents with practical identity, as defined by Korsgaard, are bound by moral obligations regardless of our contingent circumstances or social worlds we find ourselves in.^[12]

Humean Constructivism

If Kantian constructivism holds that moral conclusions do follow from the practical point of view, the contrast with Humean constructivism is the claim that moral conclusions do not follow from the practical point of view. Humean constructivism still uses the practical point of view as its evaluative starting point but adds in the set of contingent values that an agent finds in themselves. In other words, “had one come alive with an entirely different set of evaluative attitudes, or were mere causes to bring about a radical shift in those attitudes, one’s reasons would have been, or would become, entirely different.”^[13] For instance, a rational agent cannot be bound to some moral requirement, say respecting others, if that agent does not accept that moral requirement in the first place. This further distinction, then, is that in virtue of being a rational agent, the Kantian constructivist holds that that agent is bound to the moral law regardless of that agent’s specific evaluative nature. On the other hand, Humean constructivism holds that the specific evaluative nature of a rational agent directly affects what that agent is morally bound to.^[14]

Objections and Responses

One concern for constructivism, however, is that the core constitutive strategy of constructivism relies on realism (one side of the Euthyphro problem). This collapse into realism occurs because the truths found within “correct logical standards or physical laws” are not made true by some constructive process, they are irreducible truths.^[15] The idea here is that if we are realists about the domains of the physical world, such as science, nothing makes the standards within those domains true. The truth of such standards just is “a brute fact about the way the world works.”^[16] So, if constructivists are right, that realism’s explanation of moral truths is severely deficient, then we ought to hold that there are no brute facts, and every domain should require a more complex constructivist picture. But it appears that there are some domains in which realism is a credible position. Therefore “we need some further, independent argument for thinking that moral realism is implausible,”^[17] or else constructivism is in danger of being fundamentally realist about morality.

Constructivism’s response to this charge points to realism’s failure to account for moral motivation and lacks reasons for action.^[18] That is, realism holds that moral standards are independent of our nature, commitments, or practical identity. But this leaves us without reasons to act morally at all, for there is nothing motivating us to comply with moral standards. So, realism would be unable to provide “any justification for the moral standards we take to be correct, since such justification…will entail a showing that one has good reason to comply with morality’s demands.”^[19] On the other hand, constructivism can provide an explanation of our reasons for moral action – i.e., Korsgaard’s principles of practical reasoning. By endorsing moral rationalism, constructivism can maintain moral motivation since moral standards are entailed by features constitutive of our rational agency. So, constructivism can always supply good reasons for acting morally. 

Another objection that constructivism is faced with is that agency is optional.^[20] According to this view, constructivism takes agency for granted since morality is taken to be derived from what constitutes agency. So long as one rejects being an agent, there is nothing that grounds morality for that individual, nor any reason for them to act morally at all. An example of this kind of non-agent is David Enoch’s shmagent: “a nonagent who is very similar to agents but who lacks the aim (constitutive of agency but not of shmagency) of self-constitution.”^[21] The idea here is that supposing one can give up agency for some alternative, shmagency, morality is far too easily abandoned. But disengaging from morality is not a consequence that many moral theorists will want to accept.

Some philosophers are skeptical about giving up agency, roughly that it is likely to be impossible both in principle and in practice. David Velleman develops a response to this concern of alternative constitution even if giving up agency could be possible.^[22] That is, if you are attempting to make an autonomous decision between being an agent or a shmagent, then you just are an agent whose choice is informed by the agent’s constitutive aims. If, however, you are “viewing [agency and shmagency] as alternatoids between which you are trying to make an autonomish shmoice…then you are a shmagent, and the criterion for your shmoice is fixed by the shaim constitutive of your shmagency.”^[23] Thus, in either case, you are connected with some constitution, morality can be grounded from within that constitutive framework.

Further insistence that one can be faced with alternate constitutions as a non-agent as such, that is, neither an agent nor a shmagent, then one is faced with the decision without any constitution whatsoever, “but such detachment is impossible.”^[24] In other words, such a determination must be guided by some form of constitution, and whatever that constitution is, it can still inform a constructivist account of morality. So, in virtue of asking the question about which constitution to accept, one is asking from a guiding viewpoint that is concerned about which constitution is the correct one. According to Velleman, agency is distinct from any other activity we engage in.^[25] Thus, others agree that “While it is possible to disengage from any particular ordinary activities, some sort of agency continues to operate.”^[26]

References 

Bagnoli, C. 2017. “Constructivism in Metaethics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/constructivism-metaethics/.

Copp, D. 2013. “Is Constructivism an Alternative to Moral Realism?” in Constructivism in Ethics, Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Darwall, S., A. Gibbard, & P. Railton. 1992. “Toward Fin de siècle Ethics: Some Trends,” The Philosophical Review, 101(1): 115-189.

Enoch, D. 2006. “Agency, Shmagency: Why Normativity Won’t Come from What Is Constitutive of Action,” The Philosophical Review, 115(2): 169-198.

James, A. 2012. “Constructing Protagoreon Objectivity,” in Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, James Lenman and Yonatan Shemmer (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press. 

James, A. 2013. “Moral Constructivism,” in The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Hugh LaFollette (ed.).

Korsgaard, C. 1996. The Sources of Normativity, Onora O’Neill (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Rawls, J. 1980. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures 1980,” Journal of Philosophy, 77(1): 515–572.

Shafer-Landau, R. 2003. Moral Realism: A Defence, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Street, S. 2010. “What is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?” Philosophy Compass, 5(5): 363–384.

Street, S. 2012. “Coming to Terms with Contingency: Humean Constructivism about Practical Reason,” In Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, James Lenman and Yonatan Shemmer (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press.

Velleman, J. 2009. How We Get Along, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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^[1] See James (2013) “Moral Constructivism” in The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. 

^[2] See Copp (2013) “Is Constructivism an Alternative to Moral Realism?”

^[3] Street (2010: 367) “What Is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?”

^[4] Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice and Rawls (1980) “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures 1980” in Journal of Philosophy

^[5] See Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton (1992: 140) “Toward Fin de siècle Ethics: Some Trends”

^[6] Street (2010: 366)

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Ibid., 368

^[9] Ibid., 369

^[10] Korsgaard (1996) The Sources of Normativity, especially lecture 3

^[11] Ibid., 36

^[12] Ibid., 129-130

^[13] Street (2010: 370)

^[14] Street (2012: 55-58) “Coming to Terms with Contingency: Humean Constructivism about Practical Reason”

^[15] Shafer-Landau (2003: 46-50) Moral Realism: A Defence

^[16] Ibid., 48

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] See Shafer-Landau (2003: 48-49) for a general structure of this constructivist response, particularly those constructivist theories that embrace moral rationalism – i.e. Kantian constructivism, Humean constructivism, Aristotelian constructivism.

^[19] Ibid.

^[20] Enoch (2006) “Agency, Shmagency: Why Normativity Won’t Come from What Is Constitutive of Action.”

^[21] Ibid., 179

^[22] Velleman (2009) How We Get Along, especially chapter 5

^[23] Ibid., 143

^[24] Ibid.

^[25] Ibid., 138-141

^[26] Bagnoli (2017) “Constructivism in Metaethics” in SEP. For another defender of this response see James (2012) “Constructing Protagoreon Objectivity”