Piers Rawling

On Defending Deontology

This paper comprises three sections. First, we offer a traditional defence of deontology, in the manner of, for example, W.D. Ross (1965). The leading idea of such a defence is that the right is independent of the good. Second, we modify the now standard account of the distinction, in terms of the agent-relative/agent-neutral divide, between deontology and consequentialism. (This modification is necessary if indirect consequentialism is to count as a form of consequentialism.) Third, we challenge a value-based defence of deontology proposed by Quinn (1993), Kamm (1989, 1992), and Nagel (1995).

Honoring and Promoting Values

How are we to characterize the distinction between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist moral theories? Philip Pettit has recently suggested that the difference lies in the way in which each theory tell us to respond to values. 1 He distinguishes between honoring a value and promoting it. To honor some value, such as honesty, in ones own life is to strive to be as honest as possible oneself. To promote its general realization is to devote oneself to encouraging as many people as possible to be honest. According to Pettit, this distinction holds for any value. Consequentialism requires us to promote whatever values there are. This will often, of course, involve honoring them in our own lives. Nevertheless, the consequentialist agent should honor those values only so far as honoring them is a way of promoting them. Where honoring conflicts with promoting, the former gives way to the latter. Nonconsequentialist theories, which include deontology, demand, of at least some of these values, that we honor them in our own lives, even if that means that we do not promote them as effectively as we might otherwise have done.2 This intuitively appealing account also appears to fit in well with what is fast becoming the standard method of drawing the distinction between consequentialism and deontology, which employs a contrast between the agent-neutral and the agent-relative. This latter contrast has been drawn in terms of values, rules, aims, theories, or, most commonly, reasons. On the last construal we may say, very roughly, that an agent is acting on an agent-relative reason if that reason makes essential reference to him; otherwise he is acting on an agent-neutral

Value and Agent-Relative Reasons

In recent years the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons has been taken by many to play a key role in distinguishing deontology from consequentialism. It is central to all universalist consequentialist theories that value is determined impersonally; the real value of any state of affairs does not depend on the point of view of the agent. No reference, therefore, to the agent or to his or her position in the world need enter into a consequentialist understanding of what makes an action right or wrong or morally permissible. Consequentialism thus provides an agent-neutral account of both the right and the good.

Perspectives on a Pair of Envelopes

The two envelopes problem has generated a significant number of publications (I have benefitted from reading many of them, only some of which I cite; see the epilogue for a historical note). Part of my purpose here is to provide a review of previous results (with somewhat simpler demonstrations). In addition, I hope to clear up what I see as some misconceptions concerning the problem. Within a countably additive probability framework, the problem illustrates a breakdown of dominance with respect to infinite partitions in circumstances of infinite expected utility. Within a probability framework that is only finitely additive, there are failures of dominance with respect to infinite partitions in circumstances of bounded utility with finitely many consequences (see the epilogue).

Can Scanlon avoid redundancy by passing the buck

Scanlon suggests a buck-passing account of goodness. To say that something is good is not to give a reason to, say, favour it; rather it is to say that there are such reasons. When it comes to wrongness, however, Scanlon rejects a buck-passing account: to say that j ing is wrong is, on his view, to give a sufficient moral reason not to j. Philip Stratton-Lake 2003 argues that Scanlon can evade a redundancy objection against his (Scanlon’s) view of wrongness by adopting a buck-passing account of wrongness. We argue that this manoeuvre does not succeed. Scanlon’s notion of wrongness rests on the idea of a reasonably rejectable principle. As Stratton-Lake points out, Scanlon offers two accounts, one in terms of permission, the other in terms of proscription. The permission account is tricky to formulate. Scanlon’s account (quoted in Stratton-Lake 2003: 71) might suggest any of the following four formulations (where the principles in question are principles ‘governing how one may act’ (Scanlon 1998: 195):

Conditional and Conditioned Reasons

This paper is a brief reponse to some of Douglas Portmores criticisms of our version of the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction. In his interesting and helpful paper ‘McNaughton and Rawling on the Agent-relative/Agent-neutral Distinction’, Douglas Portmore criticizes our formalization of duties on the grounds that we have over-looked an important class of conditional cases in which the antecedent of the conditional falls outside the scope of the deontic operator.

BENEFITS, HOLISM, AND THE AGGREGATION OF VALUE

We reject Moorean holism about value—the view that the value of the whole does not equal the sum of the values of its parts. We propose an alternative aggregative holism according to which the value of a state of affairs is the sum of the values of its constituent states. But these constituents must be evaluated in situ . We also argue that, in addition to value tout court , there are benefits that can go to individuals—where the value of a state of affairs need not equal the sum of the benefits it supplies. To deny this claim is to deny, among other things, the possibility of even raising distributional concerns, or that of stating egoism in a coherent fashion. And denying these possibilities is implausible. But once benefits are in the picture, there is, pace certain forms of consequentialism, pressure to acknowledge that we can have extra reason to pursue them beyond considerations of the effect of such pursuit on the general good. We conclude by applying these thoughts to, first, the claim that Pareto-optimality is necessary for maximal value (we argue that this thesis is false); and, second, Parfits ‘repugnant conclusion’ (we use this conclusion to bolster our claim that value need not be the sum of benefits: if value were always the sum of benefits, the repugnant conclusion would follow; the repugnant conclusion is false; therefore value is not always the sum of benefits).

Achievement, welfare and consequentialism

In ‘Utilitarianism and accomplishment’ (2000: 264-67) Roger Crisp argues that any attempt to defend utilitarianism by moving from a hedonist account of well-being to one that allows a significant role for accomplishment thereby admits a ‘Trojan Horse’ (267).1 To abandon hedonism in favour of a conception of well-being that incorporates achievement is to take the first step down a slippery slope toward the collapse of the other two pillars of utilitarian morality: welfarism and consequentialism. We shall argue that Crisp’s arguments do not support these conclusions. We begin with welfarism. Crisp defines it thus: ‘Well-being is the only value. Everything good must be good for some being or beings’ (264). The first part of this definition is potentially misleading, since it makes it sound as if welfarism adopts a monistic account of value, in which well-being is the only good thing. But well-being, as Crisp notes, when discussing hedonism, is best understood as consisting in a balance of good things over bad in one’s life. So understood, welfarism is silent on the issue of what things are good; it places a structural restriction on what kinds of things can be good: they must be things that are good for beings. It is a separate task to supply the content to fit this structure by determining what things are good, and welfarists differ in their answers: hedonists traditionally assert that pleasure alone is good; others add further items such as knowledge and virtue. Why is the thought that a person’s well-being depends importantly on what they accomplish a threat to welfarism? An accomplishment is judged both by its outcome or product and by the manner of the performance itself. But an activity or outcome is only an achievement if it is worthwhile, and whether it is worthwhile will depend on whether it exhibits what Crisp asserts to be ‘non-welfarist values’ (266), such as beauty, grace, importance, or style excellences which welfarism, in Crisp’s view, cannot accommodate because they cannot be ‘cashed out in welfarist terms’, or ‘reduced to the value of well-being’ (266). Here Crisp rests his case, but it is worth trying to get clearer about the difficulties in order to see if the welfarist can meet them. Take Crisp’s example of Niels Bohr, whose work on the structure of the atom was a considerable achievement. Part of Bohr’s achievement was that he advanced our knowledge, and knowledge is a value a welfarist can accommodate. She could hold that knowledge is intrinsically good for its possessor. But Crisp’s point is that not all advances in knowledge are equally significant, the more significant they are the greater the achievement. So one who counts the blades of grass on a lawn has achieved little or nothing. Can the welfarist offer an account of what makes one advance in knowledge more important than another? The welfarist can make one of two responses, to each of which there are objections. The first is to say that the importance of knowledge is measured by its contribution to other aspects of well-being Bohr’s discovery, it might be claimed, led on to inventions that improved health and increased pleasure. There are a number of difficulties with this response. First, it is doubtfully true. Bohr’s discovery paved the way to the discovery of nuclear weapons. Second, and more importantly, it makes the value of knowledge instrumental. Knowledge is good only in so far as it leads to other desirable things, such as health or pleasure. But the welfarist was trying to capture the thought that (significant) knowledge is good in itself, and not simply as a means to

On C. D. Broad’s “On the Function of False Hypotheses in Ethics”*

The paper we discuss has not, as far as we can tell, been much cited. But Broad’s topic remains one of interest, and we find ourselves in agreement with most of his conclusions, although we have some quibbles concerning how he arrives at some of them. The “false hypothesis” that centrally concerns Broad is the supposition that everyone will perform some action, and he considers in detail its associated “mode of argument,” which he refers to as the “Principle of False Universalization” ð377; hereafter “PFU”Þ: if the consequences of everyone performing some act would be bad, then, the thought goes, no one should do it. But, as Broad points out, this does not, in general, look like a promising strategy, at least on its surface. With rare exceptions, we know in advance that not everyone will perform the act in question; so, as far as the consideration of consequences goes, the false supposition that everyone will perform it would appear to have no role—surely, the agent should try to discover what everyone will in fact do, not operate with false presuppositions about it. This complaint reflects, of course, a