PEA Soup

Defending Double Effect

According to the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), there is a morally significant difference between (i) the consequences of an action that were intended by the agent and (ii) the consequences that were not intended, but are merely foreseen side-effects of the action.

More precisely, according to the DDE, if the consequences of an action include a state of affairs S, and S is in the relevant way a bad state of affairs, then (other things equal) the action is worse if it is the successful execution of an intention to bring about this state of affairs S than if S is merely foreseen (and not intended) by the agent.  Being the successful execution of a bad intention of this sort is a bad feature of an action – the sort of feature that can make the action impermissible, or can at least make an impermissible action more seriously wrong than it would otherwise be.

In my view, the DDE is entirely true. But the DDE has been attacked on many fronts. One of these attacks certainly raises a fundamental problem that any full defence of the DDE must solve – namely, the “closeness problem”, which was originally raised by H. L. A. Hart in “Intention and Punishment”, and has since then been discussed by many philosophers, such as Philippa Foot, Warren Quinn, and Jonathan Bennett, among others.

More recently, however, a different sort of attack has been launched by Judith Thomson (“Self-Defense” in Philosophy & Public Affairs 1991, and “Physician-Assisted Suicide” in Ethics 1999). This attack on the DDE has now received a whole-hearted endorsement in T. M. Scanlon’s book Moral Dimensions (Harvard UP, 2008). However, Thomson’s attacks on the DDE seem to me to be completely misguided. In this post, I shall examine one of her objections, and then I shall explain what is wrong with it.

Expressivism and Self-Refutation

Here is a worry for (pure) expressivism.  I think it is new.  I am not sure how cogent it is, and this is probably not its most elegant formulation.  So help is welcome.  Consider

(1)    No ought-claim is true.

Construe ‘ought-claim’ to include (1) itself.  Then (1) is necessarily false:  if it is true, then it says of itself that it is false.  (You might think (1) is a pretty good statement of error theory; I will leave that as a problem for the error theorist.)   Consider now

(2)    No ought-claim ought to be accepted.

This is contingent.  It might be, for example, that one ought to do what has the best consequences and the best consequences happen when people never think about ought-claims.  If someone finds themselves accepting (2), of course, the first thing they ought to do is figure out how to abandon it.  That doesn’t affect its truth however. 

Welcome, Adrienne Martin!

We are pleased to announce that Adrienne Martin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, has accepted our invitation to become a contributor here at PEA Soup.  Adrienne works on agency, practical reasoning, and Kantian ethics.  Her writings have appeared in such publications as Pacific Philosophical Quarterly and the Hastings Center Report.  Welcome!

We are pleased to announce that Adrienne Martin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, has accepted our invitation to become a contributor here at PEA Soup.  Adrienne works on agency, practical reasoning, and Kantian ethics.  Her writings have appeared in such publications as Pacific Philosophical Quarterly and the Hastings Center Report.  Welcome!

A Request for Help Regarding Imperfect Duties

At the moment, I’m interested in imperfect duties and, in particular, the duty of beneficence, and I need some help tracking down the relevant literature with regard to two particular aspects of this duty. First, it seems to me that the duty of beneficence is not a duty to do x amount of good for others (where x is some percentage of the total amount of good that one could possibly do for others), but is instead a duty to dedicate y percent of one’s time and/or resources to helping others. If it were the former as opposed to the latter, then, a person who donates only to NPR (National Public Radio) would have to donate twenty times as much as a relevantly similar person who instead donates only to Oxfam if Oxfam does twenty times as much good for others as NPR does with the same quantity of donated monies. Now, surely, someone has made this point, but since I don’t know the literature that well, could you tell me who and where.

Enjoying immorality for its own sake.

I feel certain someone has already discussed the following problem, but I'm frustrated that I don't remember who and where.  Anyway:

Suppose there is some action whose consequences, it appears, are on balance slightly bad.  (Perhaps a boy steals a candy bar from a store.)   It seems possible for there to be an omniscient person who enjoys immoral things for their own sake.  It also seems possible that this person is a consequentialist.  Suppose she reads about this theft in the neighborhood newspaper.  She enjoys this immorality.  It's also plausible that her enjoyment of immoral things is good.  But because one consequence of this theft is that she enjoys reading about it, the total consequences of his theft are now, on balance, good.  But then she no longer believes that his action is immoral.  So she doesn't enjoy it.  So, his theft does not have on balance good consequences.  So his action is slightly bad...........

This pattern can oscillate infinitely.

What's going on here?  It appears as though there is some kind of conflict between 1) enjoying immorality for its own sake, 2) believing in consequentialism, 3) believing enjoyment is good, 4) being omniscient.  (I'm not even sure that #4 is necessary to generate the oscillation, but it certainly helps.)

A New Era Begins: Multiple Submissions

Thom Brooks alerts us to a new moral and political philosophy journal, Public Reason.  The journal looks to be noteworthy for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it is an open-access e-journal, following the recent (and I think wholly positive) trend set by journals like Philosophers' Imprint and the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.  Moreover, back when JESP debuted, there was some excitement over the idea that philosophy had its first journal (or one of its first journals?) that was willing to consider papers that are simultaneously under submission elsewhere.  As was noted at the time, this policy loses some sizzle if it is the only journal willing to do this.  Apparently now that is no longer the case, though: Public Reason will also consider simultaneous submissions, so there are at least two journals to which those working in moral/political/social philosophy can simultaneously submit.

For philosophers concerned with various timetables that increase pressure to publish, this will no doubt be welcome news.  It will be interesting to see how interested parties, particularly referees, respond to this development.  (Some have been bothered by the idea of simultaneous submissions of book proposals.)  As a referee, I don't think I'd be too bothered to learn that I had been working up a report for a paper that was withdrawn from the journal I was working for because it had been accepted elsewhere.  But I also think it would be nice if authors took advantage of this opportunity--and thus of referees--only when they are under some sort of career deadline or other unique pressure to publish.

In related news, and again like JESP, Public Reason will be publishing discussion notes, in addition to regular articles and book reviews.

Kant, Well-being, and Happiness

I’m intrigued by Kant’s remarks on happiness and well-being. I’ve been thinking of the traditional understanding of his view and a passage we’ve discussed in a reading group on the Second Critique. I’m left with jigsaw puzzle where I cannot seem to make all the parts fit. I would be thankful for any help.