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Paternalism and Subsequent Consent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Donald Van De Veer
Donald Van De Veer*
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University at Raleigh
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Extract

Some philosophers believe that appeals to promoting or maximizing good consequences are a suspect way of attempting to justify coercive interference with another person's actions. Suppose that is true. If there is a presumption that individuals have a right not to be coercively interfered with, then, foregoing utilitarian type appeals, it would seem that the only way to justify coercive interference of a paternalistic sort would be to show that under certain conditions the presumption fails.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 631 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 By’ A acts paternalistically towards B’ I mean ‘A coercively interferes with B's actions (or omissions) or B's interests in order to promote what A believes to be B's own good.’ Such an analysis is rough but will serve my purposes here. 631

2 Carter, Rosemary, “Justifying Paternalism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1977), pp. 133-45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., p. 134.

5 Ibid., p. 135. 1. prior to the interference the subject explicitly consents to the paternalistic intervention; or 2. subsequent to the interference the subject i) explicitly consents to the action; or ii) is disposed to consent either upon request, or upon receipt of a relevant piece of information 6

6 Ibid., p.136.

7 Ibid., p. 137.

8 Ibid., p. 138. Regarding 3(a) compare the mentioned brainwashing example.

9 The reader may wish to contemplate Br'er Fox's “threat” to throw Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch. Elsewhere, I offer an analysis of coercion, cocive offers, and seductive ones; see “Coercion, Seduction, and Rights,” The Personalist 58 (1977), pp. 374-81.Google Scholar

10 Carter, op. cit., p. 133.

11 Carter curiously, given her position, at the end of her paper states “ … if the majority want something like ‘medicare’ to be instituted, then it is non-paternalistic to comply with their wishes, since they are not, at any time, being forced to do something they do not want to do.” Ibid., p. 145.

12 Ibid., p. 135 (top).

13 Carter, rightly, does not assume that (6) entails (7), but does so only in the absence of other morally relevant considerations (e.g. suppose X causes disaster for others); I leave this qualifying assumption tacit here and elsewhere in the paper.

14 Guideline (6) refers to prior agreements, e.g. we agree to not let the other drive a car if he or she is inebriated.

15 Carter, op. cit., p. 141.

16 “Hypothetical Atemporal Consent” might be a better label since the emphasis in such a view is not on the consideration that the subject would at a certain time consent but on the consideration that a subject would consent if certain conditions are satisfied whether or not they are-concurrently, subsequently, or ever. The essay by Dworkin, Gerald is his “Paternalism”, in Morality and the Law, ed. Wasserstrom, Richard (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 107-26.Google Scholar

17 I believe that such a view is also not without problems, but will not discuss them here.

18 Carter, op. cit., p. 138