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Moral Status and Agent-Centred Options

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

SETH LAZAR Open the ORCID record for SETH LAZAR [Opens in a new window]
SETH LAZAR*
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Australian National Universityseth.lazar@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

If we were required to sacrifice our own interests whenever doing so was best overall, or prohibited from doing so unless it was optimal, then we would be mere sites for the realization of value. Our interests, not ourselves, would wholly determine what we ought to do. We are not mere sites for the realization of value – instead we, ourselves, matter unconditionally. So we have options to act suboptimally. These options have limits, grounded in the very same considerations. Though not merely such sites, you and I are also sites for the realization of value, and our interests (and ourselves) must therefore sometimes determine what others ought to do, in particular requiring them to bear reasonable costs for our sake. Likewise, just as my moral status grounds a requirement that others show me appropriate respect, so must I do to myself.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 83 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 Some advocates of indirect or subjective consequentialism argue that actually just living our lives in a more or less ordinary way does maximize (expected) value. See, for example, Pettit, P., ‘The Consequentialist Perspective’, Three Methods of Ethics, ed. Pettit, Philip, Baron, Marcia and Slote, Michael A. (Oxford, 1997), pp. 92–174Google Scholar.

2 One might think that taking on a great burden for the sake of a trivial benefit to others is impermissible; even if we don't take that view, we might not describe such an action as supererogatory. Thanks to a referee here. See Curtis, B., ‘The Supererogatory, the Foolish and the Morally Required’, The Journal of Value Inquiry 15 (1981), pp. 311–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Slote, M., ‘Morality and Self–Other Asymmetry’, The Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984), pp. 179–92, at 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Broad, C. D., ‘Self and Others’, Broad's Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. Cheney, David R. (London and New York, 1971), pp. 1–9Google Scholar.

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7 Kagan, Limits.

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10 Though see Hurley, ‘Getting’; Shiffrin, ‘Moral Autonomy’.

11 Fellow-travellers: Heyd, D., Supererogation (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar; Hurley, ‘Getting’.

12 E.g. Williams, Moral Luck; Scheffler, Rejection.

13 Scheffler, S., Human Morality (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar. There is a quite different approach to justifying moral options (and our moral reasons more generally) that gives the concept of empathy a driving role. I lack the space to consider that approach here, but it is no doubt worth pursuing. Thanks to a referee for raising it.

14 See e.g. Heyd, Supererogation; Kamm, F. M., ‘Review: Non-Consequentialism, the Person as an End-in-Itself, and the Significance of Status’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992), pp. 354–89Google Scholar; Hurley, ‘Getting’; Shiffrin, ‘Moral Autonomy’; Slote, M. A., Common-Sense Morality and Consequentialism (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

15 Thanks to a referee here.

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17 Sobel, ‘Impotence’.

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20 Slote, Common-Sense Morality; Mulgan, Demands.

21 For an independent statement of this concern, see Walker, M. U., ‘Autonomy or Integrity: A Reply to Slote’, Philosophical Papers 18 (1989), pp. 253–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a response on Slote's behalf, see Shiffrin, ‘Moral Autonomy’.

22 Slote, Common-Sense Morality.

23 Walker, ‘Autonomy or Integrity’.

24 These criteria are used by Lewis to assess putative laws of nature. But they seem equally apt to moral theorizing. Lewis, D. K., Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (New York, 1983)Google Scholar.

25 As the editor pointed out in comments, I don't believe that moral status is binary. It can come in degrees, and non-human animals plausibly have some degree of moral status (the degree depending on the kind of animal). To avoid unnecessary complexity, throughout the rest of the article when I refer to having moral status, I mean having full moral status.

26 See the papers cited in Chappell, R. Y., ‘Value Receptacles’, Noûs 49 (2015), pp. 322–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 I am not arguing that this is the only respect in which my mattering unconditionally makes a difference to what I and others ought to do. I am simply saying that, necessarily, if I had to sacrifice my interests by X in order to realize a benefit of X + 1 for someone else, then I would not matter unconditionally – my mattering would depend only on the extent to which my interests are at stake. Thanks to the editor for pressing me here.

28 Quinn, W. S., ‘Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’, Philosophical Review 89 (1989), pp. 287–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Hampton, J., ‘Selflessness and the Loss of Self’, Social Philosophy and Policy 10 (1993), pp. 135–65Google Scholar; Hurka and Shubert, ‘Permissions’.

30 Thanks to a referee for pressing here.

31 Of course, there could be other versions of this approach that leave very little room for self-favouring options. All I need for my argument here is that there be a version for which such options are easy to justify.

32 A reviewer notes that, in the world as it is, the imperative to help those whose basic needs are going unfulfilled could be all-consuming, leaving no room for self-favouring options. If that's right, then it is true that the Kantian may have a hard time justifying agent-centred options – indeed, perhaps they would simply deny that we have such options in the real world. In fact, however, I think that the present conditions of need are not a function of scarcity, but rather of the lack of political will on the part of the global rich. This raises the distinct issue of which kinds of duties one might have to take up the slack left by others not performing their primary duties.

33 Anderson, E., Value in Ethics and Economics (London, 1993)Google Scholar.

34 A similar idea is defended in Quinn, ‘Doing and Allowing’; Woollard, F., ‘If This Is My Body . . .: A Defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2013), pp. 315–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Obviously, some absolutist deontologists think that this additional protection cannot be outweighed.

36 Curtis, ‘Foolish’. Note that not all failures of self-respect involve a significant amount of self-harm.

37 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

38 Quinn, W. S., ‘Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989), pp. 334–51Google ScholarPubMed.

39 Pettit, ‘The Consequentialist Perspective’.

40 Quinn, ‘Doing and Allowing’. Frances Kamm implies endorsement for the ‘no positive duties’ thesis in Kamm, ‘Review’. For a canonical Kant-inspired view that we have no positive duties, see e.g. Nozick, R., Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar.

41 Singer, P., ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 229–43Google Scholar.

42 Gert, J., ‘Normative Strength and the Balance of Reasons’, The Philosophical Review 116 (2007), pp. 533–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Sobel, ‘Impotence’; Kagan, Limits.

44 Gert defends something like this view, though he argues that the well-being of others cannot generate rational requirements. My focus is on moral normativity. Gert, ‘Requiring and Justifying’.

45 Thanks to a referee for helping me to see this point.

46 Kamm, ‘Status’.

47 Kagan, ‘Defending Options’.

48 Compare Sobel, ‘Impotence’.

49 Chappell, ‘Receptacles’.

50 I presented earlier versions of this article at the Australasian Moral Philosophy Workshop, at Kioloa, and at seminars in Yale and Berkeley. My thanks to the organizers of those meetings for inviting me, and to the participants for their many helpful comments. For comments on drafts, thanks to Garrett Cullity, Meir Dan-Cohen, Dale Dorsey, Tom Hurka, Shelly Kagan, Niko Kolodny, Chris Kutz, Véronique Munoz-Dardé, Shmulik Nili, Doug Portmore, Nic Southwood, and Yuan Yuan. Thanks also to a reviewer and the editor of this journal, for their many helpful and insightful suggestions. This article was supported by Australian Research Council grant DP170101394.