From Morality to the End of Reason: An Essay on Rights, Reasons, and Responsibility

337 Pages·2013·1.17 MB·English

by  Ingmar Persson

From Morality to the End of Reason
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From Morality to
the End of Reason
An Essay on Rights, Reasons, and
Responsibility
Ingmar Persson
1
3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
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© Ingmar Persson 2013
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First Edition published in 2013
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Acknowledgements

Without much advance planning, this book gradually grew into its present
shape over a period of almost ten years. It grew out of a nucleus of papers
critically examining rights, the act-omission doctrine, and the doctrine of
the double eff ect. I then added some positive claims about consequentialist
morality and responsibility, but in order to avoid incorporating too much of
earlier publications, these claims had to be about the form of a moral theory
rather than its substance. The book is meant to illustrate a certain method-
ology of doing normative ethics rather than to issue in substantive moral
conclusions. Even if I had given more substance to the emerging con-
sequentialist morality by appropriating conclusions that I have elsewhere
reached, it would still have been quite indeterminate. We should not expect
that in serious moral matters there is an answer that is defi nitely best, or that
there is anything minimally suffi cient for acting rightly. But we can still act
more or less well, and we should try to act as well as we can. To this extent,
morality parallels the business of fi nding out how to lead your own life. In
both cases, sound deliberation requires a sensitivity developed by a never-
ending, open-minded refl ection and analysis of relevant facts and responses
to them.
I hope this book could be of some assistance in such a developmental
process, though I am fi nishing it with a sense of defeat. As I am aging,
I feel with increasing intensity that Protagoras’ remark about religion, that
the obscurity of the topic and the shortness of human life preclude real
insight, applies as forcefully to moral philosophy and, indeed, to any area
of philosophy. Like life itself, the objective of the philosophical quest both
overwhelms you and slips away between your fi ngers.
Over the years I have benefi ted greatly from discussions on the topics of
this book with, in particular, Roger Crisp, Jeff McMahan, Sven Nyholm,
Jonas Olson, Derek Parfi t, Julian Savulescu, Paul Snowdon, Larry Temkin,
Suzanne Uniacke, and Michael Zimmerman. The extended time frame of
the writing of the book and my inability to keep any decent record of my
professional life make it almost inescapable that I have forgotten some who
vi acknowledgements
off ered valuable suggestions, for which I apologize. Two anonymous read-
ers for OUP provided very helpful comments. I am most grateful to Peter
Momtchiloff for generous support and friendly advice during the produc-
tion process.
Although, as already remarked, I have tried to avoid too much overlap
with earlier publications, Chapter 3 is based on ‘The Act-Omission Doctrine
and Negative Rights’, Journal of Value Inquiry , 41 (2007), 15–29 (©2007
Springer), Chapter 4 on ‘Two Act-Omission Paradoxes’, Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society , 104 (2004), pt 2 (©2004 Blackwell), and Chapter 10 ‘A
Consequentialist Distinction between What We Ought to Do and Ought to
Try’, Utilitas , 20 (2008), 348–55 (©2008 Cambridge University Press).
Ingmar Persson
Oxford, November, 2012
Contents

Introduction 1
1. The Nature of Rights 17
2. Problems in the Theory of Rights 4 8
3. The Act-Omission Doctrine and Negative Rights 69
4. Two Act-Omission Paradoxes 95
5. The Nature of Mental Explanations 118
6. Double Eff ect Troubles 140
7. Reasons of Benefi cence and Reason-Based Responsibility 160
8. Consequences Involving Other Acts 181
9. The Non-Transitivity of Identity of Supervenient Properties 202
10. Maximizing Value and Acting Responsibly 222
11. The End of Epistemic Reasons 241
12. The End of Practical Reasons 269
Conclusion 3 05
References 315
I ndex 3 23
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Introduction
According to some moral doctrines, there is an ‘asymmetry’ to the eff ect
that, as a rule, we have stronger moral reasons not to perform some actions
than we have to perform any actions. Thus, according to what I shall call
the doctrine of negative rights , DNR, we have general rights against others that
they do not interfere with us and our property, but no general rights that
they positively help us to sustain ourselves or our property. Hence, others
will be under a duty or obligation—and so will have strong moral reasons—
not to interfere with us and our property, but they will be under no duty
or obligation positively to help us, and so will have at most weaker reasons
to do so. Consequently, DNR exhibits the kind of asymmetry that I have
in mind.
Another asymmetrical doctrine is the act-omission doctrine , AOD, the doc-
trine that, in the case of certain harms, there are stronger moral reasons
against causing them than against omitting to prevent them or letting them
occur; for instance, there are stronger moral reasons against killing, or caus-
ing to die, than against letting die, or be killed. I shall argue in Chapter 3
that AOD involves DNR, that the acts that we have stronger reasons to
omit are acts that would violate rights. This might be taken to indicate that
the asymmetrical character of AOD derives from DNR, but there is more
to be said.
I shall contend that, alongside DNR, AOD involves another idea that
I am going to call CBR, an acronym for causally-based responsibility . The
core of CBR is the idea that responsibility is proportionate to causation: the
more of a causal contribution to an event, the greater the responsibility for
it, other things being equal. One implication of this idea is, as will appear,
that we are more responsible, more praise- or blameworthy, for what we
cause than for what we let happen, or let be caused. I believe that it is the
inclusion of CBR that explains why AOD implies that we are under no
duty to prevent other responsible agents from violating rights to life by kill-
ing, while we are under a duty not to kill with our own hands, though the
outcome in both cases is a violation of the right to life. A theory of rights