Abstract
There has been a great deal of philosophical discussion about using people, using people intentionally, using people as a means to some end, and using people merely (or just, or only) as a means to some end. In this paper, I defend the following claim about using people: NOT ALWAYS WRONG: using people—even merely as a means—is not always (prima facie or pro tanto or all-things-considered) morally objectionable. Having defended that claim, I suggest that the following claim is also correct: NO ONE FEATURE: when it is morally objectionable to use people (either as a means or merely as a means), this is for many different kinds of reasons—there is no one wrong-making feature that every morally objectionable using has in common. After discussing these claims, I use them to present and motivate what I call the “precaution” theory of norms against using people. I conclude by considering a few cases from the criminal law context—cases that are naturally described as using people—to assess the moral appropriateness of this kind of use in these cases, and to demonstrate how the theory applies to the real world.
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Notes
There is a distinction between knowingly using a person and unknowingly using a person, and a similar distinction between intentionally using a person and unintentionally using a person. The account of using a person I’ve offered doesn’t build in that the use is knowing or intentional. We could offer explicit supplementary conditions:
(UK) and S knows that (UM2)-(UM4) obtain
(UI) and S performs A intentionally and with the knowledge that (UM2)-(UM4) obtain
and so on. My focus is not on the distinctive issues that unknowing or unintentional using of persons can raise, and so I will assume that (UK) and (UI) obtain, unless I explicitly state otherwise.
Derek Parfit, On What Matters Vol. 1 (2011), p. 212.
There is a question of what makes using a person different from working with or even working for a person. On one suggestion, to say that S is working with X is just to say that S is using X and X is using S—there is mutual use—perhaps along with conditional intentions and mutual knowledge of various kinds. It may also have to do with whether X has explicitly consented—or even explicitly signed up or volunteered—to being used by S. Finally, it may have to do with the extent to which the end, E, toward which S’s action is aiming is an end that is shared (perhaps explicitly) by X. The suggestion here is that working with and working for a person will be special cases in which one person is using another—cases in which these various other conditions hold as well.
Parfit, p. 213.
Parfit, p. 213, noting that Kamm gave him this objection “in discussion.”
Parfit, p. 214.
And it may be plausible that, on this account, it is always at least prima facie or pro tanto morally objectionable to use someone as a mere means—if for no other reason than the attitudes that one possesses.
In fairness to Parfit, he offers the above account as a “rough” definition, and it is possible he meant to be highlighting a clear set of sufficient conditions for treating merely as a means, perhaps leaving open whether those conditions are necessary.
Parfit, p. 215.
Parfit, p. 214.
Thanks to Heidi M. Hurd for encouraging me to be explicit regarding the full scope of the view.
Thomas Hill, in interpreting Kant on a related point, writes “‘Never treat them merely as a means’ is narrower, amounting to ‘when treating persons as means, also treat them as ends in themselves.’” “Scanlon on Moral Dimensions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 83 (2011), p. 484.
Alexander A. Guerrero, “Don’t Know, Don’t Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability, and Caution,” Philosophical Studies Vol. 136, pp. 59–97 (2007), p. 73.
“Equating Innocent Threats and Bystanders,” Journal of Applied Philosophy (2008), p. 281.
Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason (1989), p. 138.
“The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil,” in Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 138.
T. M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions (Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 118.
Perhaps one of the objectionable things about exploitation of the vulnerable is that vulnerability affects the quality of the consent that can be obtained. It can be hard to spell out the notion of consent at work in this thought but, even if there is a worry in this vicinity, we can turn to cases in which it seems completely clear that consent is both actual and rational, and that it is “robustly offered” in some sense. Consider, for example, a very slightly modified version of Parfit’s Green and Gold case (Parfit, p. 217):
Green marries Gold, a 90-year old billionaire. Green gives Gold various services and in other ways treats Gold well. Green’s sole aim throughout this, as Gold knows, is to inherit Gold’s wealth. Though Gold would prefer genuine affection from Green, she accepts a mutually advantageous arrangement on Green’s egoistic terms. Suppose next that Green regards Gold as a mere tool, whom he would treat in whatever way would best achieve his aims. Green’s first plan was to forge Gold’s will and then murder her, and he changed his plan to marrying Gold, and treating her well, only because that seemed a safer way to get some of Gold’s wealth.
Here, there is no harm to Gold (let us suppose), and Gold’s consent does not seem at all questionable. What is morally objectionable is the same: the attitude toward Gold that Green possesses and perhaps expresses.
There is an additional complication here in that some theorists, such as Parfit, want to focus on whether the action A is morally objectionable, as opposed to whether there is something morally objectionable about the case more inclusively—perhaps including just the mental states of the person performing the action. So Parfit suggests that, in some cases, a person might possess a morally objectionable attitude toward another, but this does not manifest itself in the action, and the action is not morally wrong or even morally objectionable. Again, resolving this dispute or the relevance of this dispute requires, among other things, taking a view about what is the proper object of moral assessment—something I will avoid doing here.
Alec Walen, “Transcending the Means Principle,” Law and Philosophy (2013), pp. 1–2.
For discussion of the empirical point, see Fiery Cushman, Liane Young & Marc Hauser, “The Role of Reasoning and Intuition in Moral Judgments: Testing Three Principles of Harm,” Psychological Science 17 (2006): 1082–1089.
Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die (Oxford University Press, 1996).
Acknowledgments
Thanks to participants at the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy workshop on “Deontological Principles and the Criminal Law” for their comments and discussion, and particular thanks to Heidi Hurd and Alec Walen for their comments on this paper.
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Guerrero, A.A. Appropriately Using People Merely as a Means. Criminal Law, Philosophy 10, 777–794 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9346-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9346-x