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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2016
Most people believe that the rights of others sometimes require us to act in ways that have even substantially sub-optimal outcomes, as viewed from an axiological perspective that ranks outcomes objectively. Bringing about the optimal outcome, contrary to such a requirement, is an ‘optimific wronging’. It is less clear, however, that we are required to prevent optimific wrongings. Perhaps the value of the outcome, combined with the relative weakness of prohibitions on allowing harm as compared to those against doing harm, justifies non-intervention. In this article, I consider arguments to that effect, focusing on a recent paper in this journal by Andreas Mogensen. I argue that while we do not, in general, do wrong by failing to prevent optimific wrongings, we are nevertheless not permitted, in key cases, to refrain from intervening on the grounds that not intervening will secure the optimal outcome.
1 Adapted slightly from Mogensen, Andreas L., ‘Should We Prevent Optimific Wrongs?’, Utilitas 28 (2016), pp. 215–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 215-16. The example is a variation on one originally due to Judith Jarvis Thomson; see her, ‘The Trolley Problem’, Yale Law Journal 94 (1985), pp. 1395–1415 Google Scholar, at 1409.
2 Adapted from Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 216.
3 The two cited by Mogensen are Kamm, Frances, ‘Rights beyond Interests’, in her Intricate Ethics (Oxford, 2007), pp. 237–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 252; and McMahan, Jeff, ‘Intention, Permissibility, Terrorism and War’, Philosophical Perspectives 23 (2009), pp. 345–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 350.
4 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 217.
5 Mogensen uses the term ‘optimific wrong’ rather than ‘optimific wronging’. But the cases that interest both of us are cases of infringements of Hohfeldian claims. Intervention to prevent wrongs that are not also wrongings in this sense (if any there be) are not the focus. So I use the term ‘optimific wronging’, even though it's much clunkier.
6 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 218.
7 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 219.
8 Slightly adapted from Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, pp. 218-19.
9 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 219.
10 The classic discussion is Waldron, Jeremy, ‘A Right to Do Wrong’, Ethics 92 (1981), pp. 21–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 See Herman, Barbara, ‘The Scope of Moral Requirement’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 30 (2002), pp. 227–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 I suppose optimific injustices might be so few that it would in fact be possible for a person to intervene to prevent all of them. So it wouldn't follow from the permissibility of not intervening to prevent every injustice that it's permissible to fail to intervene to prevent all optimific injustices. But I doubt that optimific injustices really are so few in number, and in any case it would be a strange conception of the obligation to fight injustice that gave priority to fighting optimific ones in particular.
13 Davis, N. Ann, ‘The Priority of Avoiding Harm’, Killing and Letting Die, ed. Steinbock, Bonnie and Norcross, Alastair, 2nd edn. (New York, 1994), pp. 298–354 Google Scholar, at 327; Thomson, ‘The Trolley Problem’, p. 1397. points is a variation on a case originally described in Foot, Philippa, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect’, in her Virtues and Vices (Oxford, 1978), pp. 19–32 Google Scholar, at 23.
14 Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting the argumentative strategy I pursue in this paragraph.
15 For instance: ‘Whilst not immune to the pull of the intuition that one ought to intervene in Footbridge* and in other cases of its kind, I want to challenge that conclusion in this article’ (Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 217).
16 Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere (Oxford, 1986), p. 180 Google Scholar.
17 Quinn, Warren, ‘Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect’, in his Morality and Action (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 175–93Google Scholar, at 190. Others appealing to this idea include Nelkin, Dana K. and Rickless, Samuel C., ‘Three Cheers for Double Effect’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2014), pp. 125–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tadros, Victor, ‘Wrongful Intentions without Closeness’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 43 (2015), pp. 52–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Thanks to Sandy Steel for suggesting this example.
19 Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for making me see the need to address this suggestion.
20 Draper, Kai, ‘Rights and the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33 (2003), pp. 253–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 261. For more examples, see Foot, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect’, pp. 19-32; Quinn, Warren, ‘Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’, in his Morality and Action (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 149–74Google Scholar; Kagan, Shelly, The Limits of Morality (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar, ch. 3; McMahan, Jeff, ‘Killing, Letting Die, and Withdrawing Aid’, Ethics 103 (1993), pp. 250–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bennett, Jonathan, The Act Itself (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; Woollard, Fiona, Doing and Allowing Harm (Oxford, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 4.
21 McMahan, ‘Killing, Letting Die, and Withdrawing Aid’.
22 See his discussion of The Dutch Boy at ‘Killing, Letting Die, and Withdrawing Aid’, p. 257.
23 Woollard, Doing and Allowing Harm, ch. 4.
24 Draper, ‘Rights and the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’.
25 This is the strategy that Woollard adopts at Doing and Allowing Harm, pp. 70–9. She is the only author I know of who explicitly addresses this type of case, though what Thomson, Judith Jarvis says at p. 64 of ‘A Defense of Abortion’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1971), pp. 47–66 Google Scholar, suggests the same response. Compare also what McMahan says about the Involuntary Donor cases in ‘Killing, Letting Die, and Withdrawing Aid’.
26 Strictly speaking, thanks to the ‘problem of closeness’, it's not true that you must intend that the hiker be harmed, and so the specifically Nagelian explanation, which appeals to the evil of that harm, may in fact founder. But other accounts of intention-sensitivity that avoid the closeness problem also appeal to the hiker's essential involvement in your plan, so we can disregard this complication here. For further discussion, see Bennett, The Act Itself, ch. 11; Nelkin, Dana K. and Rickless, Samuel C., ‘So Close, Yet So Far: Why Solutions to the Closeness Problem for the Doctrine of Double Effect Fall Short’, Noûs 49 (2015), pp. 376–409 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tadros, ‘Wrongful Intentions without Closeness’.
27 Mogensen acknowledges (‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 217) that the philosophers he cites don't take the DDA to justify non-intervention in footbridge*. But he doesn't engage with them on that score, choosing instead to offer the Basic Argument.
28 For Mogensen's argument to go through, he needs to show only that you need not pull the hiker to safety in tracks. As we have seen, however, his defence of that claim appeals to the idea that it would be wrong to pull the hiker to safety. As against both claims, I have suggested reasons to think that it would be wrong not to pull the hiker to safety. In this section and the next, I consider the coherence of disregarding my suggestion and taking it to be morally required to intervene to prevent the hiker from being pushed off the bridge in footbridge* and yet not taking it to be morally required to pull the hiker to safety in tracks. My defence of the coherence of this position will not depend on the claim that it is required, rather than merely permissible, to leave the hiker on the tracks in tracks, so there is no need to clarify whether we are assuming one or the other. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to clarify this.
29 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 220.
30 Note that the Wrong-Preventing Principle doesn't imply that for non-wrongful harm-causing processes, there is no reason to prevent such processes over and above those reasons associated with preventing harm to the victim(s), although I'm not sure whether the reason not to throw our weight behind the non-wrongfully produced suffering of others counts as a reason associated with preventing harm to the victim(s) or not.
31 As Iason Gabriel pointed out to me, a further ground for WPP, which would reinforce the conclusion I reach in this section (though not in section VIII), might be the moral harm that perpetrators of wrongs do to themselves by perpetrating the wrongs.
32 Given that what is at issue is something – endorsing or acquiescing in harm – that seems likely to be morally troubling in almost every realistic case, a clear illustration of the difference WPP2 can make to permissibility must inevitably be far-fetched.
33 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 223.
34 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 223.
35 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, pp. 223–4.
36 See Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, pp. 220–2.
37 See e.g. Thomas W. Simpson and Vincent C. Müller, ‘Just War and Robot Killings’, The Philosophical Quarterly 66 (2016), pp. 302–22., who argue that responsibility (although not blame) for what autonomous machines do is always attributable to humans. For the opposite view, see Matthias, Andreas, ‘The Responsibility Gap: Ascribing Responsibility for the Actions of Learning Automata’, Ethics and Information Technology 6 (2004), pp. 175–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sparrow, Robert, ‘Killer Robots’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 24 (2007), pp. 62–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 Andreas Mogensen pointed this out to me. Compare Simpson and Müller, ‘Just War and Robot Killings’, pp. 311–12.
39 Mogensen, ‘Optimific Wrongs’, p. 225.
40 Thanks to Iason Gabriel, Chris MacLeod, Brian McElwee, Andreas Mogensen, Alison Hills, Adina Preda, Sandy Steel, Tom Simpson and three anonymous reviewers for Utilitas for their comments, suggestions and encouragement.
