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Article Excerpt
Critics of deontology have long noted that its proscriptions seem paradoxical since, in contrast with welfare utilitarianism, they forbid some acts that maximize welfare overall. Recently some philosophers have suggested that deontology harbors a special paradox; that thinking certain actions morally objectionable--for example, rape--it forbids minimizing such actions by doing one. (1) For example, Samuel Scheffler states the following about a deontological constraint.
[I]t is a restriction which it is at least sometimes impermissible to violate in circumstances where a violation would [serve to minimize total overall violations] of the very same restriction, ... and would have no other morally relevant consequences. (2)
The passage suggests that there is something particularly irrational about forbidding a deontological violation that, if done, would have the effect of reducing the total number of such violations. To take another example, if intentionally killing the innocent is wrong, it seems irrational to forbid killing one innocent person to prevent five murders.
I argue, considering work of Scheffler and others, that thinking deontology paradoxical in this sense commits one to believing that minimizing moral evil is a goal distinct from minimizing harm. Although perhaps correct, I explore what I think to be serious difficulties with this view.
Some preliminaries: I note that orthodox welfare utilitarianism aims to optimize happiness or pleasure without constraining that aim by conditions of distributive or retributive justice. However, it is explicit for Scheffler, and implicit for others I consider, that what is subject to minimization is undeserved harm. In the text, therefore, "harm" will mean "undeserved harm." Following Christopher McMahon, I call minimizing violations, those that reduce the number of identical violations, "preventative violations." (3) I will use "deontology," "common-sense morality," and "ordinary morality" interchangeably. "Moral evil," as used here, characterizes any violation of ordinary moral prohibitions, for example, those against theft, kidnapping, rape, or murder. And although there are debates about what constitutes harm, for this essay I count as harm a person' s experienced diminution of welfare. (4)
Scheffler, however, expresses deontology's "air of paradox" in two ways. Responding to an essay by Jonathan Bennett, (5) Scheffler writes about his earlier book, The Rejection of Consequentialism:
I was concerned with the air of paradox surrounding the idea that it is morally impermissible to minimize morally undesirable activity, the idea, more specifically, that because certain kinds of acts are so objectionable, one must not perform one such act even if that means that more acts of the very same kind will be performed or that other equally undesirable events will transpire. (6)
"Equally undesirable events" denotes equivalent harm naturally or accidentally caused. Scheffler further comments:
He [Bennett] rightly notes that deontological restrictions do not apply only to cases in which, for example, killing an innocent person oneself is the only way to prevent more numerous killings committed by other people (call these 'A-type cases'); they also apply to cases in which killing an innocent person oneself is the only way to prevent a greater number of deaths due to natural causes ('B-type cases')]
He claims, with respect to A-type cases, that if we're concerned, pace Bennett, with people making bad things happen, then it seems rational to do one making--a preventative violation--to minimize such makings. In B-type cases, the issue of "makings" vs. "allowings" (of violations) obviously doesn't arise. But nothing here suggests that A-type cases are paradoxical in a different way from B-type cases. However, in a later essay, commenting on work of Philippa Foot, Scheffler expresses ordinary moral constraint's paradoxical character in the following way: "How can the minimization of morally objectionable conduct be itself morally objectionable?" (8) No mention is made of harm "caused by equally undesirable events." Scheffler's point against Foot is that even if one grants that conceptions of morally better and worse lack meaning outside the dictates of ordinary morality, a principle of maximization comes into play. For Foot, optimizing welfare overall, aside from expressing the particular virtue of benevolence,...
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