The problem of rational compliance with rules is the problem of how it can be rational for an agent to follow a rule with a purely consequentialist justification in a case in which she knows that she can do more good by breaking it. This paper discusses two ways in which responses to this problem can fail to address it, using Alan Goldman’s article “The Rationality of Complying with Rules: Paradox Resolved” as a case study.

The question of when other people’s bad acts belong on our moral ledger arises in a number of different scenarios. Each scenario has received some philosophical attention, but no one has noted the structural similarities of these various scenarios or the implications of a proposed approach to one for how the others should be approached. That is the ambition of this article. In it, seemingly disparate moral phenomena—blunt rules, preemptive restrictions, moral blackmail, complicity, retreat and proportional response, and the duty (...) to rescue from a peril one has caused—are shown to have similar structures and thus to require similar moral approaches. (shrink)