Claims to rights and negotiation about their shape are pervasive in our public and private culture. Rights consciousness is surely desirable and is part and parcel of the transition toward a more democratic world. In this essay I consider the proper placement of moral rights in moral theory. In a famous essay, "Taking Rights Seriously," Ronald Dworkin argues that if it is accepted that individuals have moral rights against their government, that implies serious constraints on the conduct of government and (...) the freedom of a political majority to enforce its wishes through law. I endorse the thesis that individuals have such moral rights and support taking rights seriously in Dworkin's sense. My focus is elsewhere. In this essay I shall argue that moral rights do not and should not figure in our fundamental moral principles; rights enter at the level of subordinate principles. In a very broad way, to take this stand is to side with utilitarians and consequentialists, who see rights as instruments for achieving other values, not moral goals in their own right. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that the utilitarian principle of criminalization is sounder than its poor reputation suggests. The paper begins by describing three possible answers to the research question: To what extent should the consequences of criminalization matter morally in a theory of criminalization? Hereafter I explain why I shall discuss only two of these answers. Then follows a detailed and critical specification of UPC. Furthermore, I will argue why criticisms of UPC made by philosophers such (...) as Douglas Husak and Victor Tadros in their recent work are far from convincing. Finally, I will present a positive reason for accepting UPC as a principle of criminalization, namely: that UPC is consistent with what I call the Counterproductive Criminalization Principle, while non-consequentialist theories of criminalization are not. (shrink)

In The Ends of Harm Victor Tadros develops an alternative to consequentialist, and non-consequentialist retributivist, accounts of the justifiability of punishment: the duty view. Crucial to this view is the claim that wrongdoers incur an enforceable duty to remedy their wrongs. They cannot undo them, but they can do something that is almost as good—namely, by submitting to appropriate punishment, which will deter potential wrongdoers in the future, reduce their victim’s risk of suffering similar wrongs again. Admittedly, this involves harming (...) wrongdoers as a means to an end, but according to Tadros the ‘means principle’ that we should not harm others as a means, properly construed, does not apply to cases where the victim has an enforceable duty to bear the kind of harm that he or she is being made to suffer. In this article, I shall express reservations about Tadros’ defense and interpretation of the means principle. In presenting his position, Tadros also sets out some interesting anti-retributivist considerations casting doubt on the idea that wrongdoers’ suffering is non-instrumentally good. I shall challenge these. Finally, I shall suggest that the duty view may have counterintuitive implications in relation to wrongs where the offender helps to lower the risk that victims will be subjected to similar wrongs in ways other than by being punished. (shrink)

Agent-relative restrictions prohibit minimizing violations: that is, they require us not to minimize the total number of their violations by violating them ourselves. Frances Kamm has explained this prohibition in terms of the moral worth of persons, which, in turn, she explains in terms of persons’ high moral status as inviolable beings. I press the following criticism of this account: even if minimizing violations are permissible, we need not have a lower moral status provided other determinants thereof boost it. Thus, (...) Kamm’s account is incomplete at best. And when, to address this incompleteness, it is insisted that our moral worth derives from specific moral statuses, the inviolability account comes to seem deficient because it begs the question against those who are not initially persuaded that minimizing violations are impermissible. (shrink)

It is impermissible to violate a constraint, even if by doing so a greater number of violations of the very same constraint were to be prevented. Most find this puzzling. But what makes the impermissibility of such minimizing violations puzzling? This article discusses some recent answers to this question. The article's first aim is to make clear in what way these answers differ. The second aim is to evaluate the answers, along with Kamm's and Nagel's proposed solutions of what they (...) see as the puzzle of constraints. The main thesis of the article is this: because defenders of constraints are not committed to any conception of valuable states of affairs, constraints do not conflict with maximizing rationality; but neither can they be accounted for in terms of impersonal values. (shrink)

The series of 'trolley' examples issue a challenge to moral principles based on intentions, since it seems that these give the wrong answers in two important cases: 'Fat Man', where they seem to say that it is permissible to push someone in front of a trolley to save others, and 'Loop', where they seem to say that it is wrong to divert a trolley towards a single person whose body will stop it and save others. I reply, first, that there (...) is a parallel between the wrongful intention to mutilate in 'Transplant', where one person's vital organs are removed to save others' lives, and the intention to assault in Fat Man. Secondly, I defend Frances Kamm's view that in Loop one can divert the trolley towards the one without an intention to kill or assault, since good potential side-effects can be taken into account in deciding what to do, without their becoming intentions. (shrink)

In this article I pose a challenge for attempts to ground all reasons in considerations of value. Some believe that all reasons for action are grounded in considerations of value. Some also believe that there are agent-relative restrictions, which provide us with agent-relative reasons against bringing about the best state of affairs, on an impartial ranking of states of affairs. Some would like to hold both of these beliefs. That is, they would like to hold that such agent-relative restrictions are (...) compatible with a teleological theory, one that grounds all reasons for action in considerations of value. This is what I will argue is problematic. I will argue that agent-centered restrictions will not fit into a teleological theory. If the correct moral theory is a teleological one, then there are no agent-relative restrictions. If there are agent-relative restrictions, then teleology is false. My argument challenges a particular project, of showing that all ethical theories are broadly consequentialist. The attraction of this project is that it promises to preserve what is thought to be compelling about consequentialism—its teleology and maximizing—while also preserving elements of commonsense morality—such as agent-relative restrictions—that have typically been thought of as distinctly non-consequentialist in nature. If my argument is correct, then this promise cannot be fulfilled. (shrink)

Kantian respect for persons is based on the special status and dignity of humanity. There are, however, at least three distinct kinds of interpretation of the principle of respect for the dignity of persons: the contractualist conception, the substantive conception and the direct conception. Contractualist theories are the most common and familiar interpretation. The contractualist assumes that some form of consent or agreement is the crucial factor that is required by respect for persons. The substantive conceptions of dignity, on the (...) other hand, treat the concept of dignity as a substantive value that justifies a deontological conception of respect for persons. A third conception of respect for the dignity of persons, the conception that I favor, focuses directly on the special value of our rational nature. According to this consequentialist conception, we respect the dignity of persons by promoting the flourishing of rational nature. (shrink)

In their recent books, National Responsibility and Global Justice (2007) and Intricate Ethics (2007), David Miller and Frances Kamm give two similar arguments aimed at preventing their favoured accounts of the moral justification of rights from justifying an excess of demanding assistance rights. Both arguments appeal to the fact that a proliferation of assistance rights would conflict with other rights. In this paper, I show that these arguments fail. As Miller recognises in a footnote, the failure of such arguments appears (...) to support an alternative holistic approach to the moral justification of rights. But I will show that, without significant further argument that Miller and Kamm do not provide, this holistic approach offers no better support for Miller's and Kamm's claim that there are few demanding assistance rights. (shrink)

In their recent books, National Responsibility and Global Justice and Intricate Ethics, David Miller and Frances Kamm give two similar arguments aimed at preventing their favoured accounts of the moral justification of rights from justifying an excess of demanding assistance rights. Both arguments appeal to the fact that a proliferation of assistance rights would conflict with other rights. In this paper, I show that these arguments fail. As Miller recognises in a footnote, the failure of such arguments appears to support (...) an alternative holistic approach to the moral justification of rights. But I will show that, without significant further argument that Miller and Kamm do not provide, this holistic approach offers no better support for Miller’s and Kamm’s claim that there are few demanding assistance rights. (shrink)

The trolley problem, first described by Foot (1967) and Thomson (The Monist, 59, 204–217, 1976), is one of the most famous and influential thought experiments in deontological ethics. The general story is that a runaway trolley is threatening the lives of five people. Doing nothing will result in the death of those persons, but acting in order to save those persons would unavoidably result in the death of another, sixth person. It appears that, depending on the situation, we have different (...) moral judgments about the permissibility of action. We will review and systematize all the proposals in the literature of the past 35 years that have attempted to grasp our moral intuitions in a simple deontological principle. In particular, seventeen proposals will be classified: six algorithmic, seven psychological, and four other invalid accounts. This review and classification sheds light on some subtle differences and clarify a few issues. (shrink)

This paper offers a partial justification of so-called "deontological restrictions." Specifically it defends the "self/other asymmetry," that we are morally obligated to treat our own agency, and thus its results, as specially important. The argument rests on a picture of moral obligation of a broadly Kantian sort. In particular, it rests on the basic normative assumption that our fundamental obligations are determined by the principles which a rational being as such would follow. These include principles which it is not essential (...) for rational beings to accept, but acceptance of which we could non-arbitrarily attribute to them simply in their capacity as rational. Among these principles is the asymmetry mentioned above. (shrink)