Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
distinction between moral theories for individuals and governments Harries, editor of National Interest, 1994 (Owen, The National Interest, Spring, p. 11)
Performance is the test. Asked directly by a Western interviewer, "In principle, d o you believe in one standard of human rights and free expression?", Lee immediately answers, "Look, it is not a matter of principle but of practice." This might appear to represent a simple and rather crude pragmatism. But in its context it might also be interpreted as an appreciation of the fundamental point made b y Max Weber that, in politics. it is "the ethic of responsibility" rather than "the ethic of absolute ends" that is appropriate. While an individual is free to treat human rights as absolute, to be observed whatever the cost. governments must weigh consequences and the competing claims of other ends. S o once the enter the realm of politics, human rights have to take their place in a hierarchy of interests, including such basic things as national security and the promotion o f prosperity.
( ) Absolutism causes paralysis because of conflicting obligations; only consequences can break the tie Nielsen 1993 (Kai, Phil. Prof @ U. Calgary, Absolutism and It Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf
Haber, p. 170-2) In so treating the fat man-not just to further the public good but to prevent the certain death o f a whole group of people (that is to prevent an even greater evil than his being killed in this way)-the claims of justice are not overriden either, for each individual involved, if he is reasonably correct, should realize that if he were so stuck rather than the fat man, he should in such situations be blasted out. Thus, there is no question of being unfair. Surely w e must choose between evils here, but is there anything more reasonable, more morally appropriate, than choosing the lesser evil when doing or allowing some evil cannot be avoided? That is, where there is n o avoiding both and where our actions can determine whether a greater or lesser evil obtains, should we not plainly always opt for the lesser evil? And is it not obviously a greater evil that all those other innocent people should suffer and die than that the fat man should suffer and die? Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is still more monstrous. The consequentialist is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective moral convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed or with certain reflective particular moral convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral convictions. One could even usefully and relevantly adapt here-though for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's. Conse~uentialism the kind I have been arguing for provides s o persuasive "a theoretical basis for of common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not theory, is corrupt." Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism, it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral convictions that would be another matter indeed Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing o f the innocent but cannot the compliment b e returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the death and misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems to m e to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to d o what in normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity he [it] allows, when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse. He tries to keep his 'moral purity' and [to] avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard called 'double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not make it right. ***Gender modified***
Johnson, '85 (Conrad D. Johnson, 'The Authority of the Moral Agent', Journal of Philosophy 82, N o 8
(August 1985), pp. 391) If we follow the usual deontological conception, there are also well-known difficulties. If it is simply wrong to kill the innocent, the wrongness must in some wav be connected to the consequences. That an innocent person is killed must be a consequence that has some important bearing on the wrongness of the action; else why be so concerned about the killing of an innocent? Further, if it is wrong in certain cases for the agent to weigh the consequences in deciding whether to kill or to break a promise, it is hard to deny that this has some connection to the conseauences. Following one line of thought, it is consequentialist considerations of mistrust that stand behind such restrictions on what the agent may take into account.3 But then again it is hard to deal with that rare case in which the agent can truly claim that his judgement about the consequences is accurate, or, in that last resort of the philosophical thought experiment, has been verified by the Infallible Optimizer.
PTpe fact of ng mnkes a morit claim on not only from IC udLtnn:tn or onsequcntialist point of view. but on common-sense moral grounds as well. E 3 t from nnv responsibilitv we mav h : ~ ?Fnr_havincrmadc less
fortunate other peov1e less wctl off r ~ c o u l huve been/ d &he sornmon-sense rnordity ofbenevolent a -& eqrd it as in general wron never to do u n v t h i n P . f o r v l e s s t e peopIc whom one is in a position to help end as mbrallv petlcr to do more for such people rather than less. LO sacrificeof one's own well-being rither than less in order to give aid to thc
- - -
to dive aid
a m
r1vu d l ype has to thc less lortunate. or. at least. to reduce tmcscb to thc (prcsumabiy rising) kvcl of wcll-being of lhosc anc
(when 111
over
- ;re. in that spectrum. k ( m u g h ) Jividine lihc'hetwfcen duties and su6ereropitihnevolence should be drcrwvn kavc 6alurccl time and time again in ed~icildiscussions. I
( ) Ignoring consequences is immoral - they sacrifice others to preserve moral purity. It is most moral to act to produce the best end regardless of the moral cleanliness of the means Ailinsky 1971 (Saul D., Activist, Prof, Social Organizer with Int'l Fame, Founder of Industrial Areas Foundation, Rules for Radicals, p. 24-7)
"Does this particular end justify this particular means?" Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The person [man] of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. T o say that cormpt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life. The practical revolutionary will understand Geothe's "conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action in action one does not always enioy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one s individual conscience and the pood of [hulmankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation. He [or she1 who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't care enough for people to be "cormvted" for them. The people [men] who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics o f means and ends-which with rare exception is conspicuous for its sterility-rarely write about their won experiences in the perpetual struggle of life and change. They are strangers, moreover, to the burdens and problems of operational responsibility and the unceasing pressure for immediate decisions. They are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends as if studying a navigational chart on land. They can be recognized by one of two verbal brands; "We agree with the ends but not the means," or "This is not the time." The means-and- end moralists or non-doers always wind up on their ends without any means. The means-and'ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as t o their real political position. In fact, they are passive-but real-allies of the Haves. They are the ones Jacques Maritain referred to in his statement, "The fear of soiling ourselves by entering the context of history is not virtue, but a way o f escaping virtue." These non-doers were the ones who chose not to fight the Nazis in the only way they could have been fought; they were the ones who drew their window blinds to shut out the shameful spectacle of Jews and political prisoners being dragged through the streets; they were the ones who privately deplored the horror of it all-and did nothing. This is the nadir of immorality. The most unethical o f all means is the nonuse of any means. It is this species of man who so vehemently and militantly participated in that classically idealistic debate at the old League of Nations on the ethical differences between defensive and offensive weapons. Their fears of action drive them to refuge in an ethics s o divorced from the politics of life that it can apply only to angels, not to men. The standards ofjudgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be. 1 present here a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends: first, that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. When we are not directly concerned our morality overflows; as La Rochefoucauld put it, "We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."
***Gender Modified***
Governments = conseq'ist
( The government must always act in a consequentialist framework J Alexander, Prof @ University of San Diego, 1987 (Larry Alexander, The Journal of
Philosophy, Scheffler on Angent-Centered Perogatives, 1987 May p. 282) An equally important reason why Scheffler cannot plausibly posit conflicting moral permissions across the board, rather than as limited to discrete spheres such as athletic and business competition and (more problematically) self-defense, is that, without agent-centered restrictions, there is on important actor that is always obligated to produce an optimal set of consequences. That actor is the government. The government is not that kind of moral agent which can possess an agent centered prerogative with resvect to its own acts. It must always act as a thoroughgoing consequentialist, giving only impartial consideration to individuals weightings of their own proiects.
Finn (Senior editor of Freedom Review) 93 James, M i ~ h & Riaht After the Cold War: Can Foreian 9oticv Be M W . Ed. Michael Cromartie, p. 44-6 t _...
,
consequences themselves Johnson, prof philosophy @ Cambridge, 1985 (Conrad D Johnson, The Journal of Philosophy,
The Authority of the Moral Agent, 1985 August p. 391-2) Recent moral philosophy shows much interest in the problem of how deontological constraints are to be reconciled with consequentialism. On the one hand there is the intuition that there are certain things it is simply wrong for an individual to do, even if violating the prohibitions would produce better consequences. On the other hand, moral prohibitions themselves are not above critical scrutiny and when we turn to this enterprise, consequentialism broadly conceived has a powerful claim; for how else are we to evaluate and possibly revise our conception of morally right behavior if not by reflecting on the consequences. Trouble develops when we try to reconcile deontological intuitions with consequentialist insights. Some versions of rule utilitarianism have seemed promising at first, but dissatisfaction returns when we try to give a careful explanation of the relationship between the rules that are utilitarianly justified and the particular actions that one is called upon to do. When it is absolutely clear to the agent in a particular case that following the rule will have worse consequences than breaking it, even though the rule is in general the best, is it morally right to break the rule? If the rule is conceived as merely cautionary and simplifying, then there is no argument against bypassing it in a particular case in which the situation is wholly clear and the calculation has already taken place or was unnecessary. On the other hand if the rule is conceived as having some independent authority, that what is the nature of this independent authority? The rule-bound or superstitious person might adhere to the rule for its own sake, but the rational person would not. If we follow the usual deontological conception, there are also well-known difficulties. If it simply wrona to kill the innocent the wrongness must in some way be connected to the consequences. That an innocent person is killed must be a consequence that has some important bearing on the wrongness of the action; else why be so concerned about the killing o f an innocent. Further if it is wrong in certain cases for the agent to weigh the consequences in deciding whether to kill or to break a promise, it is hard to deny that this has some connection to the consequences. Following one link of though, it is consequentialist considerations of mistrust that stand behind such restrictions on what the agent may take into account. But then again it is hard to deal with that rare case which the agent can truly claim'that his judgement about the consequences is accurate, or, in that last resort of the philosophical thought experiment, has been verified by the Infallible Optimizer. These counterexamples are a challenge, not because they are at all likely, but because they test our intuitions. The deontological conviction in even the more hard-bittern consequentialist among us seeks a deeper foundation than any prevailing and sufficiently consequentialist account is able to give.
Obligation, ed: Aiken and La Follette, p. 9 1-2) The second minimal condition is the 'ought implies can' condition. & vrder to-be obligated to save the sufferer one must, have the means to remedv his condition, that is, have the ~ o o d s the capability to render or the services reauhd to deviate the condition of the sufferer. I can o d be obligated m save you if I can save you. ? hus, if you are d y i n g 4 cf a blood transfusion of a very rare type of blood and I am available for a transfusion, but my blood type is incompatible with your blood type and
thus of no use to vop, then no matter how severe your need is, I have no duty to save you because I cannot provide you with the goods you need. However, any person of the right blood type who knows of your condition and who is available to provide a transfusion has a mord duty to save you.
Oblisarion. and La Follette, p. 96-7) - There is ed: Aikenexcusing condition to the obligation to save persons another
Government intervention in food distribution excuses us from our moral obligation to save the stamng people . Aiken, profof philosophy @ Chatham College, 1977 (William, World Hunger and Moral
. .
f o preventable death due to deprivation. If one has no access to an rm effective method of makina the ~ o o dand services available to the stEferer, s . then one i excued from the obligation to save the s&erer. For example, s i$ government intentionally prevents the delivery ot toarelief to starva ing persons within that nation, then one possible methOd of delivering the load wodd be to destroy that government by ddaring war on it. h t h & wodd be to smuggle the food in with the knowledne that most of It would be confiscated. Another would be to drop packages from high flying aircraft wifih the hope that at least some of them reached the ground undam-and were then received by those who need them. Each of these methods is a pmrible means of deliverinp the Food but none OF them is particularly rffkfiw. In this case, where no effective m e a i 4 n the food is available, we would b&xcu$edJ?om the obligation to save the starving persons in that nation. Of course, it might be that we have other moral responsibilities to find or to establish an effective method. We might evenbe required to coerce that government into permitting us to distribute the food necessary for the lives of persons w t i that nation; but this ihn would be another type of moral responsibility, and justification of i t would require a separate argument. 410-3f
..
Wodd Hun-
and Moral
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own death by dehydration,then obviously I have ariy, if to save you fromfeeezing to death I must no dutv to save v a . 've you my only coat and thus freeze to death mvself, then 1 have no' :oral duty to save you. This mndltion prevents the appeal to lifeboat situations of u k scam& from s w i n g as counterewmples to the right to be saved from death due to deprivation. The ethics of extreme scar&
is perhaps different from the ethics of moderate scarcity or moderate abundance. Be that as it may, there are wry few situations in which the scarcity is so extreme as to warrant appeal to "lifeboat ethics" (which is, in my opinion, the same as prudent self-interest). One situation of such scarcity might be the case of the dotting factor for hemophiliacs.Another might be the use of a dialysis machine for those with kidney Failure. But very few cases demonstrate t i extreme scarcity. The world hunger situahs tion is oot yet-pzcc the opinion of atany-a lifeboat:situation. It is more of a problem of distribution, use, and waste of food than it is of scarcity OF food.
Self-defense necessitates immoral acts at times O'Keefe 2002 (Michael O'Keefe, Research Fellow at the ARC Centre for Applied Philosophy and
Public Ethics., Terrorism and justice : moral argument in a threatened world, , 2002 p. 119) Bomb-throwing Russian anarchists of the nineteenth century, who gave themselves up for execution after they had murdered, arguably showed a kind of respect for human life even when they deliberately killed civilians. The 'softening up' operations that bombed tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers into the desert sands of Iraq and Kuwait, and which apparently provoked contempt for the United States in much of the Arab world, showed a brutal lack of regard for human life. It is hard to see how one could show such contempt for the humanity of combatants and at the same time show respect for the humanity o f civilians by carehl (and much publicised) attempts to minimise 'collateral damage'. Respect for the humanity of others is not so easily divisible. The frequent attempt to make it so is one of the reasons why George Orwell was scornful of the sometimes hypocritical importance we attach to the distinction between combatants and civilians.6 'Do you think our enemy will lay down its arms just because we insist on being nice!' That is how one former US general put his objection to what he regarded as the childish constraints moralists would place on the conduct of war. Crude though his expression of it was, the thought he expressed was not crude. Ever since Socrates claimed that it is better to suffer evil than to do it, the same thought has been invoked to remind us that in politics one has sometimes to decide whether one will adopt the only means available for one's defence or renounce them because thev are uniust. Nothing in morality can save us from the ~ossibility we will face an enemy who is cunning enough to ensure that the only available means that for our self-defence are evil. It is mere whistling in the dark to believe, as a distinguished Catholic moralist put it, that though morality may lead us to tragedy, it can never lead us to disaster.
SDI 2005
Nuclear war requires the evaluation of consequences Michael Moore, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at University of San Diego School of Law, 1997, Placing
Blame, p. 7 19-721 3. Non-Absolute Moral Norms: Threshold Deontology Apart from the exceptions that the content of moral norms must have for them to be plausible, a third modification of absolutism is the softening of the 'whatever the consequences' aspect mentioned earlier. This aspect of absolutism is often attributed to Kant, who held that though the heavens may fall, justice must be done. Despite my nonconsequentialist views on morality, I cannot accept the Kantian line. It just is not true that one should allow a nuclear war rather than killing or torturing an innocent person. It is not even true that one should allow the destruction of a sizable city by a terrorist nuclear device rather than kill or torture an innocent person. To prevent such extraordinary harms extreme actions seem to me to bejustified. There is a story in the Talmudic sources that may appear to appeal to a contrary intuition. 122 It is said that where the city is surrounded and threatened with destruction if it does not send out one of its inhabitants to be killed, it is better that the whole city should perish rather than become an accomplice to the killing of one of its inhabitants. Benjamin Cardozo expressed the same intuition in rejecting the idea that those in a lifeboat about to sink and drown may jettison enough of their number to allow the remainder to stay afloat. As Cardozo put it: Where two or more are overtaken by a common disaster, there is no right on the part of one to save the lives of some by the killing of another. There is no rule of human jettison. Men there will often be who, when told that their going will be the salvation of the remnant, will choose the nobler part and make the plunge into the waters. In that supreme moment the darkness for them will be illumined by the thought that those behind wili ride to safety. If none of such mold are found aboard the boat, or too few to save the others, the human freight must be left to meet the chances of the waters. 123 There is admittedly a nobility when those who are threatened with destruction choose on their own to suffer that destruction rather than participate in a prima facie immoral act. But what happens when we eliminate the choice of all concerned to sacrifice themselves? Alter the Talmudic example slightly by making it the ruler of the city who alone must decide whether to send one out in order to prevent destruction of the city. Or take the actual facts of the lifeboat case'24 to which Cardozo was adverting, where it was a seaman who took charge of the sinking lifeboat and jettisoned enough of its passengers to save the rest. Or consider Bernard Williams's example, where you come across a large group of villagers about to be shot by the army as an example to others, and you can save most of them if you will but shoot one; far fiom choosing to 'sink or swim' together, the villagers beg you to shoot one of their number so that the rest may be saved.125 In all such cases it no longer seems virtuous to refuse to do an act that you abhor. On the contrary, it seems a narcissistic preoccu~ation with your own 'virtue'-that is, the 'virtue' you could have if the world were ideal and did not present you with such awful choices-if you choose to allow the meater number to perish. In such cases, I prefer Sartre's version of the Orestes legend to the Talmud: the ruler should take the guilt upon himself rather than allow his people to perish.'26 One should feel guilty in such cases, but it is nobler to undertake such milt than to shut one's eves to the horrendous consequences of not acting.
b ~ f :uw h cl*
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[Joseph,~uciear Ethics, p 1
UIVEN THE ENORMITY of the potential effects, moral reasoning about nuclear weapons must pay primary attention to consequences. In the nuclear era a philosophy ;;fpure integrity that gould "let the world perish" is n&t compelling. But given the unavoidable uncertainties l"n the estimation of risks, consequentialist arguments will not support precise or absolute moral judgments. , / y
r'
()
Weeramantry '96
Nuclear weapons used in reswnse to a nuclear attack, especially in the event of an all-out nuclear response, would be likelv to cause genocide by trignerine off an all-out nuclear exchange, as visualized in Section IV (inh.). Even a single "small" nuclear weamn, such as those used in Japan, could be instruments of~enocide, judging &om the number of deaths they are known to have caused. If cities are targeted, a single bomb could cause a death toll exceeding a million. Ifthe retaliatorv weawns are more numerous, on WHO'S estimates of the effects of nuclear war, even a billion ~ e o p l eboth of , the attacking state and of others, could be killed. This is ~lainlv genocide and, whatever the circumstances, cannot be within the law.
When a nuclear weapon is used, those using it must know that it will have the effect of causing deaths on a scale so massive as to wive out entire ~ o ~ u l a t i o nGenocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention (Art. 11), means any act s. committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. Acts included in the definition are killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental hann to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
In discussions on the definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention, much play is made upon the words "as such". The areument offered is that there must be an intention to tareet a varticular national. ethnical. racial or reli~ious moup qua such group, and not incidentally to some other act. However, having regard to the abilitv of nuclear weapons to wipe out blocks o f uo~ulation ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions, there can be no doubt that the weapon tarD;ets.in whole or in Dart. the national m o u ~ the State at which it is directed. of Nurember~ held that the extermination of the civilian ~ouulation whole or in part is a crime aeainst humanity. This is in preciselv what a nuclear weapon achieves. [AT: NO INTENT]
( )
Nuclear war IS genocide - our disads operate within their own framework
.
Lang'86
(Beret, Professor of philosophy and hu~nanistic studies - SUNY,NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY: THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS, Eds: Avner Cohen & Steven Lee, p. 122-123)
<~hc qucstion still remains whether genocide and omnicide are related to each other other than by elements of a common origin and chronology. Here it stems to me important to note features of a more direct connection between them. The main anc is thc fact that the thmt of omnicidepresuppo~ phenomenon of genocide; that the is, that omnicide itself implies genocide. is possible only by raking genmidc for granted. I mean by this claim somelhing mora than the vacuws logical relation that to risk the death of everyone is also to risk the death of the "kinds" of which individuals are members as well as of the singk kind to which the individuals taken togcOlet belong. The point I would stress is more substantive. namely, that the e as it is now evident is based on the willi ess of those who S E E E ! i i o y a noun ~u~ a nation) w m & n .i o made or eve% w i b l c between ambarants and nonqmbatanb, bchucen adults and children,
e c , and with no limits on the numbers or extent of extermination. It may be t. objected that this is not an inevitable feature of thc thnatof nuclear war; it is possible to plan a more limited "action." and it is even possible that such limitations might work in practice. But the actual planning of nuclear deterrence is invariably of a different order than this. The idea of a nuclear strike (fim or counter-) is to prevent a response in kind, indeed, m y significant mponse, and the most obvious
way to assure this is by preparation that, if implemented, would result in the virtual annihilation of a populace. Certainly no safeguards, not even any professions of safeguards, are offered by the nuclear planners against such an outcome. (And this says nothing, of course, about the distinct possibility of a global chain-reaction that might be triggered by severe, even "limited" nuclear explosions.) The logic of this planning suggests that if a single bomb could be built that would by ifseljdestroy an entire populace, this too would be readily sought (many of them, of course) as part of the arsenal of preparedness. Genocide has, in fact, been so much taken for ranted as a feature of nuclear war that it has nol, to my knowledge, Hen been kenboned a one of its presuppositions. s
Undoubndly, one reason for such avoidance is the common place assumption chat nuclear war is like any other war, only Iarger in scale; because wars ofthe past have charactuisfically pursued the conquest, not the annihilation, of an enemy, this is also the ostensive ;&pose of nudearewar:any other outcome becomes an excep tional or chance occurrence. In any war, it could be argued along the same lines, and certainly in went, n o ~ ~ ~ c lconflicts, attacks have occurred which, notwithear standing the generally limfed goals of those wars, have blurred any distinction between combatants and non-combatants; in this sense, again, nuclear war might seem no different in principle from n o ~ u c l e awar. a t h e response to this objecr tion is no l u s obvious: that in none of these other instances, devastating as they have been, hns it been imagin:ble that an attack would,ei&er by itself or in conjunction with the response it evoked, result in the virtual destruction of a people, thus, that this destruction might follow necessarily-not as the result of an independern decision-from a first, purportedly limited decision It may well be that had such a possibility been an option in the past, it would in fact have been chosen; but I am not asserting that individual w corporate agents in the past were more morally enliehtened than their successors. onlv that the choices available to the latter have chanchanged radically. that the p r o s k t oigenoci& as well as that of omnicide is noy enfailed in the willed consideration of nuclear war. \=-
>
_ no moral account that extinction may be d o k r slinht m&$ty. No one can say & n g m t the possibiiitv is. but na one has yet,
..(Nuclear d i i r s e
flm of probbili~vsr
t
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( )
Abnractly put, the connections betwecn my useof nuckar weapons and human and natural extinction arc scveral{~ac obviously, a sirable ucbangc of strategic nuclnr weapom crus by a chain of cvents In nature, lead to the canh's uninhabitability. to *nuclear wintcr," or to Schell's %pubtic of i m t s and grass." But thc consideration of extinction cannot rest with the pasibility of a sizable cxchange of strategic weapons. It cannot m with xhc im r peratire t h t a sizable exchasp must not takc p'?4
Any nuclear use risks human extinction Kateb 1986 coisscnt.p. I 64)
< ~ i o Q l l c d tacticai or "theater use. or a sw called \imitcd use, i s alsoprohibitedabb0IutC)Y. baause of thc possibility of immcd'mtc cscalation into a sizable exchange: or because, cvea if tbm wcro nw an immediate czcalatioh rhe pt&'bir~ty of cxrlnnion would wide in the prccc&nt for future use set by any w: whatever in a world in which morc than one pow psscsw nuclear weapons: in the amagious effect an nonnuslear p e n who may feel sompllcd by a mixture o fear and vanity a f try a acquire their own weapons. thus iflcWSin8 the powbility of use by 4ncwing the numbs of nuclear pow= and in the in the form of escalation. can be N I U D I ~ OR TO
l) a
leached emotions of indignetion. relribathn, and tcvcnge tbt. if not acted On irnmediaw
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They are responsible for &ads and turns--foresigBmakes them m p d evm mHt if they do not intend to muse harm
the
our responsibility to aur successors is to avoid M i foresmaNs ban on @ m Sad to act: *re e, w can i ways n which we can foresee will o r ~ a y wxk to their benefit.. r ('Could have foreseenr here pans 'could reasonably have been to fareseerr and the thingr; that are foreseeable i n s s8nse aze not just Utoea which the kncwledge we b p p n to ham oharld bavs amhled ua to foresee, M also those cmwpurmcc~uhichwacutldhmtaoomctobeinawsitirnta
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Focusing on intentions gives us no guidance about the moral worth of policy-should look at consequences .. Hinman, profofphIlosophy, 1998 ~Lan-teticc. t h i c s . E P-186)
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to change hcalthsare benetiu foe the cldcrly. We could tumine the modvcr of thc i n d i v i d ~ ~ t o n lobbvisa who support or. and %pox the lc@$ttion. but lbrr miuht be of lidc king e h u the b ~tsclf a goad one or not,-W M e fa example, that z 1 pcrcenraac of rhc DKID~C?%o cithtr su 01 opporc them are mourntat bv a concern with mi ii c l admK2rnt lcld r or linancial q n . S m bc acting our of~rinbmthc nu@r m & roughlv cvcnlv cpli~bcovccn two camps. Laalcing a t rhex v the individual rnotivadonr, u2rnav decide that such nrotiwdons arc jwr a matar of pcrsond roncsn. 1 w whether h u t o r X u
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us
ihr Icdsl&on.
lcalcing ac what results or conscaucnccs would hUow from ldqpting We then srws these canscqucncu in t e r n of mme tbr cxmpic, in tcrm o ' mount oi plcvurc =dmp* r the t h e may causc. or in tcrm ot' the amounr of happincu and unbppincu they m q causc. This is rou~hIg what rhc rule ucilidul scck to do:to sscss chc mom1 worth ol'a policy or rulc ill r c m oida consc. oucnces tlut it wiil probably have.
SDI 2005
Morality Toolbox
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When, for example, we want to assess the moral correctness of proposed governmental legislation, we may well wish to set aside any question of the intentions of the legislators. After all good laws may be passed for the most venal of political motives, and bad legislation may be the outcome of quite good intentions. Instead, we can concentrate solely on the question of what effects the legislation may have on the people. When we make this shift, we are not necessarily denying that individual intentions are important on some level, but rather confining our attention to a level on which those intentions become largely irrelevant. This is particularly appropriate in the case of policy decisions by governments, corporations, or other groups. In such cases there may be a diversity of different intentions that one may want to treat as essentially private matters hwen assessing the moral worth of the proposed law, policy, or action. Therefore, rule utilitarianism's neglect of intentions intuitively makes the most sense when we are assessing the moral worth of some large-scale policy proposed by an entity consisting of more than one individual.
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Their obsession with certainty i misplaced-a less certain Ask of n much h r ~ r s impact i moral reason to vote negative s
Problems with predictability don't justify rejection of utilitarianismuncertainty is an inevitable part of the human condition
endless comparisons. 1-cc far many of us. the nrast i d u e n d hctorssu& Y the hdividuds ls me&the Kcnds we dcvdoped, chc pcoptc we fdl i low dlh-wcrc ona rvc could ncvcr have prcdictcd. n Mast ax utiliari3nt arc willing m agree wlrh uirics about &c limits of our prcdicdve powm. but- t *h . . a way that it no tonau c o u n t s d n ocr utilitarianism. Our o x d i e c
v act in the social world if we did not bdcvt that thcre& pcnl predimbiitv ro human behaor. This ~ c n b i i w d o not hrve a W
to uc cmplcre. Wc cyUnaJrc &in
and be arr.
Bares C O I I C ~ ~ )
@..id, aewirth: Critical Essavs on Action. Rationalitv. and Community, Ed. Michael Boylan, p. 134-5
I would call i t - ~ o n c r e t e o n x q u c n t i d ~ ~ - B u t ~ w h a t e v c rcall this p s i c wc tion, Kantian deonrologists arc ncrer satisfied when consequrntialists chanec lhr:
subject in this way. Thcy always ss on and rule out by stipulation all the other dM1alivcs that a i r t i n 14 rirnihrll pic. Oswinh. his ibsolutism : *a ' r -c nv way t his con o . To be bricf, hc p r r c n l L o ugume& $";~?zuphining el ~ = ~ : h of the intervening r m n fo~owr - ' L trec y rn the Principle o Generic Consisknc~ f Indccd. at this ctucial point I n the acvcIopmcnt o his normative thcory, mcrc assertion add t k intuitive t appeal o the principle =places his more charac~nstrc f carci1Xp-. lr r 3 0 Pet quite clearly much argument is w l l c d for. -
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shown. As Gcwirtlr cmphasizcs. all iiscnki have u righr not lo be killed. The q u a lion at issue i s whether il i s sor~tcliti~cs obligiltclry tcr kill to prcvcnr morc killinjp. Ilene rcvpnnds that i t is no1 k c a u s c i~nuthcr agenr is doing the killing. then om i s simply ssun~ing that the dury i r r qucstion is or! a p t - d a t i v e r ~ t r i c t i o nThis . unnqucd assumption. howvevcr, conllicts with rhr buic PGC nquircrncnt 10
the rcmrists. As we have seen above. all orher lhings equal, the rights of all will be morc secure i f we accept u principle where the righu of a few give way to the rights of thc many,Thc consyucntialist criterion ofthe degneof needfulness for
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Their intervening actors principle# is morally hollow-3 reasons -Diverts responsibility -Justifies inaction in tough circumstancm -Ignores foresight of harms which makes us complicit regardless ofintent
@s, ~nstitote social ~ t a d i es~he ~agae, e d m h j ~ , . of , ~ Bummu Jownal of Development Rseacb. vll, n2, Dcamber, p 98-99) .
Gasper '99
handy tool could & su non-supp t the Rwandese camps, mq o bann to the r~m-canb&t ~ l & m & % M b&d& Pushed hard, as a way of living with the d e o n t- l-o - i ~ t i o n s o g in Roim Calholicism, tbe- dectrine a ~enerated m n c h l c 8 9 u i s ~ h &uch as+ Y h k w p i v e slot.machines L b l e "Par the. provention 'of disease onlc aeld [bidu and corresponarng criticismFar if some cffectr of one's actions are the teactions of other actors, and some of tfieir d o n s are consided f o d or natmd, one i a l e a s C ~ y ~ n s i b 1 c ) f them. Mackie went f u d m and * s t or rejected the doctrine as foIIows: 'if B's actiorq though neitha dcfensfile nor excusable,w ~ bc confidcntl&tici& d a response to AS '. @kc some responsiiility for the d , the more automatic B's response tand could be foreseen as being, the more of tfie responsibility for the result must
Qke &awseintending the cform~~] but not rbc otha' [P& one
19791.
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efliicl of whs-or
smEch. h O G s. ~ ~ th% actions or oolic?es undcr his control will lead to thc harms in qucstion. he can c o r k whether the harms will occur. so that it is within his power to prevcnt or at ]cast lessen Oic pmbabiliry of their occurrence by ceasing to engage in these actions. Thus. just as all persons haw a right to informed control. so far as possible. over the conditions rclevanr to their incurring cancer and othcr serio~lsharms, so the c u a and moral rcasl sponsibility for inflicting cancer can be atfributcd to persons who have inforrncd control over other persons. sumering the lc thal harms of cancer.>
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SDI 2005
In that circumstance the Their Martin Luther King, Jr. example doesn't apply-consequential good outweighed the bad of his actions. MLK was in fact partly responsible for riots and civil disturbances. The reason we look highly upon him is not because of intervenlng actors, but because his overall effort produced far more good than evil.
(Managhg editor, Chmnides A Magazine of ~ m w i c d n Culture) Theodore, Chicaao Tribune, July 5. 1998 p. lexis
PB ppas
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But how m order and the rghl to rebel coexist?As always. his example is the civil rlghts movement as led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Carter "nonviolentprotest is not passive. .. 11 is intended, o btiw to the surface tensions that the s m l m I desianed s 'to oascwe." But, Carter assures us, "allthe noise' resulting from this form of pfotest was 'civil."
But is this true? Certainly the noise of "Bull"Conno& attack dogs was anything but clvil, and the && o t f h
Of responsibility for the b W y consequences of their acf~ns? And if one justides the consequenceson grounds of a higher law, what Is to stop, say, the anti-abo~ofl lobby from killing more doctors, bombing more dhics, all in the name of greater civility? Carter's fine anafysls here comes up d m . Like it or mt, one of ?heLeff s pet strategies is cornlng home to roost, leaving a bloody-and uncivit-trail behind it.
Feldman 92 (Stephen, Associate Professor@ University of Tulsa College of Law, Georgetown Law Journal, June pp. 1874-6)
I(ines #rsonal&xpriences of social iniustice and radsm urevmtedhim 60m being naive in his auest fot the belovcd community. 02.28 He undemood ttre complexity of human nature, and h d i z c d that the *ad c usually [*I8751 ~ d sthreats to thelr DO-. t 11229 remained etanally wary of He the human propensities for depravity md for greedy pursuit of self-interest, and qmseaucntfy. ~s a matter of uofitieal tactics. he was not above advertin* to convcmenci~s benvecn the i n t c r e ~ ~ of whitesand African American$. For example. King argued tha! thc economic growth of the South r q u i d the aadicationof racial dism'mination and that discrimination ddated tbc nation in world opinion. n230 But King emphasized. "These are practical wnsiderations all dictating one road. Y t e above it all, a greater imperativedemands fulfillment Throughout our histary, the moral decision has alwtys k m the correct decision." n231
Thus, thc constitutional and political theory that emerges from King strongly membles the realistic civic republicanism of the framers. The framers atways rcmained committed to a government that pursues the cpmmon good, despite their recognilion that factionsw u l d inevitabIy arise in a democracy. Lblvise; Kine always remained cammiaed to the beloved_ gmmunitv. des~itc recomizinpthc human oenchant for evil. 0232 The fraznas believed that through political dialogue, the community can arrive at the common good, while Kin! believed that Ihrough various forms of political dialogue, fie mmunitv can bush itself towards the ideal of the beloved community. The fiamess wcrc not above using factionalism to preserve h e republic: they s(ructurcd the govcmment so that thc tva-present potential fbr factionatism w u l d d l y emourage govcmmmtal officialsa pwsue the common good Illrr&l rnanwkile. was not &ove occasionallv u 4 n white self-interest if it would hdo build the ~ beloved communiw but he mlizcd that pure self-firtarsc ultimately is corrupt and therefore must be suborciTnattd to morality and love. 6 3 3
King not only cch& the hmers, howvu, but also elaboratedtheit civic rcpublic8o vision. He understoodthe diviskencss of mism as well ss the need to take special stcps lo eradicatb i He recognizedthc ncce~ity t of empowering all individuals and groups throughout Arnwican society so that thtv could oarticiaate in thc political didome that is the lifeblood of Pind a the~comrn~nity. be rmli;rd b t socfaiiustiocand wlrtjcal caudemand [*1876] profound economic d not &or or m mdsIn s m Kin& m n a l exDerlmcts of racism and ommion ei . u e imbued his civic mublicanlsrn with a &ism fiy m e ha^^ mv known
SDI 2005
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fmbabiIity assessment can not be used when examining catastrophes. The catastrophe should be avoided no matter what thR probability. Rescher, prof of philosophy @ U of Pittdwpk 1983 (JML p. 70-1) '
diary" range. A ca
negativities. As Figure 4 i~usuates, t a a whose neaativitv lies e n o n n o l b 2 i v m n d f hegativities the ordinary range (that is, accordiilg to our earlier of undmtanding, urceeding this range by more than thrtc of magnitude). Thus, catastrophic neeatidties are not dtoggthg:
fundarnentaly fluid situation. The question of what constituw a catastrophe - of just when dative intolerability and unaccgp tability begins is once again an evaluative issue that hgeIy lia in the eyes of the beholder. With such drelative) catasmphe c it transpires that. in relation to any ordinary negativity H,cven the W t y of H is preferable to chancing a realization of the caIastrophic C. B is x,~at a ncmtivity that a r is "diopatit~ risks" obtains between it and my neaatiyity of the of
Certain ~ k that are extremely large are unacceptable no matter s how the ematl the probability
@balance or dis~aritybetween the &kt is lust too great c o x restored k ~ ~ m b a b i l i s t ireadJusLmentaThey are (probabilisc tidy] incommensurable: soniontcd with such **hcomparablc'* h8zards. we do not bother to weigh this "balance of probabilities" afall. but simply dismiss one alternative as involving risks that are,, -: eh circumstances, "unacceptable." n . t J , -
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enturfw ago, wise men invented statutes o r ' lusllfy the rejection of such pure justice, in the interest of preventing ;ont&ual disdrder. The law zealously defcnds property rights, but an13 relatively recent property rights. ~ r a w i n g line after an arbitrary time has a elapsed may be unjust, but the alternatives are worse. We are all the descendants of thieves, and the world's resources arp inecluitably distributed. But b a ,must begin the j&rney to tomorrow fmm h point where we are today, We-cannot remake the past. We cannot e safcly divide the wealth equitably among all peoples so bng as people reproduce at different rdtcs. TOdo so would guarantee that our grandchildren, and everyone else's grandchildren. would have only aruincd ivorld
~nhabit. To'be generous with o e s own possessions i quite differn' s nenerous with thosepf posterity. We should call this point to the attention of thosc who, from a commendable love of justice and equality, would institute a system of the commons, cither i the form of a world food bank, n or of unrestricted immigration. We must convince them if we wish to save at teast some parts of the world from environmental ruin.
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What must a Kan~fan when faced with the horrible choii between killing do same p e o p o r Letting many more people dic?=if, for exanlple, the only way ta end an otherwise lony: and brawn-out war *-ere bc to attack a populaiion cente>?Such an act wrdy constitutes aggrecdfon against many noncombatants tchildmn. the elderlv, dtizenr of tho opposing country wo h
human suffering and opprerrionTnd that ft will save many lives. t h e s t Is not ai d!&r why a bntian should not sacrifice come to s w e m y . 1 The formula o f --in-itsclf m u i r e that me ~t UK anotherbldvb a means to a subjcctfve end. &ct in thk type of case. thr!cnds of the action areoblective. not Subiative tChId 427). Thc objmtiw end i qucstion is first to p n m the l i w ,,,, and lib& that would bc lost by a prolonged conflict and, sceond, to promote. ' '' according to one's means, thc fvndarnentd and bash needsof 0 t h (MM4 a r 5-
(Michael D,Westmhtm lnstikrte for Ethics and Human Values, Wastminstcr . College, Ontario, M o a t v p. 122-3) _ r l t ,
dlredty relatedto aid. WilJiam ~ i l r e con&nds that people have a rbhtto-h wved n fmm preventable due to deprivetion.'r 0ecelrse starvation is e form of deprivatlan, s right to be saved from sulwatlon Is a bpecim of the more general One. The right to besaved. &ken argues. is a moral f rwn fight basedona h ~ m n need. walnst sl persons. AP Alken specH~es right he avoids many ofthe above crfticismsof 0;Nefll's thls ergument" Rrst he does not clafm that people in devebped axlntrles d w i c ~ ~ the deaths pf people In less devebped ones. but onty that they could h e se prevented them. Second, he recognizesthat people cannot claim the right I they f ' have vokmnQriC aaumed risks of death by deprivation, Third, as 'wghf implies ' 'can', the right & not Impose a dvty on peaple unless they a n prevent the deaths. This establishes the "causal" connection.because s fanure to save when one can will be the cause of the person not havinghis right fuffilled. (Becausethis r& requlres one to act, the requirementof a causal conkctlonis satisfied if the !t failure to act is necessary for the deprivation.) Foud~.Aiken a s limits the lo
correlative duty to those people who are aware of pwsons' needs to be saved. The,centraldefect In Aiken's argument is that he nowhere d argues for m i the right to be saved. Unfike the right not to be Wlled, thls right has not been widely reaxmized. The usual understanding of a right to Life is as a negative right &to be k i l l e d . ~ a s positive right to be saved. Aiken statesthat the r "a - - k be a i h - -is W e d by an a m . k a mosl p r i e that .,prom emag ~ s mat I d u a l wehare for all."" This prindolerasembles the ufiliirien one, but i may t dafer h requtdng that the wgffare of each indnridual. tamer fEKfl% total or w e W . be promored (Pareto q3timality). Unfortunatety. Aiken heither clarifies nor defends the principle. Nor does he show how the right to be saved is derived
. from i . t
Alken suggests another argument for the tight to be w e d . namehr. that its recognit[onencapsulates and clarifies moral i n & o n s and argumentswin particular. hr claims that k r c g k n il eo nb w f be beneficialforthe world hunaef issue bv I11 that it is 1101 one of pnxlence %what one m ought-to do but of a e e r ~ f l M o&b, [2) shiftingthe burden of prod trom those who need food to f and those who could prwlde it TMs ergomfmt begs the question. for Ohe issue preddy is whether the fallurn to provide food aid is wrong or simply the fallurn tb &something one o u g h t 7 I z t 3
Our alternative is threshold deontology-nuclear war requires a temporary suspension of Kantian rules-this doesn't collapse into total consequentalism Michael Moore, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at University of San Diego School of Law, 1997, Placing
Blame, p. 7 19-722 Non-Absolute Moral Norms: Threshold Deontolorzy Apart from the exceptions that the content o f moral norms must have for them to be plausible, a thud modification of absolutism is the softening o f the 'whatever the consequences' aspect mentioned earlier. This aspect o f absolutism is oAen attributed to Kant, who held that though the heavens may fall, justice must be done. Despite m v nonconseauentialist views on moralitv. I cannot accept the Kantian line. It iust is not true that one should allow a nuclear war rather than killing or torturing an innocent person. It is not even true that one should allow the destruction of a sizable city bv a terrorist nuclear device rather than kill or torture innocent verson. T o urevent such extraordinary harms extreme actions seem to me to be iustified. There is a story in the Talmudic sources that may appear to appeal to a contrary intuition.122 It is said that where the city is surrounded and threatened with destruction if it does not send out one of its inhabitants to be killed, it is better that the whole city should perish rather than become an accomplice to the killing of one of its inhabitants. Benjamin Cardozo expressed the same intuition in rejecting the idea that those in a lifeboat about to sink and drown may jettison enough of their number to allow the remainder to stay afloat. As Cardozo put it: Where two or more are overtaken by a common disaster, there is no right on the part of one to save the lives of some by the killing of another. There is no rule of human jettison. Men there will often be who, when told that their going will be the salvation of the remnant, will choose the nobler part and make the plunge into the waters. In that supreme moment the darkness for them will be illumined by the thought that those behind will ride to safety. If none of such mold are found aboard the boat, or too few to save the others, the human freight must be left to meet the chances of the waters. 123 There is admittedly a nobility when those who are threatened with destruction choose on their own to suffer that destruction rather than participate in a prima facie immoral act. But what happens when we eliminate the choice of all concerned to sacrifice themselves? Alter the Talmudic example slightly by making it the ruler of the city who alone must decide whether to send one out in order to prevent destruction of the city. Or take the actual facts of the lifeboat case'24 to which Cardozo was adverting, where it was a seaman who took charge of the sinking lifeboat and jettisoned enough of its passengers to save the rest. Or consider Bernard Williams's example, where you come across a large group of villagers about to be shot by the army as an example to others, and you can save most of them if you will but shoot one; far from choosing to 'sink or swim' together, the villagers beg you to shoot one of their number so that the rest may be saved. 125 In all such cases it no longer seems virtuous to refuse to do an act that you abhor. On the contrary, it seems a narcissistic preoccuvation with your own 'virtue'--that is, the 'virtue' you could have if the world were ideal and did not present vou with such awful choices-if you choose to allow the ~ r e a t e number to ~ e r i s hIn such cases, I prefer Sartre's version of the Orestes legend to the Talmud: the ruler r . should take the guilt upon himself rather than allow his people to perish.'26 One should feel rmiltv in such cases, k t it is nobler to undertake such milt than to shut one's eyes to the horrendous consecluences of not acting. I thus have some sympathy for the Landau Commission's conclusion that 'actual torture . . . would perhaps be justified in order to uncover a bomb about to explode in a building full of people'. If one does not know which building is going to explode, one does not have the consent of all concerned to 'sink or swim' together. On the contrary, one suspects that like Williams's villagers, the occupants of the building, if they knew of their danger, would choose that one of their number (to say nothing of one of the terrorist group) be tortured or die to prevent the loss of all. In any case, the GSS interrogator must choose for others who will pay the costs for his decision if he decides not to act, a cost he does not have to bear; this situation is thus more like mv variation of the Talmudic think that the agent-relative vikwjust sketched, allowing as it do& consequences to override example than the original. moral absolutes when those consequences are horrendous enough, collauses into a consequentialist morality after all. Glanville Williams, for example, in his discussion of the legal defence ofn&essi&, recognizes the ggent-relative view that 'certain actions are right or wrong irrespective of their consequences' and that 'a good end never justifies bad means'. Williams nonetheless concludes that 'in the last resort moral decisions must be made with reference to results'. Williams reaches this conclusion because, as Williams sees if the agent-relative slogansjust quoted reduce to the claim 'that we ought to do what is right regardless of the consequences, as long as the consequences are not serious'. Contrary to Williams, there is no collapse of agent-relative views into consequentialism iust because morality's norms can be ovemdden bv horrendous consauences.13' A consequentialist is committed by her moral theory to saying that torture of one person is justified whenever it is necessary to prevent the t o m r e of two or more. The agent-relative view, even as here modified, is not committed to this proposition. To iustifv torturing one innocent person requires that there be horrendous consequences attached to not torturing that person-the destruction of an entire city, or, perhaps, of a lifeboat or building full of people. On this view, in other words, there i s a verv hinh threshold of bad conseauences that must be threatened before something as a f i l as torturing an innocent person can be justified. Almost all reallife decisions a GSS interrogator will face-and perhaps all decisions-will not reach that threshold of horrendous consequences justifying torture of the innocent. Short of such a threshold. the anent-relative view just sketched will operate as absolutely as absolutism in its ban on torturina the innocent.
any
Threshold deontology maintains personal dignity but requires temporary suspension of Kantian rules at the threshold of nuclear war L r y Alexander, Warren Distinguished Professor of l a w , Fall 2000, San Diego Law Review ar
In his 1989 law review article, Torture and the Balance of Evils, nl later republished as Chapter Seventeen in Placing Blame, n2 Michael Moore declares himself to be a "threshold deontolonist. " n3 What he means is this: There are some acts that are morallv wrone desoite uroducine a net uositive balance of conseauences; but if the positive balance of consesuences becomes sufficiently great - esueciallv if it does so by averting horrible conseauences as opposed to merely making people quite well off - then one is morally permitted, and perhaps reauired, to enRage in those acts that are otherwise morallv ~rohibited.Thus, one may not kill or torture an innocent person in order to save two or thee other innocent veoule from death or torture - even though purely consequentialist considerations might dictate otherwise. However, if the number of innocent . people who can be saved from death or torture gets sufficiently l a r ~ ethen what was morallv uroscribed - the killing or torture of an innocent person - becomes morallv uermissible or mandatory. At a certain number of lives at risk - the Threshold - consequentialist moral principles ovemde deontological ones. Says Moore: just is not true that one should allow a nuclear war rather than killinn or torturing an innocent Person. It is not even true that one should allow the destruction of a sizable city by a terrorist nuclear device rather than kill torture an innocent person. To prevent such extraordinary harms extreme actions seem to me to be justified.
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1T
~ E R ~ C I N A L CLAIM was that moral responsibility must be disO tinguishcd from individual freedom: h e no-fault naturalist d a . . freeof moral responsibility does not -ua[ dom, and evidcnce of (naturalist-c~rn~atibilist) individual freedom docs not count in favor of moral responsibility. This chapter has brought the argument full circle: instead of mutual s u ~ p o r t b -
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inquiries into the c (both autonomous and heteronomous) behavior, promotes punitive rather than positive social .pro~rams.and enmuragai inegalitarian social policies. Withqut tbc hobbles of spurious moral r c ccc 01 s inor I $r -c - to u ' ' T i -.-IS the optimum environn~ent-fir individualI freedom.
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Notions o moral responsibility quash freedom-only rejecting moral f responsibility can preserve freedom and avoid absolutism
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F4eje&ing moral responsibility is the only way to work towards both morality and freedom
(Prof. at Youngstown State Univ.) 90
Wailer
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dcnyiilg word responsibility does not Iicensc assaults on individ~l freedonl under ihc guise o i ..therapy." But thc claim to bc agucd i z h p t e r is stronger: individual freedom is nor thrtatcncd by iro-fault naturalism; r tl~ccontrar~, o tlle_no-Caulnaturalist denial of moral rcspsnsibilitv lish - t i for preserving, koadcning, andnt es t . . . (4
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Recent Supreme Court decision has upheld violations of Privacy Act Hong, 2005 (Haeji, Akron Law Review, "Dismantling the Private Enforcement of the Privacy Act of
1974: Doe V. Chao", LN) The Supreme Court's narrow construction of the Privacy Act will force individuals to overcome unrealistic hurdles. The majority contorted the statute and the legislative history to reach a result that restricts individuals from effectively enforcing the Privacy Act. n206 On the other hand, the dissent's straightforward statutory construction is consistent with the purpose of the Privacy Act: n207 The Court's restrictive interpretation is especially disturbing because the Court, in effect, held that individuals have no remedy for the government's unlawful disclosure of a person's social security number. n208 But if individuals have no effective remedy, who will enforce the Privacy Act? Historically, the government has proven itself to be a poor enforcer of the Privacy Act. n209 Thus, the Court's ruling in Doe v. Chao decimates the likelihood of future enforcement of the Privacy Act.
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Due Process violations occurring in schools New York Law Journal, 2005 (April 7, 2005, "School District Is Not Entitled to Immunity, Under
Eleventh Amendment, in Gun Case", Lexis-Nexis) Constitutionally, due process "I-equiresthat individuals have 'notice and opportunity for a hearing appropriate to the nature of the case' prior to a deprivation of life. liberty, or property." Rosa R. v. Connelly, 889 F.2d 435,438 (2d Cir. 1989) (quoting Mullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 3 13 ( 1 950)). "Notice must be 'reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to appraise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their obiections."' Id. at 439 (quoting Mullane, 339 U.S. at 3 14). Defendants also contend that it is well established in the context of disciplinary proceedings that postdiscipline due process provides sufficient due process to satisfv the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. Def. Memo. (Dkt. No. 8) at 18. In Giglio v. Dunn 732 F.2d 1133, 1135 (2d Cir. 1998), the Second Circuit noted that "due process requires only that a hearing be held at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner," and that "[wlhere a predeprivation hearing is impractical and a post-deprivation hearing is meaningful, the state satisfies its constitutional obligations by providing the latter." Id. at 1135. The court found that an Article 78 proceeding is such a meaningfd opportunity. Id.; See also Richardson v. Capt. Van Dusen, 833 F. Supp. 146, 153 (N.D.N.Y. 1993) (McAvoy, C.J.) ("[Elven when assuming that the Superintendent's Hearing was conducted in [a] manner that deprived plaintiff of his due process rights, the process afforded the plaintiff in the Article 78 proceeding cured any defect in the original hearing."); Monroe v. Schenectady County, 1 F. Supp. 2d 168, 172 (N.D.N.Y. 1997) (McAvoy, C.J.) (finding that an Article 78 proceeding provides an adequate post-deprivation remedy and constituted "all the process plaintiff was due."); Gudema v. Nassau County, 163 F.3d 717, 724 (2d Cir. 1998).
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Privacy exceptions
There are key exceptions to the privacy principle Crawford, counsel to Association to Benefit Children, '96 (Colin, Cardozo Women's Law
Journal, 3 Cardozo Women's L. J. 3 1, LN)
A. Privacy Concerns. The privacy argument against pediatric HIV testing would presumably go as follows: everyone has a right to make choices about his or her own health. Because a mother is entitled to this protection as much as anyone else, testing her child - and thus identifying the mother's HIV status - is an impermissible infringement on her constitutionally protected right to privacy. This argument fails, however, because of a key exception to privacy doctrine, the compellinc: state interest exception, which provides that the overriding public interest in protectin&the uublic [*38] health and welfare supersedes nearly all personal r i ~ h t sn25 Typically, privacy law has been bifurcated into two main . lines of case law: those cases dealing with confidentiality, and those concerned with related questions of autonomy. Again, even if the pediatric HIV testing issue is examined in light of these cases, no constitutional concern would argue against ABC's position as outlined in these remarks.
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There are important exceptions to due process guarantees Bosniak, Fellow, Georgetown, 2002 (Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Winter, 16 Geo.
Immigr. L.J. 407, LN) There are certainly common themes that link these cases, yet stringing them together is misleading. It is misleading because the cited immigration cases do not precisely stand for the physical presence rule. These cases for the most part distinguish between those non-citizens who have entered the country and those who have not. And while the class of aliens who are physically present is largely coterminous with the class of those who have entered the territory, there is a tremendously important exception to the rule: the class of immigration parolees, i.e., those who are physically present but who, pursuant to a long-time legal fiction in immigration law, have not been deemed to have "entered." It is precisely because they have not "entered" that parolees are held not to be entitled to due process in immination proceedings, notwithstanding their location "inside" the territory. In the immigration domain, non-entry is tantamount to non-presence.
~ewirth (Absolutism and its Conseqtmtialist Critics, Professor of Philosophy at the '94 University of Chicago, Alan)
&&
intervening actors proves: our action is on face moral but only indirectly risks the disad impacts Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U of Chicago, '94 (Alan, "Are There Any Absolute Rights?"
Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics, p. 137) The solution to this difficulty is that it is a fallacy to infer, from the two premises, ( I ) the son's refusal to kill his mother is justified and (2) many innocent persons die as a result of that refusal, to the conclusion (3) their deaths are justified. For, y the principle o f the intervening action. the son's refusal is not causally or morally responsible for the deaths; rather, it is the terrorists who are responsible. Hence, the justifi cation referred to in (1) does not c a n y through to (2). Since the terrorists' action in ordering the killings is unjustified, the resulting deaths are unjustified. Hence, the rights to life of the many innocent victims remain absolute even if they are killed as a result o f the s&'s justified refusal, and it IS not he who violates their rights. He may be said to intend the many deaths obl~query, that they are a foreseen but unwanted side-effect of his refusal. But he is not responsible for in t h a t e f f e c t because of the terrorists' intervening action.
our act Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U of Chicago, '94 (Alan, "Are There Any Absolute Rights?"
Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics, p. 137) One distinction is between direct and oblique intention. When Abrams refrains from torturing his mother to death, he does not directly intend the many ensuing deaths of the other inhabitants either as end or as m k ' n this case, inaction. Hence, c e is not morally responsible for those deaths.
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Grisez and Shaw 1988 (Germain Gabriel, Russell, Beyond the New Morality: The Responsibilities of
Freedom p 26) If there are no ethical absolutes, human persons, rather than being the norm and source from which other things receive their value, become simply items or commodities with a relative value-inviolable only up to the point at which it is expedient to violate them in order to achieve an objective. It would then make no sense at all to speak of the immeasurable value of the human person. Far from being immeasurable-that is, beyond calculation-the value of a person would be quite specific and quantifiable, something to be weighed in the balance against other values.
( ) Utilitarianism reduces value of life to number game Levy, prof of philosophy @ Montana State, 2000 (Sanford Levy, Morality, Rules, And
Consequences : A Critical Reader, "The Educational Equivalence of Act and Rule Utilitarianism", 2000 p. 28) At the same time, act utilitarianism is clearly an extremist view from the commonsense perspective of 'ordinary morality', which consists of the intuitions which most people in our social context share about right and wrong acts. On the one hand, act utilitarianism is overly permissive because it doesn't recognise ordinary moral constraints against doing or allowing serious harm (including death) to others. Because it doesn't recognise these constraints, it denies that individuals have corresponding fixed rights not to be harmed. T o save the lives of five patients who need different organ transplants, for example. a surgeon will be permitted to seize and chop up the innocent Chuck to harvest his healthy heart, liver, lungs and s o on, if these organs happen to be matches for the respective patients. 'After all, if evewone counts e ~ u a l l y then it , is simply a matter of five versus one. Obviously, itis a horrible result that Chuck will end up dead; but it would be an even worse result fpve people end up dead. So the right thing to do - according to [act] utilitarianism -is to kill Chuck.'6 There isn't any thought that Chuck has a 'deontological right' not to be killed for his o r ~ a n s . 7
Grisez and Shaw 1988 (Germain Gabriel, Russell, Beyond the New Morality: The Responsibilities of
Freedom p 28) One arrives at a different judgment of how one ought to proceed in such circumstances if human life is re~arded, as one of the things of relative value which a person has, but as an intrinsic component of the not person, and s o as a value which shares in the dignity of the person. In denying that w e can choose to kill one person for the sake of two, we really are denying that two persons are "worth" twice as much as some other real person. On this view it is simply not possible to make the sort of calculation which weighs persons against each other (my life is more valuable than John's life, John's life is more valuable than Mary's and Tom's combined, or vice versa) and thus to determine whose life shall be respected and whose sacrificed. The value o f each human person is incalculable, not in anv merely poetic sense, but simply because it is not susceptible to calculation, measurement, weighing. and balancing. Traditionally this point has been expressed by the statement that the end does not iustify the means. This is a way of saying that the direct violation of any good intrinsic to the person cannot be justified by the good result which such a violation may bring about. What is extrinsic to human persons may be used for the good of persons, but what is intrinsic to persons has a kind of sacredness and may not be violated.
Fried '94 (Absautism and its Conseauentialist Critics, Professor of law at Haward Law School, Charles)
[Absolutism and its ~onskauentialist Critics, ilynn Chair in Christian Ethics Saint Mary's college. Germain)
Mount
made. one has the option of choosing the morally k n a altemativc while bowing the morally right one. But if one alternative rcally did c m M y thc greater good and illhat ware knowa. it would be i m p o s ~ ble in such a case to charsc the infcriw altcrnativc. for psopk am irrcapablr! 01 prefemng less gocd t more. All that propoi-lionalists or o conscqucntialists rcaUy are saying is tho1 it is wrong to choosc that
Fried '94 (Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics. Professor of law at Haward Law School,
Charles)
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f i o u l d thc consequentialist express Lhis absolutcmss olthc norm by saying that Ihc rcsull of the killing. the dudth, is not only bad in itsell bur somehow ahsdutcly bad. whcrc this must mcaa that it i s so bad a
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of mass destruction has allowed the worst atrocities in history Callahan, Director of International Program, PhD on philosophy in Harvard, 1985
(Daniel, The Tyranny of Survival and Other Pathologies of Civilized Life, p. 91 -93 Kim) The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power.2 But abused it has been. In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for ever-larger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During World War 11, native Japanese-Americans were herded, without due process of law, into detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (i4) in the general context that a threat to national security can iustifv acts otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations of Nazism. Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of the meatest of the many absurdities tolerated in the name of survival the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is not only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival.3 For Jacques Monod, in Chance andNecessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known re1 igioU5 ethical and political system.4 In genetics the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical efforts to find means by which those suffering from such corn- rnon genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul Ehrlich, whose works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a denial of food to starving populations of nations which have not enacted population-Control policies. For all these reasons, it is possible to counte~oise over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival." There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on another for the sake of survival, for rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never talk about their amressions but only about the need to defend the fatherland, to save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny of survival as a value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely. of wiping out all other values. Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive singlemindedness that will stop at nothing,
( ) The tyranny of survival devalues all life and takes away all worth suwiving for
Consequentialism Fails - Each Choice is Infinitely Unique Making Weighing Options Impossible Grisez and Shaw 1988 (Germain Gabriel, Russell, Beyond the New Morality: The Responsibilities of
'
Freedom-p 24-5) Artificial as the example is, it makes the crucial point that whenever we have a real choice to make, it is because we are confronted with various possibilities, each embodying a diverse mix of human goods. Consequentialism or proportionalism requires that one weigh and measure the good as represented in the various possibilities and opt for the instance promising more good. But each of the several possibilities comprises, not merely so much (on an imaginary scale) of a certain human good, but a unique "package" of instances of various goods whose verv uniqueness makes it impossible to measure it against other, similarly unique "packages" competing to be chosen.
Donaidson (Prof. of Business Ethics, Georgetown) Thomas, . Ethics & International Affairs, v9, p. 147 - -=>..
L
95
0 f the consequentialists. I rcg 3rd Hardin as the most articulate spokespcrson. Hecombines formidable philosophical skills withpoIitica1erudition. Both talcnts, unfortunateIy, make his muskken conclusions on the maaer of international deontology surprising. As I will showGgrceing with Hardin to banish discussion amounts to abandondeontologica1justifications from ~ntcrnational ing the power of deontology to interpret political inrent and to establish hard limits on political behavior. States may not be human individuals, but they often behave with foresight anb must he accountable to certain moral principles. the scale of future Genocide and t o r t f l conscquenccs; rather, states simply nwst not engagc in them. The moral Iancage oidcontology may nt be .m/ficient f r the moral interpretaiion of intero o r ~ 7 ktional affain,bui it turns out ro h i n ~ ~ c s s a )q-+
ife~i
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6,
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A d a i ~v ,p. 149-50 ,9
e h c stale is not d ~ r i u e d :ntcntionnlity,as Hardin alleges, b thc fact that of " v a r i ~ o f f i c i a l s a panicular stace m s lypically reach differenrconclus~ons of ut a t i o n a a g u t what is r possess decision-making procedures designed to allow inferences about thc ass and intent~ons the state itself l i ~ [ : l acts of individual members ~ h c n . l r ot the &le, majorit-duly-clccted members of both houscr of thc U S . (' Congrcss approve aid KO Poland ?or the purpose of developing its zonomir, ' infrasrructurc, and wheli thc ~.?praident concurs, that the United States has acted intentionally in m w s e s at Least onc reason for thar actlon: namely, the aim of dcvcloping Poland's infrasuucturc. It is prcciscly such decision-making structures that allow thc actions of states to be consuued as more than the actions of an agpm gate of individuals. 14 573
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OCivil liberties lost during the war on terror will never be regained, the loss is permanent Baker, associate professor in the Department of Government at New Mexico State University, 2003 (Nancy V. Baker, Presidential Studies Quarterly, National Security Versus Civil
Liberties, 2003 September p. L/N) Another product of wartime is that civil liberties are generally categorized as luxury items, like silk stockings during World War 11, that divert valuable resources from the war effort. Historically, once war is over, those luxuries are again embraced. The White House, Congress, and the courts then reassert civil liberty values, perhaps even chiding themselves for their earlier restrictions. But a war on terrorism, bringing a securitization of domestic life, creates a different metaphor. Liberties are not luxuries to be sacrificed in the short term until we can afford them again. Liberties are gaping holes in the security fabric; they must be sealed off permanently if the nation is to be safe. The demands of a war on terrorism also undercut the likelihood that liberties can be reasserted, because a war without a clear end will never produce the peace of mind necessary to reflect on what we have lost.
( ) Rights violations in the name of "national security" snowballs to full-scale totalitarianism Greenlee, U of Chicago Law, 1998 (Robert, University of Chicago Law Review, Summer, 65 U.
Chi. L. Rev. 943) Second, "national security" is generally viewed as the Pandora's box of totalitarianism. Once courts develor a national security exception for the Fourth Amendment, critics fear that courts will find the exception increasingly difficult to limit, given the large number of activities that the government may characterize as involving national security. n154
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Cole, Professor of Law at Georgetown, 2002 (David, "Enemy Aliens and American Freedoms: Experience Teaches U s That Whatever the Threat, Certain Principles Are Sacrosanct," The Nation Magazine, Vol. 275 Sept 23 p. 20 Kim)
The double standard is also illusory, for what we do to aliens today provides a precedent for what can and will be done to citizens tomorrow. When the President introduced the concept of military justice with his military tribunal or- der in November [200 11, for example, he reassured Amen- cans that it would not apply to them, but only to "noncitizens." Yet now the Administration has asserted the authority to detain under military custody two U S citizens-Yasser Hamdi, a citizen captured in Afghanistan, and Jose Padilla, arrested at O'Hare Airport in May [2002] on suspicion that he might be planning to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb." The military claims that simply by attaching the label "en- emy combatant," the President can authorize the indefinite, incommunicado incarceration of any US citizen he chooses, without iudicial review. Military justice has come home. This proposition is so extreme that even the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, by far the most conservative federal circuit in the country, has rejected it. Yet the WaLl Street Journal reported in August [2002] that high-level Administration officials have advocated even broader reliance on this power, and have suggested creating a special camp to house citizen "enemy combatants." The illusory line between alien and citizen has often been crossed before. Two of the most shameful episodes of our nation'[s history also had their provenance in measures initially targeted at noncitizens. The McCarthy era of the 1 940s and. '50s, in which thousands of Americans were tarred with guilt by association. was simply an extension to citizens of a similar campaign using similar techniques against alien radicals in the first Red Scare thiriy years earlier.3 The same is true of the internment of U S citizens of Japanese descent during World War 11, which treated citizens as we had long treated "enemy aliensm-as suspicious based solely o n thelr group identity, without regard to individual circumstances. So the fact that we have selectively targeted immigrants, far from justifying the new paradigm, condemns it.
nourished survival is the equal right of every human individual or nation is a specification of the higher principle that everyone has equal right to t%enecessities of life, The moral stress of the principle of equity is primarily on equal sharing, and only secondarily on what is being shared. The higher moral principle is of human equity per st. Consequently, the moral action is to distribute all food eauallv, whatever the c o n . c e r r u w . This is the hard line apparently drawn by such moralists as Immanuel Kant and Noam Chomsky-but then, morality is hard. The conclusion may be unreasonable (impractical and irrational in conventional terms), but it is obviously moral. Nor should anyone purport surprise; it has always been understood that the claims of morality-if taken seriously-supersede those of conflicting reason. One may even have to sacrifice one's life or one's nation to be moral in situations where practical behavior would oreserve it. For example, if a prisoner of war undergoing torture is to be a (perhaps dead) patriot even when reason tells him that collaboration will hurt no one. he remains silent. Similarly, if one is to be moral, one distributes available food in egual shares (even if everyone then dies). That an action is necessary to save one's life is n o excuse for beha~inqun~atriotically immorally if one or wishes to be a patriot or moral. No principle of moraliiv absolves one of behaving immorally simply to save one's life or nation. There is a strict analogy here between adhering to moral principles for the sake of being -. moral, and adhering to Christian principles for the sake of being Christian. The moral world contains pits and lions, but one Iooks always to the h recant or die-and it is pathetic to profess morality if one quits when the going gets rough. 110-9