Rebecca, I’m not sure I fully understand your remarks on this. As you note, Kamm isn’t denying that betterness of outcome CAN matter. She is however denying that it always does, and that it matters through consequentialist aggregation.

I find the last comment in your recent post, and similar types of comments by Kamm, to be very interesting, and they prompt me to ask the questions listed below. But first, your comment:

“Before we can just say that they ought to build the school where it will do most good, we must check that we are not treating unfairly those who do not get the benefit. Surely that’s the interest of this chapter?”

Your comment, and very similar ones by Kamm (I believe), cause me to wonder and ask: What do non-consequentialists think ‘fairness’ to be (beyond a concept, that is), what do they think the role of fairness is when it comes to societal stability and well-being, and what greater end do they see fairness serving, more or less, if any?

To put this another way, do non-consequentialists consider ‘fairness’ to be an ultimate end in itself, to be considered equal to ‘the good’ in weight, and to sometimes trump ‘the good’? (If fairness trumps ‘the good’, is it because fairness can sometimes trump ‘the complete good’ (all things considered and accurately calculated), or is it because ‘the good’ that is trumped is only a partial and incorrectly calculated ‘good’?) Or, do non-consequentalists consider fairness to be a very important means to help, in concert with other considerations, achieve ‘the good’ as well as a subcomponent of the good and a subsidiary end?

And, on this matter anyhow (i.e., ‘fairness’), is the main difference between consequentialists and non-consequentialists merely definitional or is it substantive? In other words, is the main difference between the two the fact that non-consequentialists consider fairness (and the impact on fairness of any given decision) to be a very important consideration in decision-making, but prefer not to call this impact a ‘consequence’, while the consequentialists prefer to call this impact a ‘consequence’? Or, do consequentialists exclude the impact on fairness from their calculus entirely, i.e., do they not consider it as a ‘consequence’ of any given moral choice? Or, do consequentialists and non-consequentialists both consider the impact on fairness (though one calls it a ‘consequence’ and one doesn’t) but hold very different views regarding what ‘fairness’ is, its role in society, and the larger end that it often serves?

I apologize if these questions don’t make sense as written. I’m very interested in your thoughts, and I also wish that Kamm could answer these questions from her own perspective (though perhaps she has already done so in her earlier works that I, unfortunately, have not read).

I think we’re talking a little at cross purposes here. My example was only intended to defend Kamm against your comment:

“It seems to me that this example is not a good one; there is no reason to presume that there are two groups.”

I just wanted to show that we can easily imagine scenarios in which we do have to choose between providing a good education to 1000 people and providing a good education to 900 people, with two clear groups. It wasn’t intended to be a counterexample to any of your normative claims.

However, I’m pretty sure that Kamm would not accept straightforward appeal to the principle of utility. As a non-consequentialist, she wouldn’t see this as settling the matter. Before we can just say that they ought to build the school where it will do most good, we must check that we are not treating unfairly those who do not get the benefit. Surely that’s the interest of this chapter?

I think it’s important to recognise that the common sense intuition that lost legs but not sore throats break ties between decisions about whose life to save may depend upon another common sense intuition: that sore throats are irrelevant to decisions about whose life to save because we really ought to be looking for less trifling considerations to help us make such massive decisions. If this is right, the fact that Kamm has, in introducing dilemmas such as that between saving A’s life or saving B’s life and curing C’s sore throat, specified that there are no other morally relevant considerations to help us reach our decision means that she has artificially removed the possibility of satisfying the common sense desire to find a consideration less trifling than a sore throat. In this case, the common sense intuition that sore throats should not break ties in life-or-death decisions fails to apply, and so (like Toby) I find her denial of the relevance of such things as sore throats difficult to accept. It’s true that it’s difficult to accept that someone’s sore throat could be morally relevant to a decision about whose life to save, but it seems to me to be no more difficult to accept than the stipulation that there is no other factor more morally relevant than a sore throat that could help us reach a decision.

I’m not sure, either, that Kamm’s methodology excuses her from ignoring C’s sore throat in the scenario that she has described. She does, after all, accept that an act’s consequences can be relevant to its rightness – she only denies that the act’s consequences are the only, or the most important, relevant factors (see the beginning of chapter 1). However, if the option of saving A’s life, and that of saving B’s life and curing C’s sore throat, are – C’s sore throat aside – matched in all morally relevant nonconsequentialist and consequentialst factors, then I don’t see how the addition of even a trifling consequentialist factor to one side can fail to be morally relevant.

It seems to me that there are at least two central considerations having to do with the tie-breaking question in this type of situation, in my view: 1.) The likelihood and degree that the third person’s ailment will undermine her/his own survival or her/his own ability to have or raise children; and 2.) The ongoing role that the society’s concept of fairness plays in its sustainable survival and healthy stability, and the precedent set by (or lesson learned via) the way the pending choice is ultimately made. Of course, this assumes that the moral status and situation of persons ‘A’ and ‘B’ are equal and that all else of relevance is equal.

Considering item ‘2’ first: In my view, coming from a scientific standpoint, there is probably not an absolute, precise, exacting principle of fairness written into the cosmos. When we consider (and weigh) the concept of fairness, we should probably do so in light of other aspects of being human, and in light of the question: Fairness to what end? In other words, we should see fairness as a very important subsidiary goal (after all, it’s nice and helpful to be treated fairly!) and, importantly, as a valuable means and dynamic in our human quest for survival as a species. So, what do (and would) humans consider fair, and why? Although (as has been pointed out) intuitions are not everything, intuitions that can be validly tied to sensible reasons that all serve some sensible function and that pass other tests are probably as good as it gets. This brings us to consider item ‘1’.

If the ailment of the third person (or what he would suffer if not saved) only causes a temporary diminishment in his happiness (or temporary increase in suffering), and if it will not likely lead to his death, and if it will not prevent her/him from having children (if she/he chooses to do so), then such an ailment should probably not be considered a tie-breaker (in deciding which of two other people will have to die), because using such a temporary ailment as a tie-breaker would actually (likely) undermine the intuitive sense of fairness in a society and can’t be tied to the most foundational ‘effective’ function of human social-moral nature. Survival has a grounded value. The ability to have children has a grounded value. Without adherence to these values, at least on average, the human species would not continue to exist for very long (in evolutionary terms). Although we all like happiness, and we like to avoid suffering, temporary sadness and temporary suffering are common aspects of life (and most people intuitively understand this) and are thus not sufficient reasons to rob ‘B’ of a 50% chance to be saved and in so doing give everyone else in that society the idea that her/his own lot could be similar if ever in a situation similar to that of ‘B.’ (If living in such a society, it might be wise to always go around with someone chained to you who has at least a broken leg, or better yet a broken leg and a sore throat.)

On the other hand, if the ailment of the third person could likely be life-threatening (even a year from the choice being considered) or if it would rob her/him of the ability to have children, then such an ailment could be reasonably considered a tie breaker for deciding whether to save ‘A’ or ‘B’, all else equal, without undermining the ongoing societal sense of fairness in a way not ground-able in a basic understanding of ongoing human survival.

Look at it this way: Consider an isolated society that, for some odd environmental or behavioral reason, routinely faces such difficult choices. One of two equal persons, ‘A’ or ‘B’, will (unfortunately) die. A third person exists (with some ailment) as a possible tie-breaker. One side of the calculus involves the question/likelihood that the ailment, if not cured, will cause the third person to die or will cause her/him to be unable to have children. The other side of the calculus involves the role of ‘fairness’ in the society’s stability, health, and ongoing ability to survive and regenerate (reproduce). I think it’s accurate to say that, if members of the society face these choices often, and if they don’t do this calculus at least reasonably correctly, the society will likely decline and may even decline itself into non-existence, other things equal. Or, if it catches its miscalculation in time, it can change policy. On the other hand, if a society gets the calculation right, its choices will be consistent with its own ongoing survival and regeneration from one generation to the next.

This is an oversimplification, of course, but (I believe) is directionally correct.

I agree that Kamm’s claim (lost legs break ties, but sore throats do not) is in line with common sense. I also agree that it is the type of claim that is fairly typical in nonconsequentialist reasoning. However, it is closely related to claims that have been shown to be very problematic. Kamm has previously claimed something like the following: sufficiently many sore throats outweigh one person losing their legs and sufficiently many people losing their legs outweigh one death, but no amount of sore throats outweigh one death. This is not explicitly contradictory as Kamm need not decide what we ought to do purely on the grounds of what is better and thus her theory can survive intransitivity, but Alastair Norcross has shown that the induced intransitivity is very counterintuitive (Gustaf Arrhenius has some similar troubling results for theories like Kamm’s).

Suppose that the number of sore throats needed to outweigh loss of a pair of legs is 1,000 and the number of pairs of legs being lost needed to outweigh a death is also 1,000 (any other numbers also work). Now suppose you are faced with:

(A) saving 1 life
(B) saving 1,000 pairs of legs
(C) curing 1,000,000 sore throats

For each option there is a long windy road leading to the people in need. Faced with (A) and (B) you must choose (B), from (B) and (C) you must choose (C) and from (A) and (C) you must choose (A). If faced with all three options, there must be a permissible option. It doesn’t matter which it is, but let’s say that (A) is permissible and that you set off down the road to where the person can be saved. Now suppose that as you set off, a tree falls blocking the road to (C). You are now facing a choice between (A) and (B) and since the legs outweigh the life, (A) is no longer permissible and you must change to road (B). This is very odd, and the phenomenon occurs so long as any one of them is permissible. Indeed whenever a theory has intransitivity in its ought claims, you get this strange dependence on irrelevant alternatives. Thus, while deontological theories are not entirely destroyed by intransitivity (as consequentialism would be), the intransitivities still lead to very strange and unmotivated ethical constraints.

I don’t think that Kamm says quite enough about lives, legs and throats in the chapter to pin her to a Norcross style argument like this one, but I think she is dangerously close, and would run into it if she made her position entirely explicit.

I do not see how your example counters mine. Given your assumption that inclass learning is better then remote learning then utilizing the principle of utility, we should provide the most good to the most people affected by our action. If we assign a value of 1 to inclass learning and a value of .8 to remote learning then it is clear that we should build the school on the island of 1000 and provide remote learning for the 900.

However, why would one build a school with a capacity that so far exceeds the amount of children to be served? On consequentialist/utilitarian grounds it would seem morally preferable that if it were possible to build a school with that capacity then we should build two schools; one with a capacity of 1000 on that island and a smaller school on the other island. Given the values assigned to inclass versus remote learning above isn’t that what we should do?

The capacity of the school is 15000. All of the children on the island that the school is built on can attend the school. However, the islands are far enough away from each other (and all other communities) that no one from the other island can attend the school. (Assume for the example that) attending school is much better for children than remote learning. In this case, we have a choice between providing an good education to 1000 children and providing a good education to 900 children, with the memembership of each group fixed.

Kamm claims that a broken leg can break a tie, but not a sore throat. You find this claim incredible. There is of course a certain form of utilitarianism that would make such a claim extremely hard to defend. But do you think that this claim is incredible for a non-consequentialist who employs something like Kamm’s methodology? I’d say she’s making a commonsensical point.

The claim does need grounding. It ties to some big questions. It is similar to the intuitive view that it would be wrong to allow one person to suffer just because this suffering is needed to produce a moment of pleasure in millions (as in an example of Scanlon’s).

Such claims assume a normative threshold in facts about well-being. To defend them, one needs to (1) show that we really are committed to such a threshold in many different evaluative contexts (it needn’t be a sharp line of course), (2) that there is some principled grounding for this threshold. Only then could one hope to (3) show that this threshold can support such strong normative claims.

I certainly don’t intend to mount such a defense. I’m not sure how to defend (3). (1) seems to me fairly easy to establish, though not much noticed in philosophical discussions of well-being. So just a remark on (2). A number of people have independently claimed that brief passing hedonic states that are not significantly connected to one’s ongoing projects and values can be discounted in assessments of lifelong well-being. One way of interpreting this claim would make sense even to a utilitarian. Such episodes don’t really make a life go better. But this would mean that they are not, in the relevant sense, irrelevant goods.

I think you make a good point. Kamm’s discussion is only really applicable to cases in which we really do have two competing sets.

However, I’m not sure that this makes Kamm’s example a bad one. We can certainly imagine a case in which the potential beneficiaries of an education are split into two groups. Suppose that we have two remote islands (perhaps in the Hebrides). 1000 children live on one island and 900 on another. We only have enough money to build one school. (Of course, we will do all we can in terms of remote learning for the other children.)

It seems to me that this example is not a good one; there is no reason to presume that there are two groups. If people share the same characteristics and have an equal interest of securing a good and all are equally capable of as good an outcome as anyone else, then it seems to me that there is only one group, or set, namely those who want x, an education in her example. It seems to me that the only way we could break them into two groups is to use some criteria other then the equal desire for, and capability of, securing x. Relative to her example, the moral issue would be which criteria, that are not morally suspect, could one use to break people into groups? The ones I come up with, race, ethnicity, age, gender, etc. are all morally irrelevant and using any of these criteria is morally problematic. The key to resolve this issue is to treat the 1900 people as members of one set. If there are less then 1900 openings and everyone is equal in capacity to succeed and achieve the outcome, then the ‘coin toss’ (an impartial method) would be the morally preferable way to select those who will ‘get in.’

The point I am getting at is that in some situations (trolley-like problems) numbers come into play, but in many others, the number of people does not matter if they are not in differentiated sets that can be establised using morally acceptable criteria. What matters is how many people with desire x (that which gives membership in a set)can be satisfied if everyone with desire x cannot be satisfied. Impartiality seems the only morally defensible way to solve who gets x in these situations.

As I read chapter 2, as much as I enjoyed it, it made me wonder whether I was ‘missing something’ that is unstated in the work (perhaps explained in Kamm’s earlier work?) or simply taken as a given, i.e., as a standard accepted assumption?

That ‘something’ is, in my view, an understanding and acknowledgment of the basic ‘effective function’ of morality itself, i.e., its ‘reason for being.’ Although morality includes fairness (for example) as a very important means and as a subsidiary ‘end’, morality is not ultimately ‘about’ fairness. Put another way, the topic of human ‘morality’ itself, as well as our human social-moral faculties, exist by virtue of human survival (life), and they will continue to exist (hopefully) by virtue of continuing human survival. So, relatively speaking, morality itself is more ‘about’ survival (of humans), and continuing survival (of the human species), than it is about other very important means to this survival, including fairness, justice, and etc. This doesn’t mean that morality is solely ‘about’ survival, or continuing survival; it just means that morality is first-and-foremost about (continuing) survival, and that fairness and justice are means and subsidiary ‘ends’, and happiness is also a motivator, a subsidiary ‘end’, and (when we enjoy it) icing on the cake of survival. In my view, if this broader context were understood or made explicit, it would help support many of the arguments made, call for refinement of a few, and place the whole exercise in a more grounded context.

Consider various benefits that were mentioned in the chapter: Life (avoidance of death), chances at life, resources that could help sustain life, a reasonable life span (or extensions to achieve such), enhanced intelligence, legs (the avoidance of losing them), arms (the avoidance of losing them), a cure for a sore throat, a cure for an earache, and etc. What differentiates whether some of these (or their associated losses) count (for example, in a tie-breaker situation) or whether they should be aggregated against each other? Why? And what tells us how real humans (even very intelligent and moral ones) assess such situations, relevance, probabilities, and direct and indirect consequences? And do/should the ‘example’ represented by (and proclaimed by) a choice, as well as the notions ‘what if everyone thought this way?’ or ‘what if someone made this decision that resulted in this consequence to me?’, play real roles in our human intuitions about these types of choices? I.e., are these aspects of the situation to be included in some sense among the ‘consequences’ of a given choice, rather than consequences being limited to the direct lives lost or gained in the immediate incident? In my view, there are answers to these questions that are grounded in a broad and science-informed view of morality itself.

This leads me to two questions that, it seems to me, one should consider:

Is it the goal (of the book or the broader enterprise) to discover or propose an ‘ideal’ morality that is justified and described in many situations based on intricate rules and logic that (probably) don’t capture how most people assess situations and make choices (even very responsible people making very moral choices)? OR,

Is it the goal to discover or propose an ‘ideal’ morality that we should strive for that is justified by, and described using, an understanding of the effective function of morality itself, an understanding of people at their ‘reasonable best’, an understanding of how humans assess situations and how they ‘work’, and an understanding of human limits?

This is true, however he may then find himself in trouble if he wishes to say that we shouldn’t toss a coin between A’s life and B’s little finger.

That seems right to me, though maybe Taurek or someone could respond that there is a ‘sphere of incommensurability’ that includes lives, legs, arms, etc., but not fingers, hair, finger nails, etc.

In your case, E has been given further weight in the sense that E can make a claim. Indeed, E’s claim is balanced by B or C. In the case of tossing a coin though, C is not given the chance to make a claim at all.

This is true, but I wonder how much merely being able to make a claim is worth, if it doesn’t correspond to any increased chance of being saved. I personally support saving the greatest number rather than any of the randomised methods, but don’t think that Kamm’s reasoning here really works.

The problem is that (b) is not true by ‘mere logic.’ The moral equivalence of persons is a substantive moral claim that has to be argued for, and a claim that someone who holds that persons are incommensurable might deny.

I agree. Kamm certainly needs moral principles to get claims (a) and (b) off the ground, though once she has them, she doesn’t need an additional principle of substitution of persons.

But (rightly or wrongly), Taurek could deny that he is engaged in pairwise comparison; he could instead hold the view the persons are incommensurable.

This is true, however he may then find himself in trouble if he wishes to say that we shouldn’t toss a coin between A’s life and B’s little finger.

Two comments on your points and two comments on Kamm.

1. You say that Kamm holds that

if we were to toss a coin between saving A and saving B, and would also toss a coin between saving A and saving B and C, then we would be wronging C by giving him no further weight.

You argue that suppose we have two cases:

(1) A and B and C versus D
(2) A and B and C versus D and E
If we save A, B and C in (1) and save them in (2), then it would appear that we are doing in (2) just what we would have done were E not present. Despite saving the greatest number, we would still be committing the same sin that Kamm complains of above.

But I think Kamm would respond that the two cases are not analogous. In your case, E has been given further weight in the sense that E can make a claim. Indeed, E’s claim is balanced by B or C. In the case of tossing a coin though, C is not given the chance to make a claim at all.

You go on to say that “if taken seriously, this argument really points towards proportional chances.” I think Kamm or someone might argue that a proportional chance approach gives the individual in the lesser group too much weight. Suppose there are one million people on one side and one individual on the other. And suppose a one-million-and-one sided dice has been cast in favor of the one individual. One would be required to save the one individual on this approach. But this seems counterintuitive. It might also be pointed out that the fact that the proportional chance approach makes it more likely than not – perhaps even overwhelmingly likely – that the greater number will be saved is insufficient to establish that this approach solves the problem at hand, given that the problem at hand is that of explaining why we should always save the greater number in these cases.

2. You say that

However, she doesn’t really need to do any substituting of persons at all, for (c) follows from (a) and (b) by mere logic (and the rules of comparatives, like ‘worse than’). If one thing is worse than a second and this second thing is equally bad as a third, then the first thing is worse than the third.

The problem is that (b) is not true by ‘mere logic.’ The moral equivalence of persons is a substantive moral claim that has to be argued for, and a claim that someone who holds that persons are incommensurable might deny.

Comments on Kamm:
3. On p. 50: Kamm says that Taurek’s premise (i) (that no one of the people in the larger group will suffer a greater loss than the one person would) suggests that we are engaging in a pairwise comparison. But (rightly or wrongly), Taurek could deny that he is engaged in pairwise comparison; he could instead hold the view the persons are incommensurable. This interpretation would be consistent with Taurek’s holding 2) and in particular, 2 b) (that there is no impartial perspective from which to judge this issue.)

4. Why isn’t Kamm’s Context-Aware View of pairwise comparison really just consequentialism in disguise? Indeed, why not call it the ‘Consequence-Aware’ view? Kamm might respond that unlike consequentialism, she is not aggregating. But as the Argument for Best Outcomes shows consequentialists do not necessarily have to aggregate either. Moreover, Kamm is already comparing, substituting, balancing, dividing persons. Why not also aggregate? Her stopping point seems arbitrary.

Yes this occurred to me as well. Kamm’s argument may work against this particular wording of Anscombe’s principle, but Anscombe would probably respond by restricting the principle to mutually exclusive acts (which was perhaps her intention all along).