Consequence Argument Research Articles

Incompatibilism proved

The consequence argument attempts to show that incompatibilism is true by showing that if there is determinism, then we never had, have or will have any choice about anything. Much of the debate on the consequence argument has focused on the “beta” transfer principle, and its improvements. We shall show that on an appropriate definition of “never have had, have or will have any choice”, a version of the beta principle is a theorem given one plausible axiom for counterfactuals (weakening). Instead of being about transfer principles, the debate should be over whether the distant past and laws are up to us.

Parallelism in the Early Moist Texts

Abstract Parallelism is present everywhere in the early Moist texts: at the syntactic level, at the semantic level, between sentences, between sets of sentences, between argumentative structures. The present article gives many examples of the phenomenon: parallelism of insistence, insistence from top to bottom, insistence from bottom to top, parallelism with symmetry, parallelism involving negation, subcontraries and negation at deeper levels, parallelism of the argumentative structures. Logic is particularly applied to the study of parallelism involving negation. From the point of view of argumentation, it is shown that many of those constructions have an important role in supporting arguments such as: arguments of generalization, a fortiori arguments, arguments of exemplarity, consequentialist arguments, arguments by comparison. This study draws the attention to the importance of argumentation in the study of Moism and gives a new light on the argument by parallelism (mou 侔) in the “Xiaoqu”: It is a natural extension of what we call “parallelism involving negation,” already very common in the early Moist texts.

Advancing population and public health ethics regarding HIV testing: a scoping review

Recently, scholars have called for more robust population and public health ethical frameworks to inform how the health of populations and individuals ought to be improved through various approaches to HIV testing practices. Our objective is to examine the breadth, range and foci of a variety of ethical issues pertaining to HIV testing approaches within the peer-reviewed literature, and how these issues address population and/or individual interests. We identify potential tensions between individual and collective approaches as well as other concerns, including equity, justice and distribution of health and risk – hallmarks of the emergent field of population and public health ethics. Based on our review, we suggest that additional theoretical work and empirical research are required in order to inform more ethically robust debates related to population HIV testing practices. Specifically problematic were consequentialist arguments that deem testing approaches as either morally permissible or impermissible without sufficient robust empirical and/or theoretical underpinnings and about how a particular approach would unfold among individuals and populations. The current review underscores the need to continue to articulate an evidence- and theory- informed population and public health ethics pertaining to HIV testing.

Industrial Policy and Competition Enforcement: Is There, Could There and Should There Be a Nexus?

This paper muses on whether there can be, there is, and there should exist a nexus between European Union (“EU”) competition law and industrial policy. A well-known, long lasting grievance in the history of EU competition law is indeed that the European Commission (“the Commission”) has allegedly enforced the competition rules dogmatically, and turned a blind eye on industrial policy considerations. Lately, this policy debate has revived. With the current economic debacle in the Western world, decades of free-market economic policies – including competition policies – inherited from the so-called “Washington consensus” are called into question. In contrast, thriving economic models like Brazil, China, or India where the State interferes with the market at the expense of free competition, are increasingly looked by the “old world” as a possible source of inspiration.Those new developments justify devoting another paper to the question whether industrial policy considerations could and should inform EU competition enforcement. To address it, we follow a four steps methodology. We first solve definitional issues by describing the various possible meanings of “industrial policy” (I). Second, we follow a legalistic approach to review whether such considerations can, as a matter of positive law, play a role (II). Third, we turn to empirical analysis, to examine if there has been some industrial policy influence in the Commission’s case-law (III). Fourth, we review consequentialist arguments to assess whether industrial policy considerations should play a stronger role in EU competition enforcement (IV).

Actuaries, Financial Economists and Accountants’ Contributions to GASB's 'Pension Project': An Ethical Perspective

This study focuses on the Governmental Accounting Standards Board’s (GASB) Pension Project which, over 2009-2012, deliberated a highly contested issue over the “correct” discount rates to be used in the discounting of pension liabilities on government financial statements. We claim that this debate comprises an ethical dimension and analyze the ethical framework underlying the arguments used by various groups of experts -- financial economists, actuaries and accountants -- involved in the consultation process orchestrated by GASB. We find that, despite the unprecedented economic consequences associated with the discount rate debate, these groups of experts all predominantly favor deontological arguments. One exception is notable: when experts act as lobbyists to support the interests of one specific party (e.g., plan sponsors), we find that they are more likely than their “independent” peers to hybridize their deontological thinking with consequentialist arguments. This specificity however fades away with time. When left by themselves and among themselves during three rounds of consultations, experts’ preference for deontological -- rather than consequentialist or hybrid arguments -- reinforces itself. At the end of the consultation period, GASB is left with two contradictory opinions, each supported by distinct deontological arguments, and ends up choosing a weighted average of both. Consequentialist arguments, prevalent in the public debate largely echoed by the press but absent from GASB’s Pension Project debate, are therefore not taken into account -- at least not explicitly -- in GASB’s final decision. This study contributes to the literature on the role of experts in democracies and, following the precursor work by Ruland (1984) and Zeff (1978), adds an ethical theory layer to our understanding of how those involved in accounting standard setting processes interact and make decisions.

Against Court-Ordered Apologies

Court-ordered apologies add very little of value to the meanings and functions already present in contemporary legal proceedings and punishments. They also present considerable costs. This article first evaluates Kant’s infamous advocacy for court-ordered apologies as retributive humiliation as well arguments from contemporary Kantians who support court-ordered apologies on somewhat less divisive grounds. It then considers various consequentialist arguments for and against court-ordered apologies. Throughout these discussions clean distinctions between voluntary and involuntary apologies deteriorate. Any value we might derive from court-ordered apologies can probably be better realized through less problematic means.

Does the consequence argument beg the question?

The Consequence Argument has elicited various responses, ranging from acceptance as obviously right to rejection as obviously problematic in one way or another. Here we wish to focus on one specific response, according to which the Consequence Argument begs the question. This is a serious accusation that has not yet been adequately rebutted, and we aim to remedy that in what follows. We begin by giving a formulation of the Consequence Argument. We also offer some tentative proposals about the nature of begging the question. Although the charge of begging the question is frequently made in philosophy, it is surprisingly difficult to pin down the precise nature of this dialectical infelicity (or family of such infelicities). Thus we offer some new proposals about the nature of begging the question with an eye to understanding what is going on in central cases in which the charge is legitimately made. We then defend the Consequence Argument against the charge that it begs the question, so construed. We contend that, whatever the other liabilities of the argument may be, it does not beg the question against the compatibilist.

La reducción al absurdo como argumento jurídico

Mediante la reducción al absurdo, reductio ad absurdum o argumento apagógico se defiende una tesis mostrando que rechazarla tiene implicaciones absurdas porque lleva a una contradicción. El argumento tiene distintas variantes, y es más o menos concluyente, dependiendo de su lógica interna y de la justificación de la premisa que se considera absurdo negar. Este trabajo discute la tipología y algunos problemas específicos que presenta este argumento en el razonamiento jurídico, en particular su naturaleza lógica, su relación con el ideal de coherencia del ordenamiento jurídico, su proximidad con los argumentos consecuencialistas y su carácter emotivo y potencialmente falaz. Además se muestran y clasifican varios ejemplos de uso del argumento en la motivación de decisiones jurídicas.

Towards a Richer Debate on Tissue Engineering: A Consideration on the Basis of NEST-Ethics

In their 2007 paper, Swierstra and Rip identify characteristic tropes and patterns of moral argumentation in the debate about the ethics of new and emerging science and technologies (or "NEST-ethics"). Taking their NEST-ethics structure as a starting point, we considered the debate about tissue engineering (TE), and argue what aspects we think ought to be a part of a rich and high-quality debate of TE. The debate surrounding TE seems to be predominantly a debate among experts. When considering the NEST-ethics arguments that deal directly with technology, we can generally conclude that consequentialist arguments are by far the most prominently featured in discussions of TE. In addition, many papers discuss principles, rights and duties relevant to aspects of TE, both in a positive and in a critical sense. Justice arguments are only sporadically made, some "good life" arguments are used, others less so (such as the explicit articulation of perceived limits, or the technology as a technological fix for a social problem). Missing topics in the discussion, at least from the perspective of NEST-ethics, are second "level" arguments-those referring to techno-moral change connected to tissue engineering. Currently, the discussion about tissue engineering mostly focuses on its so-called "hard impacts"-quantifiable risks and benefits of the technology. Its "soft impacts"-effects that cannot easily be quantified, such as changes to experience, habits and perceptions, should receive more attention.

Some Gays and the Queers

Some Gays and the Queers

Explaining Away Incompatibilist Intuitions

The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists depends in large part on what ordinary people mean by ‘free will’, a matter on which previous experimental philosophy studies have yielded conflicting results. In Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner (2005, 2006), most participants judged that agents in deterministic scenarios could have free will and be morally responsible. Nichols and Knobe (2007), though, suggest that these apparent compatibilist responses are performance errors produced by using concrete scenarios, and that their abstract scenarios reveal the folk theory of free will for what it actually is—incompatibilist. Here, we argue that the results of two new studies suggest just the opposite. Most participants only give apparent incompatibilist judgments when they mistakenly interpret determinism to imply that agents’ mental states are bypassed in the causal chains that lead to their behavior. Determinism does not entail bypassing, so these responses do not reflect genuine incompatibilist intuitions. When participants understand what determinism does mean, the vast majority take it to be compatible with free will. Further results indicate that most people’s concepts of choice and the ability to do otherwise do not commit them to incompatibilism, either, putting pressure on incompatibilist arguments that rely on transfer principles, such as the Consequence Argument. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical debates about free will, and suggest that incompatibilism appears to be either false, or else a thesis about something other than what most people mean by ‘free will’.

The non-consequentialist moral force of promises: a response to Sinnott-Armstrong

That we have a duty not to break a promise is often presented as a reason to reject consequentialism. Sinnott-Armstrong has argued, however, that in fact consequentialism provides the best account of the duty not to break a promise (2009; see also Sinnott-Armstrong 1992). I will argue that Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument fails. The phenomena of promising remain a reason to reject the view that all of morality consists in our duty to produce the best consequences. That is not to say that we do not have a duty to produce the best consequences. Rather, the duty to produce the best consequences is, like the duty not to break a promise, one of a plurality of moral duties. According to Sinnott-Armstrong, the best explanation of the strength of one’s duty to keep a promise is that the duty’s strength is based on the consequences of breaking the promise. This is because if the consequences of keeping a promise vary, then the strength of one’s duty to keep the promise will vary as well; while if the consequences of keeping a promise do not vary, the strength of the duty will not vary even if all the other circumstances surrounding the promise do vary. And, applying Mill’s method of concomitant variation, Sinnott-Armstrong maintains that ‘since the strength of a moral obligation goes up and down as the harms in violating it go up and down, this correlation supports the hypothesis that the harms of violating it are what makes the moral obligation as strong as it is’ (2009: 440). Moreover, Sinnott-Armstrong argues, if the strength of the duty to keep a promise is based on the consequences of breaking it, then the best explanation of the existence of the duty must be consequentialist as well. The only way to rebut this consequentialist argument is ‘to explain why some moral obligations are stronger than others without invoking the harmful consequences of violating those moral obligations’ (2009: 442). Sinnott-Armstrong doubts that this can be done. I will try to show that it can be, by explicating cases in which the strengths of moral obligations vary even while the consequences remain the same.

Moral Harm and Moral Responsibility: A Defence of Ascriptivism*

AbstractThis paper investigates the relations between the concepts of moral harm and moral responsibility, arguing for a circularity between the two. On this basis the conceptual soundness of descriptivism, on which consequentialist and non‐consequentialist arguments are often grounded, is questioned. In the last section a certain version of ascriptivism is defended: The circularity is relevant in order to understand how a restricted version of ascriptivism may in fact be well founded.

Lehrer and the consequence argument

The consequence argument of van Inwagen is widely regarded as the best argument for incompatibilism. Lewis’s response is praised by van Inwagen as the best compatibilist’s strategy but Lewis himself acknowledges that his strategy resembles that of Lehrer. A comparison will show that one can speak about Lehrer–Lewis strategy, although I think that Lewis’s variation is dialectically slightly stronger. The paper provides a response to some standard objections of incompatibilists to the Lehrer–Lewis reply.

Incompatibilism and the Past*

AbstractThere is a new objection to the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism. I argue that the objection is more wide‐ranging than originally thought. In particular: if it tells against the Consequence Argument, it tells against other arguments for incompatibilism too. I survey a few ways of dealing with this objection and show the costs of each. I then present an argument for incompatibilism that is immune to the objection and that enjoys other advantages.

Reasonable Disagreement about Identifed vs. Statistical Victims

AbstractPeople tend to contribute more—and think they have stronger obligations to contribute more—to rescuing an identified victim rather than a statistical one. Indeed, they are often disposed to contribute more to rescuing a single identified victim than a greater number of statistical ones. By an “identified victim,” I mean Terry Q., lying injured in the passenger seat of the wrecked automobile on the corner of Main Street and Broadway, or Jessica McClure, the child who fell into the Texas well in 1987 and whose family was sent $700,000 in donations for her. We need not know their names, however, and we can accept a very minimal form of identification. By a “statistical victim,” I mean the person who, extrapolating from traffic records, will be in a similar, serious car accident tomorrow (and may then be identified), or the children who will fall into wells next year if we do not cap them better than we did the well that trapped Jessica.Does this disposition (or perceived obligation) have any normative force? I initially thought there could be no such normative force, but consequentialist and nonconsequentialist arguments, pro and con, have convinced me that reasonable people can disagree with each other. This disagreement poses a problem for political philosophy: how should policy choices take such disagreement into account?

The Folk Psychology of Free Will: An Argument Against Compatibilism

Abstract This paper presents existing results and experimental evidence in social psychology to argue against the compatibilist thesis that our folk-psychological notions of freedom and moral responsibility are completely consistent with the acceptance of determinism. In section 1, I spell out the compatibilist position and briefly discuss the standard incompatibilist argument-the so-called consequence argument. In section 2, I take a closer look at the folk psychology of free will and argue that, contra the compatibilist, recent empirical research by Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe and others, reveals that our folk-psychological intuitions are essentially incompatibilist and libertarian in nature. I conclude in section 3 by examining the phenomenology of agentive experience and argue that it further undermines the compatibilist thesis.

DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY AND ECONOMIC LIBERTY

AbstractLibertarians and classical liberals typically defend private economic liberty as a requirement of self-ownership or on the basis of consequentialist arguments of various sorts. By contrast, this paper defends private economic liberty as a requirement of democratic legitimacy. In recent decades, many philosophers have converged upon a certain view about political justification. If a set of social institutions is to be just and legitimate, those institutions must be acceptable in principle to the citizens who are to lead their lives within them. This deliberative or democratic approach to justification is traditionally associated with thinkers on the left who are skeptical of the importance of private economic liberty. This article shows how the protection of private economic liberty is a requirement of citizens' developing and exercising the moral powers they have as democratic citizens. Democratic legitimacy does not require the affirmation of absolute economic liberty rights as sometimes defended by libertarians. But democratic legitimacy does require that a wide range of private economic liberties be meriting constitutional protection on a par with the civil and political liberties of democratic citizens. This opens the way for a wider defense of classical liberalism based upon the idea of democratic legitimacy.

RECALCITRANT PLURALISM

AbstractIn this paper I argue that the best form of deontology is one understood in terms of prima facie duties. I outline how these duties are to be understood and show how they offer a plausible and elegant connection between the reason why we ought to do certain acts, the normative reasons we have to do these acts, the reason why moral agents will do them, and the reasons certain people have to resent someone who does not do them. I then argue that this form of deontology makes it harder to unify a pluralistic ethics under a single consequentialist principle in a plausible way, and illustrate this with reference to Rob Shaver's consequentialist arguments.

On behalf of the consequence argument: time, modality, and the nature of free action

The consequence argument for the incompatibility of free action and determinism has long been under attack, but two important objections have only recently emerged: Warfield’s modal fallacy objection and Campbell’s no past objection. In this paper, I explain the significance of these objections and defend the consequence argument against them. First, I present a novel formulation of the argument that withstands their force. Next, I argue for the one controversial claim on which this formulation relies: the trans-temporality thesis. This thesis implies that an agent acts freely only if there is one time at which she is able to perform an action and a distinct time at which she actually performs it. I then point out that determinism, too, is a thesis about trans-temporal relations. I conclude that it is precisely because my formulation of the consequence argument emphasizes trans-temporality that it prevails against the modal fallacy and no past objections.