Demandingness Objection Research Articles

Demandingness Objection in Kant’s Ethical Philosophy: Conversational Implicature and Kant’s notion of Willlkur

In this contribution we will discuss the demandingness objection with regard to Kant?s ethics. While in the literature there has been an emphasis on this issue with regard to imperfect duties, our main goal is to show Kantian ethics has resources to resort to in the case of the demandingness objection with regard to both perfect and imperfect duties. We consider different possible components of a moral theory which can lead to demandingness introduced by Scheffler. While we concur with Kantian critics that the stringent content of Kantian ethics may be a source of demandingness, we show that Kantian ethics has resources to respond to over demandingness objection arisen from other components. For this purpose we discuss Kant?s notion of ?Vorsatz? (intention), accompanied by the device of Flouting, introduced by Grice in his Conversational Implicatures.

Solving Satisficing Consequentialism

Satisficing consequentialism is often used as a way of solving the demandingness objection, but many forms of satisficing consequentialism fail to do so. Further, those that do are vulnerable to the objections Ben Bradley outlined in Against Satisficing Consequentialism. In this paper, I present a new type of satisficing consequentialism which resolves the demandingness objection, is in-line with common intuitions about moral responsibility, and avoids Bradley's criticisms.

Comprehensive moral thinking and the demandingness objection

AbstractIn his tripartite theory of corporate responsibility, Kenneth Goodpaster argues for the inclusion of “Comprehensive Moral Thinking (CMT)” as the third part alongside shareholder and stakeholder thinking. CMT requires managers sometimes to act for reasons of dignity or a just community, against what shareholder and stakeholder thinking recommend. To address concerns about the demandingness of CMT, Goodpaster argues that the responsibilities it imposes are significant but qualified or conditional: they require only that managers make efforts to address problems of dignity and justice, especially in cooperation with other willing firms. If extreme efforts are required or if other firms are unwilling to cooperate, managers can be justified in deciding in favor of shareholder or stakeholder values, even when dignity or justice is at stake. I raise two problems for the appeal to qualified responsibility—an extensional problem about the inability of the account to yield the correct judgment in important cases and an internal problem about the coherence of the account when qualified responsibility is included. I conclude by considering the prospects of a theory that includes CMT but rejects qualified responsibility.

Demandingness and Public Health Ethics

Public health policies often require individuals to make personal sacrifices for the sake of protecting other individuals or the community at large. Such requirements can be more or less demanding for individuals. This paper examines the implications of demandingness for public health ethics and policy. It focuses on three possible public health policies that pose requirements that are differently demanding: vaccination policies, policy to contain antimicrobial resistance, and quarantine and isolation policies. Assuming the validity of the ‘demandingness objection’ in ethics, we argue that states should try to pose requirements that individuals would have an independent moral obligation to fulfil, and therefore that are not too demanding. In such cases, coercive measures are ethically justified, especially if the interventions also entail some benefits to the individuals; this is, for example, the case of vaccination policies. When public health policies need to require individuals to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation, states have an obligation to either provide incentives to give individuals non-moral reasons to fulfil a certain requirement – as in the case of policies that limit antibiotic prescriptions – or to compensate individuals for being forced to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation – as in the case of quarantine and isolation policies.

Consequentialism and Its demands: The Role of Institutions

It isn’t saying much to claim that morality is demanding; the question, rather, is: can morality be so demanding that we have reason not to follow its dictates? According to many, it can, if that morality is a consequentialist one. This paper takes the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given. Our question, therefore, is how to respond to the Objection. We put forward a response that we think has not received sufficient attention in the literature: institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. We first introduce the Objection, then explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and how it responds to the objection. In the remainder of the paper, we defend the view against potential objections.

The implications of being implicated. Individual responsibility and structural injustice

Within the global justice debate the demandingness objection is primarily aimed at utilitarian theorists who defend a version of the ‘optimizing principle of beneficence’ to deal with the problem of global poverty. The problem of demandingness, however, is hardly ever raised within the context of the dominant institutional theories of global justice that see severe poverty as a human rights violation. Nor are the fundamental underlying questions posed by most of these theorists. Which specific responsibilities do individual moral agents have regarding institutional and structural forms of injustice (1)? Which political spheres, organized public spaces, or political practices are necessary to create a setting in which these responsibilities can be discharged (2)? Does a ‘defensible and psychologically feasible conception of responsibility’ (Scheffler 2002, 62) exist that is restrictive – yet demanding – enough to deal with the complex challenges of our globalizing age (3). This paper addresses questions (1) and (3) on the basis of a critical analysis of Iris Marion Young’s social connection theory of responsibility.

Institutional consequentialism and global governance

ABSTRACTElsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems, such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system.

V—Dimensions of Demandingness

The Demandingness Objection is the objection that a moral theory or principle is unacceptable because it asks more than we can reasonably expect. David Sobel, Shelley Kagan and Liam Murphy have each argued that the Demandingness Objection implicitly – and without justification – appeals to moral distinctions between different types of cost. I discuss three sets of cases each of which suggest that we implicitly assume some distinction between costs when applying the Demandingness Objection. We can explain each set of cases, but each set requires appeal to a separate dimension of the Demandingness Objection.

Coping with Climate Change: What Justice Demands of Surfers, Mormons, and the Rest of us

Henry Shue has led the charge among moral philosophers in arguing that harms stemming from anthropogenic climate change constitute violations of basic rights and are therefore prohibited by duties of justice. Because frameworks such as Shue's argue that duties of justice are at stake, one could object that the special urgency of those duties threatens to overrun the normatively protected space in which an agent makes her life her own. We argue that an alternative conception of how moral reasons combine to produce duties is required to respond to the demandingness objection, providing normatively protected space to pursue one's projects while yielding numerous strict obligations of justice.

Intuitions and the Demands of Consequentialism

One response to the demandingness objection is that it begs the question against consequentialism by assuming a moral distinction between what a theory requires and what it permits. According to the consequentialist, this distinction stands in need of defense. However, this response may also beg the question, this time at the methodological level, regarding the credibility of the intuitions underlying the objection. The success of the consequentialist's response thus turns on the role we assign to intuitions in our moral methodology. After presenting the demandingness objection to consequentialism and revealing the underlying methodological stalemate, I break the stalemate by appealing to research in the cognitive neuroscience of intuitions. Given the evidence for the hypothesis that our moral intuitions are fundamentally emotional (rather than rational) responses, we should give our intuitions a modest (rather than robust) role in our moral methodology. This rescues the consequentialist's response to the demandingness objection.

Integrity and Demandingness

I discuss Bernard Williams' 'integrity objection' - his version of the demandingness objection to unreasonably demanding 'extremist' moral theories such as consequentialism - and argue that it is best understood as presupposing the internal reasons thesis. However, since the internal reasons thesis is questionable, so is Williams' integrity objection. I propose an alternative way of bringing out the unreasonableness of extremism, based on the notion of the agent's autonomy, and show how an objection to this proposal can be outflanked by a strategy that also outflanks the 'paradox of deontology.'