Doing and Allowing Harm (original) (raw)

The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing I: Analysis of the Doing/Allowing Distinction

Philosophy Compass, 2012

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the first of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the analysis of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I explore some of the most prominent attempts to analyse this distinction: Philippa Foot's sequence account, Warren Quinn's action ⁄ inaction account, and counterfactual test accounts put forward by Shelly Kagan and Jonathan Bennett. I also discuss Jeff McMahan's account of the removal of barriers to harm. I argue that analysis of the distinction has often been made more difficult by two mistaken assumption: (a) the assumption that when an agent does or allows harm his behaviour makes the difference to whether or not the harm occurs; (b) the assumption that the distinction between doing and allowing and the distinction between action and inaction are interchangeable. I suggest that Foot's account is the most promising account of the doing ⁄ allowing distinction, but that it requires further development.

The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing II: The Moral Relevance of the Doing/Allowing Distinction

Philosophy Compass, 2012

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the second of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the moral status of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I look at objections to the doctrine such as James Rachels' Wicked Uncle Case and Jonathan Bennett's argument that any acceptable analysis of the distinction leaves it implausible that the distinction is morally relevant. I consider defences of the Doctrine from Philippa Foot and Warren Quinn. I argue that neither Foot not Quinn provides a satisfactory justification of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, but that the idea of self-ownership discussed by Quinn can be developed to provide a justification of the doctrine.

Harming and allowing harm

Ethics 110(4) (2000): 749–79, 2000

The article takes as its starting point the assumption that (a) competing accounts of moral rules should be judged by the distribution of benefits and burdens which would arise from everyone accepting these rules, and that (b) these benefits and burdens are understood in a way which has a substantial resource or freedom-based component. This starting point is compatible with contractualism and various forms of rule consequentialism, and will yield a morality in which people have significant freedoms. The main claim of the article is that as a consequence of these freedoms, and because of phenomena connected with cost internalization, this morality will also impose strong constraints on harming and weak constraints on allowing harm. Thus the starting point ends up vindicating commonsense morality.

Harm and Its Moral Significance

Standard, familiar models portray harms and benefits as symmetrical. Usually, harm is portrayed as involving a worsening of one's situation, and benefits as involving an improvement. Yet morally, the aversion, prevention, and relief of harms seem, at least presumptively, to matter more than the provision, protection, and maintenance of comparable and often greater benefits. Standard models of harms and benefits have difficulty acknowledging this priority, much less explaining it. They also fail to identify harm accurately and reliably. In this paper, I develop these problems, argue that we should reconsider our commitment to the standard models, and then merely gesture at the direction in which we might locate a superior approach, one that better accounts for the moral significance of harm and its relation to autonomy rights.

A rights-based perspective on permissible harm

2015

I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of the author. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 70,201 words.

Harm, responsibility, and enforceability

Ethics & Global Politics

In this article I respond to the eight critical essays in this issue that evaluate the claims in my book with Gerhard Øverland, Responding to Global Poverty: Harm, Responsibility, and Agency.

A Pluralist Case for the Harm Principle

The San Diego law review, 2017

This Essay makes a pluralist case for Mill’s Harm Principle in its core ‘negative’ variant, according to which it is wrong to restrain individual freedom for moralist or paternalist reasons. It argues that the best case that can be made for it is based on a broad coalition of partly overlapping reasons, comprising equal respect, moral worth, self-government, experimentalism, and individualism. It then defends the Harm Principle against attempts to discredit it as an incoherent and useless formula.