Constructivism and Common Sense

I've been reading and thinking about constructivism today mainly as a response of some sort to it will have to feature in work I am currently pursuing. Whilst doing so, however, a question arose for me in relation to how constructivism is understood by Onora O'Neill in her criticism of Rawls. This question concerned the priority she gives, in her criticism of Rawls, to the notion of "reflective equilibrium".


The essay of O'Neill's I'm referring to is one that appears in Samuel Freeman's edited collection on Rawls. In this piece O'Neill concentrates on the way in which the constructive procedure in Rawls works looking at the range of what can be constructed according to Rawls, the justification he offers of the constructive procedure and, most importantly for her critique, the address of Rawls' construction. The view offered by her of these topics ranges across Rawls' work, moving from Theory to Political Liberalism. 


In O'Neill's picture of Theory the key notion is "reflective equilibrium" which is taken to provide a coherentist test of "our considered judgments" and to rely on a conception of the reasonable that is explicitly discussed in Rawls' later notion of "Kantian constructivism". O'Neill subsequently refers to this notion of "reflective equilibrium" when she draws out that "Kantian constructivism" appeals to an idealised Kantian view of the person and rests its appeal to this notion on reference to "our moral experience". Part of what enables this appeal for O'Neill is Rawls' reliance upon a coherentist justification of practical reason in his view of "Kantian constructivism". Her view of Rawls' later "political" turn is that what happens is that the conception of practical reason as rested on a generic coherence is replaced by a closed appeal to "public reason" where the resources of public reason are simply derived from the common conceptions of a democratic culture much as the earlier appeal was to "our moral experience".


In contrast to Rawls' later political turn O'Neill sets out a view of Kantian reason as something that cannot be anchored in a given public culture but accessible in principle to anyone including "outsiders" to the culture of the West that produced Kant's own philosophy. So O'Neill's first move is to depict the appeal to "public reason" Rawls makes as a fatal concession to relativism. The point in doing so is to widen the view of what is to count as public reason suggesting that reasoning is not "completely" public when it rests on appeals to particular properties and beliefs which can appear merely arbitrary to anyone outside the original community that rests on them. In contrast to this view O'Neill states that we need justifications of claims that can be satisfied only in terms of what can be followed in principle by anyone. This is part of what motivates O'Neill's general view that the categorical imperative is not merely the supreme principle of morality but also the supreme principle of reason.


An implication of O'Neill's argument is that reason is "cosmopolitan" for Kant and does not rest on "bounded societies" as political institutions are incapable of conferring justification. This is why O'Neill argues that Kant's view of the construction of ethical principles is more demanding than the "Kantian constructivism" described by Rawls as Kant requires justification to be capable of "aiming to reach all others without restriction". This is why practical reason itself is something that O'Neill argues is capable of construction by Kant as it was not by Rawls.


Having rehearsed O'Neill's critique of Rawls I now want to suggest that there is a central problem with her view that does not apply to Rawls' constructivism and suggests a reason for thinking that Rawls' appeal to "reflective equilibrium" and to "our moral experience" may be less alien to Kant than O'Neill's arguments would lead one to suppose. The first problem that can be posed with O'Neill's view is that it is unclear from her general picture of reason how the process of public reason is to be carried out. She argues that public reason is incomplete if it involves appeal to particular beliefs held by some and thereby appears to take the reference to universal law to require abandonment of commitment to any given prior beliefs and to provide us with a  de novo conception of justification. It is partly due to following a view like this however that the procedure of trying to justify the Kantian appeal to universal laws off the ground gets involved in terrible tangles. The notoriously involved difficulties in providing justifications of universalised maxims that are morally permissible arises from thinking that we need to provide an account for maxims that no one normally takes to need justification at all. Necessarily any and every type of maxim has to be looked at in terms of its permissibility if the point of appeal to universal law is to provide us with a means of assessing morality without bringing in previously agreed moral data.


Moreover, the point of appeal to public reason on O'Neill's view appears to be to arrive at a standard for what can be shown to be acceptable so that the procedure of public reason is itself the arbiter of what we agree can be done. This makes the arrival at universal agreement the ground for permissibility rather than the possibility of convergence being shown to be based upon salient factors that allow the agreement to hold. This seems to put the burden of justification in the wrong place. A second but related point concerns how the standards of public reason on a neutrally determined view of universal reason are to be set out. This point concerns not the kind of consideration that Rawls was interested in with reference to "pluralism" but rather deep problems with reasoning with some who appear to be committed to principles that are deeply antithetical to universality. Racist views for example are directly in contradiction to appeal to universality and would have to be dealt with as providing non-public reason in some sense but if this is not to be stipulative through moral content (as clearly is impossible on O'Neill's view) this has to require a structural notion of formal public reasoning to rule out certain types of reasoning from the start. 


In order to rule out appeal to certain kinds of reasons as non-public there have to be ways of showing to those who adopt these reasons a basis for agreement on their behalf to a standard of reasoning that rules out appeals to their favoured principles. The means that O'Neill appears to favour is by reference to a view of agency that requires us to see the agency of others as intertwined with our own in an important way. So she refers in Towards Justice and Virtue to activity as inclusive of plurality, connection and finitude. What is meant by these notions is that we have to relate to others as independent sources of activity (plurality) who there is a real possibility we will affect by acting (connection) and that these others are limited enough to be vulnerable to our actions (finitude). Conversely we are reciprocally related to them in the same way. So rules of action should generally take these characteristics into account. It is likely that the point of these descriptors is to give a basic notion of moral standing to O'Neill but the problem is that the notion has itself to be constructed in terms of "public reasons" and there are problems with doing so. The basic sense that we would expect from her general view is that the reasons in question would have a neutral status and not require any one to adopt specific beliefs in the sense that she criticises Rawls for requiring. If that is right, however, then the notion of plurality only points to a constraint on my action if I independently have reasons to regard others as having standing as it does not itself provide them with such standing. The fact that I am connected to others and vulnerable to them provides some general prudential constraints on action but, again, is insufficient to give others serious moral standing. The only one of these three criteria that really has the significance that it would provide a reason for morally taking others seriously is the criteria of vulnerability but if I interpret it from a first-person perspective it only grounds a prudential one and requiring as a matter of reason that I see it more broadly is not to follow the basic constructivist rule.


If O'Neill's view of public reason is one that just draws on generic criteria like these it is not going to get off the ground and it requires some additional elements to be taken seriously as a guide for a normative conception of public reason. Such further elements are available if we make the appeal to common sense that Rawls makes with his notion of "reflective equilibrium" and for which O'Neill criticises him. The ability to appeal to "common sense" as a means of understanding conditions of action is part of what is at work in Rawls' discussion of such things as the "circumstances of justice" and the "strains of commitment", both of which build into practical reason the basis for the coherence requirements that O'Neill dislikes. Without them, however, she has to fall back on a generic conception of public reason that is either too thin to build anything from or to implicitly rely on normative commitments that she has not constructively justified. Either way it seems less obvious than O'Neill may think that cosmopolitan conceptions of reason can get by without appeal to some views of pre-conceived moral standards.


Not only is this so but Kant's own procedure seems not to mirror the generic requirements of practical reason that O'Neill presents. Not only does the first part of Kant's Groundwork proceed from data of common human reason but the examples of how to test maxims that are supplied by Kant in this work presuppose the normative existence of practices. This is evident in the way Kant discusses promises, suicide, the cultivation of talents and benevolence. In each case Kant proceeds from a pre-existent conception of moral views and provides a means for understanding, by reference to them, reasons for thinking certain types of maxims are impermissible. The maxims in question do not arise as de novo tests but as ones that have pertinence against the background of a set of practices which give them the sense that they have. Perhaps thus Rawls' reference to "reflective equilibrium" is rather more Kantian than O'Neill's allegedly "cosmopolitan" view of reason.

O'Neill and Kant on Rational Willing

In a piece originally published in 1985 and reprinted in Paul Guyer's edited collection on the Groundwork Onora O'Neill discusses the understanding of consistent willing that Kant offers with his idea of willing universal laws. It's worth going through the general argument of this piece again, not least since it stands as a corrective against views that, due to the influence of Derek Parfit, are once again current concerning the categorical imperative.


O'Neill opens the piece by pointing out that there is a tendency to discuss universality tests in terms of what everybody or somebody wants done either by or to everyone. Due to understanding what wants done in terms of what happens to be contingently wanted this way of presenting universality tests ensures that they are seen in heteronomous fashion. Kant's own view of universality testing makes no reference either to want everyone wants done or to what somebody wants done either by or to everybody. This is why the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) reads simply: "Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (Ak. 4: 421). So, as O'Neill puts this, we are invited here to consider that we can will only that which it is possible or consistent to will as a universal law and no reference is made to what we would will or would find acceptable or would want. So Kant's formulation does not match those that are often given. This is why Kant is taken by O'Neill to have what she terms "an uncompromisingly rationalist foundation for ethics". I'd have to parse this notion of "rationalism" a little myself but it is, I think, clear that what O'Neill means here is that the formulation is one that moves away from desire/inclination models entirely and that this is what is distinctive about it.


Now, one of the reasons why universal law tests tend to import heteronomous elements in their discussion is to avoid charges of triviality or emptiness (as the shadow of Hegel falls over most discussion of universal law tests). Substantive conclusions are generally thought not to be available from formal tests alone. O'Neill's piece sets out to show why this view is problematic and thus to offer a basis for viewing formal universality testing of a Kantian sort as capable of responding to the challenge of providing substantive conclusions. 


The first step in O'Neill's reconstruction is to bring out that there are two aspects to how the Kantian universality test is to go and in describing these she brings out how FUL proposes to us two points. Firstly, FUL indicates reference to action on a maxim. Secondly, it restricts the types of maxim we can appeal to by reference to the capability of a maxim being one that can become a universal law. So the two elements of working out how to understand what "action on a maxim" means and how the restriction of maxims to conditions of universality is to work have to distinguished in order for the test to be understood in its complexity.


So O'Neill's analysis opens with an account of what "acting on a maxim" involves and follows Kant's basic statements of "maxims" as being "subjective principles" of action (Ak. 4: 421n). Such a point is not meant by Kant to suggest that they are "subjective" in the sense of being purely arbitrary or having any content whatsoever. Maxims are not only constrained in their form in ways we'll look at in a moment but they are also available generally in the sense that any number of agents could adopt them, they could be adopted at different times and places and refer to apparently very different actions. However, it is also the case that whilst Kant discusses action through his conception of "maxims" that it is no part of the Kantian conception to think of "maxims" as being consciously referred to always. But in a given situation there are involved in the description of the "maxim" of action references to the agent, the act and the situation itself. 


Maxims are not (pace Parfit) the same thing as "intentions", not least because "intentions" include many details that are not relevant to the consideration of maxims. Maxims are, rather, the underlying principles that guide specific "intentions" as O'Neill puts this. I'll formulate this point slightly differently to how O'Neill does but, I think, in conformity with the general thrust of her view. On my account, a maxim can be understood in general terms as formulating a kind of aim we have, one that exists whether it is consciously at work for us at various times or not and which forms the context in which we develop specific policies that are expressed in given specific actions. This understanding of maxims as stating aims is important although it does mean that it is not always transparent, simply from observing someone's actions, what maxim they are following. Nor might an agent always be able to answer if we pressed them as to their maxim since it is possible the general aim of their action was not at that given point before them even though the understanding of it as a background condition is what really made sense of their action. So we infer them as a result of understanding not specific actions in isolation but by connecting specific actions together in view of the policies involved in them in order to arrive at a sense of the basic aim in view.


Now part of O'Neill's point in this article is to use this argument to distance Kant from a general understanding of universality tests that frames the way they are put by reference to heteronomous considerations. The point here is that universality tests tend to be seen through the prism, as O'Neill puts it, of "categories of right". Rightness and wrongness are then seen primarily in terms of appraisal of outward actions. On O'Neill's account, however, this is not the prime point of using the categorical imperative in a universality test with regard to maxims. Rather than this being the point the basic question the categorical imperative is being used to put is whether the aim with which we propose to act is consistently universalizable. If this is the point of the test then it follows that what we want to know when we apply it is whether acting on this maxim will produce an act that is morally worthy and this is the way we can tell whether or not the act is one that conforms to duty. So duty is comprehended through the question of moral worth and not the other way around on O'Neill's view. 


This key point distances the understanding of the point of the categorical imperative's universality test away from understanding of outward actions towards moral worth with moral worth now emerging not as something that is merely bound by duty but rather as the central case of duty. Understanding of outward appraisal of actions would, by contrast, be derivative of this. Putting matters this way shows that the understanding of what "action on a maxim" involves is not a trivial part of the process of constructing the universality test.


A result of seeing the Kantian universality test in this way is that the general objections to universality testing that are posed by many can be seen to be faulty. So, for example, the basic problem of "maxim-fiddling" that is formulated to show that any act can pass the universality test arises because it is taken to be the point of the test to appraise outward actions and to see whether if the actions in question were performed by others a contradiction would arise. By contrast, on O'Neill's construction, the outward actions are not the primary point of the test. Another way that counter-examples tend to get presented is through focus on specific policies as the target of maxim testing rather than underlying aims, a basic failure to get the point of the reference to maxims.


The first point of the process is thus to identify maxims as aims of actions and to evaluate policies by reference to aims. It is only a secondary part of the process to appraise outward actions. A major plus of this reading is that it brings the first two parts of the Groundwork closer together than they are often seen as. The account of moral worth in the first part of the Groundwork is frequently seen as if it had little to do with the account of the categorical imperative in the second part whereas O'Neill's view leads us to seeing the categorical imperative instead through the prism of moral worth. It is thus the consequence of her argument that we should basically apply the universality test to our own aims of action as it is we who are adopting maxims. 


The second part of the process opens now we have an account of what "acting on a maxim" involves. This second part requires testing the maxim in terms of its consistency with universality. O'Neill famously formulates two types of inconsistency: one within an agent's maxim (contradiction in conception) and one between either the different policies that follow from the aim or between the policies and the aim (contradiction in the will). The first type is here termed by O'Neill conceptual inconsistency and the second type volitional inconsistency. There are different ways that maxims can express either of these types of inconsistency.


The most basic way a maxim can be inconsistent is by expressing an aspiration which is, for some reason, impossible. This is so if, for instance, it involves mutually incompatible aspirations. This would prevent action on the underlying maxim from being possible and would point to the emergence of action that is seriously disjointed as a consequence. However, the point of my distinction between policies and aims comes out clearly when we consider how O'Neill formulates this point: "A non-universalisable maxim embodies a conceptual contradiction only if it aims at achieving mutually incompatible objectives and so cannot under any circumstances be acted on with success". It is clear that the underlying aim is the problem here and this is what a maxim is basically concerned with. The policies come into conflict with themselves as they are part of an aim that is intrinsically impossible to realise.


Maxims are principles of action in that they give us principles that we aim to realise and this aim is what is meant by saying that we have willed the maxim. The conceptual contradiction emerges when the willing in question incorporates something in its aim that is not possible. The more interesting case, in many respects, however, concerns volitional inconsistency. It is with regard to it that O'Neill is led to an account of rational action that is particularly rich. Kant describes hypothetical imperatives as involving a kind of analytic connection between means and end assuming that reason has decisive influence on action. O'Neill terms this the Principle of Hypothetical Imperatives (PHI) and says that it means that agents "intend any indispensable requirements" for the achievement of their aims. However, whilst Kant's text in the second part of the Groundwork appears to rest with this point, O'Neill articulates a broader view of rational aiming (called by her rational intending but I think this is misleading). The broader account leads to her setting alongside the PHI a list that is unlikely to be complete but which extends the general discussion of rational volition further.


Included amongst O'Neill's family of principles of rational aiming are the following: a) a requirement of rationality to direct policies that are not merely concerned with indispensable or necessary means (as with the PHI) but also with sufficient means for achieving the aim; b) adding to sufficient means the seeking of such means when they are not available; c) including in one's policies all necessary and sufficient components of what is aimed at; d) ensuring that specific policies are mutually consistent; e) ensuring that the foreseeable results of specific policies do not conflict with the underlying aim.


O'Neill understands the point of the family of principles as one of bringing together what she calls "surface and underlying intentions" but which I would term bringing together policies and aims. Policies must express commitment to acts that provide either the means to or components of aims and must not undercut the aims. The fact that the policy not undercut the aim is central here and points to a basic standard of action. 


Having clarified this point O'Neill returns now to the universality test and states that her view is that the basic intuition expressed in it is a non-egoistic one of not singling ourselves out for special consideration or treatment. This is clear when Kant talks about how we often "make exceptions" of ourselves when we attempt to formulate maxims and O'Neill understands this point to mean that FUL includes in its basic reference a notion of a plurality of interacting agents. The consideration of maxims is one in which we are understanding ourselves to adopt a maxim that meets the condition of being able to be adopted by others and maxims, as we will see in a moment, often are concerned with relations to others. 


Now when the universalisation of maxims is presented in the Groundwork Kant moves from FUL to the Law of Nature formula and after referring to the latter he states the two types of inconsistency (Ak. 4: 424). Contradictions in conception often would not involve a contradiction if we did not attempt to universalise them so it is the process of putting them to the test of universality that reveals the problem with them. A clear case of this occurring is with maxims of deception which involve no incoherence so long as they are not universalised but which do when they are. With regard to the examples of contradiction in conception the distinction between aims and policies is particularly important. 


Maxims that lead to volitional inconsistency state no manifest incoherence even when universalised. So what they conflict with is one of the family of principles of rational volition that O'Neill spoke of earlier. The most obvious case is where they conflict with PHI which Kant takes to apply to the case of non-beneficence. The maxim of neglect of talents, by contrast, is one that O'Neill thinks contravenes not merely PHI but also the second requirement of adoption of sufficient means for realisation of aims. And she has similar arguments that invoke her criteria of rational action with regard to other types of maxims. The point of the cases of contradiction of the will is that they show that a number of maxims require, for their realisation, stable relations with others as a necessary condition. The general argument thus shows that a Kantian argument for a universality test that is grounded on considerations of formal consistency and rationality can ground substantive requirements without needing to refer to notions of desire and preference.

Parfit and Kant on Universal Laws (III)

I looked at Parfit's discussion of the requirements of Kant's Formula of Universal Law (FUL) in Climbing the Mountain recently and in this posting I am going to look at some of the salient features of his treatment of it in the 2008 version of On What Matters. Whilst the treatment here is in some respects continuous with that in Climbing the Mountain I want to use the review of it to assess some of the ways the requirements of the test of maxims based on FUL are understood by Parfit and how this understanding relates to other views in the secondary literature on Kant. I will refrain, in this posting, from replying to these conceptions except to mention the reasons why Parfit rejects a number of such interpretations.


As in the previous treatments of the topic so here Parfit opens by viewing one way of assessing the requirement of FUL as stating what he terms an "impossibility formula" so that what cannot be willed is something we could not take to state a universal law. However, whilst this generally does capture part of what seems to be involved in the contradiction tests that are related by writers to Kant's FUL, Parfit takes it that we need a further refinement of the "impossibility formula" before we can describe it as indicating what kinds of action are "permissible". It is not, says Parfit, that Kant refers to maxims that we could not all be permitted to act upon simpliciter. Nor does Parfit think that permissibility should be understood in terms of maxims that all could "accept" since "acceptance" alone seems to him too neutral a term. Similarly Parfit does not think permissibility can be understood in terms of what "everyone" could act upon since many maxims have particularistic content but of a sort that is demonstrably referring to moral concepts. More generally referred to is a way of viewing permissibility that refers us to actions that could be "successfully" acted on, a notion that many writers have tried to view FUL in terms of but which Parfit rightly rejects as generating false negatives.


Having gone through all these ways of looking at FUL Parfit replaces the initial formulation of it to one that incorporates, oddly enough, the reference to "success" that he has previously rejected as a way of interpreting "permissibility" and assesses some maxims in reference to this revised requirement but, unsurprisingly, finds the results discouraging. The revised formula does not, says Parfit, "condemn self-interested killing, injuring, coercing, lying, and stealing". Assuming this is so it is reasonable to wonder why Parfit spent time considering a revised formula that he had already found reason to reject? One reason appears to be that Kant's paradigm example of lying promises could be rejected by reference to the "success" understanding of "permissibility". Having located this result Parfit next revises again the understanding of the "permissibility" interpretation of practical impossibility to read: "It is wrong to act on any maxim of which it is true that, if everyone believed such acts to be permissible, that would make it impossible for any such act to succeed". 


However the problem Parfit next raises concerns the types of practices to which the formula as given should be attached stating that the undermining of promises would involve the destruction of a valuable set of practices but adding now that it is not only to valuable practices that the formula would have to be applied. Counter-examples are marshalled now both to the idea that it is universally true that promising is a valuable social practice and to the idea that the formula only picks out social practices that possess value. The result is, once again, that the formula has mixed results, condemning some acts that we would usually take to be right and, furthermore, when it correctly condemns acts, doing so for a reason that does not appear to Parfit, at least, to be good.


Still staying with a variant of the interpretation of the practical impossibility requirement that sees this in terms of some reference to "success" Parfit next looks at a version of the formula that would describe wrong action as based on a maxim that would, if universally acted on, "make it impossible for anyone successfully to act upon it". This formula is often described as preventing action on maxims that we normally think people should act upon such as giving generously to the poor. Whilst Parfit concedes that Christine Korsgaard has a partial reply to this objection he still presses a restricted version of it and, furthermore, points to other maxims that are not affected by Korsgaard's defence. Onora O'Neill has similarly pressed a version of the "success" conception that Parfit rejects on familiar grounds concerning false positives and false negatives. The more restricted sense of the "success" criterion views it in terms of some acting on maxims whose success depends on their being exceptional (a variant proposed by Korsgaard) but which runs into trouble with common examples such as aiming to use tennis courts at unpopular times. This leads Parfit to reach a summary conclusion of the different attempts to rescue the practical impossibility view of FUL and to say that "none contains a good idea". 


Having rejected thus summarily all the versions of the practical impossibility view of FUL Parfit looks next at the way Kant himself phrases it in terms of willing. The reference to willing is, however, understood by Parfit to bring in its wake Kantian thought-experiments concerning possible worlds. It is with regard to such that Parfit understands the claims about consistent willing and avoidance of contradiction. However, added to these notions is Parfit's own conception of "rational" willing. As Parfit puts this: "for our choices to be rational, we must also respond well to reasons or apparent reasons". In so doing what we have to take account of, on Parfit's view, are "facts that give us clearly decisive reasons". 


The turn to viewing things through the prism of thought-experiments is clearly grist to the general mill of Parfit's own conceptions and it is at this point, unsurprisingly, that Parfit turns away from FUL strictly speaking to the schematised form of it that Kant presents in both the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, namely, the "law of nature formula", a formula interpreted by Parfit to include his conception of rational willing. It is after reaching this point that Parfit's interpretation becomes truly inventive. Parfit suggests that Kant often applies FUL not necessarily simply by reference to the law of nature but also by introducing other supplementary ideas. One of these is "permissibility" interpreted now not in terms of "impossibility" as previously but rather simply expressed as a requirement in its own right: "It is wrong for us to act on some maxim unless we could rationally will it to be true that everyone is morally permitted to act on this maxim". The application of this formula is seen by Parfit as affecting what people would be likely to do but having seen the formula in this way he also indicates it in fact introduces an epistemic constraint on people. This leads to the formulation of what Parfit terms "the Moral Belief Formula" and MBF is stated as follows: "It is wrong for us to act on some maxim unless we could rationally will it to be true that everyone believes that such acts are morally permitted". Not only is this epistemic constraint introduced but Parfit assumes it presents a better understanding of permissibility than can be gained by the permissibility formula alone.


The introduction of MBF is taken by Parfit to underlie questions often attributed to Kant such as the famous "what if everyone did that" notion. If questions are to be assessed however that really concern beliefs the question is how such beliefs are to be framed. Parfit assumes that if we appeal directly to deontic beliefs or deontic reasons the appeal to Kant's notion of universal laws would be pointless since we would simply be building moral requirements into our criteria when the criteria is supposed to be determining them. This point is expressed by Parfit as a "deontic beliefs restriction". 


Having arrived at this point Parfit steps back from where his argument has proceeded up to this point and introduces another element into his discussion. This element concerns the way the maxims we are testing are to be understood and Parfit indicates that he takes maxims to express policies of agents. The problems that then arise in relation to the universal test of maxims are stated in terms of agential conceptions. This occurs through stating the requirement of universality in terms of permissibility which is then presented with the problem of highly specific maxims. This problem is stated in terms of what Parfit calls the "rarity objection". Parfit accepts that this objection is at least partially one Kant can respond to as people do not themselves tend to state the basis of their conduct in terms of such highly specific maxims. But this is only taken to be a partial reply since there is nothing inconceivable in principle in the existence of such people. 


The next problem that Parfit introduces is different in scope. It occurs through the introduction of the figure of the egoist acting on the general (not highly specific) maxim of doing what best serves their interest. In this case, Parfit argues, the figure in question can perform acts that in themselves seem fine but which are apparently rejected tout court simply because of his adherence to a generic maxim that is always rejected. This implies wrong acts are occurring when independent of the application of the criteria of universalisation we would not normally think so. This leads Parfit to introduce the notion of "mixed maxims", mixed in the moral sense that sometimes action in accordance with them would be wrong and sometimes right (where wrong and right are clearly conceived in terms of outcomes). This objection by reference to mixed maxims is then added to the "rarity objection" to produce what appears to be a general argument on Parfit's part against recourse to universalisation tests.


There have been a few philosophers who work in the general area of Kantian ethics who have followed similar reasoning to reach a similar result and thus rejected the idea that Kant has provided a universalisation test really. Barbara Herman, for example, moved away from this way of looking at Kant's references to universalisation towards the general notion of "deliberative" or rebuttable "presumptions" built into the practice of moral judgment. Onora O'Neill, by contrast, seems to take the discussion of universalisation to produce results not concerned with wrong-making characteristics of actions but instead as descriptive of actions that have moral worth.


However Parfit does not follow the suggestions of Herman and O'Neill. Instead Parfit refers to Kant's discussions of actions in conformity with duty in order to indicate that Kant had a broader notion at work in his recourse to universalisation than the modest conception some Kantian writers have suggested. In setting out this broader notion Parfit refers back first to the "mixed maxims" objection and argues that, in considering it, we need to know "all of the morally relevant facts". This point is part of the reason, according to Parfit, why Kant often discusses maxims in terms of underlying policies though this alone is not taken by Parfit to be sufficient for knowing all the "moral facts" that are relevant. Not only is this so but Parfit rejects reference to "policies" altogether as including information that is often irrelevant to assessment of a situation.


Having reached the conclusion that we should not understand the reference to the law of nature in terms of policies of action Parfit reformulates the universal law formula now in the following way: "We act wrongly unless what we are doing is something that we could have done while acting on some maxim on which we could rationally will everyone to act". This revised formula is said to avoid the "mixed maxims" objection as the action now allows us to call many acts of the egoist right as we don't appeal to his underlying maxim now to judge of his acts. But whilst this revised version gives response to the "mixed maxims" objection, it does not, for Parfit, allow response to the "rarity objection". Rare actions, or ones based on highly specific maxims, could still be allowed on this revised formula.


Due to this a further revision of the law of nature formula is carried out that refers instead to "similar circumstances" and this produces a correlative alteration in the way the epistemic constraint formulated in the moral belief formula is framed. These revised formulas avoid the "mixed maxims" objections but also allow us to avoid the "rarity objection". However, Parfit, having moved away from recourse to underlying policies as a way of assessing maxims now introduces instead of these an account of the "intentions" of agents. This point is one that is not as naive as it initially sounds since Parfit does not assess "intentions" simply as what someone says they wish to achieve. Parfit recognises this point by means of the same example Sidgwick uses at one point when stating that someone blowing up a train on which the Czar was travelling may not "intend" to kill the other passengers but such other killing is nonetheless an intentional part of the action in question. So reference to agent's intentions is not simply stating what they take themselves to be doing but what is built into the action.


Essentially the result of these considerations is that Parfit now revises the understanding of Kant's formulas in such a way as to remove reference to "maxims" altogether although it is far from obvious that this is the way he has to understand his revisions. The sense of "intentional action" may well be the right way to capture the notion of "maxim" and it has, in any case, proved difficult to stabilise what a "maxim" is without reference to considerations that clearly go beyond what is normally taken to be the "intentions" expressed by someone acting. Further, as Parfit discusses, the notion of a maxim does include some sense of subjective principles of action and without it one may wonder what discussion of universalisation is going to be about. Parfit incorporates a response to this question into his next revision of the epistemic constraint specifying this latter in terms of "moral principles" that permit acts.

Parfit and Kant on Treating Persons as Ends (IV)

The discussion of the "mere means" principle that Parfit locates as the second part of Kant's Formula of Humanity is one that I have traced from the various accounts of it given from 2002 to 2008, culminating in the posting here. In this posting I'm going to cover the description of it that is given in the final published version which is in Chapter 9 of On What Matters.


The published version of the discussion of the mere means principle is very little changed on the previous formulations that Parfit gave of it. As with the earlier formulations he opens by describing the mere means principle as stating that it is wrong to treat anyone merely as a means and distinguishes between treating as a means and treating merely as a means. The latter involves some kind of objectification being added to the treating as a means and, due to this element of objectification, neglecting any sense of the "well-being and moral claims" of the other. As with earlier cases Parfit considers a peculiar objection concerning slave-holding and as with previous formulations uses this objection to arrive at the second mere means principle which does not merely say that it is wrong to treat someone merely as a means but also to "come close" to doing so. The "coming close" involves not entirely neglecting the well-being and moral claims of the other but instead giving too little weight to them.


This addition to the initial simpler formula is next mitigated by inclusion of a discussion of ways in which we avoid treating someone either merely as a means or come close to doing so. The ways in which this can be done are by either relating to them in a way which manifests that our behaviour is "governed or guided" by some relevant moral belief or concern or, apparently more challengingly, we would choose to bear a great burden for this person's sake. However, Parfit's apparent way of indicating ways of avoiding such conduct is rather slim in its scope since, as he admits, it is often unclear whether the first of these conditions is met. Similarly, the second way seems not to rule out that we might be treating someone merely as a means since the sacrifice we might be prepared to make for them in the given case need not prevent us from treating the person in question merely as a means right now.


Parfit does, however, offer a better point when he suggests that whereas treating someone as a means may only refer to intentional actions, that treating them merely as a means requires, instead, understanding of underlying maxims of conduct. This point is the first useful element of his analysis but is immediately followed by a complication that leads his analysis towards a conclusion that is not initially obvious (at least not for anyone who hasn't read Parfit's previous treatments of the question). The complication is a distinction that is introduced between acting in a way that treats someone merely as a means and regarding someone as being merely a means. The reason given for introducing this distinction is, however, an odd one since the case that is meant to justify it patently fails to do so. This is the case of gangsters who, whilst regarding others merely as means, may, for example, pay for their coffee rather than steal it simply because it is less trouble. Here, however, the question concerns not Parfit's alleged distinction at all, but rather one about whether certain kinds of action have moral worth.


Another case meant to illustrate the distinction also in fact tells us something else. This is the case of someone who marries a rich, aged person in order to inherit their money but does nothing, during the period of the rest of their life to harm them. Here the suggestion is that the actions in question, judged merely as actions, do not constitute a wrong but, this being said, they are actions that are not morally worthy. However the introduction of reference to questions of harm is given weight since harm being inflicted would automatically brand the actions in question as wrong. The example is under-specified however since, unless we assume that acts of deception are not themselves wrong, which would be a big assumption, we can hardly say that the actions undertaken here are ones that really meet the test of the mere means principle.


Parfit next formulates a third version of the mere means principle which directly brings in reference to criteria of harm as part of what demonstrates that we have treated someone merely as a means or come close to doing so. However, introducing this notion of harm as something extra is problematic. After all, it involves the assumption that there is something further required other and above the reference merely to treating someone merely as a means and this has not been established by Parfit's account.


Parfit next combines the mere means principle with the principle of consent that he took to be the first part of the Formula of Humanity to give an overall description of this formula. That would give the result that we treat people merely as means when we treat them in such a way that they could not rationally consent to our so treating them. This leads Parfit back to his trolley type cases which lead him to the conclusion that there is a basis, given his view of rational consent, to prefer some people to others in cases of moral dilemmas given that those not favoured would be capable of giving this rational (not actual) consent themselves. The reasoning in question is of a clear consequentialist type and is certainly a counter-intuitive view of the way the "mere means" principle might be thought to work!


In recognition of this point Parfit looks again at the mere means principle and assesses what he terms the "standard view" of it. On this view, which is related by Parfit to his third conception of the mere means principle, and hence builds in reference to harm straight from the start, it would be a violation of the mere means principle to treat people without their consent as a means of achieving some aim and thereby harming them. Notably, Parfit's description of the "standard" view refers to actual consent. However, Parfit states three immediate objections to this formula as given. The first is that harming people as a means may not involve harming the people whose consent is in question. This is true though not evidently to the point of the use of the "standard" view as a reply. Whilst there are ways of treating people as means which are not directly harmful to people whose consent we might need and which might harm others there would, on this criteria, still be a question about the consent of these others. It is also true, as Parfit points out, that we might be treating consenting parties as a means without treating them merely as a means but this is again beside the point since, in that case, we would be doing nothing to violate the "standard" view as stated. Finally, Parfit claims that in treating them merely as a means we need not be acting wrongly. This is the only point of Parfit's that needs to be considered, though, given it involves a different standard of wrongness to the "standard" view, it requires this other standard to be given a defence.


In order to give this defence Parfit reaches again for a kind of trolley case. In doing so his point is to suggest that cases of lesser harm could be "rationally" consented to even if not actually consented to as a way of ensuring an overall better outcome. However such an argument involves a number of important assumptions. Firstly, it requires us to accept that outcomes are the ways of measuring the question of what is involved in treating someone merely as a means. It thereby illicitly rules out other ways of assessing the question of what is involved in treating someone this way. Secondly, in invoking lesser harm it steps back from some of Parfit's earlier cases which stated that even death could be rationally consented to, so questions of commensurability of harms seem to undercut even the possibility of reference to agency on his full view which raises substantial questions. Thirdly, and finally, the argument for a different view of the wrong is not settled by examples which build in disputable assumptions since the examples effectively beg the question asked.


Subsequent to rejecting the "standard" view on the basis of his appeal to examples Parfit looks at another view of the mere means principle to which he voices objections. Onora O'Neill and Christine Korsgaard refer to deception or coercion as involving treating someone merely as a means and Parfit replies to this by using an example to show that deception could be adopted for an altruistic end that ultimately benefited someone other than oneself. This is certainly plausible though what Parfit does not here discuss, given the narrowness of his counter-example, is the way such benevolent treatment can quickly be the basis of tyrannical treatment of others. The guideline against deception might not be, as O'Neill and Korsgaard's statements suggest, completely absolute, but still, there are some very good reasons to take it as a general rule. The final part of the chapter returns to investigating further cases loaded in terms of being considered primarily in relation to harm.


There is little in this chapter likely to persuade one to modify the view of the mere means principle since nothing in Parfit's argument really leaves behind the appeals to question-begging principles and cases. In this respect, despite the modifications and extensions of this discussion that occur in the course of the evolution of Parfit's view, there is remarkably little real progress in the nature of this view.

Allison and Kant on Autonomy (III)

My last posting on Allison concentrated on how, in Chapter 9 of his commentary on the Groundwork, Allison discusses the question of the relationship between the formulas of the categorical imperative, and, particularly, some questions that arise from his view that there is a second formula of universal law that emerges subsequent to the formula of autonomy. In this posting I am going to continue to look at the discussion of formulas of the categorical imperative in Chapter 9, focusing now on how Allison treats the question of their alleged equivalence.


The question of their equivalence is one that is approached by Allison initially in terms of extensional equivalence, which would involve the claim that the distinct formulas would yield the same results for the same cases. This is distinct from an intensional equivalence claim which would, by contrast, entail that the reason for the sameness of results would be because each of the formulas has the same fundamental rationale. The question of extensional equivalence is complicated by the problems of alleged counter-examples to the formulas, which, in the case of the formula of the law of nature, are generally false positives which are, on Allison's reading, not applicable to the Formula of Humanity. Since Allison's solution was to treat these two formulas as yielding different kinds of universality it appears difficult to see how, on his interpretation, a thesis of extensional equivalence of the formulas can be sustained.


In response Allison ventures what he terms a "complete construction interpretation" of the categorical imperative which  suggests that the different formulas are parts of the construction involved in arriving at the full sense of the categorical imperative. So, for example, the formula of universal law is not treated on this view as settled by its initial statement since Kant's later treatment is taken to enrich it. Each of the formulas is taken by Allison as presenting a vantage upon the categorical imperative. The claim that the formula of universal law is "equivalent" to the formula of humanity is understood as a claim about the reconstructed formula of universality that Allison takes to have followed from the statement of the formula of autonomy. The second, enlarged, sense of universalisability is related to as one that requires endorsement by any rational being and thus to be equivalent to taking rational beings as ends-in-themselves. However, it is also the case that this interpretation takes the fuller sense of Kant's reference to a universal law of nature to be one that requires understanding these laws as teleological.


Allison contrasts his account with that of Onora O'Neill who, in contrast to Allison, has argued not merely for extensional equivalence of the formulas but also for their intensional equivalence. O'Neill's interpretation takes the force of the formula of universal law to concern the conditions of agency at work in willing and thus argues that maxims that are ruled out by it are maxims that undercut such conditions of agency. However, O'Neill does take the "perspective" of the formulas of universal law and of humanity to be distinct. On O'Neill's view the formula of universal law is a formula from the perspective of agents who acknowledge that others are also agents and requires maxims to be adopted that relate to this recognition. By contrast, on her view, the formula of humanity involves the recognition that actions affect others and thus requires us to adopt maxims that will regulate actions with this in mind. Allison points out that O'Neill's account fails to address the formula of the law of nature, which is peculiar given that this formula is the one applied to consideration of maxims.


Allison's account, based as it is on his "complete construction" hypothesis, views the earlier formulas as more "primitive" than the later and in taking this tack rules out the possibility of intensional equivalence that O'Neill's interpretation is aimed at salvaging. Whilst this attempt on O'Neill's part is certainly an interesting element of her interpretation, the view of different "perspectives" she builds in can only involve the claim that the "same" reasons are involved in a very thin sense of "same". Allison's rejection of the view that autonomy can be involved prior to being directly stated does not seem plausible to me, not least because of the appearance of claims about respect as early as the Groundwork I discussion of universal law. Whilst there is something to be said about formulas being either explicit or implicit in their appeal to autonomy I don't agree with the reading that takes autonomy not to be involved in the earlier formulas. 

Allison and Kant on Universal Law

Due to being away traveling in the earlier part of this month it is a little while since I last blogged. My last posting on Allison's book on the Groundwork was about a month previous to this one and concerned chapter 6 where Allison discussed rational agency and the general notion of imperatives. In this posting I will comment on the seventh chapter where Allison gives his account of the two formulas of universal law as they appear in the second part of the Groundwork, and which includes an account of the examples Kant gives there.


The first issue Allison raises in this chapter concerns the claim Kant makes at Ak. 4: 421 that all "imperatives of his duty" can be "derived" from the "single imperative" of universal law that Kant unequivocally identifies with the categorical imperative formula of universal law. The word translated as "derived" is abgeleitet and Allison asks whether Kant here means that the test of the categorical imperative concerns whether all generally recognised duties can be derived from it or whether he has something weaker in mind. Allison also raises a second immediate question concerning Kant's use of the notion of "nature" in the formula of the law of nature and asks what function this reference serves for Kant. 


In addressing this second question Allison turns, unsurprisingly, to the account in the Critique of Practical Reason, of the "typic" of pure practical judgment where Kant gives a general discussion of the notion of practical schematism. Here the notion of natural law is described as serving as a "type" or schema of the general notion of law in the process of formulating imperatives. In the second Critique this leads to the formulation: "Ask yourself whether, if the action you propose were to take place by a law of nature of which you were yourself a part, you could indeed regard it as possible through your will" (Ak. 5: 69). This is indicated to be substantially the same as the formula of the law of nature in the Groundwork by Allison though he does little to use the "typic" to make clear the means by which the formula of the law of nature is justified.


The point that comes out by use of the typic is that actions that cannot meet it are, by virtue of this, morally impossible. However, rather than focus on this point, Allison chooses instead to return to the question of what is meant by the claim that imperatives of duty are "derived" from the reference to the law of nature. This question leads Allison to think of the reference to the law of nature as one that is intended to be "fertile" in the sense that it enables a discussion of how lists of duty are supposedly meant to arise. Despite formulating the alleged task of the reference to the law of nature in this way, however, Allison reaches the conclusion that the most that it can do is indicate the impermissibility of a course of action under a given maxim. In other words, it provides a test of moral permissibility rather than providing for specific determination of duties. 


Allison also defends this reading of what can be accomplished by the reference to the law of nature against other views, principally against the claim of Stephen Engstrom that fundamental duties of justice and beneficence can be directly derived from this reference. Essentially the reason why Allison disagrees with Engstrom appears to be that Allison does not think that the reference to universal laws of nature is sufficient to arrive at a generally acceptable conception of what is rationally universally required. 


In turning to Kant's use of examples, which appear after the formulation of the reference to universal laws of nature, Allison notes some points about Kant's procedure. Amongst other things, it is important on Allison's view to see that the examples include courses of action that run against generally accepted duties. Also the examples are meant to bring out a form of contradiction that will arise in willing the course of action in question. 


The first example is that of suicide but important in considering it is the understanding that the maxim here is one of taking shortening one's life to be acceptable if its longer duration promises more ill than agreeableness. So the maxim is one that rests upon an appeal to inclinations. However Allison takes it that the contradiction that arises from this maxim is a teleological one but also views Kant's argument here as unsuccessful. One of the points that Allison makes here is that there is no way of formulating the argument concerning suicide in terms of a simple reference to universal law simplicter. This seems to entail that Allison views the incorporation of reference to universal laws of nature as requiring some sense of teleology though it is far from clear why this should be so. Indeed, Allison himself accepts that taking a strongly teleological view of nature seems a rather large step in order to show a problem with reference to inclinations in a maxim concerning suicide and yet still thinks that Kant requires this. It appears to me that Allison's treatment of this example is marred in failing to justify the necessity of seeing Kant's treatment of it as having to involve assumptions that are far from evidently required.


Moving on to the example of false promises Kant invokes specific circumstances to make this example a strong one. In the case in question there is a reason why the false promise has a real attraction for the agent which is that they are in clear difficulties. Given these difficulties there is a need for something like the appeal to the device of the typic to test the maxim in question. The maxim then emerges as one in which a promise is to be made that I do not intend to fulfil. It is only within the device of the thought experiment that the problem that such a maxim involves can be clearly stated. It is within the device that a contradiction emerges, not within the maxim simply as such. 


Allison considers the type of contradiction that is meant to emerge from the false promising case, discussing whether it is a strict logical contradiction or, as Christine Korsgaard has suggested, a "practical" contradiction. Whilst the former is suggested to show that the contradiction would render the institution of promising impossible, the latter is rather supposed to show that there is a problem with the end of the agent. Allison favours the latter view though he does not think there is a single form of contradiction underlying all of Kant's examples. In this case, however, Allison's reading leads to the view that it is the "intention qua universal law" that generates a contradiction.


The third example concerning the development of talents is treated by Allison as including two different lines of argument, one that concerns a teleological contradiction and the other a practical contradiction. The former, however, if it is involved at all, is one that runs into difficulties of the same sort that would apply to reading the suicide example in this way. The latter, by contrast, has the difficulty that it could simply amount to a case concerning prudential rather than moral reasoning. The way that Allison avoids the latter is by reference to a conception of "true needs" that are essential to finite rational agency and that would be compromised if talents were not developed. However this leads Allison to reading the third example in a way that is weaker than is standard since it produces the outcome not that we are required to cultivate our talents but only that we not adopt a maxim of completely neglecting them. The fourth example concerning non-beneficence is ruled out by Kant in terms of universal laws of nature but this is again viewed by Allison in terms of "true needs" of finite rational agents. This is again thought to produce a form of practical contradiction in the maxim in question.


After treating Kant's four examples Allison moves on to the decidedly tricky ground of the counter-examples that have been stated in the literature to Kant's account. There are two types of such counter-examples: false positives and false negatives. False positives come in two versions, those based on attributing to an agent a highly specific maxim, on the basis of which a proposed course of action could pass the universalisability test and a second set that don't involve such specific reference. The first type of examples are used in particular by Allen Wood. In these cases the high specificity of the examples is meant to evade the reference to universality. In response to these examples Allison stresses the point that increasing the specificity of the maxim has the consequence of narrowing the scope of universalization without evading the universalizability requirement. The more general problem that such a procedure of false positives is meant to reveal is, however, that actions can be presented under a variety of descriptions and not all of such descriptions exclude universalisation. In response Allison stresses the point that use of such false positives depends on a very specific conception of what "maxims" are, namely, identifying them with intentions or actions rather than general determinations of the basis of conduct.


The second type of false positives, by contrast to the ones based on very specific formulations of maxims, tend to concern what Korsgaard has termed "natural" as opposed to "conventional" actions. Such "natural" actions don't require reference to institutions (such as "promising") and, in not requiring this, are allegedly more open to response by invocation of false positives. So the example of killing babies who disturb one's sleep does not appear to run into an immediate contradiction of either logical or practical type once universalised. The strategies of dealing with these types of example that Allison mentions are not entirely successful as responses. Korsgaard, for example, responds to them by stating that they involve reference to some further end than that immediately suggested by the maxim and that this further end is one that cannot be secured consistently with willing the maxim itself (a kind of "practical" contradiction suggestion). However that requires clear assumptions concerning these further ends and is thus open to the kinds of objections that Allison has mentioned when treating the example of cultivation of talents.


The second strategy in responding to these types of false positives is to invoke the contradiction in the will test rather than the contradiction in conception test. Barbara Herman, for example, favours this response. However, this has the peculiar consequence that the maxim concerning the killing of babies appears now to only violate an imperfect rather than a perfect duty, which is surely false. The third strategy, promoted by Onora O'Neill, is to say that the examples in question presuppose practices that would undercut the agency of those they victimise (which appears to imply some kind of reference to humanity and/or autonomy). Allison takes this strategy to be the best on offer but to be implausible as a reading of the requirements of reference to universal law alone. In making this point Allison argues that the formulas of universal law are only intra-subjective and not inter-subjective. What is meant by this is that the formulas of universal law, on Allison's reading, test only the compatibility of an agent's maxim with the same maxim considered as a universal law whilst an inter-subjective test relates the maxim to its possibility of endorsement by other rational agents. Since Allison views the reference to universal law to only involve the former and not the latter form of universalizability he is correct to see the strategy of O'Neill as not persuasive though the case for seeing the formulas of universal law in this restrictive way is not seriously made in this chapter.


After treating false positives, Allison moves on to false negatives that are used against Kant. These are cases of maxims that would be generally agreed not to be morally objectionable but which, it is argued, would fail Kant's test. They include what Herman terms "timing" problems where we state maxims that include references to doing things at given times (such as playing tennis on occasions when the courts aren't widely used). Again, Allen Wood has invoked many of these cases. As with the false positives the real question being raised by these examples concerns the nature of the description of the maxims that is appropriate. Again, Allison responds by distinguishing maxims from intentions. In the Critique of Practical Reason Kant describes maxims as "propositions that contain a general determination of the will having under it several practical rules" though Allison indicates that the nature of the claim that practical rules fall under a maxim is ambiguous. It is ambiguous as the rules could be seen as deduced from the maxim or that the maxim could be seen as providing the normative criterion for the rules but Allison sees the second as correct.


On this ground Allison revisits the alleged problem with the tennis example and points out that the real question concerns the end for the sake of which the agent is engaging in the activity in question. This accords with his point that we should be focusing not on specific intentions when we consider maxims but instead on general determinations of the will. Maxims are thus viewed as containing grounds that are found in agent's practical interests not in their specific intentions.


However, even on Allison's account there are still some problems left unaccounted for. Assuming with him that maxims are best tested by practical contradiction tests and that universal law formulas are seen in terms of intra-subjective validity, it follows that the example of the killing of the baby that disturbs one's sleep, appears not to be ruled out by reference to universal law. Since this is so it follows that Allison will need a stronger account of Kant's other formulas than he gives for the formulas of universal law if Kant's procedure is to be robust enough to rule out maxims that it would appear clearly counter-intuitive to leave undisturbed.

Parfit, Humanity and Consent (IV)

After perusing the various drafts that went into the making of Parfit's account of consent in On What Matters, most recently in the pre-publication version, I want, in this posting, to simply lay out the structure and general content of Chapter 8 of volume 1, ostensibly concerned with the topic of "possible consent". When you look at the chapter as a whole and break down the movement of its argument there are some straightforwardly surprising characteristics of it.


So, for example, the Chapter opens, as the earlier drafts did, with a description of Kant's formula of humanity and, in particular, with the way that this formula is related to the discussion of false promising. It is by means of this connection that Parfit is enabled to focus less on the sense of Kant's formula itself as on the apparent reference to treating people in ways to which they could not possibly consent though the latter reference appears only in connection with this example of false promising and not when the three other  examples to which the formula is related are discussed. 


It is by means of this account of consent in the treatment of false promising that Parfit describes and criticises views of Christine Korsgaard and Onora O'Neill who, in being treated in such a concise manner, certainly have cause for complaint of Parfit's compressed conception of their readings. The point of Parfit's first section in this chapter is, however, not primarily one that arises from exegetical concerns. It is rather to stress problems with viewing the wrongness of coercion to lie mainly in the claim that it makes consent impossible since, as he correctly points out, certain types of coercion are precisely not generally regarded as wrong despite clearly being seen as examples of coercion. Hence when we object to coercion, it would seem, there is a ground for this objection that does not rest simply on its being coercion that is being exercised.


The second section of the chapter moves to clarify this point by focusing on what it is about consent that matters to moral claims on its behalf. Here Parfit repeats the claim of his earlier drafts that the wrong-making character of appeals to consent cannot reside, as some remarks of Korsgaard and O'Neill might lead us to think, on appeal to the "Choice-giving principle" that states simply that it is wrong not to give other people the power to choose how we shall treat them. Such a naive principle is, indeed, one that it would be hoped should not arise from any kind of careful Kantian thought since it would appear that, on its ground, we should simply, for example, buy anything that someone wants to sell to us. By contrast to this principle Parfit instead emphasises what he terms the "Consent principle" which states that it is wrong to treat people in ways to which they could not "rationally consent". This emphasis on "rational consent" does have the potential problem that it appears to build quite a bit of normativity into the general notion of reason but Parfit does not appear to follow Kant in understanding this to be a reference to the "end of acts". 


Parfit presents Kant's point in the following way: "Kant must mean that, when we are choosing how we shall treat other people, we ought always to act with some aim that these people would be able to share" (181). But this "being able to share" that Parfit refers to here is not simply a way of stating the conceivability of a shared end as it rather requires the rationality of this end to be acceptable to others. However, this rationality is not understood here by reference simply to the "end of acts" because this would not in itself include discussion of the means by which ends can be achieved. That Kant's account does, however, include some constraint on this is clear enough when we remember that the Formula of Humanity involves reference to treating others as ends in themselves but this part of the Formula is not included in the chapter in question as Parfit has, for the purposes of the argument of this chapter, deliberately foreshortened the formula.


The third section of the chapter concerns reasons to give consent and here Parfit dismisses Rawls' attempt to view the "Consent Principle" in terms derived from Kant's Formula of Universal Law. Oddly enough, however, one of Parfit's reasons for dismissing this view of Rawls appears to consist in the simple assertion that Kant was inconsistent! It is usual, in interpreting philosophers, not to adopt this view unless it is absolutely necessary to make the best of their positions but here Parfit seems to assume it rather breathtakingly easily. More importantly, in this section, Parfit fills out his understanding of consent by suggesting that it is consent in the act-affecting sense that Kant means and, further, this consent has to be understood as "informed". These additions lead Parfit to refine the "Consent Principle" and he then adds some conditions on its acceptability as he takes it to be the case that it should not require us to act in ways we normally condemn and nor should it rule out too many acts we usually assume to be required.


The fourth section of the chapter then proceeds to defend the "Consent Principle" from the charge that it is superfluous. In replying to this objection Parfit argues that there are two general aims a moral principle can have, firstly, that they provide a reliable criterion of wrongness by showing that acts of a certain kind are wrong and, secondly, they can be explanatory, describing one of the reasons why wrong acts can be said to be wrong. After enumerating these points Parfit goes on to claim that the Consent Principle, if correct, offers more than a reliable criterion of wrongness (and is thus explanatory). 


The fifth section of the chapter moves on to discussing "actual" consent pointing out, by using the example of rape, that reference to it is often crucial for us in determining the wrongness of acts. This section is surprisingly long and after agreeing with the need to include reference, in some sense, to "actual" consent, Parfit moves on to look at the objection that it is possible that the Consent Principle concedes too much to actual consent. In considering this objection Parfit is, in a sense, reprising the objections to Korsgaard and O'Neill with which he began his argument in the chapter except that now he saddles them with what he terms a "Veto Principle" as opposed to the absolute objection to coercion and deception he opened by presenting them as having. Just as the "Choice-giving" principle that led to such absolute positions was earlier exposed as false so now is this "veto principle" similarly rejected and it is argued that the Consent Principle need not imply the Veto principle which would give others the automatic right to object to anything to which they either do not or would in fact refuse consent. 


It is useful, despite the repetition it involves, that Parfit does discuss the "Veto Principle". It is useful because, until this point, he has not clarified sufficiently his earlier statement to the effect that coercion is not, despite appearances to the contrary, necessarily wrong. In amplifying now Parfit discusses the notion of "irreversible" consent. It is frequently not possible to give irreversible consent but we can give such consent to things that we might later regret having consented to without it being irrational that we have nonetheless given this "irreversible" consent. So, for example, the inevitable pain that might come from certain kinds of operation might well, during the experience of its being undergone, lead us to regret having consented to the operation without this making it irrational that we in fact gave "irreversible" consent earlier.


Parfit's next move is to replace the "Veto Principle" with appeal to what he terms the "Rights Principle" which instead claims that everyone has rights not to be treated in certain ways without their actual consent. So there are certain kinds of act that would be veto-covered as the earlier principle intended but which kinds of act might well be difficult to determine given the rebuttability of many claims. However Parfit does argue that the opportunity to refuse consent does arise from the Rights Principle.  But there is a restriction on the application of this Rights Principle since the opportunity to refuse consent "must be given by people who have sufficient understanding of the relevant facts". So it does not apply to infants, the mentally ill or those under the influence of seriously distorting drugs (including being drunk, a rather problematic exclusion I think). Further Parfit also attenuates the application of the principle by stating that influences distort judgments in various degrees with the result that decisions made under some types of influence may not be entirely over-ruled but can be given less weight (a provision that would require much care).


These points also lead to Parfit bringing in temporal considerations for the first time since he argues that present consent matters more than past consent which, in its turn, matter more than retroactive endorsement. The basis of this present bias is, however, simply grounded on the reference of present beliefs to acceptance of truth since we act on the assumption at present that the beliefs we have now are true. 


The penultimate section of the chapter concerns deontic beliefs which are introduced in order to discuss the sense that wrong-making characteristics do not only arise from reference to consent. Some acts, in principle, could be wrong even though there was general rational consent to them suggests Parfit (which partly defuses the earlier sense that quite a bit of normativity was built in to his sense of "reason"). Included here, for Parfit, would be voluntary euthanasia, cruelty to animals, and, potentially, suicide (interestingly, the last of these is the first example Kant gives of application of the Formula of Humanity). So we have beliefs about wrong-making characteristics being involved with certain types of act regardless of reference to consent in relation to them. The beliefs that are so held are described by Parfit as 'deontic' reasons. Having said this, it is less than obvious that this section provides a way of dealing with such claims seriously.


The final section of the chapter looks at extreme demands that might be thought to arise from the Consent Principle which repeats the problem about the intuitive acceptability of principles that Parfit made earlier in the chapter. Here Parfit considers a revision to the Consent Principle that might be thought to be needed to prevent it from demanding too much of us which brings in reference to not requiring that we bear too great a burden (though Parfit does not specify clearly enough how to understand what "too great" would be). Finally, Parfit is aware of the fact that the Formula of Humanity has only been partially treated in this chapter and indicates the need to treat, in the following chapter, the reference to not treating others merely as a means. However, whilst this recognition is good, it is odd to have Kant named again at the end of the chapter when he has been missing from it for a considerable number of sections and when the focus on consent in general has not been systematically justified as a correct response to his general argument in terms of the discussion of humanity. It is, after all, only with regard to one example out of four when discussing the formula of humanity that Kant even refers to consent. So the suggestion that "half" the sense of the formula has been caught in the chapter is certainly peculiar.