Parfit and Kant on Moral Dilemmas (II)

I reviewed the account of moral dilemmas that Parfit poses with regard to universalisation tests in Climbing the Mountain and in this posting I am going to track the parallel treatment that he provided in Chapter 13 of the 2008 version of On What Matters. This chapter is given a title in the 2008 version that is new as it is now headed "what if everyone did that?", a question often used to crudely summarise the basic idea taken to be behind Kant's universalisation tests.


It is interesting to see how Parfit summarises the understanding he has of the question given in the chapter title. It is to the effect that what has to be asked, in testing maxims, is whether we could rationally will it to be true that everyone acts on some given maxim. However it is not merely that this is the translation Parfit gives of the question that appears to be asked when the universal law formula is related to maxims. It is also a question that Parfit considers has to include reference to alternatives. So, it is not just whether everyone could rationally will in a certain way, but a relation of this question to options that the situation includes that would be different. The way this is understood by Parfit is that the acting of everyone in accord with a "bad" maxim could be better than an alternative if the alternative were that everyone apart from ourselves were to act in a different way. This would ensure however, that the way the maxim testing procedure is going to go is through axiological measurement. An alternative to this which Parfit considers and approves of as preferable is that we ask instead whether rational willing of a maxim is better if everyone acts on the maxim in question rather than no one acting on it. But even this is complicated by the question of what other maxims people would act upon rather the one being put to the test.


Parfit argues that the Law of Nature Formula works best when it is applied to maxims of which 3 things are true, namely that it would be possible for many to act on the maxim, that the effects would be similar regardless of the number who so acted and that these effects would be equally distributed. The reason Parfit takes trouble to specify things in this way becomes clear when the topic of moral dilemmas subsequently enters the picture as these dilemmas are understood in a particular way. The dilemmas are taken from cases of game theory in which there exist what are termed "each-we" dilemmas of practical rationality in which "if each rather than none of us does what would be in a certain way better, we would be doing what would be, in this same way, worse".


Now the way these dilemmas are construed is not neutral between different ways the universalisation test could be understood. In these dilemmas there is an implicit assumption which Parfit makes explicit to the effect that what is really at issue are questions of "benefit" or "well-being". This applies to the classic prisoner's dilemmas cases which Parfit understands as "self-benefiting" dilemmas in which the whole question turns on whether self-interest is best served by doing what appears immediately to maximise it or rather by doing what would, should cooperation follow, be best overall. Similar considerations are at issue in "contributors dilemmas" that frame discussions of public goods. Parfit complicates matters in one way by introducing a variant that is not usually mentioned in these contexts. The variant concerns special attachments which are favoured by ordinary common sense morality including those formed between parents and children. These special attachments frame connections that Parfit terms M-relations and there can be "dilemmas" concerning whether we favour people in these relations as opposed to having impartial aims.


The public policy implications of these dilemmas are typically addressed as Parfit indicates by means of coercive measures intended to disincentivise "free-riding" behaviours. However in the moral arena act consequentialists favour direct responses to these dilemmas, albeit ones that have made many uncomfortable. Kantian solutions appear, by contrast, to favour universal responses on the grounds that the converse are not, as Parfit understands it, rationally willable. Kant's tests apply also not simply to "actual" cases (as do solutions to policy dilemmas) but also to possible ones. It is in so doing that they interest Parfit who thinks that Kantian ways of formulating views concerning putative possible dilemmas are capable of challenging the standard intuitions of common sense morality. An example of this concerns the connection of Kant's universalisation test to acts that appear trivial in impact when related to each person's acts but which have a large accumulative effect. So, on grounds of appeal to the Formula of the Law of Nature Parfit takes it there is a duty not to act so that the earth's resources become seriously depleted as this would not be rationally willable.


If Parfit thinks that appeal to the universalisation tests has a good sense with regard to cases where particular acts seem not to be wrong in themselves but only in their accumulative effect he nonetheless has reservations about the appeal to the Formula of the Law of Nature in other areas. In many cases, on Parfit's view, the problem is not picked out by the universalisation test since the wrongness of an act may often depend, on Parfit's conception, on how many people act in a given way. So when a certain number, call it x, acts on a given maxim, the effect of their so acting is neutral but when the number rises above this, it becomes bad. (Note again the axiological measurement procedure appealed to here.) The example given refers to a behaviour manifested by Kant himself and some of the rest of us. This would be not to have children so as to devote oneself to philosophy. If a certain number act on this maxim the result can be beneficial but if the number rises too high the result would be negative. Notice that the suggestion here of how to assess the maxim assumes, however, that the existence of people is something that can be calculated in terms of its goodness or badness, something that is not at all obvious to Kantians.


The objection that is put here is one that Parfit terms a "Threshold Objection" and Thomas Pogge is mentioned now as someone who thinks that a response to this objection would require us to move away from the Law of Nature Formula to considerations based on moral belief. This would mean not assessing the maxim given in terms of acts but instead in terms of what is believed concerning acts. Parfit is far from convinced that this response is a good one since Pogge's response appears to involve us endorsing beliefs that would, in regard to the acts, specify something untrue of them. Pogge also appeals to conditionality considerations which suggest that acts are endorsed only given certain conditions. This does involve Pogge giving concession however to the implicit consequentialism of the discussion.


In considering this claim about conditionality Parfit looks at a different kind of example such as what is at work in someone acting on the "maxim" that they should become a dentist. Clearly not everyone could become one but there is conditionality built into this maxim since the aim of becoming a dentist refers, at least implicitly to the understanding that this is a stable way of making a living. But, if this kind of case is handled well by reference to moral beliefs of the sort appealed to by Pogge, there are exceptions to it. Not only is this so but, on Parfit's demanding account, we have to consider not just maxims that anyone would endorse but any that someone conceivably "could" endorse. This involves conjuring up a figure familiar from the writings of R.M. Hare, the figure of the moral "fanatic". Such a figure adopts maxims unconditionally and hence is not dealt with by the type of move Pogge has made.


When we reach this level of account however, it appears that the type of objection that is really at work in "threshold cases" is not really a new objection after all as the figure of the fanatic makes clear that what is being considered are cases of "mixed maxims", maxims that it would be sometimes but not always wrong to act upon. And when it becomes clear that the cases in question are really of this type Parfit alters the account he gives of the way that Kantians could respond. Now Parfit suggests that "maxims" should not be considered as referring to general "policies" but instead to morally relevant descriptions of what people are doing. This leads to a revised version of the Law of Nature Formula being given: "We act wrongly unless we are doing something that we could rationally will everyone to do, in similar circumstances, if they can".


The reference to similar circumstances is supposed to cover even the case of the moral fanatic and their unconditional endorsement of maxims. Having introduced the variant of the Law of Nature Formula intended to address the renewed "mixed maxims" objection Parfit next considers a different type of objection. On this objection it would be the case that if enough people act in a certain way, these acts would have good effects but when fewer people act in this way the effects would or might be very bad. Here we have a kind of "reverse threshold" since it is the case that it is the number dropping below x that produces the problem. A case said to indicate the problem is real is that of the maxim, "never use violence" which, according to some, is one that Kant's tests should lead us to endorse but which clear cases (like those prevailing in the 1930's) count against. Game theoretic considerations of similar sort are also again wheeled on here by Parfit. The point of this reverse threshold objection is to motivate the general complaint, attributed to Christine Korsgaard, that Kant provides only standards of conduct that apply to ideal states of affairs and not to actual ones in which they might have disastrous results.


Parfit considers conditional statements of maxims again in order to show that it need not follow that maxims are endorsed that fail to take any account of what others are doing. This enables, for example, a much clearer statement of response to violent acts which allows response to the violence of others should that be manifested. Given that conditionality of maxim formation allows a response to the "ideal world objection" it is not so clear that this can be sustained. However, rather than this being the case, it could instead be true, as Parfit considers, that unrestricted retaliation to violence could be rationally willed. Since this would only be in response to actual violence undergone Parfit assumes that this type of maxim could be, mistakenly, endorsed by Kant's test though it is not at all clear to me why Parfit thinks this. If the onus passes from being unreasonably restrictive to being unreasonably permissive there still appears to be a way of thinking about thresholds that creates a problem (at least according to Parfit). These problems do often afflict rule consequentialism, as Parfit indicates. On the basis of consideration of this reverse threshold objection Parfit revises further the Law of Nature Formula so that it becomes: "It is wrong for us to act on some maxim unless we could rationally will it to be true that this maxim be acted on by everyone, and by any other number of people, rather than by no one".


This revised maxim builds in consideration of the numbers of others that act according to the maxim given. The advantage of this, on Parfit's view, is that many more maxims are now condemned so that Kant's test does not become unreasonably permissive. This revision is one that Parfit assumes further enables it to be the case that moral beliefs that can be endorsed by most are thereby capable of being pursued.

Parfit and Kant on Impartiality

In my last posting on Parfit I looked at Chapter 9 of Climbing the Mountain, the first manuscript-length version of what has recently been published as On What Matters. In this posting I'm going to look at Chapter 10 of Climbing the Mountain where Parfit addresses the notion of impartiality, including, thereby, the relationship between the Formula of Universal Law and the "Golden Rule". 


This chapter opens with a description of Kant's view of beneficence indicating that the duty to beneficence is conceived of by Kant as a duty we owe to others on the grounds that we expect such conduct from others towards ourselves. This way of capturing the duty of beneficence leads Parfit to invoke the "Golden Rule" of the Gospels, famously formulated as do unto others as you would they did unto you. Kant is generally taken to have rejected this rule, a rejection based on citation of a footnote in the Groundwork:

"Let it not be thought that the trivial quod tibia non vis fiery etc. can serve as the benchmark or principle here. For it is, though with various limitations, just derived from the latter; it can be no universal law, for it does not contain the ground of duties to oneself, not of duties of love to others (for many a man would gladly agree that others should not benefit him if only he might be exempt from showing them beneficence), finally not of owed duties to one another; for the criminal would argue on this ground against the judges who punish him, and so on." (Ak. 4: 430n)

A few points are worth making about this citation, the first of which is that Kant does not here cite, as Parfit supposes, the Golden Rule but, rather, the so-called "Silver" Rule, which is a negative formulation to the effect, do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you. This point is significant since the problems listed with the Silver Rule by Kant may well not transfer simply to the Golden Rule and, arguing on this basis, it has been suggested by some, that Kant therefore did not mean any direct criticism of the Golden Rule at all.


Kant introduces the cited footnote just after discussing the false promising maxim in relation to the Formula of Humanity, hence, not in connection with the Formula of Universal Law at all. So, when Kant claims that the Silver Rule is "just derived" from the latter, he presumably means by "the latter" the reference to consideration of the ends that are contained in the person of others. The subsequent point is that the Silver Rule is not a "universal" law which, given its negative formulation, is not that surprising a point. It will only operate to forbid conduct, not to promote it and when Kant goes on to the consideration of the third example in relation to the Formula of Humanity (to do with cultivation of talents) he introduces precisely considerations for thinking that there is a positive as well as a negative sense to this formula, thereby demarcating it from the Silver Rule. Kant next amplifies the point about the lack of universality of the Silver Rule pointing out that it is not possible to arrive at the "ground" of a number of duties from it. This argument repeats the point about the essentially negative character of the Silver Rule as it is expansive duties that cannot be arrived at on its basis including duties to oneself and duties of love. Both these kinds of duties are explored not in the Groundwork but in the Doctrine of Virtue where duties of love cover duties with regard to beneficence, gratitude and sympathy so the point clearly again is that such duties cannot be derived from a purely negative formula such as the Silver Rule. Similarly, with duties towards others generally, the Silver Rule is open to the kinds of problems Kant lists with regard to both maxims of indifference and the conduct of the criminal towards the judge.


Unfortunately Parfit conflates the actual rule Kant cites and distances himself from (the Silver Rule) with the rule from the Gospels (the Golden Rule) that Kant does not give and does not discuss. This is a shame, not least since, as the Golden Rule is stated in a positive form, it is not as evidently open to the same riposte Kant sets out against the Silver Rule. Parfit in fact goes further than pursuing the case Kant sets out against the Silver Rule as if it were an argument against the Golden Rule, he also turns Kant's case against another formula that was not at issue for Kant in the citation given, namely, the Formula of Universal Law. Textually problematic as this is Parfit opens with an account of the maxim of indifference and states that if people wish to be helped then they should also wish to help others. Having put the point this way as a case that the Golden Rule can enable to be stated against the maxim of indifference, Parfit argues that the maxim of indifference could be formulated in accord with the Formula of Universal Law although it cannot accord with the Golden Rule. This claim is problematic on a number of levels, not least that Kant at no point relates the Formula of Universal Law to duties but only refers the Formula of the Law of Nature to them. Not only is this so but the maxim of indifference is specifically rejected when related to the Formula of the Law of Nature on the grounds that it could not be "willed" to hold everywhere as a law of nature (the contradiction in the will test). This point is part of showing that the Law of Nature formula has two dimensions and that one of these involves a sense of consistency of willing, not merely of conception.


Parfit does note that Kant discusses this riposte of contradiction in willing but rejects it as inadequate on the grounds that it involves people wanting to be helped whereas it is possible that there could be people who never want to be helped and that with regard to them the reference to universal law will be insufficient. There are further problems with these remarks including the point that wishing to be helped is not an optional extra in human life even though there are situations in which some may be convinced they will never require help. As such the discussion involved in Kant's account of beneficence with regard to universal law includes a sense of what it is that has to apply to finite rational beings due to the nature of their finitude.


Parfit again recognises this point and formulates a response with regard to what he terms "rational" willing. Having recognised it he proceeds to reformulate the Golden Rule in such a way that it includes a similar recognition as appears in Kant's discussion of universal laws. This reformulation on Parfit's part renders it as follows: "We ought to treat others in ways in which, if we had the choice and were rational, we would choose that others treat us". This formulation is condensed further into a reference to what we would rationally choose. Having reformulated the Golden Rule in this way Parfit has significantly altered its scope and understanding. This is furthered when he extends application of the new rule not just to the "actual world" but also to imaginary cases.


Having reformulated and extended the Golden Rule in the ways indicated Parfit next considers cases that might be thought to present difficulties for it including one in which a racist claims to be applying the Golden Rule when refusing admission to his hotel to anyone not of his race. This can be done if the racist assumes only that the rule applies simply to those of different races and not to any of his own race and thus endorses such treatment as applicable universally given that his own race is always in the favourable position. In response Parfit claims that the racist in question has misunderstood the Golden Rule since the rule requires that one relate to others as if one might be in their position. So application of the Golden Rule requires imagining changes not just in other things but also, potentially, in ourselves so that we were as the others we treat now are. This gives the third formulation of the "Golden Rule" that Parfit has: "We ought to treat others only in ways in which we would rationally choose that we ourselves be treated, if we were going to be in these other people's positions, and if we would also be relevantly like them".


This conception of the Golden Rule involves a form of imaginative identification and in so doing is well on the way to being something like an impartial spectator model of moral reasoning. It is clear, however, that the reasoning and the model has reached a point very far removed from the formulation of the Silver Rule Kant criticised in the Groundwork.


Returning to the Groundwork text Parfit refers to the example of the criminal arguing with the judge concerning punishment that Kant gives towards the conclusion of the footnote discussing the Silver Rule. Parfit suggests that the rule Kant is here rejecting is more like a rule that states we ought to treat each other person "only in ways in which we would choose that we ourselves be treated if we were going to be in this person's position". This formulation, the one Parfit imagines Kant to be actually reading into the Silver Rule is like the third formula of the Golden Rule that Parfit has given in the sense that it involves a form of imaginative identification. It however does not include the sense of rational willing that Parfit has built into his third formula of the Golden Rule. Parfit indicates that the kind of identification he takes Kant to be involved in the rule he objects to is one that it is, indeed, right to reject. The reason Parfit rejects it, however, is that it implies a kind of egoistic position. In response Parfit gives another kind of formulation of the Golden Rule that cites it as stating that we "ought to treat other people as we would rationally choose that we be treated if we were going to be in the positions of all of these people, and would be relevantly like them". This extension of the process of imaginative identification clearly makes it impersonal since, if we are to be asked to think of what it would be like to be in the positions of "all" of them then no particular characteristics can be at issue (unlike in the earlier formula where Parfit was precisely building in particular characteristics to forestall the racist move).


The readings of the Golden Rule that involve the kinds of imaginative identification Parfit has in mind are formulated to prevent the kind of appeal the criminal is imagined to be capable of making working on Kant's conception of the Silver Rule. Parfit does, however, simply now adopt the impersonal reading of the Golden Rule and appears just to drop his earlier interpretation of imaginative identification. This is meant to show that punishment is quite capable of being morally justified. 


Parfit next considers the objection Kant makes to the effect that the Silver Rule provides no basis for duties towards oneself and recognises that failure to do this will ensure that others appear always to have priority over oneself, something that is implausible. Given this point Parfit further refines the Golden Rule to meet this point and arrives at another formulation of it. This formulation states: "We ought to treat everyone as we would rationally choose that we be treated if we were going to be in all of these people's positions, and would be relevantly like them". This point is meant to indicate that we are part of the "everyone" in question though, notably, it abstracts from the separateness of persons in precisely the manner Rawls famously objected to utilitarianism for doing.


Parfit next returns to comparing the "Golden Rule" in the formula in which he has now arrived at with the Formula of Universal Law and points out that both involve appeals to claims about what it would be rational for people to choose and include the basic egalitarian point that everyone matters equally (though the way the latter point is recognised in Parfit's "Golden Rule" is quite different from how it is recognised in the Formula of Humanity). The difference between them that Parfit registers concerns the manner in which thought experiments are conducted. The "Golden Rule" is meant to address the question, on Parfit's view, "what if that was done to me" rather than, as he takes to be required on Kant's Formula of Universal Law, "what if everyone did that"? 


Parfit takes the use of Kant's Law of Nature Formula to require reference to different possible worlds and to apply the laws in question as if they were ones everyone followed in these worlds. This differs from another kind of test Parfit attributes to Kant in which we ask what would happen if everyone had certain kinds of moral beliefs. Parfit next invokes the notion of an ideal impartial observer who is not involved in any events and judges as it were from the standpoint of the "universe" (as Sidgwick puts it in The Methods of Ethics) and he contrasts this with the "Consent Principle" that he previously formulated as the first part of the Formula of Humanity.


Parfit confesses, however, that the "Golden Rule" in his account of it faces the objection that it might lead us to ignore the fact that, in the "actual" world, ideal redistributions of benefits and burdens could produce irretrievable losses for some that, at least for them, are not compensated and that this matters when we are considering distributive justice. Due to recognition of this point Parfit thinks that the "Golden Rule" is, as he puts it, "theoretically" inferior to the Impartial Observer Formula and to the "Consent Principle" he earlier stated as the first part of the Formula of Humanity. The point Parfit should here have noted however is that the "Golden Rule" is not the only one of these principles open to this objection and, if it were, it would be not "theoretically" but "practically" inferior to the other formulas.


Parfit next considers some questions that he thinks create difficulties for Kant's discussion of universal laws. The first point considered here is that wrong-doing often involves acts that can only be rarely performed, a point Parfit formulates as the "Rarity Objection" and which is given an example in the case of someone who is willing to let another be punished for a crime that they committed. The question that is asked with regard to this person is whether their maxim falls foul of the Law of Nature Formula. Parfit suggests that the universalisation of the maxim of the person in question is plausible though, in making this point, he does nothing to test the maxim with regard to the criterion Kant uses in the Groundwork in terms of types of contradiction. In failing to refer to the tests in question Parfit simply pre-judges his case against the Formula of the Law of Nature. Similarly Parfit considers an egoistic maxim here and imagines a case where we have an egoist who could live in a world of other egoists, thereby ignoring the points made about this case when Kant discusses consistency of willing.


A much better case is made by Parfit when he moves from the discussion of rarity to one of "high stakes" and imagines cases where the perceived benefit of maxims for those considering them is very great compared to the alternatives. Such cases do show a ground for action in which it is hard to imagine people being persuaded to act in terms of what would be best overall given their own good is so great to them at the time but they do not count against a formal process in which abstraction from questions of the good is required. So again Parfit builds into his case assumptions that do not allow considerations of Kant's point.


The next objection Parfit considers is that the Law of Nature Formula is insufficiently impartial or not impartial in the "right way" unlike the "Golden Rule". The reason for this claimed difference is that Kant's rule does not build in a specific reference to the actor in question. Kant does, however, fail to do this for a specifically good reason that Parfit recognises which is to abstract away from the consideration that the egoist wishes to hold to. However Parfit suggests that this abstraction fails to recognise a key problem, that he terms "non-reversibility" where it is possible that we do to others something that no one is able to do to us in the same way (for whatever reason). This is, in fact, a problem much like the earlier racist suggestion Parfit considered and shows still that the case is being considered continuously in relation to material benefits that are not relevant to Kant's formula with conditions that do not allow for universality of application so, once again, beg the question against Kant's formula.


Parfit seems to think this "non-reversibility" claim is an important one simply due to the realities that something like it may well be involved in many cases of social injustice. So, for example, if men believe rape of women justified this may be because they are not women and not capable of being treated in the same way. However, even should such beliefs be actually held in such situations they are simply not relevant to the consideration of Kant's formula since, in holding to such beliefs the actors in question are not subjecting themselves to the standards of universality Kant is stating.


Parfit considers a response of this sort to his cases of "non-reversibility" but does so through Thomas Nagel's suggestion of a form of imaginative identification much like the one Parfit himself earlier built into the "Golden Rule". In responding to this point Parfit cites the response Kant made to the maxim of indifference in which Kant pointed to the contradiction in the will as being to do with what it would state about the one who formulated this maxim in a world governed by it. This point is taken by Parfit to indicate an illicit partiality in the formula rather than a consideration of the cases of all as in his own "Golden Rule". However the point surely is that cases of "non-reversibility" do not require the introduction of imaginative identification of the sort Parfit has invoked any more than Kant thought of such as involved in the response to the maxim of indifference. It was rather a question of reaching the maxim in question and formulating it as a universal rule that did the trick. Similarly, assuming something like a principle of "non-reversibility" is at work in much wrong-doing let's articulate its general assumption as something like the following: "I will take advantage of the ways in which others are differently vulnerable to myself in order to have mastery over them" and then think of its universal application. Are there are any cases in which this could not be applied to the disadvantage of the one formulating the maxim? It is enough to ask the question to point to the answer.


Parfit does not consider a response like the one I have given but he does mention Rawls' "veil of ignorance" notion only to suggest that Kant does not include reference to anything like it but, in so doing, he fails to discuss the ways in which Rawls interpreted Kant's typic of universal law in order to show considerations of the "veil of ignorance" type were at work there, thus, once again, he merely assumes his point. Similarly, Parfit considers Thomas Scanlon's interpretation which produces an account of universality that asks us to consider what everyone could rationally will only in order to rebut it by mentioning that Kant does not explicitly state things this way which is no answer to Scanlon. 


Parfit subsequently proposes to revise Kant's formulations in order to meet his notion of "non-reversibility" which is done by importing considerations of the sort Scanlon was concerned with when he referred to what everyone could rationally will. Having done so Parfit concludes the chapter with what he terms is the "Kantian Contractualist Formula" and which is stated as: "Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will". Such a formula assimilates Kant to Scanlon.

Parfit and Kant on Moral Dilemmas

In the previous posting on Parfit I looked at Chapter 8 of Climbing the Mountain, the first full monograph-length version of what later was to become published as On What Matters and suggested some significant problems with the treatment Parfit gave there of Kantian formulas of universal law. In this posting I'm going to look at Chapter 9 of Climbing the Mountain where Parfit moves on to addressing some moral dilemmas and connects the understanding of these dilemmas to questions about universalisation tests.


One of the points that this chapter raises concerns the world that is being referred to when universalisation tests are formulated. Is it the "actual" world or not? There are good reasons to think not, not least some remarks Kant makes in his discussion of the typic in the Critique of Practical Reason where he makes clear that we frequently give ourselves a pass with regard to moral requirements precisely on the grounds that not everyone will follow our example in the actual world. Parfit construes this point as requiring the test that is formulated by the Law of Nature Formula to be understood as asking us whether it would be better if no one acted in a certain way.


Parfit takes the Law of Nature Formula to work best when applied to maxims of which 3 things are true: a) it is possible for many people to act on this maxim; b) whatever the number of people who act on it the effects of each such act would be similar; c) these effects would be roughly equally distributed between different people. After stating these points Parfit moves on to the real business of this chapter which is to discuss moral dilemmas, beginning with the case of "each-we dilemmas" in which "if each rather than none of us does what would be better in some kind of way, we would be doing what would be, in this way, worse" (171). These cases are next summarised in terms of well-being.


The basic move that Parfit thus makes, apparently casually, in this chapter, is to examine types of moral dilemma that are based on a general consequentialist appraisal basis and to apply versions of the universality test to cases so considered. Such cases have a wide range, involving free-rider considerations for example, as applied to "public goods" such as the provision of law and order (with cases of tax evasion having force here). The general cases of each-we dilemmas also touch upon special questions from common sense morality that involve those to whom we have special obligations (such as children, clients or colleagues). Each-we dilemmas arise in these cases in particular affecting the people Parfit dubs M-related to us.


Moral cases of each-we dilemmas are often resolved by appeal to forms of utilitarianism but Parfit considers here Kantian solutions though he does so not by asking the question with which the chapter is titled, namely, "what if everyone did that", but rather its negative complement, "what if no one did that". The reasons for invoking this formula in these cases, according to Parfit, is that it will lead us to revise widely held moral beliefs that are mistaken. Not only will appeal to Kant's Law of Nature Formula have this effect, on Parfit's view, it will also challenge common sense beliefs here in an especially forceful way.


When Parfit comes to apply the Law of Nature Formula to the each-we dilemmas he does so with a proviso. This is that we consider acts whose rightness depends at least in part on their predictable effects. The point Parfit is after here is that certain types of maxims are fine if restrictively applied whilst they would become problematic if widely adopted. This type of problem is widely stated in secondary literature on Kant's universal law formulas and would require more consideration than can be given here. Parfit's example is of the maxim "have no children so I can devote myself to philosophy", a maxim that is fine in restricted application but would be disastrous if adopted universally.This is what is termed by Parfit the "permissible acts objection".


With regard to these "permissible acts" most maxims concerning them are formulated in a conditional way and this points to Parfit to restrictions on the maxims in question that are taken by him to be broadly in accord with the standards of the hypothetical imperative (though he doesn't explicitly refer here to the hypothetical imperative). However, in accord with Parfit's general conflation of maxims with intentions he reformulates the Law of Nature Formula to say that we act wrongly unless what we are intentionally doing is something that we could rationally will everyone to do.


After considering this first objection Parfit moves on to a second one. This again is formulated in terms of effects of adopting certain maxims. However, in this case, the problem is taken to be that Kant's general standard is that of an ideal world. Parfit here follows Christine Korsgaard in stating that there might be a problem with stating things in terms of ideal worlds since, in the "actual" world, disastrous results could ensue from following maxims that would ideally be alright. This "Ideal World Objection" applies, for example, to any maxims that rule against violence as such since, in the "actual" world, use of it cannot be unrestrictedly ruled out. However, once we have admitted this and formulated maxims to meet it, there is a different ideal world objection, namely, that maxims might thus become too permissive.


This objection concerning permissiveness is applied by Parfit to the general formulations that are often given of rule consequentialism, and used to further revise the Law of Nature formula. However the revision that arises from considering the permissiveness objection also has the effect of making the kind of consequentialism that Parfit has been building in to the moral situation one that becomes closer to that envisaged by act consequentialists. The chapter closes with this construal of the Law of Nature Formula having become thus close to a modified notion of rule consequentialism that appears well on the way to act consequentialism.

Parfit and Kant on Universal Law (II)

In my last posting on Parfit I looked at the way in which Parfit addressed the topic of universal laws in the second of his 2002 Tanner Lectures. In this posting, by contrast, I'm going to look at the way in which Parfit addresses the topic in Climbing the Mountain, the first draft of Parfit's book, On What Matters.


Chapter 8 of Climbing the Mountain is concentrated on the question of "universal laws" and opens, as did the second of Parfit's Tanner Lectures of 2002, with a description of the variety of statements that appear to be classified by Kant as "maxims". Having listed these Parfit goes on to discuss the question of what underlies the Formula of Universal Law. Essentially Parfit is here attempting to assess what could underpin it for a successful version of Kantian ethics to be mounted and he is not interested, strictly speaking, in whatever it might have been that Kant himself was up to.


So the first candidate for the essential thrust of the Formula of Universal Law that Parfit considers is the one he terms "the Impossibility Formula" that alleges that there is something wrong in acting on a maxim that could not be a universal law. However, Parfit is not content to rest the understanding of the Formula of Universal Law on the Impossibility Formula alone since he wishes to offer further interpretation of what it is claiming to be impossible. Is it, as Parfit considers first, acting on maxims that we could not all accept? Well, if this refers to questions about psychological plausibility then it is not a formula that would work so Parfit shifts from this account to a different one where it would mean that acting on a maxim that it would be impossible for everyone to act upon would be wrong.


Here, however, the reference to "everyone" requires careful attention since many maxims can only be acted on by some. Children whose parents are mentally ill or imprisoned have no basis to expect that these parents are able to act on the general maxim of caring for their children and nor can the childless act upon such a maxim. These points are pretty obvious and show that the formula cannot be interpreted in ways that lead to such objections. Parfit reformulates Kant's notion as based upon an idea like the following: "It is wrong to act on any maxim of which it is true that, if everyone accepted and acted upon this maxim, or everyone believed that it was permissible to act upon it, that would make it impossible for anyone successfully to act upon it". (151)


The question that Parfit then raises concerning this more extended view of the Formula of Universal Law is whether he has reached an understanding of what the wrong-making characteristics of something are. However, Parfit still understands the question in a way that seems to me eccentric although the eccentricity of understanding here is not his alone. Barbara Herman, like Parfit, seems to think that it would be possible, in accordance with this criteria, to adopt the maxim of killing or injuring others wherever that would benefit me. The suggestion that this could be adopted as a maxim under the rules of the above citation strikes me as bizarre. Once this maxim has been generally adopted it would follow that all were constantly vigilant against being attacked by each other and that the general result would have to be to establish conditions that prevented such mutual harm. A structural argument of this sort is precisely at work in Kant's philosophy of right and it is very odd of Parfit and Herman to ignore it.


A similar point applies to Parfit's attempt to evade the logic of the universalisation of the practice of lying undermining the practice of lies. Parfit here indicates that some lies wouldn't then be told due to no longer being believed but that some lies would be told still since not every lie could be detected. In this case Parfit abstracts from the example Kant explicitly considers in the Groundwork which does not concern lying per se but lying promises and that what Kant was considering was the undermining of the practice of promising. Since generalised lying would ensure that no promise could be accepted as it stood it is promises that would be undermined, exactly as Kant argues. Parfit does later arrive at the point about promising only to channel it into an account of generalised permissibility without stopping to examine the basis of the claim about promising. Similarly, Parfit generally neglects the distinction between examples of contradiction in conception and contradiction in the will and looks at all of Kant's cases as if they were examples of the former.


Parfit does later arrive at questions about practices but, in invoking practices that he has reasons to think are bad ones, neglects to ask why Kant focused on the cases that he did.
The discussion of examples that Parfit gives is consistently in terms of checking different versions of what he thinks lies behind the Formula of Universal Law. Included here are questions about what it is to "successfully" act on certain maxims but Parfit basically rejects the notion that the Formula of Universal Law itself can help us with maxims that guide actions without revealing that Kant does not specifically apply it in this way in the Groundwork. Kant instead moves to the Formula of the Law of Nature before he turns to examples and Parfit follows Kant in this without indicating that he has done so. When he moves to the law of nature formula, however, Parfit for the first time considers "rational willing" though only to conflate this with formulas of his own devising concerning permissibility and "moral belief". The latter notion is used to ask whether acting on certain types of belief would produce wrong results. 


Once Parfit has arrived at this view he considers what he terms "policy-and-motive maxims" though this still leads him into muddles when he considers cases of egoistic action, actions that are not consistently treated by Parfit in terms of moral worth. The basic problem seems to be that Parfit takes a maxim to formulate an intention rather than an underlying policy that may not feature in conscious acts at all. Due to this Parfit consistently sets his examples in a peculiar light. Further, due to failing to get this right, Parfit gets confused about the point of understanding something having "moral worth". The formulations in Chapter 8 of Climbing the Mountain are thus little better than they were in the 2002 lectures.

Parfit and Kant on Universal Law

When I last looked at Parfit's 2002 Tanner Lectures, the "Ur-text" of On What Matters, it was to discuss the first of those lectures, and, not least, to examine how there Parfit interpreted Kant's Formula of Humanity. In this posting I'm going to look at Parfit's second 2002 lecture where he turns, by contrast, to the discussion of Kant's Formula(s) of Universal Law.


Parfit opens the second of his lectures with a discussion of the nature of Kant's references to "maxims" in his account of the rightness of acts. Parfit lists some statements that are described by Kant as "maxims" and then proceeds to describe what he terms Kant's "stated criterion of strict duties" which is: "it is wrong to act on maxims that could not be universal laws" though this seems to be based on Ak. 4: 424 where Kant in fact, by referring to at least two types of contradiction, refers to notions of "conception" and "willing" to distinguish them, a distinction that Parfit appears to make nothing of. Parfit looks instead at the notion that what is tested by the reference to universal laws is the "permissibility" of certain maxims (not their "possibility" of being experienced which is what Kant discusses). The notion of "permissibility" is not, in any case, taken by Parfit to be a very helpful way of understanding Kant's notion of universalisation and he raises questions about maxim-formation that have been circulating in the literature for some time in terms of the "test" of universality being either under-determined or over-determined. 


In the process of raising these points Parfit criticises ways of understanding universal laws that have been made by Onora O'Neill which culminates in a switch from the initial "stated criterion of strict duties" to a different "actual criterion of strict duties" which latter states that: "it is wrong to act on maxims whose being universally accepted, or believed to be permissible, would make it impossible for anyone successfully to act upon them". This criteria has the advantage that it appears to make questions of publicity emerge as key to the way universal laws are meant to work. However, it is not this, but instead the notion of "success" that Parfit fixes on, arguing, as he does, that the alleged maxim of coercing others wherever this would benefit me, even if adopted universally, would not be universally impossible to successfully achieve. This objection strikes me as a pretty odd one since such a situation would, if it was the basis of all known and avowed maxims, make rather a large number of actions impossible of success and is the basic reason why, in the Doctrine of Right, Kant can provide an argument for the need for a sovereign power.


Parfit does not consider such a case, however, preferring instead to look at Kant's arguments against lying and stealing which are, however, themselves interpreted by Parfit in ways that are pretty eccentric since he focuses primarily on the question of the egoist, which was not obviously on Kant's agenda at all here. Parfit makes a better point with regard to lying promises since it is here that he sees that the practice of promising is conditional on the notion that keeping them is the general rule to be observed. This leads Parfit to begin to consider the reference to universality in a different way to previously as based not merely on an account of maxims in relation to acts but also in relation to beliefs concerning acts. However Parfit still has difficulties with the kind of criteria that the reference to universal laws seems to involve since, as he can easily point out, there are cases where lying promises might seem to be required. 


The first lesson derived from the discussion by Parfit emerges at this point which is to the effect that relating maxims permissibility to a standard of universal successful accomplishment appears to make the universality criteria either much too weak or much too strong. It is only after this point has been stated that Parfit actually states Kant's Formula of Universal Law which is, however, given in a form that Kant never explicitly gives. The Formula in Parfit's telling emerges as follows: "It is wrong to act on some maxim unless we could also rationally will it to be true that this maxim is a universal law". Shortly after giving this formula Parfit also adds the "law of nature formula" and what he terms "the Permissibility Formula" which latter is said to state: "It is wrong to act on some maxim unless we could also rationally will it to be true that everyone is morally permitted to act in this way".  This latter notion is said to be derived from Thomas Scanlon and is freely admitted by Parfit to be one that is not generally recognised.


Nor does Parfit stop here, however, since after giving the "permissibility formula" he adds that Kant's basic assumption in this alleged formula refers to effects of beliefs people hold and thus depends on what Parfit calls a "Moral Belief Formula", something that he implicitly appealed to earlier in the lecture but which is now explicitly presented as stating: "It is wrong to act on some maxim unless we could also rationally will it to be true that everyone believes such acts to be permissible". This formula is, however, implicitly conservative since it appears to require recognition of actual beliefs and thus not to test them. 


As often, however, Parfit moves on to a different question than the one that seems obvious since his question about the alleged formulas given does not turn on any particular type of objection to their coherence but instead he goes back again to the question of the status of "maxims" for Kant. Here Parfit makes the point that when Kant speaks of "maxims" it seems that different types of things can be at issue. Thus, on some occasions it appears that Kant is using "maxim" to indicate the "policy" on which someone is acting, on others to the relationship between "policy" and "aim". Having made this point Parfit returns to the general problem of having a view of maxims that provides a serious wrong-making criteria and indicates that many maxims have a "mixed" status in the sense that it is not always bad to act on them nor always good. This is termed by Parfit the "mixed maxims objection" to the accounts of maxims that have been discussed by him up to this point. In response to it Parfit suggests a revision of Kant's Formula(s). The point of the revision is, however, a rather odd one. Having indicated that his basic problem is with "mixed maxims" Parfit suggests that the way that maxims are referred to should not be by means of policies or aims but instead by what persons are "intentionally doing". In fact, in stating this, Parfit seems unusually poorly informed since making the understanding of maxims refer to "intentions" is a proposal that has been widely considered and it has provoked serious objections from a range of philosophers.


Nor, in any case, is it obvious that what Parfit goes on to do is to discuss a revision that is really based on this notion of "intentions". It is instead Parfit's move to begin discussing rational willing and this appears to involve some sense of instrumental coherence, a notion that requires no explicit reference to "intentions" at all. 


Parfit states that Kant's Formula(s) of universal law work best when 3 conditions are satisfied, namely, that it would be (a) possible to act on the maxim; (b) the effects of the maxim would be much the same however many people acted on it; (c) these effects could be randomly or equally distributed between people. Understanding Kant's formulas in this way brings them close to considerations that are at work in standard decision theories and in games theories (much as Parfit invokes in Reasons and Persons). Parfit's claim is that the problems that arise for the Kantian formulas are related to failure of one of these conditions. The only failure Parfit explicitly considers is (c) which leads to burdens being imposed only on select groups. In raising this point Parfit gets to the notion of "impartiality" and indicates that there is no guarantee of impartial consideration in weighing universal acceptability. The example of this given is one that I find extremely unpersuasive though and appears to me to be a prime example of what is often termed "maxim-fiddling". 


The example is of a racist who takes it that there would be no problem of universalising maxims of segregation and unequal treatment. But in allowing the racist this claim Parfit neglects to conceive of the world that would therefore be being willed which would be a world in which there would therefore be no problem with the racist himself suffering the same treatment whenever they were in the minority. In failing to conceive of the general test in this way Parfit has simply fiddled the maxim in the racist's favour.


Parfit eventually gets to a version of this response when he considers Thomas Nagel's account of the maxims concerning benevolence which is the classic counterpart of the problem with contradiction of the will that I have transposed here to the case of the racist. Nagel appears to view the benevolence example as requiring us to be placed in "everyone else's position" but this is too strong and all that is needed is precisely what Parfit agrees is found in the discussion of benevolence in the Groundwork which is the failure of rational willing even in the case of the one willing non-beneficence. It is due to such failure that Rawls, as Parfit cites, invokes his idea of the "veil of ignorance" as a way of seeing the problem here. It is not that Kant has to have directly supposed that we do need to invoke this veil, as Parfit wrongly assumes. It is rather that the veil is an alternative way to make the same point in the same spirit.


In response to the discussion at this point Parfit invokes another way of understanding Kant's formulas of universal law in terms that recognises the question about impartiality in an explicit form. This leads Parfit to give what he terms the "Formula of Universally Willed Acts" which is as follows: "An act is wrong unless it could be rationally willed by everyone". This formula is an extension of the Consent Principle that Parfit found to be the first part of Kant's Formula of Humanity. It faces at least the problem Parfit himself mentions which is that Kant does not refer in this way to "what everyone could rationally will" though it is evident he does require some sense of rational willing to be understood. However Parfit concludes the second lecture with 2 final formulas. The first is meant to build in a reference to beliefs and produces what Parfit terms "Kant's Contractualist Formula" which is: "We ought to act on the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will". This version brings Kant into the vicinity of Thomas Scanlon though this point is not explored in this lecture.


Finally Parfit concludes with a formula that explicitly brings in a reference to Rawls' notion of the "veil of ignorance" and is stated simply as "Rawls's Formula" and is given as follows: "We ought to act on the principles that it would be rational for everyone to choose, as the principles that we would all accept, if no one knew anything about themselves or their circumstances".


Parfit concludes the second 2002 lecture with the claim that the third lecture will be devoted to consideration of the contractualist formula though it surely also considers its relationship to Rawls's Formula and indicates a resolution of some sort of the two formulas. However, before looking at the third and final 2002 lecture I will first consider the ways in which the discussion of the second 2002 lecture becomes transformed and reworked in Climbing the Mountain and the pre-publication version of On What Matters to become, eventually, Chapters 12 to 14 of the published book.

Parfit and Kant on Treating Persons As Ends (III)

A little while ago I looked at Parfit's treatment of the "mere means" principle that he identifies with the second half of Kant's Formula of Humanity as Parfit treats it in Climbing the Mountain. In this posting I'm going to look at the ways Parfit revises this discussion in the pre-publication version of On What Matters that was reached towards the close of 2008. The discussion parallel to that of Climbing the Mountain takes place in Chapter 9 of the pre-publication version of On What Matters.


The opening of Chapter 9 closely parallels the beginning discussion in Climbing the Mountain distinguishing again between treating someone as a means and treating them merely as a means (which latter involves relating to them as a mere instrument or tool). In response to the latter notion Parfit mentions the objection that a rich person could respond to the duty to give to the poor by giving extremely little and thereby still fail to follow their duty. Similarly, we might only partially fail to treat people merely as means (though it is rather less clear how this would go). This leads, as in Climbing the Mountain, to a revision of the mere means principle which now says it would be wrong to treat someone as a means or doing something that comes close to that. Now, after mentioning this revision of the mere means principle Parfit next refers to two ways in which our conduct can be said to be such that it definitely does not involve treating someone merely as a means.


These two ways are if we either treat this person in a way that is governed by a relevant moral belief or concern or we are or would relevantly choose to bear some great burden for this person's sake. However, given that relevance and importance are themselves matters of degree it is often unclear whether we have met these conditions. Further, we might well be prepared to meet the condition of bearing a great burden for someone whilst normally treating them merely as a means. 


Parfit distinguishes further between the kinds of consideration appropriate to saying that we have treated someone as a means as opposed to treating them merely as a means. In the first case Parfit takes it that reference to "intentions" is appropriate whereas in the second it is more apt to refer instead to "underlying attitudes or policies" (hence to view these on the lines that would fit many characterisations of the Kantian notion of a "maxim"). However, despite having introduced this complexity, Parfit is keener on a different distinction, namely that between regarding someone as a mere tool and acting towards them in a way that reflects such a view of them. Whilst he takes the former to be wrong he is less convinced that the latter is always so. Part of his case for this view is strikingly weak as when he claims that a gangster treats a coffee seller merely as a means because they purchase the coffee rather than stealing simply because this is simpler. However surely this is a case of instead only treating someone as a means and doing so in a way that lacks moral worth without thereby having become "wrong"?


Rather than drawing this conclusion, which would seem the obvious one, Parfit allows a further emendation of the mere means principle so that it now claims that we don't treat someone merely as a means if our acts will not harm this person (adding that we know that this is so). The introduction of this criteria of "harm" was, however, unnecessary in relation to the case and the example that Parfit introduces to cause trouble for this emendation is not one difficult to meet. Parfit asks us to imagine the case of someone marrying an elderly person merely for their money without acting so as to harm them, a form of conduct which surely involves treating them merely as a means. It is clear that this example undercuts the new formulation since it shows actual harm is not necessary for conduct to be such that it involves wrongfully treating someone as a mere means. However, it is also the case that this example illustrates wrong conduct on the earlier formulations of the mere means principle and thus demonstrates further the otiose character of the emendation provided.


Parfit does at this point call in the notion of acts that lack "moral worth" though the case just introduced deserves a stronger response than this. However, rather than drop the otiose reference to harm, he retains it in a further formula of the mere means principle that describes wrong-doing as consisting in treating someone as a means or coming close to that if our act "will also be likely" to harm them. The principle seems to be insufficiently differentiated from the previous version and no more necessary than it.


Parfit next turns to the task of combining the mere means principle with the consent principle that he argued was the root of the first part of the Formula of Humanity. At this point his discussion repeats the invocation of trolly examples that was given earlier in Climbing the Mountain. Subsequent to this Parfit reverts to what he calls the "standard view" of the mere means principle that claims that if we harm people, without their consent, as a means of achieving some aim, then we are treating them merely as a means. The invocation of "harm" is, again, quickly shown to add nothing relevant to the picture since it is possible to harm someone without treating them as a mere means or doing anything wrong as Parfit himself confesses. Similarly, treating someone as a means has already been distinguished from treating them merely as a means so it remains unclear what Parfit has here added to his previous account.


The account of harm distorts Parfit's subsequent treatment of examples since he keeps coming back to cases involving it as supposedly definitive of treating someone merely as a means and then showing that this is insufficient for the action to be viewed as wrong. But if treating someone merely as a means has no essential link to "harm" then these cases only prove the point that the introduction of the reference to "harm" has not proved helpful. 


A different element of Parfit's discussion is his response to the claims of Christine Korsgaard and Onora O'Neill that coercion and deception are essentially connected to treating others merely as means. The negative reaction Parfit has to these suggestions turns again on cases where reduction of harm would ensue from deceiving others so that the question of harm is taken to be an obvious sign of wrong actions, a point that Parfit simply assumes and does not argue for. 


Parfit also returns to the Bad Samaritan case used in Climbing the Mountain to show that not regarding someone as worthy of being taken as an end of action can be as bad as treating them merely as a means. However it is not evident what relevance this is supposed to have for assessing the right way of viewing the mere means principle. Whilst the mere means principle may be insufficient on its own as a ground for moral appraisal this does not show that it doesn't pick out an important wrong-making characteristic of some actions.


As in Climbing the Mountain Parfit's overall aim is to make the claim that regarding people as mere means is different to and worse than acting in ways that treat them as mere means. But it is unclear that his discussions do any more than conflate questions of treating others merely as means with discussions about "harm" and effectively treat questions about harm as definitive for the view we should have of the "mere means" principle. For these reasons it is unclear to me that the argument of Chapter 9 of the pre-publication version of On What Matters marks any real progress on the account in Climbing the Mountain.

Parfit and Kant on the Greatest Good

In my last posting on Parfit I looked at Chapter 6 of Climbing the Mountain, a chapter that still corresponded to part of the second of his 2002 lectures. In this posting I am moving on to Chapter 7 of Climbing the Mountain, a chapter that offers material that is not found in the second of the 2002 lectures. 


Chapter 7 is concerned with the notion of the "greatest good" and enlists Kant in order to discuss it. Following Kant's discussions in the Critique of Practical Reason Parfit pulls out what he terms the "formula of the greatest good" which, in Parfit's formulation, reads: "everyone ought always to strive to promote a world of universal virtue and deserved happiness". The relation between virtue and happiness was explicitly set forth in the dialectic of the Critique of Practical Reason as a way of seeing that "the good" is not homogeneous since it encompasses matters of real normative import and a demand of inclination. In the Critique of Practical Reason this leads to Kant formulating what he terms there an "antinomy" and which is resolved only by means of utilising the practical postulates. 


Parfit's discussion abstracts from the account of practical postulates and the dialectic between the two elements of "the good" in order to present the "formula" as stating a goal we should aim to achieve. However this aim is one that it is necessary that Parfit distinguish from the classic one attributed to hedonistic act utilitarianism (HAU). The view of HAU concerns the maximisation of happiness and is understood by Parfit as "wholly telic" in concentrating entirely on promotion of a common end or aim. Some telic theories are also described by Parfit as "value-based" in the sense that they appeal to claims about the reason-involving goodness of what they tell us to achieve. This reference to an impartial reason-involving sense is built into Parfit's conception of "consequentialism". 


Parfit also discusses the relationship between claims about what is good and what we ought morally to do distinguishing between theories that take "the good" to be fundamental and define what ought to be done in terms of it on the one hand from those that take the conception of moral obligatoriness to be fundamental and derive the sense of the good from it. Parfit affirms, however, a different view according to which neither of these terms is taken to be fundamental and takes them to be independent of each other. In taking such a stance, however, Parfit is departing from Kant as he goes on to acknowledge, since Kant views the notion of the "good" as determined by the moral law as he clearly states in the Critique of Practical Reason. This commitment of Kant to the priority of the right over the good is central to his resistance to consequentialism and is of no small importance.


Rather than addressing this point immediately Parfit prefers instead to look at some of Kant's other claims concerning goodness. So, for example, Kant makes the statement, at the very beginning of the Groundwork, to the effect that good wills have a form of goodness that is higher than all other kinds. Parfit converts this claim, following the logic of the argument of the first part of the Groundwork, into the classic formulation that we ought to try to have wills that are dutiful. 


After presenting these two opening moves Parfit goes on to look at the claim with which he opened the chapter, to wit, that everyone ought to strive to promote the greatest good, a view based on the conception of the summum bonum. The point of reintroducing reference to this claim is to compare it now with the act consequentialist view that everyone ought always to try to produce the greatest amount of good. As Parfit states, it may seem that the act consequentialist view is close to what Kant is after when Kant discusses the greatest good. However since Kant's claim concerning the greatest good is one that can be translated back into the apparently more sober point concerning a world of universal virtue and deserved happiness, then it follows that Kant's conception, unlike that of the act consequentialist, is not a value-based view. Kant's view is ought-based, not value-based, and so has a different foundation to the act consequentialist view despite surface similarities of formulation.


Having distinguished Kant's view from that of the act consequentialists Parfit goes on to look at the relationship between Kant's claims about the greatest good and the formulas of universal law and humanity. It is clear from the pre-eminent status of the appeals to the other formulas that it is by following the moral law, understood as formulated in them, that the promotion of the greatest good will be best followed according to Kant. This seems an unexceptionable claim but Parfit conjoins to it the view that Kant is committed also to the suggestion that following the moral law is sufficient to give the happiness that their virtue would make them deserve and this is a clear error on Parfit's part. Kant makes no such assumption as this but only presents the much weaker claim that following the moral law would make one worthy of happiness, not that it will be sufficient to enable this happiness.


The reason why Parfit makes this mistake is due to the kind of concentration he has on happiness. Parfit is on sounder ground when he reports Sidgwick's remark that happiness is best taken as a second-order rather than a first-order end since taking it as a first-order end will often be self-defeating. This suggestion is mixed up by Parfit with an understanding of Kant's claim concerning worthiness to be happy but Kant is making no suggestion here of taking happiness to be an end in adopting the moral law (even a second-order end). Rather Kant is making the quite different point that it is only in making the moral law our chief guide in action that we become worthy of receipt of happiness, a point quite different to Sidgwick's.


Parfit is much more concerned with Sidgwick's claim than with Kant's quite different one and relates Sidgwick's claim to the need to follow the precepts of common sense morality (at least for the most part). Having made this point concerning the sense in which adopting happiness is not a first end requirement Parfit turns to assessing the claim bound up with this one concerning common sense morality. One way of understanding the connection between common sense morality and the promotion of happiness is by means of what Parfit terms the "marginalist" view. On this view we decide how much good an act would do by determining what difference it would make. So: "the good that some act would do is the amount by which, if this act were done, things would go better than they would have gone if this act had not been done".


This "marginalist" view can, however, imply some very implausible things. So if, for example, the actions of four people coordinated together are sufficient to save a group of others then five people undertaking this action is superfluous and if five people do join it would appear to follow that none of the five saved the lives in question. In order to avoid this consequence, we can appeal to the claim that it is what people do in conjunction that produces the right outcomes, a claim that Parfit terms the "share of the total view" so that "when some group of people together produce some good effect, the good that each person does is this person's share of the total good".


The "share of the total view" avoids the implausible consequence of the "marginalist" view and leads to ignoring the specific effects of particular actions in focusing instead on the way that actions accumulate to produce results. As Parfit mentions Hume shared a similar view, though Hume's conception is even wider in scope. Hume's view is termed by Parfit the "whole scheme view" and asks us to look beyond the specific acts that may, considered alone, have bad effects to the set of acts that are done at different times or by different people in order to assess the best effects. The acts that, considered in this set manner, have such effects are then the ones that we should regard as doing the most good. The appeal of referring to a view such as Hume's for Parfit is that it leads away from act consequentialism towards grounds for accepting general rules in accordance with their overall effects.


After making these claims, claims that require a more general notion of consequentialism than is involved in act consequentialism, Parfit makes a parallel move with regard to Kant. In considering Kant's writings concerning lying Parfit emphasises the point that Kant views lying as undermining humanity in making the source of right "unusable". This point, which would require sustained attention to the role of the discussion of lying (and promising) in Kant's philosophy of right, is used by Parfit to make the more minimal point that it appears that Kant's response to lying is part of a commitment on Kant's part to rejecting things that cause "harm" (a claim that can only be sustained with an unusually broad sense of "harm" being given here). 


Subsequently to producing this reading of Kant's view of lying Parfit goes on to suggest a further way of aligning Kant's view with that of a form of consequentialism when he cites some fragments of Kant's in a rather tendentious way. In a lecture of 1778 Kant speaks of worthiness to be happy as consisting in the practical agreement of our actions with the idea of universal happiness (Ak. 28: 377). This is viewed by Parfit as equivalent to a form of hedonistic act utilitarianism but what is missed by Parfit when he makes this claim is any account of the status of "ideas" in Kant's practical philosophy. Absent this the parallel with utilitarianism is plausible but once it is present it shows that Kant is far from taking as an actual consequence of virtuous action an increase in overall happiness.


Parfit is concentrated on viewing the ideal world that Kant understands through the summum bonum as stating a single ultimate end rather than aligning two distinct forms of good and also being placed in a dialectical situation precisely due to the lack of congruence between these two forms of good. Parfit does, in conclusion, understand that the reference to the summum bonum includes a conception of desert that is distinct from the formulas of the categorical imperative. Parfit's chapter unexpectedly breaks off however, just after he  has stated he will show Kant's view of desert to be mistaken.


This chapter introduces new material and the account of the greatest good in Kant provides Parfit with opportunities to attempt a form of assimilation of Kant's view to consequentialist ones but only due to failing to refer back again to the centrality of the priority of the right over the good that Parfit cited earlier in the chapter. 

Parfit and Kant on Respect and Value

In a recent posting on Parfit I looked at his treatment of respect in his 2002 lectures. In Chapter 6 of Climbing the Mountain Parfit returns to this topic and, in the process, extends his discussion. As in the 2002 lecture the chapter opens by pointing out that the Formula of Humanity has been read by some primarily in terms of treating persons with respect but Parfit indicates that such a requirement is not action-guiding. Further, Parfit dissents from Allen Wood's focus on "expression" of respect since no given "expression" of respect is required in terms of treating persons with respect. Parfit does concede that Kant specifically describes some vices as indicative of disrespect but, as he points out, the Formula of Humanity is not meant to cover only some wrong acts and not all wrong acts involve disrespect in the manner that the vices Kant discusses do.


When moving on to the specific notion of respect "for humanity", Wood is on stronger ground against Parfit since the requirement for such respect is somehow related by Kant to the notion of what "humanity" itself consists in. Parfit's objections to this turn principally on indicating that Kant often makes remarks (about lying for example) that we may well find it difficult to accept but this is hardly conclusive evidence against the need to count the respect requirement as part of the meaning of the Formula of Humanity.


In assessing the claim Kant makes concerning the "dignity" of humanity in the Formula of Humanity Parfit arrives at the question of the relationship between the right and the good and mentions Rawls' famous claim that the former has priority over the latter. In responding to this point Parfit mentions the idea of things being good in what he terms a reason-involving sense. Something is "good" in this way if it has a property or feature that would, in some situations, give reasons to respond to these things in certain ways. In tying the notion of the "goodness" of this sort to properties or features of situations Parfit ensures that the goodness in question is not what Christine Korsgaard would term a "final" good since its relationship to situations makes it dependent upon them. Further Parfit adds the claim that many such forms of good have a "value" and adds, somewhat confusingly, that the things, and not the "value" they possess, can be promoted.


This claim about "value" turns into a discussion about events since it is the events that can, apparently, be promoted. Parfit also indicates that he is committed to an "actualist" view of such events which means that possible acts/events are good as ends when they possess intrinsic features that give us reasons to want them to be actual. Such a view does not claim to account for goodness of types that do not belong to events. Since Parfit appears to follow Scanlon in taking a teleological theory of ethics to be one according to which only acts and events have intrinsic value he does not assume that an actualist view is equivalent to a teleological one. 


After making these claims Parfit now arrives at a different account of respect to that involved in the requirements of the Formula of Humanity. This is in terms of respect that applies to things we value in a way that merits the appellation of "respect" but in which it is, again, the things themselves and not the respect attached to them that is the basis of the value the things possess. As examples here Parfit indicates the attitudes that are displayed towards the nation's flag or the oldest tree in a region since these things cannot be used in ways that would tarnish the value attached to them. Respect, in this sense, is a manifestation of a right kind of attitude to a thing but is not intended by Parfit as a form of goodness though the acts that are mandated here can be seen as having an instrumental kind of value.


Parfit next turns to the "value" of human life, a value that Scanlon sees in terms of a kind of respect but which Parfit refuses to view as involving a respect that is distinct from a kind of "promotion". The reason why this move is made is not entirely clear though it has something to do with Parfit's rejection of an absolutist attitude towards suicide since Scanlon views the question about suicide as having to do with a respect for the autonomous decision of the person contemplating such an act. The reason why Parfit tends towards a similar conclusion here as Scanlon is due to the claim on Parfit's part that the kind of value that human life has is to do with a relationship to the requirement of rational consent, which Parfit earlier derived from the first part of the Formula of Humanity.


After mentioning these matters Parfit returns to considering Kantian claims about dignity and mentions how Kant has consideration for three different kinds of ends. Ends that are to be effected are instrumental ends and relate to the hypothetical imperative and these types of end are distinct from "existent" ends which latter are represented by persons. However the notion of such an "existent" end is something distinct from an end-in-itself for Parfit.


The analysis of Kant that Parfit offers involves the claim that a good will is an end we ought to achieve so he tends to assimilate it to the general claim about ends to be effected without, in so doing, making clear how the good will is distinct from a merely instrumental end. Similarly Parfit talks of the realm of ends as a good to be effected, again without making clear how it is nonetheless distinct from an instrumental end. Finally, Parfit describes Kant's notion of the summum bonum as a good we should promote (without distinguishing such a claim from one concerning maximisation).


Turning from these claims back to the status of persons as possessed of dignity Parfit claims that such a status applies to all persons but, since it does, it does not demarcate a kind of goodness. So the treatment of them in certain ways is something that has to be recognised but not on account of any evident value they possess.


The next stage in Parfit's discussion is to look at the relationship between rationality and value for Kant and Parfit views rationality as partly an end-to-be-effected since we can develop our rationality. However Parfit shows little understanding of what Kant might mean by rationality since Parfit equates rationality quite simply with problem-solving capacities. Since, on such a construal, Parfit can find little merit in claims about rationality per se, he instead focuses on a conception of moral rationality.


Having made all these distinctions Parfit then returns to the question about the relationship between the right and the good and denies that Kant affirms the Rawlsian view since it turns out that Kant thinks that some "goods" should be promoted. Since, however, Rawls also takes it to be the case that there are "primary goods" and yet affirms the idea of the priority of the right over the good, I think it can be clearly seen that Parfit's discussion is not a reply to Rawls. Further, since Parfit systematically conflates different kinds of ways ends might be thought of as to be effected and says remarkably little about the notion of the hypothetical imperative, his discussion in this chapter is seriously incomplete.