Wronging Stages

Is the total amount of harm involved in S1' and S2' having the disease that B' could have prevented by not performing A' greater than the total amount of harm involved in S1 having the disease that B could have prevented by not performing A?

By 'total amount of harm' of the disease, I mean the total amount of pain that exists & deprivation of whatever the diseases deprives a person of over the duration throughout which the disease is present in a person.

I'm granting different people have the disease. In the first case only one person has it, S1, in the second case two people have it, S1' and S2'. And S1' is not the same person as S2'.

If the total amount of harm is different then I accept (6). All else equal it is worse to produce more harm when it can be prevented it, and one would be a worse person for producing more harm than less. This claim is plausible before we even ask about the identities of those harmed, their number, or their relation to one another. I think this is at least one lesson to draw from standard trolley cases.

However, if the total amount of harm is not different, then I don't yet understand the case, i.e., have a clear enough picture of an instance of it to yield some intuitive judgment about its moral status.

P. For each additional, intentional and malicious moral wrong A that B freely does to person(s) S, B becomes morally worse.

I agree with this, but think we need to place greater weight on the words "each" and "intentional." By virtue of the problem as stated, singular acts motivated by specific intention are what we have in view, and therefore cannot include collateral or consequential "wrong"; I'm not sure if the offender can/should be indited for S2's suffering.

At t2, God instantaneously replaces all of S1's memories and cells resulting in S2'. (S1' is not identical to and is not an earlier stage of S2'.)

So that means the total wrong in existence is not multiplied; the cessation of S1' means his suffering has ceased as well; the creation of S2' means his suffering is inherited. Even if we do peg consequential wrong on B', that wrong is not increased or multiplied. Why is some sort of "multiplication of wrongs" necessarily implied by this example?*

One could say that God is actually responsible for S2's suffering as He was completely responsible for it; B' had no part in afflicting S2' directly.

*I realize that your reply might be, "Being that the "consciouses" of S1' and S2' are unique, there is certainly a multiplication of wrong as that wrong is being experienced by two separate subjects." I'm undecided as to whether this is true or not... water is poured from one glass to another, and still we have one glass of water.

A few points.

1) Do you think that God replicating a person in that fashion can be reasonably expected to happen? If not, then it seems someone can hardly be responsible for the consequences of an unlikely event outside of one's control. This intuition would concur with your intuition that B' is no worse.

2) Are rational agents morally blameworthy for all the consequences of an already immoral act? Two legal examples presume yes:
A) The Nazis at Nuremberg were judged according to the principle that the crime of aggression included all the consequences that followed (many of which were not in control of Nazis!).
B) A reckless driver will be punished for reckless driving, but will be punished more if the driving resulted in a death.
If we take these two examples to indicate a genuine moral principle, than perhaps B' is in fact guilty, regardless of whether or not he could have anticipated the consequences.

3) I personally think B' is not morally worse, because of many reductio arguments one can form. For example, imagine I have the power of replication, and I decide to replicate all the rape victims I can find. Surely I am not simply multiplying some rapist's crimes. No, I'm multiplying my own crime - consciously creating people with the experience of having been raped.

I don't think it matters to my question whether it is expectable.
It seems to me that this matters for the following reason: If a predictable consequence of an action is that someone will feel like they were radiated, then it seems a lot like harming a person to do the action that brings this feeling about (barring some overriding reason). If this is the case and your ontology is correct, then two people have indeed been harmed by the same action, although the two harms are of different sorts.

I don't assume (re, question 2) that in general we are responsible for all of the consequences of our actions.
Quite right. In fact, it seems like your argument requires an extreme form of non-responsibility for consequences of our actions (even predictable consequences!).

But you're not doing that. What you're doing is creating people with the false memory of having been raped.
Okay. Let's say "feeling having-been-raped-ish" instead of "the experience of having been raped." It is still the replicator himself who is committing the crime, as in my third question.

Hope this clears up my points.

"But you're not doing that. What you're doing is creating people with the false memory of having been raped. If your example is following my assumptions, then the person-stages that result from your replication are not stages of the same person that was raped, despite the remnants of some terrible memories."

In so far as it is possible that a person P* has been replicated from an earlier person, P, then I take it there is no justifiable reason for P* to think that she is not a replicated person even though she has no memories of being replicated. If that is the case then P* cannot provide a justifiable reason for thinking that the person who raped her yesterday wronged her if P* is a possible replication of the being, P, who existed yesterday and was raped because all of P* present memories of being raped are false memories. Does this mean that in order for someone to be able to blame someone for an action that they think wrongs them that that person needs to prove they are not a replication of some earlier person who no longer exists?

"My argument does not focus on doing wrong but on wronging someone.'

Please explain the difference between 'doing wrong' and 'wronging someone.' How is it possible to wrong someone without doing something wrong? (I do consider and act of omission to be doing something.)

As far as I know, there is no cardinal ranking of wrongs (e.g., where we can say that wrong W is three turps more wrong than W')

I don't need to assume there are. I only need to assume that whatever is suffered by S1' and S2' together is worse than what is suffered by S1 alone. And I don't need to talk about harm either. All I need to assume is that whatever is suffered by S1' and S2' together is worse than what is suffered by S1 alone.

If we are changing the duration over which the disease is present and holding other things equal, then my assumption is correct. Whatever badness is associated with the disease (you fill in the details, I'm only assuming it has duration), then A1' intentionally brings about more of that than does A1. And so (P6) follows.

6. B' is morally worse than B (assuming, of course, that they were otherwise moral equals).

Or do you deny that, all else equal, a pain that lasts 'n' minutes is worse than one that lasts a noticeably shorter period of time?

Mike
Why do you need premise 3 at all. What work does it do? I am presuming that there are two distinct persons, B and B' harming two other persons, S1 and S1'; at least that is how I read 1 and 2. If that is the case then there would be two instances of doing wrong being done, but they are of equal value so that B and B' would be equally blameworthy, but B' would not be worse then B.

One could even argue, as I think you are, that there is one harm (being radiated) that is being done 2x. If this is so, then B and B' would be equally blameworthy even though one wrong was being instantiated 2x by two different people.

"Did B' produce bad consequences for S2' on Mars? Obviously not."

Hi Mike,

Isn't there a sense in which B' does produce bad consequences for S2'? In the sense at least stated in your original premise 5 (which I take it contains a typo, and omits a 'not'?)

(5) Had B' not performed A1', S1' and S2' would NOT have had disease D.

So if someone has a certain liberal view of 'producing bad consequences,' where the consequences of an act are all those things which wouldn't have happened had the act not been performed, it follows that S2's having D is a consequence of B's act.

The example is complicated if S2' comes into being at another world--rather than Mars--since worlds are causally isolated. If you think worlds are necessarily causally isolated, maybe you'll want to deny the possibility of the replication, since this might imply some sort of causal link between B's action to S1' and S2's state in another world (I'm not sure). Or one could run it the other way: Since worlds are nec. causally isolated, there's no causal connection between B's wronging S1' and S2's current state. Though I doubt you want the argument to turn on these sorts of things!

So you seem to be committed to denying the liberal view of consequences. Just b/c had B' not irradiated S1', S2' wouldn't now be irradiated.

I'm just wondering if someone couldn't say: "Look, I'm more confident that the liberal view of consequences is true than I am that the intuition that B' doesn't cause S2' harm is reliable." I take it something like that was what was going on earlier in the thread; it seems like a viable move, no?

I guess if I was a proponent of the liberal view of consequences, I'd have to accept that your harming C is a consequence of my A-ing. But I might make sure to add that it doesn't follow that I'm in any way responsible, culpable, etc. for you harming C. And this might make it a much more manageable bullet to bite.

Mike
I think I might finally understand what you are arguing. B' does not wrong S2' because S2's condition is a 'carry over' from S1’ who no longer exists through an action (replication) that was not caused by B'. Even though S2' has D, B' did not cause that D, the replication brought it about. S2's D is not a new case of D therefore there is only one wrong being done and that was B' radiating S1' causing D in S1'.

If I understand your argument correctly then the only way B' could be worse then B is if B' radiated two people, S1' and S2' where S1' and S2' are two distinct persons and where S2' is not a replication of S1'.

Question: Does this conclusion work if B' replicates S1' into S2' and S1' continues to exist?

Or have I completely missed the point of your argument?

Of course S2' is suffering badly, but nothing that S2' experiences is a causal consequence of B's actions. To see this more clearly, note that God might have quasi-duplicated S1' on Mars or in another causally isolated universe and might have done so without S1' ceasing to exist. So, what happens to S2' is not a causal consequence of B's actions.

If you could convince me of what you say above, then I would agree with you that what B's action is no worse than B with respect to causal consequences. I was assuming that S2' is suffering badly and that his suffering is a causal consequence of what B' does.

Given that S1's suffering badly is a causal consequence of B's actions, why do you think causation fails when it comes to S2's suffering? I see in the first case, of causing S1' to suffer, the action A' of B' is a sufficient condition, but it is not a sufficient condition for S2' to suffer, since God's actions are also necessary for S2' to suffer. Supposing causation requires the cause to be sufficient for the effect, then this is an important difference. If this is what you have in mind, then I agree that B' does not wrong S2' by causing anything to happen to S2'.

However, I still think (P6) is plausible. For, assuming B' knows that S1' is going to be replicated, when he creates the disease in S1' he fails to prevent S2' from getting the disease. This is not causation. I'm not saying that the B's act is worse becuase it involves causing more badness. I'm saying that B's act is worse than B since he causes the same amount of badness (to S1 or S1'), though B', and not B, fails to prevent some bad thing from happening when he was perfectly able to. He was able to prevent S2' from getting the disease and he did not, but this is no failure that B can share with him. That's why B' is worse than B.

I see. So B' is not causing more suffering than B. But I'm interested in whether B' is allowing more suffering than B. Grant that what B and B' cause is the same. Neither is morally worse in that respect. Nonetheless, isn't it true in your story that B knows that if he causes S1' to have the disease, then God will cause S2' to have the disease? Thus, isn't it true that B' can prevent S2' from having the disease by refraining from giving S1' the disease?

That's how I read your story.

Before you were inclined to say that what B' would be doing in such a case would be refraining from benefitting S2', where refraining from benefitting someone doesn't make one morally worse. Is that still your view?

Mike,

Does S' know that God will replicate B1'? Suppose S' does know this (he has a nifty crystal ball), and that S' is a really vicious person. He likes to harm people. He takes pleasure in knowing that B2' will suffer as a consequence (in the liberal sense) of his harming B1'. In fact, part of his reason for irradiating B1' is that B2' will suffer.

Does this make any difference to your view?

I wouldn't say that B' is himself preventing it. But I don't see how this makes him worse than B.

I think it will depend upon how the case is filled out. Suppose I am standing by a pond and watch a child drown, knowing that I can act in such a way that the suffering of the child is prevented. Does that me morally worse? My answer is 'yes'.

So, in some cases, failing to act in a certain way that prevents suffering does make one morally worse. Is your case like this?

I don't see why not. B' knows that S2' will suffer from a disease if he causes S1' to have the disease. But he goes ahead and gives S1' the disease. All else equal, it then seems to me that he is morally worse. In general, knowingly allowing something bad to happen to someone, when one is not sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance makes one a worse person. This principle applies to your case. And so it seems B' is morally worse for not preventing S2's suffering.

Suppose you sincerely assert that you will harm Smith if I choose to go to work on Monday. It's a bizarre though sincere threat. If I decide to go to work and you fulfill your threat, I am not made morally worse by your action. You are made worse.

I disagree. I think both you and I would be made morally worse. Assuming the harm to Smith is all things considered worse than my failing to go to work, I should stay at home. The principle above explains why. There is a familiar case that has been offered to elicit your intuition. My version: I am in a town and the sherrif tells me that if I shoot one victim, he will spare nineteen. If I refrain, he will kill twenty. I claim I am morally worse for refraining.

I explain the contrary intuition away as follows: I am morally worse but not blameworthy. The sherrif (and you, and God, in the cases above) are also morally worse but are blameworthy. We are confusing moral responsibility with blameworthiness when we intuit otherwise. That is, when we fail to ascribe moral worseness to you, God, and the sheriff, though not to me, we are confusing an ascription of greater blameworthiness to you, God, and the sherrif and not to me. The first ascription is false, the second is true, and our intuitions confuse them.

Sorry, I just can't take that seriously. I am not made morally worse by something you freely do.

Here is a counterexample.

At the airport, Jones sees a group of men putting guns into their bags at the boarding gate. A large group of officers are nearby, but they fail to see the men and the guns. Jones can easily walk over to the officers and say "Hey, there's some men with guns about to board a plane." However, he refrains. He doesn't feel like getting out of his seat. The men get on board, hijack the plane, and 300 people die.

You say you can't take seriously the idea that Jones is made morally worse for failing to prevent the deaths of 300 people. If so, then we indeed have a clash of intuitions.

All that aside, and returning to the point, it is false in both cases, no matter what my obligations are, that what others freely do makes me worse.

I certainly never said it did. I said what makes one morally worse is that one is failing to prevent something bad from happening without a good reason. In the original case B' fails to prevent S2' from getting a disease without a good reason. I never claimed, and don't claim, that it was God's action that makes B' morally worse.

Mike,

I tend to agree that you don't have an obligation to stay home in the Smith case; I don't think you're culpable, and so not worse, for not staying home.

But there still might be a sense in which B' ends up morally worse than B. For if B' knows that God will fission S1', and decides to irradiate S1' anyways, it might be that B' is thereby shut out from some of the reactive attitudes that are appropriate to S2'.

For instance, I'm not sure that B' will be able to sympathize with S2' over his suffering, or regret the fact that S2' is the way he is, to the same appropriate extent as B would be able to. In this sense, I think B is morally better off.

Though I think this is somewhat of a distraction, nevertheless...

I never said that one is worse for what another freely does. It wasn't part of the original case, and it wasn't part of any of my suggestions nor implied by any of my suggestions. You added it as though I was claiming it and then objected to it, all while failing to respond to my counterexample. I've been saying the same thing all along--one can be made worse, in certain cases, for failing to prevent certain bad things from happening to others. Your original case is one of these cases, so (P6) is true.

Recall, you said "I'm pretty sure this is confused. I'm not made worse by anything they do in this example. Full stop."

Who said that you were? Not me. You included that thesis. I said: "You say you can't take seriously the idea that Jones is made morally worse for failing to prevent the deaths of 300 people. If so, then we indeed have a clash of intuitions."

At any rate, I'm not sure how to be more clear. If it is true in the orginal case that B' can prevent someone from getting a terrible disease, by refraining from maliciously causing someone else to get a terrible disease, then I say he should, unless it is stipulated that he has really important reasons for giving the disease in the first place. There was no such stipulation. So I stand by the judgment that he is worse for failing to prevent something bad from happening when he could have easily done so, at no cost to himself...

I agree with your star-spangled-banner example--but I think the original case is more similar to my airport case than yours, for in mine and the original the stakes are high, in yours they are not. "I don't feel like it" can be a good reason when it comes to preventing pinches.

"But big deal. The discussion is complicated and oversights happen. I also disagree with the latest claim,
. . . what makes one morally worse is that one is failing to prevent something bad from happening without a good reason."

Mike

I think you might be confusing a point here. In the example you give after the above quote, you certainly have a good reason not to feel responsible for what happens to Smith. Clearly that falls on the person that harms Smith. You are not a causal factor in what happens to Smith. That falls squarely on the one threatening Smith. But Lee's example is not like that at all. Jones is worse off for not telling the police what he saw in so far as he could have possibly eliminated some harm had he notified them. Jones is a causal factor leading to the outcome and is therefore worse off for not alerting the police. Certainly he is not a guilty as the ones actually doing the harm, but as a causal factor he bears some responsibility. He has no good reason not to notify the police. (Of course we can construct a scenario where he has a good reason not to notify the police, but that is a different issue.) But, I think that this case squares nicely with your principle (P)

“In fact, I don't that B' wronged S2' at all! That is, I don't believe there were two wrongs, one to S1' and another to S2'. And that is why B' is not worse than B. Or, I find it difficult not to see it that way.”

When all is said and done, I am still not sure what the main point is that you are trying to make? I have to admit that I do not find the conclusion in the above quoted statement particularly interesting as it stands. The reason is that I do find the thought experiment upon which it is build very plausible or compelling. I do not see how it relates to any moral situation that we might normally expect to find ourselves in. How does your overall argument apply to Lee’s Airport Case? Is it possible for B not to wrong S but to still be morally blameworthy for what happens to S?

"The reason is that I do find the thought experiment upon which it is build very plausible or compelling."

This should have read "The reason is that I do not find the thought experiment upon which it is build very plausible or compelling."

The question in the original case is whether I wronged S2' by irradiating S1'.

Nowhere in the original case was this question present. You've only lately been raising that question. You concluded your post by saying:

And that is why B' is not worse than B. Or, I find it difficult not to see it that way.

That's what I have been questioning. Notice that it is one thing to claim S2' is wronged, and it is another thing to claim that one wrongs S2' by irradiating S1' and another thing to claim B' is morally worse for doing so.

Moreover, I don't need anything like Consequentialism for my conclusion, nor do I need a principle from which my intuition can be derived. Though, above, I provided one.

It's an interesting question whether Sarah's case is successful, I deny it is. But that denial is no part of my case, nor is it needed.

All I need is this: When B' fails to prevent S2' from acquiring the disease, he allows something bad to happen to S2'. If he didn't have a good reason, then he is a worse person for doing so.

Notice I didn't say:

1. B' wronged S2'.
2. B' has Consequentialist obligations.
3. B' wronged S2' by wronging S1'.
4. B' wronged S2' by giving S1' a disease.
5. B' is blameworthy.

Any objection to 1-5 will be irrelevant to my point.

On what principle do you choose what counts as a good reason?

Mike, I have absolutely no idea. But I'm okay going on cases, saying that in my airport case the reason is not good enough, that in pond cases the reason is not good enough, and in your case some reason is needed for B' to act as he does, and that reason isn't there. If some reason were added, then I may very well agree that B' is not morally worse for allowing S2' to suffer. For example, if God was pointing a gun at B' and said "inject S1' or I'll shoot you," then, in a case like that, I'd say B' isn't morally worse for allowing S2' suffering.

I haven't been reading your posts to others. You may have been raising the wrongness issue with them, my point is simply that the original post is directed at whether P6 is true, and that is all I have been attacking.

And something bad happens to S2'. Is that enough to conclude that B' did something wrong? I doubt it.

You're interested in wrongness I see. Since I have never made a claim about wrongness, and am interested in (P6), I'll leave this alone.

As far as preventing my death for a bad reason, I say you would be subject to mixed character evaluations, worse in some ways, better in others.

I fail to kill you at t0. Of course, if I hadn't failed to kill you at t0, you would not have died a natural death at tn. Your death at tn depends counterfactually on my failing to kill you at t0.

That's an interesting case.

I agree when you say "what I do by failing to kill you is allow something bad to happen." I disagree when you say "So, according to you, if I don't come up with a good reason not to kill you at t0, I'm made worse by your natural death at tn."

Again, I deny that the relevant worse-making property would be a property like "your natural death". The relevant worse-making property would be "failing to prevent some person's natural death."

But in your case one is not made worse by failing to prevent the death at tn. It seems that one has a very good reason to do so, for doing so will allow someone to live their life (and all that that includes).

Plainly, in neither case am I made worse by your death at tn.

Deaths don't make people worse. Causing and allowing deaths can. I'll stop being pedantic about this point.

The problem is that, if I lacked a good reason at t0 not to take your life (which in this case just is the act of failing to prevent your death at tn, so choose the act-description you like), I would not be made worse by doing so.

I must be misunderstanding you. I think that if you took my life and lacked a good reason for doing so, you would be made worse. Why do you think this is false? Let me I choose the act-description 'causing my death'. Assuming you have no good reason to cause my death, it's murder, and "being a murderer" is a bad-making feature to have, right?

I might have no good reason at all not to take your life at t0 and simply not take it.

Only if you are unaware that I exist, otherwise you typically have a good reason not to take my life, it's unjustified, it violates rights, is wrong, is bad, deprives me of a future, hurts those who love me, makes you worse, etc...

I may have good reason to take your life at t0, and not do it.

If you did have a good reason, then you would be made morally worse for not doing it. But typically you don't have a good reason, typically we don't have a good reason to kill other people.

I'm sure I'm not following.

That was indeed a counterexample to my sloppily formulated statement. But, give me a break, I wasn't aiming to carefully state a principle. I was trying to get you to provide a relevant disanalogy between pond cases, my airport case, and your original case (and I'm still trying). My principle was intended to capture one common feature of them, it wasn't meant to explain why I judge the cases the way I do, I took the intuitions about them (and do) as data for some principle or other (yet undiscovered).

Here is a candidate ammendment in light of your counterexample nonetheless.

One is a worse person, all else equal, for not preventing something 'B' bad from happening (qua knowing the bad thing will happen, and one can prevent it, and one intends not to prevent it, and is not subject to manipulation or serious brain damage) unless:

1. One fails to prevent B because one reasonably believes that by failing to prevent B, one will thereby prevent something comparably bad from happening, or
2. One fails to prevent B because one reasonably believes that by failing to prevent B, one will cause some benefit of comparable moral significance.

If the reasons are really balanced for and against commuting the sentence, then he (the judge) is not morally worse for commuting it. There must be some comparable good that commuting the sentence brings about or some comparable bad he is preventing.

It goes without saying that by commuting the sentence the judge is preventing the subject from dying at the appointed time (a good) and he is failing to prevent the subject from dying at a later time (a bad). But once we consider all of the relevant goods and bads, the judge will be benefitting the individual overall by commuting the sentence. So the principle is consistent with him not being made worse.