Comparing harms: Headaches and human lives

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 135-167

  Norcross, Alastair ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0012286960     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.1997.tb00079.x     Document Type: Review

References (36)

1. Of course, it is one thing to claim that such a deontological restriction exists, it is quite another to argue for its existence. For an attempt to do the latter, see Judith Thomson, The Realm of Rights (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), Chap. 6.
2. For an argument that Thomson's approach does not succeed, see Alastair Norcross, "Rights Violations and Distributive Constraints: Three Scenarios," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (June 1995): 159-67.
3. This assumes that agent-neutrality is an essential feature of consequentialism. This is widely accepted. However, I do not wish to go into the question of whether there could be a theory that endorsed agent-relativity and is still distinctively consequentialist in nature. This article is addressed to all those consequentialists, which may be all the consequentialists there are, who endorse agent-neutrality.
4. It is not clear what kind of possibility is required to satisfy those who find life for headaches so counterintuitive. Some may be content with nomological possibility, others may demand metaphysical possibility. For the purposes of this article, it does not matter.
5. Some philosophers equate incomparability with rough equality. This may involve a conflation of the notions of incomparability and of vagueness. I believe it avoids confusion to use a notion of incomparability that excludes rough equality as well as equality.
6. See, for example, Alastair Norcross, "Should Utilitarianism Accommodate Moral Dilemmas?" Philosophical Studies 79, no. 1 (July 1995): 59-85.
7. Philosophical Studies 59 (1990): 79-90.
8. For similar, steplike, arguments against vague objects, see Mark Heller, "Against Metphysical Vagueness," Philosophical Perspectives 10, Metaphysics (1996),
9. and Roy Sorensen, "A Thousand Clones," Mind 103 (1994).
10. Larry S. Temkin, "A Continuum Argument for Intransitivity," Philosophy & Public Affairs 25, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 175-210.
11. All page references in the text are to this article, unless otherwise stated. Temkin offers a different argument for intransitivity, based on what he calls the 'Person-Affecting Principle,' in "Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox," Philosophy & Public Affairs 16, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 138-87.
12. discuss this argument in my "Intransitivity and the Person-Affecting Principle," American Philosophical Association annual meeting, Central Division in Pittsburgh, May 1997.
13. Rachels's version of the example appears in "Reconceiving 'Better Than,'" American Philosophical Association annual meeting, Pacific Division in San Francisco, April 1995,
14. and "Counterexamples to the Transitivity of 'Better Than,'" Australasian Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming.
15. Actually, if the sequence contains lives corresponding to all the letters A through Y, X's hangnail would last for more than 16 million years, and Y's for more than 32 million years.
16. Thus, we would not insist on an infinitely divisible continuum for claim 2, or on the less intense experience of claim 1 being twice as long, as opposed to even longer. Temkin makes these points himself: More to the point, for any imaginable unpleasant experience, we can imagine another that would be noticeably better, but still sufficiently bad that we would prefer the former to twice (or three or five times) as much of the latter. This suggests that even if, phenomenologically, there isn't a smooth continuum, there is still a discontinuous spectrum of possible experiences ranging from A to Y that is sufficient for my purposes. (183-84)
17. The two years of torture have no effect on the rest of A. There are no painful memories afterwards, and no dreaded anticipation beforehand. Likewise, the hangnail pain remains constant throughout Y. It does not "eventually have the effect of the so-called Chinese water torture - where a steady drip of water ultimately drives one crazy" (181). But neither does one become used to it, so that eventually an extra day, or year, or even million years makes no difference. If that were the case, it would not be clear that Y was worse than X.
18. The steps must be equal in the proportionate sense. In the sense in which the step from 5 to 10 is equal to the step from 10 to 20, not to the step from 10 to 15. Call the sense in which the step from 5 to 10 is equal to the step from 10 to 15 additive equality.
19. Here we have the first problem with the analogy. It is not clear what, in the color case, would correspond to the difference between proportionate and additive equality in the pain case. If anything, Temkin's twelve steps across the color spectrum seem to be equal in the additive sense, but he needs them to be equal in the proportionate sense.
20. Temkin also tries a variation of his example, that envisages a cardinal ranking of pains from 1 (mildly annoying hangnail) to 100 (excruciating torture). On this scale, a moderately uncomfortable limp is 11. If we start with two days of excruciating torture, and move in steps that decrease the intensity of the pain by 20 percent but double its duration, we reach 5.6 years of a moderately uncomfortable limp in ten steps. Temkin claims that, other things being equal (the torture leaves no memories, the limp has no side-effects, etc.), two days of torture is worse than 5.6 years of the limp. Even if I agreed with that judgment, I would find the argument unconvincing. On Temkin's scale, excruciating torture is fractionally more than nine times worse than a moderately uncomfortable limp. I have had a moderately uncomfortable limp, when I was recovering from torn ankle ligaments. In my judgment, the pain of the freshly torn ligaments was far more than nine times as bad as the limp. Furthermore, as I stated above, I am quite sure that an experienced torturer could make me experience pain many times worse than the pain of freshly torn ligaments.
21. "Unless it is metaphysically impossible for the pain and color modalities to be analogous in the way suggested, there are some possible creatures for whom my argument would work - even if it does not, in fact, work for us. This is all one needs to undermine the claim that 'all things considered better than' must be transitive" (188).
22. Temkin seems to endorse this explanation on p. 194.
23. Perhaps Temkin could respond to my example of YME by altering his example, so that all the lives A . . . Y are not worth living. Rachels's version of the example (the most recent version that I have seen) has this structure. Such a move has other difficulties, though, that I do not have the space to explore here.
24. A life is worse than any amount of hangnail pain, just in case it contains some duration of some pain such that, any life containing that duration of that pain is worse than any life of equal length that is just like it, except that, instead of that pain, it contains some duration of mildly annoying hangnail pain.
25. Suppose that having the property of being worse than any amount of hangnail pain were a purely relational feature of A. In that case, the explanation that A is worse than Y because A is worse than any amount of hangnail pain has the same explanatory force as the claim that A is worse than Y because A is worse than X or Y or Z. Another reason to construe the property of being worse than any amount of hangnail pain as intrinsic, is so that claim 4, which employs this property, does not have the appearance of presupposing transitivity.
26. Furthermore, A for Bart is just like A for Lisa, and likewise with HL. For more details on this specification, see the following note.
27. This specification is important in order to construct a pair of lives to which claim 3 is supposed to apply. Bart's hangnail life is supposed to be just like Lisa's bliss, with the addition of the hangnail pain. Since the choice between B and HL is the choice between 10,000 years of bliss and 10,900 years just like bliss with the addition of hangnail pain, if Bart's experience of bliss would not have been like Lisa's, his hangnail experience would not have been just like her bliss with the addition of hangnail pain. 22. It might be objected that we can construct a pair of clearly unequal composite lives out of choices just like the ones in my example. Suppose that Bart and Lisa are each indifferent between studying the violin and studying the clarinet in college. Bart chooses the violin and Lisa chooses the clarinet. At the end of college, they are both presented with the choice between continuing their studies at Conservatory A or Conservatory B. They are both (rationally) indifferent between the two conservatories. Bart chooses A and Lisa chooses B. It does not follow that Bart's experience of studying the violin in college and in Conservatory A is neither better nor worse than Lisa's of studying the clarinet in college and in Conservatory B. Perhaps A and B are the two (equally) best places to study the clarinet and the two (equally) worst places to study the violin. In which case, Lisa's experience is probably better than Bart's. This example, though, runs foul of the 'other things being equal' clause in claim 3. In my example, Lisa's experience of bliss is just the same as Bart's would have been, had he chosen it. (See the previous note.) In the current example, Lisa's experience of studying the clarinet at B (one of the best places for that purpose) is clearly not the same as Bart's experience of studying the violin at B (one of the worst places for that purpose) would have been.
28. According to a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, "Some 64,000 Americans may die prematurely each year because of air pollution" (Reuters: May 9, 1996).
29. There are those who react to what I say about the 50 mph speed limit by declaring that I have convinced them that it is wrong not to impose it. But what I say about the 50 mph speed limit can also be said about a 40 mph speed limit, or a 30 mph speed limit, or even about abolishing private automobiles altogether. Very few are hardy enough to follow their respect for life to such extremes.
30. The discussion that follows is similar, in some respects, to the more detailed discussions in Peter Unger's recent book, Living High and Letting Die (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). We are both concerned to identify factors that might account for different intuitive judgments on a pair of cases. Unger's cases involve allowing considerable harm to befall others at the benefit of increased convenience, or even just avoiding minor expense, of one. Unlike my examples, Unger's do not address the possibility of aggregating minor benefits to outweigh major harms. Unger is also more concerned than I am to identify psychological factors that influence differential judgments. One of his aims is to strip such factors of their force by exposing them. I only discuss factors that have at least an outside shot at being morally relevant. Our overall aims are similar, though. We both argue that the initial intuitive judgments about our cases are mistaken.
31. For an interesting discussion of this point, and others relevant to the current discussion, see Guido Calabresi, Ideals, Beliefs, Attitudes, and the Law (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985), Chap. 1.
32. For more on these questions, see Bonnie Steinbock and Alastair Norcross, eds., Killing and Letting Die (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994),
33. and Jonathan Bennett, The Act Itself (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
34. The moral significance of this distinction is often defended in the context of the Doctrine of Double Effect, according to which the distinction between evil that is an intended means to a good end and evil that is a foreseen side effect of achieving a good end is crucial.
35. For more on these questions, see, among others, Steinbock and Norcross, Killing and Letting Die, esp. Chaps. 6-9, 20, and Introduction to the 2nd ed.,
36. and Bennett, The Act Itself.