"My emissions make no difference": Climate change and the argument from inconsequentialism

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 229-248

  Sandberg, Joakim ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84874807879     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics201133326     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. The term is inspired by Ronald Sandler, "Ethical Theory and the Problem of Inconsequentialism: Why Environmental Ethicists Should be Virtue-Oriented Ethicists," Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (2010): 167-83.
2. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), chap. 3.
3. Christopher Kutz, Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 17.
4. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations," in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Richard B. Howarth, eds., Perspectives on Climate Change: Science, Economics, Politics, Ethics (Burlington: Emerald Group Publishing, 2005), p. 304.
5. This formulation is left vague by intention in order to be compatible with both consequentialist and non-consequentialist considerations-cf. Frank Jackson, "Group Morality," in Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan, and Jean Norman, eds., Metaphysics and Morality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 94-95.
6. Donald Regan, Utilitarianism and Co-operation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 13.
7. Kutz, Complicity, p. 3.
8. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," pp. 288-89.
9. Sinnott-Armstrong argues that we cannot trust any of our intuitions in this context and so the philosophical challenge is to find plausible moral principles to which we can appeal-see also Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, "Moral intuitionism and empirical psychology," in Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, eds., Metaethics after Moore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
10. But I wonder how one decides whether a given moral principle is plausible or not without consulting one's moral intuitions (for more on this point, see Joakim Sandberg and Niklas Juth, "Ethics and Intuitions: A Reply to Singer," The Journal of Ethics 15 [2011]: 2-9-26). Indeed, I show below that many of Sinnott-Armstrong's arguments appeal very directly to intuitions.
11. This figure is indeed defended by John Nolt, "How Harmful are the Average American's Greenhouse Gas Emissions?" Ethics, Policy and Environment 14 (2001): 3-10.
12. Michael Otsuka, "The Paradox of Group Beneficence," Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991): 132-49.
13. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 80.
14. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," p. 291.
15. Kristin Shrader-Frechette, "Parfit and Mistakes in Moral Mathematics," Ethics 98 (1987): 50-60.
16. For more on this, see Christian N. Jardine, "Calculating the Carbon Dioxide Emissions of Flights," report of the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment (2009).
17. Peter Singer, "Is Act-Utilitarianism Self-Defeating?" Philosophical Review 81 (1972): 94-104 (emphasis added).
18. See also Alvin Goldman, "Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility Approach," Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1999): 201-17.
19. Regan, Utilitarianism and Co-operation, p. 13.
20. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 67-68.
21. Regan, Utilitarianism and Co-operation, pp. 14-16.
22. Adapted from Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 81.
23. For similar arguments see Jackson, "Group Morality
24. Torbjörn Tännsjö, "The Morality of Collective Actions," Philosophical Quarterly 39 (1989): 221-28.
25. See, e.g., James Garvey, The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World (London and New York: Continuum, 2008).
26. Jonathan Glover, "It Makes no Difference Whether or Not I do It," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 49 (1975): 171-90.
27. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
28. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," pp. 294-95.
29. See also Kutz, Complicity, pp. 132-37, 176;
30. Sandler, "Ethical Theory and the Problem of Inconsequentialism, " pp. 173-75.
31. For more on this point, see Baylor L. Johnson, "Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons," Environmental Values 12 (2003): 271-87.
32. The classic formulation of this argument is David Lyons, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
33. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 70.
34. Garrett Cullity, "Pooled Beneficence," in Michael J. Almeida, Imperceptible Harms and Benefits (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 6.
35. For a similar argument see Björn Petersson, "The Second Mistake in Moral Mathematics is Not about the Worth of Mere Participation," Utilitas 16 (2004): 288-315.
36. Kutz, Complicity, pp. 184-91.
37. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 71-72.
38. This point is acknowledged in a later paper, Derek Parfit, "Comments," Ethics 96 (1986): 832-72.
39. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," p. 298.
40. This view has also been defended by Jackson, "Group Morality
41. Tännsjö, "The Morality of Collective Actions.
42. For a more in-depth treatment of this case, see Frank Jackson, "Which Effects?" in Jonathan Dancy, ed., Reading Parfit (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
43. The debate is sometimes formulated as one about "autonomous" collective responsibility-see, e.g., the special issue of Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30 (2006): 1-337.
44. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," pp. 297-98.
45. Regan, Utilitarianism and Co-operation, p. 43.
46. Jan Narveson, "Utilitarianism, Group Actions, and Coordination, or Must the Utilitarian be a Buridan's Ass?" Noûs 10 (1976): 173-94.
47. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," p. 292.
48. Johnson, "Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons," p. 276.
49. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," p. 304.
50. Johnson, "Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons," p. 284.
51. Dale Jamieson, "When Utilitarians Should Be Virtue Theorists," Utilitas 19 (2007): 160-83.
52. Sandler, "Ethical Theory and the Problem of Inconsequentialism.
53. Jamieson, "When Utilitarians Should be Virtue Theorists," p. 167.
54. Kutz, Complicity, pp. 184-91.
55. Sinnott-Armstrong, "It's Not My Fault," p. 295.
56. Johnson, "Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons," p. 283.
57. Interestingly this point is partially conceded by Jamieson, "When Utilitarians Should be Virtue Theorists," who admits that non-complacency often is a virtue.