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The Justification of Deontology The Justification of Deontology by Gaurav Alex Sinha A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Philosophy University of Toronto © Copyright by Gaurav Alex Sinha, 2011 The Justification of Deontology Gaurav Alex Sinha Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Department of Philosophy University of Toronto Agent-centered restrictions are widely accepted both in commonsense morality and across social and legal institutions, making it all the more striking that we have yet to ground them in a compelling theoretical rationale. This dissertation amounts to an effort to fill that gap by seeking out a new principled basis for justifying such constraints. I devote each of the first three chapters, respectively, to the three established deontological normative ethical theories: Rossian intuitionism, Kantianism, and Neo-Thomism. In each of these chapters, I lay out the relevant portion of the view’s deontological apparatus, analyzing it both for its plausibility as a whole and for its ability to justify constraints of the appropriate shape. After assessing and reJecting all three approaches, I devote the next two chapters to developing a new rationale for grounding constraints—one that avoids the pitfalls indicated in the prominent historical alternatives. Specifically, I anchor constraints in the distinction between the agent-neutral and agent-relative points of view, basing them in the widely accepted psychological fact of the natural independence of the personal point of view. ii Acknowledgments I started tinkering with the key ideas presented in this thesis a couple of years before I began writing it, but only after I received guidance from my committee was I able to put those ideas into context and fully understand them. While I wish very much for this proJect to contribute something of note to the body of normative ethical literature, I hope at the very least to have done Justice to my committee. I especially hope to have lived up to the standards and expectations of my supervisor, Tom Hurka. Were it not for his invaluable assistance, there is no question that the project would have failed before it even had a chance to succeed. This thesis would not exist but for his efforts to keep me on course. I am also deeply indebted to the other members of my committee, Wayne Sumner and Gopal Sreenivasan, for their thoughtful comments and their patient beneficence in the face of my countless inquiries, even (and especially) when they were confronted with far more pressing matters. Additionally, I am grateful for the helpful suggestions provided on numerous occasions by Chris Langston, Diego Silva, and Luke Gelinas. I am thankful to all three of them for their enthusiastic and unflinching willingness to discuss various elements of this proJect with me over the course of several long years. I also owe much to my mother, who encouraged me unconditionally, coaxing me past the various frustrations I encountered along the way. Lastly, but certainly not least, I cannot imagine completing this proJect at all iii without the boundless and ever-present support of Janani Umamaheswar, who was there every step of the way, never shrinking from the opportunity to help—whether I needed an interlocutor, an editor, or an anchor. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Intuitionism 5 1.1. Intuitionism in Historical Context 5 1.2. Ross-Style Pluralism: The Good 9 1.3. Ross-Style Pluralism: The Right 12 Chapter 2: Kantianism 37 2.1. Kant’s Theory of the Right 38 2.2. The Formula of Universal Law 41 2.3. The Formula of Humanity 62 2.4. The Formula of Autonomy and the Formula of 76 the Kingdom of Ends Chapter 3: Neo-Thomism 81 3.1. John Finnis’ Normative Ethical Theory 82 3.2. The Implications of Neo-Thomistic Deontology 89 Chapter 4: Tapping The Natural Independence of Human Agency 106 4.1. Background 107 4.2. Developing the New Approach 112 4.3. What Normative Features does Agent-Relativity 133 Yield? v 4.4. Frances Kamm’s “Patient-Centered” Justification 157 For Constraints Chapter 5: The Viability and Merits of Agent-Centered Deontology 160 5.1. The Paradox of Deontology 160 5.2. A Reply to Samuel Scheffler 170 5.3. Shelly Kagan’s Skepticism 185 5.4. The Promise of the New Approach 190 5.5. Intuitionism, Kantianism and Neo-Thomism 196 Revisited Works Cited 202 vi Introduction “Individuals have rights,” Robert Nozick famously declared, “and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).” This line frames the starting point of Nozick’s magnum opus, Anarchy, State and Utopia; it is the first sentence of Nozick’s memorable preface, and it is noteworthy not for its originality but rather for the moral commonplace it expresses. Rights populate our world, both in moral and legal form. We speak of them with facility and remarkable certainty. We assume them; we invoke them; and most of all, we take them for granted. Indeed, only in such a world could Nozick begin a book with this line and offer a subsequent argument that is anything but a vanity exercise. His proJect requires that almost no one find his premise fanciful. Of course, common acceptance of an idea does not guarantee its veracity. We may be mistaken about the existence of moral rights, and we may be mistaken about the shape of the legal rights that we bestow upon ourselves. But appropriately or not, we have adopted Nozick’s assumption and put it into practice. Our intuitions and our laws carve out a space around agents, granting them the liberty to make a variety of choices about how to act and guaranteeing them freedom from various forms of interference as they pursue their goals. We find broad support for these options and constraints even in cases (or because of cases) where they interfere with the production of impersonally optimal 1 2 states of affairs. In short, we have institutionalized deontology. Unfortunately, it is far from obvious that deontology is “true.” It is not clear, in other words, that any deontological system accurately captures our obJective moral duties, assuming we have any at all. But I think that we do have such duties, and we can proceed from the knowledge that the intuitive and institutional abandonment of deontology are not forthcoming. Given our reliance on deontological devices, it would be helpful to have a deontology that we can believe in. The purpose behind the pages that follow is to seek out Just such a system. The institutional canonization of options and constraints, central as they are to the moral regulation of interpersonal interaction, offers its own independent rationale for pursuing the rational basis of these deontological devices. We might never know that deontology is “true” in the same way that we can verify the atomic weight of gold, but understanding our prospects for giving a rational account of our moral intuitions is worth nearly as much. At minimum, properly assessing the basis of options and constraints requires an evaluation of the most prominent deontological systems—namely Intuitionism, Kantianism and Neo-Thomism. I will describe and assess each of these three maJor deontological proposals, in this order across the first three chapters, with an eye toward their plausibility and intuitive fit. All three of these systems suffer from a variety of deficiencies, and my evaluation of these maJor approaches will lead me to conclude that none are satisfactory. (I leave aside indirect consequentialism entirely, even though in some forms it may be coextensive with deontology for practical purposes. My reason is that the intuitive support for deontology extends beyond such practical purposes to the theoretical justification that lies in the background, and those intuitions do not appeal, at 3 bottom, purely to consequences.) I will proceed in Chapters 4 and 5 to develop the beginnings of deontological account that I suggest is superior to the alternatives. I will use these chapters to argue that the intuitive appeal of options and constraints is not illusory or irrational, for that appeal issues directly from a particular fact about our psychological constitution. I will claim that this fact, which I follow Samuel Scheffler in calling the “natural independence of the personal point of view,” is of normative significance: it warrants some degree of recognition in a well-formed theory of the right. I will suggest that normatively adequate reflection of the natural independence of the personal point of view Justifies both options and constraints. After illustrating this new account of the Justification behind options and constraints, I will turn to a discussion of how both devices serve crucial roles in reflecting the natural independence of the personal point of view, and in particular, how constraints overcome the conventional challenges they are thought to encounter in doing so. I will also advocate for an adJustment in our terminology regarding these devices, pushing for the introduction of the term “imposition” to serve as the obverse of “options” and the term “protections” to serve as the obverse of “constraints.” Finally, I will close by elaborating on the advantages I see in an account of constraints that possesses a structure of the sort I have in mind. My aim, in sum, is twofold: first, to defend commonsense morality by arguing that the sense that commonly lies behind it has moral significance that ought not to be ignored; and second, to establish that commonsense morality can, and does, coherently place a premium on the normative ethical device we refer to as “constraints.” I view the success of 4 some such proJect as essential to Justifying (properly, at any rate) a wide range of claim and liberty rights—most directly moral ones, but legal ones as well.
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