Means and Ends

Consider this  principle proposed by Judith Jarvis Thomson in The Realm of Rights.  

The Sole-Means Principle for Permissibility: If the only means X has of doing Beta is doing Alpha , then it would be permissible for X to do beta if and only if it would permissible for X to do alpha.  

If the Sole Means Principle (SMP)  is correct there are  far reaching consequences and Thomson does not hesitate to use it to draw large scale conclusions about rights and morality.

Here is one of her examples.   You are standing on your  property and observe that Smith is about to walk on your newly sown lawn.   Would it be permissible for you to tell  him to stop?  Indeed,  to yell loudly at him , "Stop!", if that's what it  would take to get him to stop?   You might think so.  It is your lawn after all.  You have property rights and isn't it always permissible to enforce your rights?   Shouldn't we agree that:  

(r )  If A has a claim that B not φ  then it is permissible for A to prevent B from φ -ing.  

"No", says Thomson.  Suppose that we change the story.  Suppose there is someone else, Jones, in the picture.   Jones is standing, not on your property, but nearby at the edge of a cliff.  As before,  Smith is about to trample your grass  and the only way you can prevent him from doing so is to yell, "Stop!".  The thing is, Jones is so skittish that if you yell,  Jones will jump.  And if Jones  jumps he will tumble down the cliff to his death.  And suppose (somehow) you know all this.   

In that case it is clearly impermissible for you to yell "Stop!".  You would be killing poor innocent Jones.  But given that yelling is the only means available to you to prevent Smith from walking on your lawn  it follows from SMP that it is, in this case, impermissible for you to enforce your claim.   Thus, Thomson concludes,  (r) is false.  

Now I think (r) is true.  It is a core claim of Retributive Ethics.   But I agree that in this case it would be impermissible for you to yell "Stop" because that would kill Jones.  So I agree that, in this situation, you have no  morally permissible means available to you for preventing Smith from walking on the grass.   But I  think, nevertheless that it is permissible for you to prevent Smith from walking on the grass.  You have a morally permissible end, but no permissible means to achieve it. I reject SMP.  

So let me give you seven (7)  arguments that SMP is wrong.  

1. Why should having no permissible means to do  Beta, make it impermissible to do Beta?  After all it seems there are plenty of things are permissible even though you  have no means at all to do them.   For example: Surely it would be permissible for you, right now, to eat a sandwich.  A plain ordinary sandwich.  Ham, say.  What could be wrong with that?  But here's the rub.  Your cupboard is bare.  You have no means of making a sandwich,  permissible or not.   

It is impossible for you, in these  circumstances to eat a sandwich. Does that make it impermissible?   If not, then how would the existence of an impermissible means for you to get a sandwich make your sandwich eating  impermissible?  For notice that is what SMP implies.  

Probably your neighbor has something in the fridge.  If you snuck next door, broke in, and stole his groceries , you could have yourself a  sandwich.  So you do have a means of eating a sandwich after all!  Now, of course, you would never dream of using these means because you recognize they are morally impermissible.   Nevertheless given that burglary is your sole means for procuring a sandwich it turns out, according to SMP, that it is now  impermissible, in your circumstances, for you to eat a sandwich.   Who knew?   

How did the advent of this impermissible means  to this end render the end impermissible?  

2. Or was it that the sandwich eating was already impermissible when  you had no means at all to get a sandwich?   Should we say then  that it is only permissible to do beta if you actually have  a means--  a permissible means--  to do beta?   In which case, it is impermissible for you to do anything that you don’t have the means to do?

That doesn't sound right.  I don't think President Obama has the means to bring about peace in the middle east.  Must I therefore say it is impermissible for Obama to bring peace to the middle east?  

Should I, myself, take pride that I am not ending world hunger or curing cancer? After all, I’m only doing what I ought.  

3. Here is A throwing a fat man in in front of a trolley for cruel sport.  This, we all agree,  is impermissible behavior.  In contrast, here is B, also throwing a fat man in front  of a trolley, but B is doing it because it is the only means available to him to save the lives of five other people.    Many people think this is just as impermissible: that what B is doing is just as bad as what A is doing.  But it if they accept SMP it seems that they should say that, in fact, what B is doing is worse.  After all, B is doing more impermissible things that A, viz.  He is saving those five people, which, according to SMP, is,  in these circumstances, impermissible.   

4. That seems an odd thing to say.  Which leads to a broader question of why we bother calling actions “permissible” and  “ impermissible” anyway.  One reason surely is to give people-- people who want to do the right thing-- reasons for acting one way rather than another.  

So here is a mad doctor.   He knows five people who need transplants and is considering killing a healthy passerby to harvest his organs and save the five.  This is the only available means to save their lives. He asks you what to do.  If you think this is impermissible and if you accept SMP then you must think that the saving of these five people is in these circumstances,  impermissible. 

So, would you cite the impermissibility of saving  those lives if you were trying to talk the doctor out of it?  I doubt it.  I suspect that you think the saving of lives, if anything,  counts in favor of killing the one, not against it.

But,  why do  you think that if, in these circumstances, the saving  and the killing are both impermissible?

5. Suppose the Mad doctor goes ahead and kills the innocent passerby.  You arrive on the scene too late to prevent him.  But now the mad doctor says, "Look, I'm sorry I killed this guy.  I agree, that was impermissible.  But why don't you let me transplant his organs before you cart me off to jail.  After all  he's already dead and it will save lives."  

Presumably, if you accept SMP you won't allow this.  After all you must think that the Doctor’s saving lives by transplant is itself impermissible because  his only means to it was murder.  And how could the guy's being dead make the impermissibility of the transplanting go away? 

But stopping the Doctor at this point seems a moral mistake.

6. Consider the following dialog:

ABLE

I'm fed up with, Charlie!  Next time I see him I'm going to club him with a baseball bat.

BAKER

You can't do that! It would kill him!

ABLE

Exactly!

BAKER

But killing is impermissible!

ABLE

I see.

BAKER

Thank goodness!

ABLE

Well then...how about if  I use a gun?

BAKER

No!

ABLE

Poison?

One is inclined to think that Able just hasn't got the hang of this moral reasoning thing.   Generally, unless one is in some sort of moral dilemma, when you discover that something you want to do is morally impermissible you should stop thinking about ways to do it.  Other things being equal, the fact that something is morally impermissible is  a  conclusive reason  for the moral person not to do it.  

But not if that person accepts SMP.  Applying that principle you may find something morally impermissible simply because you see no permissible method of accomplishing it.  Discovering another, permissible means to your end would reveal that the end was permissible after all.   In that case it would make sense, like Able, to keep looking.    

7. Someone who accepts SMP will think more things are impermissible than someone who rejects it.  So you would think that whether or not one accepts SMP would make a difference to how one behaves.  But does it?  

Call the things that are wrong to do only because the only means to do them are impermissible, "SMP-wrong".  Suppose that A and B agree about the non-SMP-wrong things, but that A accepts SMP but B does not.  Question: Assuming they only do what they think is permissible, what will they do differently.  Answer: nothing.  That is because if you avoid doing things that are impermissible to do  you also, automatically avoid doing things that can only be accomplished by doing impermissible things.   

So SMP is a normatively  empty principle:  whether you include it or it’s negation as part of your moral theory  will make no difference  to what you recommend anyone should do on any given occasion.  

Now this last point might be turned back at me.  Since SMP makes no difference to what  anyone should or shouldn't do  on any given occasion why do bother disputing it?  What is the point of saying that it is permissible for someone to do something, if there is no permissible way for them to do it?  

My answer is that I think rejecting SMP is essential to understanding the place of rights in moral theorizing.  

If there are moral rights they must at least sometimes connect with what it is morally permissible.  And they do.   Return to our original example.  It is not generally permissible to yell "Stop!" at passing strangers.   But it was permissible for you to yell at Smith because he was about to trespass on your property.  Your property right gives you a claim that others not walk on your lawn  without asking and the claim makes it morally permissible for  you to take steps to prevent them from doing so.   

If you lacked the means to  stop Smith -- if, say, you suddenly got laryngitis and couldn't yell-- your claim would not go away.  Because you lack the physical means to stop the trespass doesn't mean it that it is morally impermissible for you to do so.  Likewise that you lack any morally permissible means to  prevent the trespass does not mean that it is morally impermissible for you to do so.  

What we can physically do and what we may permissibly do  on any given occasion  are mostly dependent on the detailed and extensive non-moral facts about our circumstances.  Our moral rights are not so changeable.   If, as SMP would require,  we judge the permissibility of our ends by the arbitrarily shifting and fragile  permissibility of our means we will never be able to recognize enduring and stable moral facts embodied in principles like ( r).

Comments

[Clayton Littlejohn]

I think Thomson has a reply to the first argument against SMP. You ask, "Why should having no permissible means to do Beta, make it impermissible to do Beta?" Suppose that the impossibility of eating a sandwich doesn't make eating the sandwich impermissible (although, not the worst bullet to bite). Can't Thomson say that if someone can't A, then it's not permissible for them to A and not impermissible for them to A? Why can't she say that whether A-ing is obligatory, permissible, or forbidden depends upon whether it can be done? I don't see the entailment from 'It is not permissible for S to A' to 'It is impermissible for S to A' as trivial. I think a similar response could work for the second argument against SMP.

Similarly, with argument 3 I think the distinction between impermissible and not permissible could be helpful. Now, there's a new element to that one. You write, "After all, B is doing more impermissible things that A, viz. He is saving those five people, which, according to SMP, is, in these circumstances, impermissible." I guess I don't find it counterintuitive to say, "In these circumstances, it is impermissible to save the five". It's harder to see how that comes out true without SMP. Saving five is, typically, the sort of thing you should do. The force of the point, however, is supposed to be that it's odd to think that B is doing more impermissible things than A. I think that _is_ counterintuitive, but probably because our intuitions about who is doing more impermissible things depends upon a way of counting actions on which it would be false to say that B is doing more impermissible things. It would be strange to say that B is engaged in more distinct/discreet actions that are impermissible than A. Indeed, that would be false. Both just pushed.

I think argument 4 is confusing pragmatics and semantics.

I think argument 5 can be dealt with by indexing to times and conditional obligation. Prior to their murder, it would have been wrong to distribute the organs. Post murder, it's not wrong--the distribution at that point doesn't involve murdering.

[tomkow]

Clayton. Thanks for your comment.

With respect to 1 you suggest that we say that if there are no means available to do something that renders doing it neither permissible or impermissible. It seems to me that this leaves my point untouched.

You are going to owe us an account of how it is that the advent of means for bringing about beta somehow turns it from a-- what?-- "value-valueless" option to something that is either impermissible or permissible.

Then too you need to explain why some things turn permissible when means are provided to do them and some things turn impermissible.

Thus here are two things I can't do right now (i) banish world hunger and (ii) kill everyone in Latvia. So, as you say, neither of these is permissible or impermissible. But given an otherwise innocent means to do either, (i) will turn permissible and (ii) will not. So there must be some difference between (i) and (ii) even now, when they are value-valueless. So maybe we should say that even when you can't do it (i) is-- say-- potentially permissible, but not (ii)?

But now having taken this, it seems to me, profitless excursion, the question becomes why should we say that the advent of an impermissible means to eat a sandwich, turns a value-valueless sandwich eating into something impermissible (as SMP would entail) rather than just failing to activate its potential permissibility. And , as before, the onus of proof is on the advocate of SMP to explain why permissibility flickers in and out in this way. After all the moral facts that would make (i) permissible and (ii) impermissible if you could do them, do not go away when you can't do them.

In respect to (3). I agree we can say that "in these circumstances it is impermissible to save the five". I understand that to say, correctly, that there is no permissible way to save them. Or if you like, that there is no way to save them without having done something impermissible. But SMP would require me to say something more. It requires me to say that both throwing the fat man and saving the five are impermissible. That seems to me very odd. There is a difference between throwing a fat man in front of a trolley as a means saving a life and throwing a fat man under a trolley as means to throwing a fat woman in front of a trolley. The difference I would say has to do with permissibility of the end. SMP doesn't seem to allow me to say that.

With respect to (5) you want to say that it is impermissible to save the lives right up till the moment at which the involuntary donor is killed, then it becomes permissible. But, as I asked in my post, how could the guy's dying render the impermissible thing permissible? Suppose A want's to harvest the organs to save lives and B wants to harvest them to feed unwitting customers at his restaurant. When A kills his end suddenly becomes permissible, not so B's. So there must be something about A's impermissible end which is different from B's impermissible end. If not permissibility, what? "Potential permissibility" again? And how can I tell what might not turn permissible once I take the impermissible steps towards it?

All of these moves seem to me wheels that turn no machinery.

And remember none of this makes any difference to what we recommend anyone actually do on any given occasion. All that is really at stake here is Thomson's method of arguing against principles like (r). I do not see why that powerful generalization should be sacrificed on the alter of SMP.

[Clayton Littlejohn]

"With respect to 1 you suggest that we say that if there are no means available to do something that renders doing it neither permissible or impermissible. It seems to me that this leaves my point untouched.

You are going to owe us an account of how it is that the advent of means for bringing about beta somehow turns it from a-- what?-- "value-valueless" option to something that is either impermissible or permissible."

I don't think it's non-standard for people to say that it is only options that are properly understood as having deontic status and that only things that can be done count as options. So, suppose in w1 it's physically impossible for someone to A and in w2 it is easy for an agent to A. It's not as if A-ing is an option in w1 that is impossible to exercise and w2 is an option that is possible to exercise, it is an option in only one of these worlds. Your comment above suggests that you aren't taking issue with the idea that only options can have deontic status, does our disagreement really turn on whether something is an option only if it can be done?

"But now having taken this, it seems to me, profitless excursion, the question becomes why should we say that the advent of an impermissible means to eat a sandwich, turns a value-valueless sandwich eating into something impermissible (as SMP would entail) rather than just failing to activate its potential permissibility. And , as before, the onus of proof is on the advocate of SMP to explain why permissibility flickers in and out in this way. After all the moral facts that would make (i) permissible and (ii) impermissible if you could do them, do not go away when you can't do them."

Didn't you just give the explanation? If we 'go' from a situation where a certain seemingly innocuous action can't be performed to a situation where it can be performed only if some wrong is commissioned, it is impermissible to eat the sandwich because the only way that can be done is engaging in wrongdoing. That looks like a good explanation, it looks like the explanation you give when you explain why it's wrong to save the five when the means by which you do it is pushing the fat man in front of the train.

"In respect to (3). I agree we can say that "in these circumstances it is impermissible to save the five". I understand that to say, correctly, that there is no permissible way to save them. Or if you like, that there is no way to save them without having done something impermissible. But SMP would require me to say something more. It requires me to say that both throwing the fat man and saving the five are impermissible. That seems to me very odd. There is a difference between throwing a fat man in front of a trolley as a means saving a life and throwing a fat man under a trolley as means to throwing a fat woman in front of a trolley. The difference I would say has to do with permissibility of the end. SMP doesn't seem to allow me to say that."

I don't follow. You say:
(i) It is impermissible to save the five.
(ii) SMP is problematic because it requires us to say both throwing the fat man and saving the five are impermissible.

If SMP requires you to say that saving the five are impermissible, it requires you to say something true. That's not the problem. Is the problem that SMP requires you to say that pushing the fat man in front of the train is impermissible. That's not the problem, that's just SMP requiring you to say something true. So the problem, I guess, is that SMP requires you to say two things that are true? Or is the problem really that it says that both things are impermissible when you just want to say that both are impermissible?

"There is a difference between throwing a fat man in front of a trolley as a means saving a life and throwing a fat man under a trolley as means to throwing a fat woman in front of a trolley. The difference I would say has to do with permissibility of the end. SMP doesn't seem to allow me to say that."

Agreed, but I don't see why someone who accepts SMP can't say this. The end of saving five is not permissibly pursued in the circumstances described, but it is permissibly pursued in different circumstances. The end of throwing a fat woman under a train isn't like that. That's the difference and nothing I've said requires denying SMP.

"But, as I asked in my post, how could the guy's dying render the impermissible thing permissible?"

Before he was dead, taking the organs requires murdering him. After he's dead, it doesn't. Suppose we had a division of labor. There's a killer and there's an organ distributor. Maybe both act wrongfully (if the victim didn't give permission to have the organs distributed), but I'd say that the killer's wrong is worse. If, however, the victim was a registered organ donor, we've hit upon our explanation as to why organ distribution becomes permissible post mortem.

"And remember none of this makes any difference to what we recommend anyone actually do on any given occasion."

I don't see that that's true or that it's a big deal if it is. I thought you were trying to show that Thomson's principle was false, not that it failed to alter our practice of advice giving in a way that is beneficial. I do think that Thomson's principle, however, can have a positive impact on how we give advice. Someone who says that it's okay to A in circumstances where A-ing leads to B-ing and B-ing is worse than A-ing is giving bad advice and the neat explanation as to why this is is contained in SMP.