[I defend pacifism in this paper against considerations of desert. This is only a partial defense of what I take to be a prima facie plausible pacifist view.]
The pacifist view I defend entails the following:
Pacifist View It is never morally impermissible to harm a person, on grounds of desert or otherwise, unless harming the person is consistent with that person’s long-term health and is not intrinsically wrong-making.
My argument for the pacifist view takes aim at considerations of desert. In the minds of many philosophers, an individual who freely commits moral wrongdoing brings about that she deserves punishment. Moreover, the fact that she deserves punishment entails that the appropriate punishment done to her (if indeed the punisher punishes because of the moral wrongdoing) is morally permissible. We will call this view the "desert view”:
Desert View On grounds of desert, it is (at least sometimes) morally permissible to harm a person[1].
The desert view attempts to render the pacifist view false by demonstrating that its modal claim is too strong. That is, the pacifist view claims that intentional harm to persons is necessarily morally impermissible, yet the desert view claims this is not always (and thus decisively not necessarily) the case. Thus, the pacifist view and the desert view are incompatible theses since they differ on key modal claims of permissibility.
I think it should be clear why considerations of desert are incredibly relevant to questions surrounding the permissibility of intentional harm. When it comes to intentionally harming a particular person, there are strong intuitions to suggest that the entity in question needs to be guilty of something – that is, in receiving harm, the entity in question is receiving harm because she did something morally wrong.[2] Note carefully the word “needs.” Suppose an agent has performed no moral wrongdoing (that is, she is innocent) but is nonetheless subjected to much intentional harm. On ordinary readings of the word “innocent,” this agent is such that she has not (freely) acted in any way such that she is the proper recipient of harm. She has done nothing to justify any harm done to her. In a word, she does not deserve it.
Some philosophers are inclined to think that even innocent agents can be permissibly punished. At least sometimes, this is argued on the grounds that an agent’s innocence is overridden or outweighed by other, higher moral considerations. One such example is general welfare. If in order to save the citizens of the United States I must intentionally harm – by torture, let us suppose – a particular innocent citizen (that is, a citizen whose actions, wherever they are temporally located, do not themselves justify such torture), then it is permissible for me to do so. It seems to me that such positions are ultimately misguided in virtue of a host of counterexamples, all of which (at least in my estimation) suggest that extrinsic considerations of this sort do not entail permissible action. Consider the example of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we will suppose was morally perfect. The crucifixion and overall torture of Jesus, even if it were necessary to save the whole of humanity, strikes me as a far cry from being permissible. Likewise, raping an innocent woman for the purpose of satisfying a cruel serial killer who holds your family hostage is impermissible. As I see it, intentionally harming innocent persons is intrinsically and without exception morally impermissible. No doubt some will disagree with this position. Although I am willing (and able) to argue for this position, I will not do so here. Suffice it to say, if efforts to show that it is permissible to harm innocent persons fail, then it seems plausible to suppose the only alternative to ground the permissibility of intentionally harming such entities consists of desert. It is to desert, then, that I presently turn my attention.
It will be helpful to qualify the desert view in order properly to evaluate it. As it stands above, the desert view merely commits itself to the somewhat vague position that the condition of desert is sufficient for permissibly harming to a person. But in fact, the desert view and its defenders are advocating something far more specific. The following is one such articulation:
Desert View For some agent S, action a, time t, and person R, S freely and permissibly brings about intentional harm to R via a at t if (i) R has done something to deserve a at t, (ii) S believes this and on this basis performs a to R at t, and (iii) the fact that R has done something to deserve a at t is itself sufficient to justify the permissibility of a to R at t.
This needs some explanation and defense. First, we are concerned only with those agents who freely bring about intentional harm. Agents who do so unfreely might be doing something wrong, but this says nothing about whether or not they did something for which they are blameworthy (or praiseworthy), since (after all) either their causal powers were not exercised (perhaps they were simply bumped by a car and inadvertently slapped a pedestrian), or because they were not aware of what they were doing (perhaps they were forced into a hypnotic state and then forced to slap someone), or the like.
Second, we are concerned with agents whose actions – again, wherever they are temporally located[3] – are such that they were impermissibly done by the agent in question, in such a way that those actions entail and ground the permissibility of punishment. Again, we do not want to punish innocent agents, or agents whose actions are not such that they entail and ground the permissibility of punishment. For example, we do not want to punish innocent persons precisely because they are innocent and consequently have done nothing for which we can justifiably punish them. Additionally, agents whose actions were impermissibly done by them yet have no bearing on the current punishment (perhaps because they are unrelated, or because the actions in question have already been forgiven, atoned for, or punished) are not justifiably the subjects of intentional harm. A man who murdered his father yet is intentionally harmed for his honest day’s work is not justifiably punished, since the punishment is not done for the right reason. And it is because of this reason that the agent who performs a to R at t needs to know why she is a-ing. If S intentionally harms R without knowing that R has done something wrong, then S intentionally harms R on grounds other than desert. According to the desert view, this is impermissible, and it is not difficult to see why. Intentionally bringing about harm to an agent who, as far as I know, does not deserve to be intentionally harmed, seems morally problematic for me insofar as there is no clear alternative ground for justification[4].
Third, the desert view suggests not only that the actions of R are necessary to justify S intentionally harming R, but are also sufficient. Initially, condition (iii) seems problematic since it claims to be uniquely sufficient to justify intentional harm, but then conditions (i) and (ii) seem either necessary (in which case (iii) is not itself sufficient) or unneeded. But this is not problematic for (iii) since (i) and (ii) are not necessary conditions. they are merely descriptive of the view. For our purposes, we will keep (i) and (ii) in mind although focus our attention on (iii). According to (iii), the mere fact that R has done something wrong is sufficient for me to intentionally harm her. This seems present, for example, in our legal system and in some commonsense notions of justice. A criminal who has committed wrongdoing has made himself liable to harm, and the man who attacks me without provocation has acted in such a way that self-defense on my part (which we will suppose includes intentionally harming him) is now morally justified. In short, they have “done enough” to be intentionally harmed in a permissible fashion.
Everyone, or nearly everyone, has done something impermissible. Everyone, or nearly everyone, has lied, cheated, taken advantage of someone, and the like. For the sake of simplicity, we will suppose that intentional harm, being grounded in desert, is a case of retributive justice, and that retributive justice (or punishment) should be at least roughly proportional to the wrongdoing committed. Again, for the sake of simplicity, let us suppose that the collective wrongdoings of the average person (or perhaps the average wrongdoing of the average person) deserve a swift slap in the face. According to the desert view, and in particular condition (iii), it is permissible for me to go around giving swift slaps in the face to everyone, or almost everyone. But this is morally problematic. Consider the following argument, which I call the Argument from Moral History:
(1) For any agent S, act a, time t, and recipient R, where R is a person: If S freely brings about a to R at t, then if a is such that it is inconsistent with the immediate or long-term health of R at t, then S brings about a for R at t for either (y) reasons independent of R’s desert-property or (z) reasons dependent on R’s desert-property.
(2) If (y), then, necessarily, S's freely bringing about a to R at t is morally impermissible.
(3) If (z), then, necessarily, S's freely bringing about a to R at t is morally impermissible.
(4) Therefore, for any agent S, act a, time t, and recipient R, where R is a person: If S freely brings about a to R at t, then if a is such that it is inconsistent with the immediate or long-term health of R at t, then, necessarily, S's freely bringing about a to R at t is morally impermissible.
Recall that by “desert” I have in mind any property which is such that the instantiation of that property in a person is necessary to ground the permissibility of harming that person. Necessarily, if anyone harms a person for any reason at all, that reason is either such that it is altogether is irrelevant to the desert-property or is relevant to the victim’s desert-property. If it can be shown that neither of these sorts of reasons is sufficient to ground the permissibility of harming persons, then the desert view is false and the pacifist view is true.
Premise (1) is universal. It concerns every possible agent, every possible act, every possible time, and every possible recipient who is a person. It is also a conceptual truth: If S harms R freely, then S harms R intentionally and thus with some reason. That reason is either independent of R's desert-property, or it is not. If it is not, then it is dependent on R's desert-property. What does it mean to say that a reason is "dependent on" someone's desert-property? the dependence is not metaphysical, but rather cognitive: S bases his treatment of R on some feature(s) of R's desert-property. More precisely, S's reason for harming R depend on R's desert-property only if S believes that some morally relevant feature(s) F of R is such that, because of F, S chooses to bring harm to R. For instance, perhaps I decide to harm you because you (unjustly) killed someone, or perhaps I slap you in the face because you (unjustly) insulted my wife.
The next premise, (2), is that it is necessarily impermissible for S to harm R for reasons independent of R's desert-property. If S harms R for reasons independent of R's desert-property, then S harms R for reasons independent of what R is morally responsible for. But clearly, R should not be harmed for things for which she is not morally responsible. Consider a case in which there is a government conspiracy. Suppose the CIA assassinates the President of the United States and needs a scapegoat. the CIA, being incredibly resourceful, can make just about anyone seem to blame for anything. Thus, it is of relatively little consequence whom they select as the scapegoat. Almost randomly, they select an innocent person (call her Lacy) whom they will subsequently capture, torture, and kill, all for "shooting the president." Lacy is clearly not responsible for the death of the president, and for that reason it is impermissible to harm her as if she were. It is always wrong to harm innocent persons, and it is always wrong precisely because they are innocent. Furthermore, it is necessarily true that, if S harms R for reasons independent of R's desert-property, then S harms R for something R is not responsible for and, therefore, S is unjustified in harming R.[5] Judith Jarvis Thomson has proposed a counterexample to the truth of (2). Consider the following passage by Thomson:
...let us look at a second hypothetical case, which is like the first except in this respect: the driver is entirely without fault for what he is doing. How can that be, given that he is chasing you around the meadow in a truck, trying to run you down? Well, let's suppose some villain had just injected him with a drug that made him go temporarily crazy. It is not his fault that he is going to kill you if you do not blow up the truck, he is not villainously aggressing against you; but he is aggressing against you, and he will in fact kill you if you do not blow up the truck. Does morality permit you to blow up the truck? I think it does: I think self-defense permissible in this case - which I will call Innocent Aggressor - just as in the case I called villainous aggressor.[6]
Perhaps my intuitions simply differ from Thomson's here, but I (frankly) do not at all see that it is permissible for you to kill the innocent aggressor. In my view, this case constitutes a bona fide moral dilemma, one in which (as I suggested above) you are neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy. For moral agency requires moral freedom, and moral freedom requires that one be morally responsible; but clearly, one is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy in cases where one does not have the power to act morally. Put differently, in the terms of 'ought implies can,' someone is morally obligated by pacifist view only if that person is a moral agent - that is, has it within her power to act according to pacifist view. This reply might be pushed back against on the grounds that, in the absence of pacifist view being obligatory, acting inconsistently with pacifist view is morally permissible. But this would miss the point since pacifist view is obligatory only for agents, and a necessary condition for moral agency is moral freedom.
The third premise is also plausible. The only relevant moral criterion dependent on a person's desert-property is immediately relevant blameworthiness. That is, if I am able to justify harming a person, where my justification depends on the person's desert-property, then, since that person's history is necessarily limited to either morally permissible features and morally impermissible features, and since the former is not (as we have seen) grounds for justifying harm, the latter must be the only morally relevant criterion.
It might be replied that it is unclear what is wrong with the view which suggests that it is permissible for me to go around intentionally harming everyone, or almost everyone. After all, there is at least some reason to believe that desert does and should make a difference in how we treat others, including when considering whether someone should be punished. But this objection is problematic on several grounds. First, in this case, it seems we have no good reason to suppose that we need to know where the desert view has gone wrong in order to know that it has gone wrong. Second, if pressed, we might simply reply that the desert view is simply wrong about the entailment relation: Mere wrongdoing doesn’t entail that the wrongdoer is permissibly intentionally harmed any more than mere wrongdoing entails that the wrongdoer should receive $1,000. In my view, this is a decisive objection to the desert view as it stands. If the desert view is true, then it is morally permissible for me to intentionally harm almost everyone.[7] Since that’s false, so is the desert view. I will now attempt to modify the desert view in such a way that it escapes this objection.
Perhaps what is implausible about the desert view, as it stands, is that it entails that just anyone can permissibly inflict harm on almost everyone. In the minds of many, including many philosophers, one’s position with respect to the wrongdoer is significant when it comes to permissible action. For example, it seems impermissible for me to harm my boss’s husband on her behalf in virtue of the fact that his offense is not against me. It is, in a manner of speaking, morally inappropriate for me to confront him. To use another example, consider (again) our legal system. Plenty of people condemn vigilante justice. What we need in order to have any sensible and permissible system of punishments (and rewards) is to establish an authority figure whose job consists of the responsibility to punish (or reward) the members over which she governs. This is why certain members of the government, but not each and every citizen, are permitted, morally, to harm intentionally. Thus, we might modify the desert view as follows:
Desert View* For some agent S, action a, time t, and person R, S freely and permissibly brings about intentional harm to R via a at t if (i) R has done something to deserve a at t, (ii) S believes this and on this basis performs a to R at t, and (iii) the fact that R has done something to deserve a at t from S is itself sufficient to justify the permissibility of a to R at t.
So, on this modified desert view*, mere wrongdoing is insufficient for S to permissibly intend harm to R via a at t. Rather, S needs to be in a certain relation to R via a at t such that R deserves a from S at t.
Unfortunately, this modified desert view* suffers from similar problems as the earlier desert view. Limiting the number of individuals who are permitted to punish, or limiting the number of individuals whom it is permissible to punish, merely localizes the problem. Consider, first, the agent who would otherwise act on behalf of his boss. On the modified desert view*, he does not act on behalf of his boss, but rather intentionally harms only those who have, say, harmed him. Let us suppose, further, that the intentional harm he inflicts is either equal to or less than the harm committed against him, and that the man in question is me. Because my eye was poked out cruelly by my boss’s wife, I now can permissibly poke out her eye. Or because I was unjustly fired by my law partners at Jerk & Jerk, I can now permissibly send them extremely cruel hate mail. the number of our offenders is often many, and so the number of individuals we could permissibly punish according to the desert view* is also many. these numbers likely increase when we consider the example of the government official. But again, it seems false to suppose that the government official can go around and permissibly slap or terrorize just any offender.
It might be objected that this relies on the contingency of those who have harmed us, or on the number of persons under government rule. But that is false, since the modified desert view* entails that it would be permissible to punish agents in appropriate relations. So, in some possible world in which our offenders are infinite, if the desert view* is true, it would be permissible for us to punish each and every offender. Thus, it is entirely appropriate to object to it in theory.
Perhaps where both the desert view and the modified desert view* have gone wrong is in suggesting that just any wrong, or any wrong committed in relation to some particular agent, justify punishing the agent who freely committed that wrong. But this is false: We do not permissibly punish people who have lied because they have lied, say, and we do not permissibly punish people who eat unhealthily because they eat unhealthily. these are insufficient to justify intentionally harming the perpetrator. they are not serious enough to merit punishment. It is, rather, severe or serious wrongs[8] that justify intentionally harming a perpetrator. Thus, we might revise the desert view* as follows:
Desert View** For some agent S, action a, time t, and person R, S freely and permissibly brings about intentional harm to R via a at t if (i) R has done something serious to deserve a at t, (ii) S believes this and on this basis performs a to R at t, and (iii) the fact that R has done something serious to deserve a at t from S[9] is itself sufficient to justify the permissibility of a to R at t.
I assume that it is plausible to suppose that there are such things as serious wrongs that can be plausibly distinguished from mere wrongs, or at least that there are such things as more serious wrongs and that they can be plausibly distinguished from less serious wrongs. For instance, it is plausible to hold that rape is a serious wrong, or a more serious wrong than telling a “white lie.” I therefore think it unreasonable to deny the desert view** on those grounds.
However, the problem of intentional harm being permissibly committed too liberally remains. For in some possible world there are thousands of persons who have committed serious moral infringements, to us or under the leadership of some ruler. But it does not therefore follow (contrary to the desert view**) that each and every one of those thousands of persons is permissibly the subject of our intentional harm. Indeed, it seems utterly absurd to suggest otherwise.
An equally serious problem concerns proportionality. If intentional harm is to be our outlet of justice, then we must handle it well. Let us begin by supposing that the harm we intend should be equal to the wrong committed. If that is true, then if every perpetrator has raped, they should be raped (or suffer some equivalent). But to do this seems quite beyond the bounds of what is morally permissible. the problem intensifies if we suppose that the harm we intend should be greater than the crime committed. However, perhaps the best route to take is to suggest that the pain we inflict should be less than the crime committed. That is, it should be disproportional to the crime committed. We might slap him across the face once or twice, or toss water on him and shock him (extremely briefly) with a small voltage of electricity. Aside from seeming moderately cruel, such acts of intentional harm fail to take seriously the gravity of rape. Rape, if it is to be taken seriously, must[10] be taken seriously in a way and to the degree that rape is a serious thing. Since neither equal nor unequal acts of intentional harm are morally permissible on this account, the desert view** is implausible.
One might think this sort of objection is at least equally as bad for someone who opposes the desert view**. After all, one who denies that it is ever morally permissible to intend harm to someone is committed to saying that, in cases of rape, the perpetrator should not be subjected to intentional harm. But in fact, none of this entails that cases of rape cannot (or should not) be taken seriously. It merely denies that cases of rape cannot permissibly (and thus should not) be taken seriously in a way that involves intentional harm. there are numerous problems with such an approach, as I have already suggested. Alternatives ways of taking serious crimes seriously include intense and prolonged rehabilitation, imprisonment, a lifetime of community service, banishment, etc.[11]. So, denying the desert view** does not entail that one cannot take rape, or serious crimes in general, seriously. I will now consider general objections to the view I have defended.
the first objection I will consider is a variation on the last objection. It seems extremely plausible to think that desert is both an ordinary and a permissible feature of our everyday lives. Teachers give students what they deserve, whether that consists in grades or in time spent with the principal. It seems quite permissible for a teacher to fail a given student if that student is not meeting fair and required standards for passing the class, or test, etc.
Likewise, many of our friends have lied to us, cheated us, taken advantage of us, etc. People make mistakes, but when they make mistakes of certain sorts and there is no good reason to think they have now become trustworthy, it seems plausible to suggest that they deserve to be trusted less.
Consider, finally, the example of dangerous criminals. In some very real sense, dangerous criminals should be quarantined. they are a danger to themselves and others. Surely these criminals deserve to be less trusted by society; surely they deserve to have their crimes (or their potential for crimes) taken seriously in such a way that placing them in prison or some other correctional institution is deserved.
It seems to me that these accounts are correct. It is permissible to give students failing grades if, in fact, they deserve them. It is permissible to trust your friends less if, in fact, they deserve less trust (presumably as a result of being untrustworthy). And supposing that incredibly dangerous criminals (or any criminals at all) actually are responsible for their crimes, it is permissible to treat them more cautiously and even to restrain them from being too engrained in society.
It is essential to realize that such an admission for a critic of the desert view** is not in the least problematic. All the critic of the desert view** claims is that intentional harm is not justified (or does not appear to be justified) by considerations of desert. He is not committed to the far stronger thesis that desert does not justify anything. Consequently, the objection as it stands gives us no good reason to abandon our criticisms of the desert view**. Denying the view simply does not come with the cost of denying that considerations of desert are morally relevant and difference-making in treatment other than intentional harm.
Consider one rather different sort of example in which a teenage boy is in a severe car accident and is fatally wounded. EMTs arrive on the scene and realize that the boy’s internal organs are now externally visible. Even worse, his organs are in bad shape. the boy is conscious and in immense pain, screaming. He has only thirty more minutes to live, and those in utter agony. He asks that the EMTs give him a fatal dosage of morphine to easy his pain and to deprive him of thirty minutes of misery. Legal concerns aside, it seems the EMTs have a moral obligation to do what is in the boy’s best interest (all other things being equal), which in this case entails that they should administer the morphine. It seems just as plausible to suppose that the boy, in virtue of his suffering, deserved something better; he deserved to be relieved of his pain. Fred Feldman offers a similar case for consideration:
Suppose there are two sick children are in the hospital. Suppose each has a painful disease. the first has suffered for several months, and has been quite miserable. Yet the doctors are perfectly certain that she will soon become quite well, and in a short time will be fully recovered with no lingering effects. the second has also suffered for several months, and has also been miserable. In this case, however, the prognosis is different. the doctors are perfectly certain that he will soon die[12].
Feldman goes on to suggest that, in his estimation, this child deserves the offer made by the Make-a-Wish Foundation: namely, “an all-expense paid trip to Disneyland.” Feldman thinks that, with respect to the trip to Disneyland, the second child “would be the more deserving, precisely because he is going to suffer the greater misfortune.” By this, I assume Feldman means to endorse that considerations of desert are relevant to relieving the suffering of individuals, that they (in some sense) deserve to be compensated for the pain they have endured. This is certainly compatible with depriving of misery the person in question, ending her suffering by ending her life. But it seems the pacifist view is incompatible with this. Thus, the pacifist view is mistaken.
Interestingly, the pacifist view, as it stands, is compatible with terminating the lives of persons provided that doing so is not intended to be harmful. In cases like the boy in the car crash or Feldman’s case, it seems that what the boy and the sick patient deserve is not intentional harm, but rather intentional help or intentional compensation. Those who endorse the pacifist view can easily accommodate such considerations.
I have claimed to be critiquing the desert view** as a means of defending the pacifist view. But it should be realized, as I mentioned early in the paper, that it is contentious whether the failure of the desert view** entails the success of the pacifist view. That is, it is unclear whether there are morally relevant considerations other than desert which justify bringing about intentional harm to persons. Perhaps factors other than the agent – i.e., extrinsic to the agent – are morally relevant: the agent’s family history or geography, the commands of God, the general welfare, and such. I haven’t the space to discuss these possibilities, although it seems to me that none succeeds. But it seems to me that, if the pacifist view is to succeed, it must show that positions like the desert view** are implausible. I have done my share of the work here by criticizing the desert view**.
Another possible response on behalf of the defender of the desert view** is that considerations of desert are necessary but not sufficient conditions for permissible intentional harm. Of course, that is just to admit that desert views, as they stand, are false. But perhaps it is the case that desert, if supplemented with something else, suffices to render it permissible to intentionally harm the agent who meets those conditions. Unfortunately, this sort of objection seems to ignore the fact that this paper has been an exploration of supplementing considerations of desert with other considerations in order to generate a sufficient condition. Moreover, there is some reason to be skeptical that there are any such other considerations. We have modified the relevant factors in significant ways: the type of wrongs, the type of punisher (i.e., agents who stand in a certain relation to the subject of punishment), and the type of punishment. Perhaps another variable we might change is the number of punishments that can be administered. Maybe it is permissible for me to intentionally harm only one or two people a year, say, or at least for there to be some limit to the number of people I harm. This is a very straightforward way of avoiding my objections, but it is also unmotivated and post hoc. If it is permissible for me to harm only a limited number of people a year, in virtue of what is this is the case? If it is not in virtue of something about the agents, then it is unclear what good reason we have for intentionally harming one agent rather than another[13]. If it is in virtue of something about the agents, what is it? Furthermore, what good reason is there to think that there are additional categories beyond those explored here? Although perhaps not unassailable, it seems to me that this dilemma is problematic for defenders of the desert view**.
No doubt there will be attempts to modify option (z) so as to avoid this implausible consequence. But as I see matters, any such attempt is bound for failure. For it seems to me that the only ways of attempting to reconstruct (z) are to suggest either that (z) does not have this implication actually, but merely possibly; or, that (z) does not have this implication even possibly. the first attempt is, in my view, irrelevant, for the counterfactual If some circumstance C occurs, then (z) would 'tell us' that it is permissible to go around slapping everyone in the face. This counterfactual consequence is sufficient to render the first response unsuccessful, since implausible counterfactual implications are (at least) almost as morally unpalatable as actual-world, non-counterfactual implications.
The second response, which is (or would be) an attempt to modify (z) so as to avoid the implication in question, is also, I think, something we need not concern ourselves with, at least not too much. One might suggest that (z) is prima facie permissible, but in cases where the number of persons is so significantly large, there are ultima facie reasons for refraining from punishing others. This strikes me as horribly ad hoc. Moreover, consider a deeper problem, one which I will illustrate with an analogous, but distinct, principle. First, consider the principle ‘An act of torture is justified provided that you do not torture too many people.’ We might call this a prima facie principle of justification for torture. It has a caveat, namely, that the number of persons tortured not be excessive. Perhaps this is correct. However, there is no reason to believe it, and (consequently) it remains unjustified. But even this response is inadequate, since it does not effectively rule out possible revision; and, if it does not rule out possible revision (where, of course, the revision ‘solves’ the problem at hand), then it does not show that it is necessary that (z) fail. If that is true, then (3) is unjustified.
Essentially, then, a revised (z) - call it (Z) - would (and must) amount to, entail, or make probable the principle that ‘it is permissible to harm guilty persons, unless there are too many of them.’ Are there any plausible or possible candidates for (Z)? I cannot think of any, but that does not entail that there aren't any[14]. For the moment, then, I find nothing intrinsically unacceptable about this alternative. Although it carries a strong scent of being ad hoc, I cannot find anything impossible about (Z) that is immune to my criticism. However, this does not entail that (3) is unjustified, since a case for (Z) has yet to be proposed and, consequently, its plausibility is (as yet) indeterminate.[15] On this front, I commend pacifists to find a way to demonstrate that (Z), which (as things currently stand) might avoid my criticism, inevitably fails. I find myself presently unequal to the task.
Despite all this, the Argument from Moral History seems to me to be a good argument, one which carries considerable plausibility despite a possible exception. (Recall that this possibility is merely epistemic; it is not, so far as I know, metaphysical.) For even supposing that (Z) is possible, it is unclear whether it is plausible. (Obviously, if it is plausible, that is problematic for the argument.) But (3) can be modified in such a way to make room for this epistemic possibility, and such a modification need not detract from the power of the argument.
[1] I offer this weaker version since the stronger version is (in virtue of being stronger) less plausible, since it appears to rule out the possibility of overriding considerations. As I will argue, this weaker desert view needs to be weak if it is to have much hope of escaping my objection.
[2] By ‘desert,’ I also mean to include any other property p which is such that, if p is instantiated in a person, that person is permissibly harmed on the basis of p. This includes properties such as being liable to harm, as in when a person freely engages enemies in warfare. Although I will speak almost wholly of desert in terms of moral wrongdoing, this is purely for purposes of clarity and concision.
[3] There is some debate as to whether future actions are plausible candidates for desert. I stake no claim on this issue, although it seems to me odd that actions which have not yet occurred can currently (that is, right now) ground the current fact that someone deserves to be intentionally harmed.
[4] And even if there were, we are supposing (currently) that other prospects are dim.
[5] This is consistent with the counterfactual “If S knew some relevant fact F about R’s desert properties, then S would be justified in harming R on the basis of F.” But we are supposing here that S lacks a justified belief that F is true.
[6] Thomson, Judith Jarvis. "Self-Defense," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Autumn, 1991), p.284.
[7] Rights theorists might press that a necessary condition for permissibly harming persons with desert-properties is that you have a right to harm those persons. Perhaps persons in government, for example, have the right to harm (certain) persons with desert-properties, whereas the everyday citizen lacks that right. But then it would be permissible for persons in government to go about slapping people in the face in NYC. It is difficult to see why that would be less counterintuitive.
[8] It might be wondered why ‘serious wrongs’ done by a free agent makes that agent more of a candidate for permissible intentional harm than ‘mere wrongs’ done by those agents. I admit that there is something mysterious here, but for current purposes the suggestion is that serious wrongs are intrinsically difference-making with respect to bringing about permissible intentional harm.
[9] I have kept the modification ‘from S.’ However, it can be removed without affecting my upcoming objections.
[10] And by ‘must’ I mean to identify a moral obligation. We should take rape quite seriously, since it is a serious wrong.
[11] Each of these could be done in ways that include intentional harm. I am referring to utilizing these approaches in ways that don’t include intentional harm.
[12] Feldman, Fred. “Desert: Reconsiderations of Some Received Wisdom,” in Mind 104 (413), p.71.
[13] And recall: the defender of the desert view** will have to say that only the agents in the limited category are permissibly harmed. So, it will do no good to suggest that agents outside the limited category could be permissibly intentionally harmed, since that would be merely to return us to earlier criticisms.
[14] Actually, I can (sort of) think of one. (Z) might be argued for on intuitive grounds, perhaps in the following way: ‘(Z) is permissible only if there is no outweighing cost.’ the defender of (Z) could then go on to suggest that harming too many people is an outweighing cost, using the same intuition I have been using. But how can the defender of (Z) account for this intuitive truth? If it is permissible to punish a guilty person, why would it matter (short of destroying or severely debilitating humanity) how many persons are harmed?
[15] More specifically (and carefully), the epistemic situation (as I see matters) is this: We have good reason to believe there are no exceptions, unless (Z) is true; but we have no reason to believe (Z), and (in fact) have an initial presumption against (Z); thus, we have good reason to believe there are no exceptions, and no good reason to believe there are exceptions.
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