How does the flautist case differ from ordinary cases of (wrongfully) harming others? Is the idea that he relies on (say) the full functioning of your kidneys to maintain his health, and so if you drink alcohol, even the mild taxing of your organs will result in grave harms to the flautist? And so, the idea goes, you aren't unjustly harming the flautist at all, because -- having no right to your organs to begin with -- you aren't depriving him of anything that he has a right to, unlike in the case of ordinary harms (e.g. polluting clean air that another *does* have a right to)?
It seems like the precise causal details will matter here (for the deontologist). If we instead imagine that your drinking alcohol harms the flautist via a causal chain unrelated to their use of your organs -- say the alcohol releases fumes that are toxic to weightless people floating about in your vicinity -- then it would seem like any other ordinary harm. If pursuing some minor interest would expose others to severely harmful toxins, it's (ordinarily) clearly impermissible to proceed.
But now it seems very strange to think that whether you can permissibly drink and cause this harm to the flautist depends on these fine details of the causal chain between the drink and the harm, and whether or not it goes via your organs. So I think that's some reason to be suspicious of the idea that Thomson is actually getting at anything morally fundamental with her talk of rights. I'm inclined to think the whole self/other asymmetry is best understood on the level of surface heuristics (people can be better trusted to make intrapersonal tradeoffs than interpersonal ones, so we give others veto power to prevent abuse) rather than fundamental moral principles (e.g. deontological claims that even perfect utilitarian tradeoffs would be objectionable, in principle, without the other's consent).
Thanks for this, Richard. I absolutely agree about heuristics idea you float at the end. I don’t think of it in terms of who can be trusted to do what, but something else, and that’s what I’m hoping to explain in the final post in this sequence. But on your earlier points: yes, I think that’s what comes out when you think through the Henry Fonda case. JJT does seem to think unhooking the violinist is morally bad (in the case where they needed your kidneys only for a couple of minutes, say), but it’s just a different kind of bad. It’s not bad because it involves violating a right. It’s bad because it’s not sufficiently beneficent, say. That’s why I think this sort of analogy can’t account for the asymmetry I’m looking for. I think JJT might be identifying a distinction that’s important for what behaviours we can sanction legally and with the backing of state power. But that’s different from my question here.
I'm not sure whether the following helps or muddies the waters, but anyway ... What about harms that are interpersonal *and* diachronic? In other words, suppose I do something now that harms my neighbour's future self. Arguably this is permissible if my neighbour's current self consents.
We still have the problem of how a person (my neighbour, in this case) can consent in the present to harm to her future self; but now, perhaps, the interpersonal and intrapersonal cases don't seem so different from each other.
I'm not sure where I originally read this, but my understanding is that much of the interpersonal morality and intrapersonal morality distinction (and the notion that the two really are fundamentally distinct), is a philosophical construction arising from old christian philosophers and theologians. It's something built up by way of a whole lot of gripping about egoism, vices and the corruption of man. A philosophical distinction predicated on dogma about the dualism of the soul.
If you ignore this and instead just talk about normative motivations, the intuition just disappears. The way we talk about selfishness and altruism then just looks like a cultural artifact, not something really meaningful.
How does the flautist case differ from ordinary cases of (wrongfully) harming others? Is the idea that he relies on (say) the full functioning of your kidneys to maintain his health, and so if you drink alcohol, even the mild taxing of your organs will result in grave harms to the flautist? And so, the idea goes, you aren't unjustly harming the flautist at all, because -- having no right to your organs to begin with -- you aren't depriving him of anything that he has a right to, unlike in the case of ordinary harms (e.g. polluting clean air that another *does* have a right to)?
It seems like the precise causal details will matter here (for the deontologist). If we instead imagine that your drinking alcohol harms the flautist via a causal chain unrelated to their use of your organs -- say the alcohol releases fumes that are toxic to weightless people floating about in your vicinity -- then it would seem like any other ordinary harm. If pursuing some minor interest would expose others to severely harmful toxins, it's (ordinarily) clearly impermissible to proceed.
But now it seems very strange to think that whether you can permissibly drink and cause this harm to the flautist depends on these fine details of the causal chain between the drink and the harm, and whether or not it goes via your organs. So I think that's some reason to be suspicious of the idea that Thomson is actually getting at anything morally fundamental with her talk of rights. I'm inclined to think the whole self/other asymmetry is best understood on the level of surface heuristics (people can be better trusted to make intrapersonal tradeoffs than interpersonal ones, so we give others veto power to prevent abuse) rather than fundamental moral principles (e.g. deontological claims that even perfect utilitarian tradeoffs would be objectionable, in principle, without the other's consent).
Thanks for this, Richard. I absolutely agree about heuristics idea you float at the end. I don’t think of it in terms of who can be trusted to do what, but something else, and that’s what I’m hoping to explain in the final post in this sequence. But on your earlier points: yes, I think that’s what comes out when you think through the Henry Fonda case. JJT does seem to think unhooking the violinist is morally bad (in the case where they needed your kidneys only for a couple of minutes, say), but it’s just a different kind of bad. It’s not bad because it involves violating a right. It’s bad because it’s not sufficiently beneficent, say. That’s why I think this sort of analogy can’t account for the asymmetry I’m looking for. I think JJT might be identifying a distinction that’s important for what behaviours we can sanction legally and with the backing of state power. But that’s different from my question here.
I'm not sure whether the following helps or muddies the waters, but anyway ... What about harms that are interpersonal *and* diachronic? In other words, suppose I do something now that harms my neighbour's future self. Arguably this is permissible if my neighbour's current self consents.
We still have the problem of how a person (my neighbour, in this case) can consent in the present to harm to her future self; but now, perhaps, the interpersonal and intrapersonal cases don't seem so different from each other.
I'm not sure where I originally read this, but my understanding is that much of the interpersonal morality and intrapersonal morality distinction (and the notion that the two really are fundamentally distinct), is a philosophical construction arising from old christian philosophers and theologians. It's something built up by way of a whole lot of gripping about egoism, vices and the corruption of man. A philosophical distinction predicated on dogma about the dualism of the soul.
If you ignore this and instead just talk about normative motivations, the intuition just disappears. The way we talk about selfishness and altruism then just looks like a cultural artifact, not something really meaningful.