Description
Sometimes, harm will occur if enough people act in a certain way j even though no particular act of j-ing makes a difference for the occurrence of this harm. Voting, climate change, and Parfit’s (1984) case of the harmless torturers might provide examples. In such cases, people might argue that you lack outcome-related reasons to refrain from j-ing since doing so makes no difference for the occurrence of the outcome (e.g. Sinnott-Armstrong 2005). This is the inefficacy argument. Many think that this argument is mistaken. The problem is to explain where it goes wrong. Some argue that you might have a reason to refrain from j-ing even though doing so makes no difference for the occurrence of the outcome. They might argue that there is some relevant causal connection between j-ing and the harmful outcome even though j-ing makes no difference for the occurrence of the outcome. These are the causal responses. Alternatively, they might argue that you have outcome-related reasons to refrain from j-ing even though there is no relevant causal connection. These are the non-causal responses. For example, they might argue that it would be unfair not to refrain when others do so (Cullity 2000), that refraining is the virtuous thing to do (Jamieson 2007, Sandler 2010), that j-ing would make you complicit in harm (Kutz 2000), or that you have a reason not be a member of the group that causes harm (Parfit 1984, Schwenkenbecher 2014). In addition, they might argue that you lack a reason to refrain j-ing, but that you instead have a reason to join or form a collective that ameliorate harm in question (Held 1970, Isaacs 2011, Collins 2019). I argue that the non-causal responses only work if there is some relevant causal connection between j-ing and the harmful outcome.| Period | 2021 Apr 15 |
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| Event title | Higher Seminar in Practical Philosophy |
| Event type | Seminar |
| Location | Lund, SwedenShow on map |