Permissibility and the Aggregation of Risks

Abstract

Tom Dougherty has recently argued that non-consequentialists cannot accommodate our judgements about acceptable levels of risk-imposition. More specifically, he argues that the following two intuitively plausible claims are inconsistent: (i) that it is impermissible to provide small benefits to many people rather than saving the life of someone else, and (ii) that it is permissible to expose someone to a negligible risk of death in order to otherwise provide this person with a small benefit. Abandoning either principle has significant consequences: rejecting (i) requires rejecting an important argument against consequentialism and consequentialist approaches to beneficence; rejecting (ii) requires radically rethinking the way we live our lives, as we routinely expose individuals to negligible risks of death. This article shows that Dougherty's argument relies on a scope ambiguity involving permissibility. Once this ambiguity is resolved, Dougherty's argument fails.

Axiological Absolutism and Risk1

“…Brown [] offers a distinct defence of maximalism from Portmore's. Kirkpatrick [] takes a similar position to Tenenbaum, arguing that the language of permissibility is ambiguous over whether campaigns or acts are the proper object of moral evaluation, and concluding that both levels matter. Interestingly, while moral philosophers seem to lean ether towards maximalism or to saying that both kinds of permissibility matter, decision theorists seem to heavily favour focusing on very narrowly described acts—see Elga []; Hedden [].…”