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Don’t Count on Taurek: Vindicating the Case for the Numbers Counting

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Abstract

Suppose you can save only one of two groups of people from harm, with one person in one group, and five persons in the other group. Are you obligated to save the greater number? While common sense seems to say ‘yes’, the numbers skeptic says ‘no’. Numbers Skepticism has been partly motivated by the anti-consequentialist thought that the goods, harms and well-being of individual people do not aggregate in any morally significant way. However, even many non-consequentialists think that Numbers Skepticism goes too far in rejecting the claim that you ought to save the greater number. Besides the prima facie implausibility of Numbers Skepticism, Michael Otsuka has developed an intriguing argument against this position. Otsuka argues that Numbers Skepticism, in conjunction with an independently plausible moral principle, leads to inconsistent choices regarding what ought to be done in certain circumstances. This inconsistency in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Numbers Skepticism. Kirsten Meyer offers a notable challenge to Otsuka’s argument. I argue that Meyer’s challenge can be met, and then offer my own reasons for rejecting Otsuka’s argument. In light of these criticisms, I then develop an improved, yet structurally similar argument to Otsuka’s argument. I argue for the slightly different conclusion that the view proposed by John Taurek that ‘the numbers don’t count’ leads to inconsistent choices, which in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Taurek’s position.

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Notes

  1. Apart from Taurek (1977), see Doggett (2013) for a defense of Numbers Don’t Count.

  2. See Kamm (1993, pp. 129–141), Timmerman (2004), and Peterson (2008).

  3. Apart from Otsuka’s (2004) argument examined in this paper, see Bradley (2009) for a defense of Numbers Fully Count.

  4. In support of a notion of the separateness of persons, see Nagel (1970, p. 138), Rawls (1971, pp. 26–27) and Nozick (1974, p. 33).

  5. For a defense of the consistency of PN (or a very similar principle) with the view that the numbers count, see Parfit (1978), Kamm (1993), (1998), (2005), Scanlon (1999), Kumar (2001), Hirose (2001), (2013), Raz (2003), and Hsieh, Strudler, and Wasserman (2006). For a critique of some of these defenses, see Otsuka (2000), (2006), Wasserman and Strudler (2003), Liao (2008), and Doggett (2009).

  6. Though, see e.g., Kamm’s (2005, p. 2) remarks on the moral relevance of numbers to both killing (causing a death) and letting die (permitting a death).

  7. I ignore for simplicity’s sake that the numbers skeptic can also endorse a hybrid view whereby Numbers Don’t Count is true in some Taurek Scenarios, and Numbers Partly Count is true in the other Taurek Scenarios.

  8. Meyer (2006, pp. 143–146) proposes that the numbers skeptic adopt a similar procedure with respect to Otsuka’s Scenario, with the exception to what should be done in the third round. However, Meyer’s suggestion does not undermine the reason I gave for adopting Author’s Principle. Moreover, I show below that such a procedure is not available to a proponent of Numbers Don’t Count, an important kind of numbers skeptic.

  9. Willenken (2012) argues that so-called commonsense morality itself commits us to the very kind of deontic cycling to which Otsuka argues Numbers Skepticism is committed. Willenken argues that we ought to accept commonsense morality rather than endorse the following Strongest reason thesis: ‘Among any set of possible actions there is always (at least) one that you have strongest reason to do’ (p. 548). If Willenken is correct, then it is hardly a cost to Numbers Don’t Count that it is inconsistent with the Strongest reason thesis. Since I cannot even begin to critically examine Willenken’s argument in this paper, one may view the argument I ultimately endorse as an argument for the conditional claim that if Willenken’s argument against the Strongest reason thesis is not sound, then we should reject Numbers Don’t Count since it is inconsistent with the Strongest reason thesis. Thanks to Ben Bradley for pointing out to me the relevance of Willenken’s paper.

  10. Though see Bradley (2009) for a dialectically effective argument for Numbers Fully Count, and Doggett (2013) for a dialectically effective argument for Numbers Don’t Count.

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Acknowledgments

For helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper, I would like to thank Ben Bradley, Matt Eller, and Travis Timmerman. I am also very grateful to Hille Paakkunainen and the anonymous referees at Res Publica for providing many thorough and challenging comments over multiple drafts of this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 13210, USA

    Yishai Cohen

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Cohen, Y. Don’t Count on Taurek: Vindicating the Case for the Numbers Counting. Res Publica 20, 245–261 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9241-2

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