Abstract
The mere means principle says it is impermissible to treat someone as merely a means to someone else’s ends. I specify this principle with two conditions: a victim is used as merely a means if the victim does not want the treatment by the agent and the agent wants the presence of the victim’s body. This principle is a specification of the doctrine of double effect which is compatible with moral intuitions and with a restricted kind of libertarianism. An extension of this mere means principle, where not only using but also considering someone as merely a means is immoral, can explain and unify other deontological principles: doing versus allowing, partiality in imperfect duties of beneficence, and the asymmetry of procreational duties. A loop trolley dilemma is often presented as a counterexample of the mere means principle, but I argue that this dilemma generates a moral illusion, comparable to perceptual illusions.
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Notes
I will not elaborate on the case of using culpable persons as merely a means in order to deter would-be criminals (themselves or others) from committing crimes. See Tadros 2011.
It should be clear that what the victim does not want, is the treatment by the agent. Consider a poor person who decides to work in a bakery. He hates getting up early in the morning to bake some bread, but his poverty gave him no choice. If I buy his bread, I am using him because he did work for me. But although he hates baking bread, the poor baker is not against my behavior. In other words: my behavior did not cause his poverty. If my behavior would be absent, i.e. if I would not buy his bread, the baker would still be poor. Therefore, I am not using him as merely a means. On the other hand, if I threaten or force someone to work in a bakery, that threatened person does not want this threat and so it becomes slavery and I am responsible for his bad situation.
This interpretation of ‘merely’ should be contrasted with other interpretations, discussed in e.g. Parfit (2011). For example one could interpret a use as merely a means when we harmfully use a victim and do not choose to bear some great burden ourselves for the victim’s sake or when we do not limit the harm that we impose on the victim in some way that would be significantly worse for us in achieving our aims.
A tricky question concerns the boundaries of a treatment. Consider a slave owner who claims that his slaves are better-off as slaves than they would be in the wild, because as indigenous people in the wild they would face predators, disease, drought, hunger and other nasty things. The owner protects the slaves and gives them food. So it might be true that a slave would prefer a life as a slave over a life in the wild. Hence the slave prefers the total treatment of the slave owner over the complete absence of the treatment, if absence means a miserable life in the wild. According to a broad interpretation of the treatment, this slave is not used as merely a means. But I prefer a narrow interpretation that focuses at a particular behavior at a particular time. According to this interpretation, the slave is used as merely a means as soon as the owner does a particular thing that the slave does not want, for example whipping the slave (even if the slave prefers the total life of a slave with whipping over the alternative life in the wild). The same goes for the practice of breeding slaves: even if a slave would prefer the life of a slave over the absence of a life (the slave would not have been born if the owner did not breed slaves), it does not mean that the slave is not used as merely a means.
If the victims undergo something against their will for their own good, they are not used as merely means for someone else’s ends, and the mere means principle is not violated. For example keeping scared patients in a hospital for their own sake does not use them as mere means. Similarly, I may forcefully prevent you from drinking a liquid if you do not know that the liquid is a poison, even if you do not want to be forced like that.
Of course this does not say anything about the epistemic status of moral intuitions. Even if everyone shares an intuition, it does not imply anything about its truth. The argument I make is not about the truth or consistency of moral intuitions, but merely about a principle being consistent with intuitions. If you happen to have those intuitions and are confident in them, then you would appreciate the mere means principle.
Looking at new technologies such brain-computer interfaces, virtual avatars, artificial organs and bionic limbs, it becomes less clear what counts as someone’s body. We can say that those extensions become part of the body when the person develops an internal representation of them. Having an internal representation might be the necessary condition for something to belong to the body of a person. From the early stages of development, persons create an internal representation of their bodies: they learns what is part of their bodies and what is not. However, there are different kinds of internal representations: I can say that this arm belongs to me, because I can autonomously move it, or because I can feel it (I can feel pressure, temperature and pain with this arm). Therefore, if internal representation is important, things become complicated when considering e.g. paralyzed or anesthetized limbs.
Note that the extended mere means principle merely says how I am not allowed to judge or consider you. This does not imply that you do not have certain duties. You still might have a duty to turn the switch to save the three people. That duty is compatible with my duty not to judge you if you do not turn the switch. Even if I am not allowed to consider you in a certain way, not much follows from this how you are allowed to act. We have to distinguish primary duties (how to act) from secondary duties (how to judge actions). Nevertheless, we could say that my secondary duty (not to judge you) counts as a justification for your (lack of) primary duty.
Utilitarians can justify some level of partiality, by claiming that this level of partiality would increase well-being overall. The levels of partiality discussed in this paper are levels that utilitarians cannot tolerate.
This is confirmed by Waldmann and Dieterich (2007), although the formulation of the trolley dilemma in their study was different: all persons were sitting in buses, so the buses instead of the passengers are used as means.
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Bruers, S. Can Deontological Principles Be Unified? Reflections on the Mere Means Principle. Philosophia 44, 407–422 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9711-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9711-1