Abstract
In this chapter, I explore some fundamental moral questions about how we should evaluate disaster policy. I offer a challenge to the dominant approach, namely cost-benefit analysis, arguing that we need to give weight to some crucial moral distinctions that this approach ignores, such as the difference between doing and allowing harm. In place of cost-benefit analysis, I defend an alternative “deontological” approach, which incorporates these distinctions. But I also show that more work is needed to fully develop a deontological theory of disaster policy. There are fruitful new avenues in this area for both policy analysts and moral theorists.
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Notes
- 1.
For further discussion of consequentialism see Sinnott-Armstrong (2011).
- 2.
See, for instance, Adler and Posner (2006) for further explanation of this approach.
- 3.
- 4.
Of course, there is huge debate about whether this is a good explanation or whether we should take seriously our common-sense judgments. It is well outside the scope of this paper to offer a full defense of the distinction: I’m just trying to explain the basic motivation.
- 5.
They also often incorporate other related distinctions, such as the intending/foreseeing distinction, but in this paper I will focus on just the doing/allowing distinction, which is less controversial.
- 6.
The language of “constraints” comes from Nozick (1974)’s discussion.
- 7.
Zamir and Medina (2010) ask whether the relevant function involves a multiplier, K, rather than, say, a fixed factor F that one adds to the harm. I chose the first function simply because I think it fits people’s judgments about the various examples better. When we consider cases that involve inflicting greater and greater harm, the benefits required to morally outweigh the harm seem to scale up proportionately.
- 8.
Someone might say here that there is some arbitrariness in the distinction between performing two separate actions together, Actions 1 and Action 2, versus performing the single Action 3: for instance, maybe when I shoot at B quickly after shooting at A I can just as easily be said to have performed Action 3. But this is no help to the absolutist. It just suggests the unhappy implication that (according to absolutism) the same behavior can be permissible under one plausible description, yet impermissible under another equally plausible description.
- 9.
- 10.
See also Alexander and Moore (2012) for further problems with absolutism.
- 11.
For a similar perspective, see Zamir and Medina (2010).
- 12.
The resulting theory will of course still retain some of the basic structure of CBA/consequentialism, requiring us to quantify and consider the costs and benefits of our actions. But I think this is to be welcomed: it shows that we can take all of these factors into account even while weighing them in a manner that respects deontological distinctions. Deontologists can take advantage of the attractively quantitative approach to policy analysis of CBA/consequentialism without accepting all of its dictates.
- 13.
- 14.
See Murphy and Gardoni (2011) for a more extensive argument that familiar duties from common-sense morality and the law have an important bearing on dealing with natural hazard risks.
- 15.
We shouldn’t draw this contrast too sharply, though, because even apparently clear cases of “non-natural” risk also involve some interaction with the natural world. For instance, in describing the House example, I said that using certain materials would create a risk of a brick eventually becoming dislodged and striking a pedestrian. It’s natural to think of this as a situation where the (potential) risk is due to factors solely internal to the structure and thus as a situation where by building the house I simply create an entirely “non-natural” threat. But really the source of the risk includes not just facts about the internal structure of the house but the way that it is likely to interact with ordinary wind, rain, subsistence, etc. So there relevant difference is probably one of degree.
- 16.
Farber et al. (2009) give many examples of legal disputes surrounding disaster hazards where multiple institutions and actors are involved and the difficulties of assigning legal responsibility in these cases.
- 17.
- 18.
Chapter 15, in this book.
- 19.
- 20.
For instance, Posner and Vermeule (2006, p. 40) complain that threshold deontology has an “arbitrary flavor” and Alexander and Moore (2012) raise the same objection. In the context of risk evaluation, see Hansson (2013, Chap. 2.3) for a similar concern that the deontologist doesn’t have a full theory of how to make trade-offs.
- 21.
It might be said that Scanlon (1998)’s contractualism is an important alternative, but I’m skeptical about the theory as a whole and it would also still require a lot of use of intuition to make trade-offs, of the kind that I am about to describe. See Hosein (2013) for elaboration of both of these issues.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
See Goodin (1995) for a defense of the claim that Bentham was particularly focused on political morality.
- 25.
Bentham doesn’t explicitly speak of thresholds, but his remarks about different balances people will strike between harming, aiding and so on suggest the same issue.
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Hosein, A. (2016). Deontology and Natural Hazards. In: Gardoni, P., Murphy, C., Rowell, A. (eds) Risk Analysis of Natural Hazards. Risk, Governance and Society, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22126-7_9
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