The Demandingness of Deontological Duties: Is the Absolute Impermissibility of Placatory Torture Irrational?

1.2.1 Intrinsic moral statuses

One tack for differentiating between deontology and consequentialism is to concentrate on the moral statuses of modes of conduct (Kramer 2014, pp. 20f). If a course of conduct on the part of any person P is covered by a deontological permission, then P’s engaging in that conduct is not wrong in any respect ─ regardless of the consequences that it causes or is likely to cause. Within the ambit of the deontological permission, P’s undertaking of the specified conduct does not breach any moral duties. Hence, within that ambit, his behavior is strongly permissible irrespective of the probable consequences of its occurrence. Suppose, for example, that P in any ordinary circumstances is deontologically at liberty to expend a certain portion of his income on his hobby of collecting stamps. Suppose further that any number of consequentialist objectives (such as the maximization of human happiness or the promotion of equal economic opportunities) would be advanced if P were instead to expend that portion of his income on donations to charities. Notwithstanding that his pursuit of his philatelic hobby will bring about a worse state of affairs than he is capable of bringing about through alternative uses of his resources, P is not committing any wrongs so long as he is acting within the scope of the deontological prerogative which encompasses that pursuit.

Whereas an activity covered by a deontological prerogative is morally permissible regardless of the likely consequences of its occurrence, modes of conduct forbidden by deontological duties are morally impermissible regardless of the benignity of the consequences that are likely to flow from the occurrence of any such modes of conduct. If P is under a deontological duty to φ, then his not φ-ing is wrong regardless of how valuable the state of affairs that would result from his not φ-ing might be. That is, every deontological duty proscribes some course of conduct even if one’s adoption of that course of conduct in particular circumstances would yield much better consequences than one’s refraining therefrom.

While deontologists ascribe consequence-independent moral bearings to various actions and omissions, consequentialists of course maintain that the moral character of any type or instance of conduct is fully determined by the probable or actual consequences thereof. ^[5] In the eyes of the latter theorists, no type or instance of conduct is ever endowed with any inherent moral status. Instead, every action or omission derives its moral status from the effects with which it is associated. Accordingly, as John Finnis has aptly remarked, a proponent of any consequentialist doctrine ‘holds himself ready to do anything’ (Finnis 1980, p. 121, emphasis in original). For the consequentialist, there are no principled limits on the range of actions that can legitimately be undertaken in sundry circumstances. The breadth or narrowness of that range will depend entirely on the results that are likely to follow from each of the multitudinous modes of conduct that might be adopted by people in any number of contexts. No mode of conduct, however abhorrent it may be, is unconditionally disallowed by the reckoning of a consequentialist theorist.

1.2.2 Agent-neutrality versus agent-centeredness

One way of differentiating between deontology and consequentialism, then, addresses the question whether the basic moral statuses of some patterns of behavior are intrinsic or extrinsic. Another way ─ which has become especially prominent during the past few decades and which figures conspicuously in some of the philosophical literature on torture ─ pertains to the manner in which many of our fundamental moral obligations present their demands (Kramer 2014, pp. 21f). Whereas deontologists contend that those demands are agent-centered, ^[6] consequentialists maintain that they are agent-neutral. In other words, deontological duties are such that they present each agent with reasons specifically for that agent to conduct himself in certain ways. The reasons do not pertain to goals by reference to which every agent is enjoined to produce maximally valuable or minimally disvaluable states of affairs. For example, a deontological duty to refrain from the crime of murder is not a duty to pursue an overarching goal such as the minimization of the number of murders in a society. Rather, it is a duty that requires each person to refrain from committing any murders even when his perpetration of such crimes would reduce their overall incidence or would otherwise be highly valuable. One’s fulfillment of a deontological obligation consists not in one’s venturing alongside other people to maximize the realization of some objective, but instead in one’s compliance with a strict prohibition regardless of how other people might respond.

By contrast, consequentialist obligations require each person to act alongside other people to maximize the realization of some goal or array of goals (which might be highly pluralistic). A consequentialist obligation is agent-neutral in that it presents everyone with reasons-for-action that do not single him or her out as a particular person distinct from everybody else. In that respect, the reasons flowing from any consequentialist duty are fundamentally the same for everyone ─ though, naturally, the detailed specificities of what is required of each person will depend on his or her aptitudes and circumstances. In regard to any desideratum or set of desiderata upheld by such a duty, a maximizing quest is prescribed. From a consequentialist perspective, the attainment of the most valuable state of affairs possible is always better than the attainment of any less valuable state of affairs and is therefore both obligatory and strongly permissible. Everyone alike is morally obligated and morally at liberty to contribute to the achievement of that maximally valuable state of affairs, even if someone’s contribution will involve his acting at odds with the content of a deontological principle. (Of course, although any consequentialist theory maintains that the maximization of some desideratum or set of desiderata is morally obligatory and permissible, not every such theory recommends that individuals adopt maximizing outlooks when arriving at decisions. Many consequentialists instead hold that the maximization of a favored desideratum or set of desiderata is best pursued indirectly through the focusing of individuals’ choices and deliberations on other concerns. For example, the sway of a satisficing mentality among individuals in relation to some desideratum might be the best way for them to maximize their attainment of a more complex balance of desiderata.)

1.2.3 Absolute prohibitions

Such, then, are the two ways of distinguishing between deontology and consequentialism. Now, as is plain, those two ways are not identical. One of them addresses the question whether the basic moral statuses of certain modes of conduct are intrinsic or extrinsic, ^[7] whereas the other addresses the question whether the reasons presented by many fundamental moral obligations are agent-centered or agent-neutral. Nonetheless, although the two versions of the deontology/consequentialism distinction are not exactly the same, they are not really separate; the latter version is a corollary of the former. If the basic moral status of a mode of conduct is consequence-independent, then ─ in the manner captured by the notion of agent-centeredness ─ that basic moral status is impervious to any consequentialist balancing that would deem the tokens of an abhorrent act-type AT to be permissible whenever those tokens can lower the overall incidence of AT. Imperviousness to such balancing is a key aspect of the general consequence-independence of an act-type’s wrongness.

The distinction between deontology and consequentialism has a crucial bearing on the matter of the absoluteness of some major prohibitions. In debates over the moral bearings of torture, one of the frequent points of controversy is whether the moral prohibition on torture is absolute. That much-broached question is in need of disambiguation, however (Kramer 2014, pp. 8f). In posing that question, one might be asking whether the duty not to engage in torture is always and everywhere binding in all possible worlds, or one might be asking whether the stringency of that ever-binding duty is always and everywhere greater than the stringency of any duties that might conflict with it. Although an affirmative answer to the latter version of the question entails an affirmative answer to the former version, there is no entailment between affirmative answers in the other direction. Strong absoluteness entails weak absoluteness, but not vice versa.

If the moral prohibition on torture is strongly absolute, it is not only binding at all times in all places in all possible worlds; in addition, it is also always more stringent than any possible countervailing moral requirements. One’s insistence on the absoluteness of that prohibition in this strong sense is perfectly consistent with one’s recognition that there can indeed be countervailing moral requirements that militate against compliance with the prohibition. In other words, a strongly absolute moral obligation can be locked in conflicts with competing moral obligations which are inferior in their normative strength. ^[8] Although those latter obligations are indeed less stringent, they impose genuine moral demands that will give rise to remedial duties if they are left unfulfilled. In such circumstances, then, compliance with the strongly absolute moral prohibition is not strongly permissible; it is only weakly permissible.

Any weakly absolute moral prohibition WM is binding everywhere and always in all possible worlds. No circumstances, however exigent, can ever negate or diminish the demands of such a prohibition. Nonetheless, although WM is irrepressibly operative in all possible situations, it can be locked in conflicts with competing moral requirements (just as strongly absolute moral prohibitions can be). Moreover, in some imaginable circumstances, the competing moral requirements are more stringent than WM with which they conflict. In such circumstances, compliance with WM would not be even weakly permissible. There is not available any strongly permissible course of conduct in such a setting, and the sole weakly permissible course of conduct resides in breaching WM. Any such breach is indeed a breach ─ that is, a moral wrong ─ and it will thus trigger remedial obligations.

Of course, if WM is formidably stringent, there might never materialize any actual situations in which the contravention of WM would be morally optimal. Nevertheless, so long as there can arise some context in which such a contravention would be optimal, WM is only weakly absolute rather than strongly absolute. Even if conformity to WM is always morally optimal in the actual world, there are never any guarantees of that optimality ─ for there remain counterfactual scenarios in which some actions at odds with WM are the morally best modes of conduct (the least dreadful modes of conduct).

Now, as has already been suggested, the only absolute that is postulated by consequentialists is a general prohibition on impeding the maximal attainment of some fundamental desideratum or set of desiderata. Any mode of conduct whatsoever that tends toward the fulfillment of such a maximizing goal is strongly permissible by the reckoning of consequentialists. By contrast, many deontologists affirm that certain major moral prohibitions are binding always and everywhere irrespective of the consequences of compliance therewith, and in particular that each of the specified prohibitions is binding even when departures from it will serve to lower greatly the overall frequency with which it is contravened. Insofar as anyone contends that a mode of conduct such as placatory torture is always and everywhere morally wrong, he or she is a deontologist.

1.2.4 Some transitional remarks

I have elsewhere argued that placatory torture is morally wrong in all of its possible instantiations (2014, pp. 209ff, 222–30). That absolutist position on the morality of placatory torture is in need of some further defense here, for quite a few philosophers have queried whether deontological absolutism is reconcilable with the requirements of practical rationality. These doubters have in mind especially the agent-centeredness of our duties to refrain from certain act-types. While granting that those duties are operative in any ordinary contexts, the opponents of deontological constraints insist that the duties would be perverse if they continued to be operative in circumstances where one’s undertaking of some normally proscribed conduct can lower the overall incidence of such conduct. That charge of perverseness ─ amounting to a charge of irrationality ─ is what the present paper will seek to rebut.

To pose the problem of deontological rationality in its starkest form, this paper will explore a moral conflict that involves an intrapersonal trade-off rather than an interpersonal trade-off. Typically, trade-offs of the former sort are morally far less problematic than trade-offs of the latter sort. Hence, by seeking to establish that the moral prohibition on placatory torture continues to be binding even in the context of an intrapersonal trade-off where a breach of that prohibition would redound to the benefit of the victim of the breach, this paper is deliberately confronting itself with a challenge that leaves no easy routes of escape. Both in its countering of some doubts about the rationality of agent-centered constraints and in its efforts to vindicate the absoluteness of the moral ban on placatory torture, this paper takes the hard and narrow path. It aims to surmount obstacles that are encountered here in their most troublesome guises.

In line with what has just been suggested, the next section of this paper will recount a situation in which the perpetration of placatory torture against a certain victim would lower the incidence and severity of the acts of torture carried out against that very same victim. As will be argued, the perpetration of placatory torture is morally wrong even in such a situation. We will then move on to ponder whether the agent-centeredness of deontological duties ─ such as our duties not to engage in acts of torture ─ is rationally tenable. Among the philosophers who have impugned the rationality of agent-centered constraints, Samuel Scheffler has mounted a particularly prominent and thought-provoking attack. ^[9] He tries to show that agent-centered restrictions clash not only with the tenets of consequentialist moral theories but also with a conception of practical rationality that extends beyond those theories into much of our ordinary thinking about an array of matters. By so arguing, Scheffler presumes to have exposed the unreasonableness of deontological requirements without begging any questions along the way in favor of consequentialist theorizing. Hence, my rebuttal of his influential critique is essential for the sustainment of my contention that placatory torture is always and everywhere morally wrong in all possible worlds. Such torture is morally wrong even when instances of it are undertaken to avert the occurrence of many other instances of wrongful torture.

2.2.1 The factor of consent

Although Miranda has consented to being tortured by Melvin, her consent is not fully efficacious. Her consent is of course wholeheartedly sincere and indeed desperately exhortative, but it is provided under conditions of overwhelming duress. Its efficacy is largely vitiated by its coercedness. Hence, the permissibility-engendering effect produced in many circumstances by consent is not produced by Miranda’s impetrations; the extreme coercion under which the victim gives her consent is destructive of any legitimizing force which the consent might otherwise have possessed.

That destructive upshot of the coercion is independent of the distinction between an interpersonal trade-off and an intrapersonal trade-off. Notwithstanding that Miranda furnishes her consent for her own good whereas the mother in an amplified version of Gewirth’s scenario furnishes her consent for the good of others, Miranda’s consent does not confer permissibility on Melvin’s acts of torture any more than the mother’s consent would confer permissibility on the politician’s acts of torture. Though the intrapersonal/interpersonal distinction might make a moral difference in some other respects, it does not here make a moral difference with regard to the factor of consent. The legitimacy-engendering effect of any instance of consent depends both on the voluntariness of the consent and on the legitimacy of the purpose for which the consent has been tendered. While Miranda’s purpose of sparing herself from additional agony (through an intrapersonal trade-off) and the mother’s purpose of saving other people’s lives (through an interpersonal trade-off) are both legitimate, the consent in each case is deprived of its voluntariness by the terrible and credible threats to which it is a response. In neither case, then, does the consent render morally permissible the use of placatory torture.

Still, although Miranda’s fervent exhortations to Melvin do not alter the basic moral status of his acts of torture from impermissible to permissible, they do mitigate the gravity of the wrongness of those acts. Whereas Miranda’s remonstrations would be bizarrely unreasonable in any ordinary circumstances, they are quite understandable in the appalling predicament in which they are uttered. Hence, when Melvin proceeds in accordance with those remonstrations, he is fulfilling some earnestly expressed wishes of his wife that are reasonable in the circumstances. In that respect, his outlook is very different from that of a typical torturer. Though the coercedness of Miranda’s expressions of her wishes is enough to deprive them of any legitimizing force, it does not deprive them of extenuative force. The fact that Melvin does what his wife desperately and understandably wants him to do is a consideration that manifestly lessens the culpability of the wrong which he has to commit against her.

2.2.2 The orientation of the torture

The torture administered by the politician to his mother in Gewirth’s scenario is inimical to the mother’s bodily and psychological well-being. Were the torture not to take place, the mother would be much better off (except in her distress over the harm inflicted on other people by the explosions which the terrorists would detonate in response). Less straightforwardly classifiable is the orientation of the torture undertaken by Melvin against Miranda; here the problem of fixing upon the germane baseline of comparison looms large.

On the one hand, when we ask whether Miranda will be better off if Melvin declines to perform any acts of torture, the answer is negative. Given that the thugs are resolutely disposed to perpetrate far worse acts of torture against her in the event of Melvin’s noncompliance with their behests, his engaging in placatory torture redounds to the benefit of her bodily and mental well-being. Injurious to her though his acts of burning and shocking are, they forestall the considerably worse onslaughts that would have been inflicted by the thugs in response to his defiance of their orders. Thus, if the appropriate baseline of comparison is the course of events that would have unfolded in the presence of such defiance, the orientation of Melvin’s placatory torture toward Miranda’s physical and psychological welfare is benevolent.

On the other hand, if the appropriate baseline of comparison is instead a course of events in which nobody contravenes the moral prohibition on the perpetration of torture against Miranda, the acts of placatory torture by her husband make her considerably worse off. The exquisite pain and wounds caused by his acts of burning and shocking are obviously detrimental to her elementary well-being, if they are compared with the absence of any such untoward effects in the moralized baseline course of events that has just been broached. Because his acts of torture foreseeably cause such deleterious effects, the orientation of his conduct toward Miranda’s bodily and mental soundness is destructive rather than benignly supportive. Of course, Melvin engages in those acts not with relish but with the utmost repugnance. Still, the impact of his torturous techniques on Miranda ─ in comparison with the morally required situation in which no one afflicts her with any such techniques ─ is severely harmful.

Now, if our moral assessment of Melvin’s behavior is to be well-founded, we need to take account of the full array of circumstances in which the behavior has occurred. Given as much, the appropriate baseline of comparison for judging the harmfulness of his actions is the first rather than the second. The context in which Melvin resorts to torture is not the morally required situation in which everyone else is disposed to abstain from any torturous measures; he adopts his harrowing course of conduct precisely in recognition of that fact. Faced with a plight in which he cannot keep Miranda from undergoing agony, he does his best to minimize the harm and pain that will be inflicted on her ─ even though the only tack open to him that will produce such a result is the subjection of her to torture. In the dreadful circumstances, the orientation of his placatory torture toward her bodily and mental well-being is benevolent.

2.2.3 Perpetrator-focused reflections

So far, I have adopted a victim-focused perspective by concentrating on the interests and autonomy of Miranda as the decisive factors for gauging whether the torture administered to her by Melvin is morally wrong. That is, I have heretofore asked whether her interests are furthered or set back by Melvin’s actions and whether her autonomy is respected or flouted by those actions. Although the victim-focused considerations that we have pondered are somewhat inconclusive, they largely militate in favor of the proposition that Melvin’s recourse to placatory torture is morally legitimate. Miranda has not uncoercedly consented to the torture, but she has fervently consented in a context in which no uncoerced consent is possible. Notwithstanding that the burning and shocking of her body by Melvin will greatly impair her welfare, the orientation of those measures is benevolent in light of the horrific harm which they fend off. Hence, even though the victim-focused considerations are not entirely clear-cut, they do not on the whole supply a basis for deeming Melvin’s actions to be wrong.

However, if we are to assess the morality of Melvin’s placatory torture fully, the victim-focused perspective has to be supplemented by a perpetrator-focused perspective. In other words, we have to attend not only to the interests and dignity of Miranda but also to the integrity or probity of Melvin. ^[11] From such a perpetrator-focused perspective, we can descry the wrongness of Melvin’s resort to placatory torture. Though Melvin is desperately well-intentioned as he takes the steps that are necessary to spare his wife from the viciousness of the thugs, he morally degrades himself by taking those steps. From a perpetrator-focused perspective, we can see that his conduct is fundamentally on a par with the conduct of the politician in Gewirth’s scenario. Melvin uses himself and Miranda as playthings of the thugs, as he shows himself ready ─ however reluctantly and disconsolately ─ to stoop to an especially demeaning and terrible mode of conduct for the sake of keeping the thugs at bay. Albeit his conduct is in conformity to his wife’s entreaties, the only people whose uncoerced wishes he obeys are the thugs. They gleefully want Miranda to be tortured, and they particularly want Melvin to administer the torture. When he abases himself by submitting to their directives, he is ignominiously providing them with exactly what they desire. He has been forced by them into becoming an active participant in his own psychological humiliation and moral degradation, as he turns his agency into the vehicle through which the thugs afflict Miranda with excruciating pain. He indelibly stains the relationship between himself and his wife, as he subjects her to modes of mistreatment to which nobody can ever legitimately be subjected (outside certain contexts in which soldiers or spies undergo training for endurance). Though Melvin and Miranda might recover from their ordeal psychologically and physically, the ethical tenor of their relationship will henceforward be tarnished by his demonstration of his willingness to afflict her with such mistreatment. He has shown that he is prepared to place his agency in the service of the thugs as an instrument of their torturous designs ─ designs that are centered on debasing him as just such an instrument.

2.2.4 Moral optimality

By resorting to placatory torture, Melvin has sullied his moral integrity and his relationship with his wife. Albeit the inconclusive victim-focused considerations pertaining to the torture are not in themselves sufficient to deprive it of moral legitimacy, the perpetrator-focused considerations just outlined do indeed render Melvin’s conduct morally wrong. His conduct breaches a duty owed to himself and a duty owed to Miranda; the former duty requires Melvin to sustain the conditions for a warrantedly high level of self-respect, while the latter duty requires him to abstain from gross forms of mistreatment. However, although his torturous actions are not strongly permissible, they are weakly permissible. That is, in the grim predicament in which Melvin performs those actions, they are morally optimal. His having recoiled altogether from performing them would have been an even graver wrong than his having performed them.

Melvin has owed and contravened the moral duties mentioned above, but those are not the only moral duties that are incumbent on him in his plight. He owes a duty to Miranda to take all feasible and necessary steps to defend her against any foreseeable infliction of very serious harm. ^[12] In the grotesque circumstances, the only way in which he can discharge that duty is to subject her to placatory torture. He will thereby be causing severe harm to her, of course, but he will be protecting her from the even worse harm that she would have undergone at the hands of the thugs directly. Moreover, his recourse to placatory torture occurs not least as a response to her own supplications. If she had not urged him to accede to the behests of the thugs ─ and especially if she had adjured him to preserve his moral integrity and the integrity of their relationship by refusing to treat the two of them as playthings for the amusement and mollification of the thugs ─ his recourse to torture would not have been morally optimal. It would not have been even weakly permissible (though its gravity would still have been considerably mitigated by the horrific context of its occurrence). However, given that Miranda has in fact beseeched Melvin to overcome his scruples in order to lessen her misery, his torturous actions are morally optimal. While running athwart some stringent moral duties that continue to be binding upon him, his actions fulfill some even more stringent moral obligations that are in conflict with the duties which he has breached.

Although the moral optimality of Melvin’s conduct does not render that conduct morally legitimate, it does markedly attenuate the gravity of the wrongs that Melvin has committed. He has wronged both himself and Miranda, but ─ given the full circumstances, including her robust expostulations ─ his declining to carry out the placatory torture would have wronged her even more severely. In a terrible quandary that has confronted him with a choice between two morally impermissible courses of conduct, he has chosen correctly (even though his correct choice has not enabled him to avoid the commission of some wrongs). Consequently, the remedies morally required of him in the aftermath of his actions will be relatively mild. In particular, he should not be subjected to any criminal sanctions or other legal sanctions. If he is ever brought to trial on any criminal charges for his wielding of torturous measures against Miranda, he should be acquitted with a full excuse of duress.

3.3.1 A first example of the conflation

Scheffler’s conflation of the none-versus-any duality and the fewer-versus-more duality is first occurrent in his exposition of the maximizing conception of rationality:

Views that incorporate agent-centered restrictions … seem troubling, relative to this [maximizing] notion of rationality. For they appear to identify certain kinds of actions as morally objectionable or undesirable, in the sense that it is morally preferable that no such actions should occur than that any should, but then tell us that there are situations in which we must act in such a way that a greater rather than a lesser number of these actions are actually performed. (1988, p. 252)

In the closing portion of this quotation, the auxiliary verb ‘must’ is clearly to be construed as deontic. Hence, the quoted remark is composed of three main claims. First, the opening sentence correctly maintains that agent-centered restrictions are at odds with the maximizing conception of rationality which Scheffler expounds. Second, the initial half of the next sentence rightly asserts that deontologists embrace the No Contraventions Principle. Third, the closing portion of that next sentence accurately indicates that deontologists reject the Minimization Principle.

In other words, each of the three main claims in the quotation is unexceptionable. What is puzzling is Scheffler’s assumption ─ signaled by ‘but’ in the second sentence of the quotation ─ that deontologists’ embrace of the No Contraventions Principle is in tension with their rejection of the Minimization Principle. His perception of some tension derives from his conflation of the none-versus-any contrast and the fewer-versus-more contrast, for the No Contraventions Principle pertains to the former contrast whereas the Minimization Principle pertains to the latter.

Suppose that, instead of adhering to the No Contraventions Principle, deontologists adhered to a variant of that principle focused on the fewer-versus-more dichotomy. That is, suppose they were committed to the thesis that it is always morally better that a smaller number of violations of deontological prohibitions occur than that a greater number occur. In that event, their position concerning what is always morally better would be in tension with their repudiation of the Minimization Principle. In fact, however, deontologists are not committed to the smaller-versus-greater thesis that has just been broached. They are instead committed to the No Contraventions Principle, which Scheffler accurately attributes to them at many junctures. Given as much, there is not even a superficial contrariety between their position concerning what is always morally better and their repudiation of the Minimization Principle.

Deontologists reject the Minimization Principle because it implies that contraventions of deontological prohibitions are sometimes morally permissible. Their position on that point is straightforwardly consistent with their endorsement of the No Contraventions Principle. After all, in any situation with reference to which the Minimization Principle would deem a transgression of a deontological prohibition to be morally permissible for some person P, the non-scalar ideal encapsulated in the No Contraventions Principle cannot be realized through any mode of conduct available to P. Thus, when deontologists reject the implications of the Minimization Principle in regard to any such situation ─ and when they thereby insist that P is morally obligated in the specified circumstances to behave in a way that will result overall in more rather than fewer violations of deontological constraints ─ there is not the slightest tension with their espousal of the No Contraventions Principle. The No Contraventions Principle does not draw a favorable comparison between fewer violations and more; rather, it draws a favorable comparison between no violations and some. It articulates the underlying attitude not of a person who minimizes violations, but of a person who eschews them.

3.3.2 A second example

Scheffler again rides roughshod over the distinction between the none-versus-some dichotomy and the fewer-versus-more dichotomy, in the following passage:

Yet if [deontological] views do regard violations [of deontological restrictions] as morally objectionable or undesirable, in the sense that it is morally preferable that none should occur than that any should, it does then seem paradoxical that they tell us there are times when we must act in such a way that a larger rather than a smaller number of violations actually takes place. (1988, p. 254)

This passage declares that deontologists are adopting a paradoxical set of positions when they embrace the No Contraventions Principle while gainsaying the Minimization Principle. As should be evident from my response to Scheffler in the preceding subsection, however, the deontologists’ combination of positions is not paradoxical at all. On the contrary, because the No Contraventions Principle encapsulates the underlying attitude of someone who seeks to avoid any violations of deontological constraints ─ rather than the underlying attitude of someone who seeks to minimize such violations ─ one’s endorsement of that principle goes together very smoothly with one’s rejection of the Minimization Principle. Only by eliding the difference between the none-versus-some contrast and the fewer-versus-more contrast has Scheffler presumed to find any incongruity between the positions which the deontologists combine.

3.3.3 Goals for deontologists: a first example

Writing more than a decade after Nozick inveighed against any efforts to formulate deontological doctrines in terms of goals, Scheffler nonetheless contends that the proponents of those doctrines cannot overcome the following problem:

[V]iews incorporating agent-centered restrictions actually do present as desirable [a] goal whose maximum accomplishment they then prohibit. They assign each person the agent-relative goal of not violating any restrictions himself … .Thus in forbidding the minimization of overall violations, they are … thwarting the achievement of [a] goal whose desirability they recognize. (1988, p. 254)

He slightly later reaffirms that

defenders of standard deontological views do not appear to be in a position to make the claim that, in forbidding us to minimize the violations of those restrictions they insist on, they are not thwarting the achievement of any goal whose desirability they recognize (1988, p. 255).

Despite Nozick’s apt animadversions on the use of teleological language in the formulation of deontological constraints, we can accept as harmless the notion that a deontological theory assigns to each person the agent-centered goal of not contravening any deontological restrictions. That goal is strictly non-scalar; the attainment of it is an all-or-nothing matter. What is remarkable in Scheffler’s comments is the suggestion that the realization of that non-scalar goal is undermined by the deontologists’ rebuffal of the Minimization Principle. On the contrary, any transgression of a deontological constraint DC that is undertaken by someone to lower the overall incidence of transgressions of DC will ensure that he or she fails to achieve the goal of not contravening any deontological restrictions. Only by avoiding all such transgressions can he or she attain that goal.

Immanent in the No Contraventions Principle is the overarching ideal of thorough compliance by everyone with deontological prohibitions. Let us designate that agent-neutral ideal ─ an ideal to which deontologists are genuinely committed ─ as the ‘Thorough Compliance Objective’. Such an ideal will go unfulfilled in any situation where some person P breaches DC in order to avert some other violations of DC. The Thorough Compliance Objective does not call for a minimized level of contraventions of DC. Rather, it calls for no contraventions of DC; it is focused on the contrast between none and some rather than on the contrast between fewer and more. Hence, the realization of the Thorough Compliance Objective is stymied whenever P strives to minimize the level of transgressions of DC by engaging in a transgression.

Of course, the Thorough Compliance Objective will also go unfulfilled if P refrains from breaching DC and thereby allows some other breaches of DC to occur. My point is not that that agent-neutral ideal will always be given effect by P’s attainment of the agent-centered goal of avoiding any breaches of DC. My point, rather, is that P’s attainment of that latter goal is a necessary condition for the fulfillment of the agent-neutral ideal. Whenever P deviates from his agent-centered goal ─ even if his aim is to increase the overall level of conformity to DC ─ he thwarts the realization of the Thorough Compliance Objective.

Perhaps, when Scheffler refers to a goal thwarted by deontologists, he has in mind neither the agent-centered goal of avoiding any transgressions of DC nor the agent-neutral Thorough Compliance Objective. Perhaps he instead has in mind the agent-neutral goal of minimizing the number of transgressions of DC. If so, he is correct in maintaining that the achievement of that agent-neutral goal can sometimes be thwarted by one’s pursuit of the agent-centered goal of not acting at odds with DC. However, we should then be baffled by Scheffler’s assertion that deontologists are somehow committed to recognizing the desirability of the accomplishment of the minimizing goal. Deontologists are not committed in any way to being consequentialists. The only agent-neutral ideal that can accurately be ascribed to them ─ an ideal repeatedly ascribed to them by Scheffler himself ─ is the Thorough Compliance Objective. That ideal is not a minimizing goal; it is centered on the division between no contraventions and some, rather than on the division between fewer contraventions and more.

In the first of the two quotations at the outset of this subsection, Scheffler speaks of a ‘goal whose maximum accomplishment [deontological doctrines] then prohibit.’ Similarly, he later states that ‘deontology is [committed] to presenting as desirable [a] non-relative goal whose maximum accomplishment it then prohibits’ (1988, p. 254). Given these references to the maximum accomplishment of a goal, and given that the goal of minimizing the number of violations of DC is itself non-scalar, Scheffler here presumably has in mind the goal of lowering the number of the violations. That latter goal is scalar; the maximum accomplishment of it would consist in minimizing the incidence of violations of DC. Again, however, Scheffler is quite mistaken in claiming that deontologists are committed to holding that the fulfillment of a consequentialist goal of the sort just mentioned is desirable. Though deontologists will undoubtedly accept that the realization of such a goal is desirable within the constraints of any deontological prohibitions, they are certainly not committed to accepting that the realization of such a goal is desirable even when it requires some breaches of those prohibitions. As has been stated, the only agent-neutral ideal which deontologists are committed to embracing is the Thorough Compliance Objective. That non-scalar ideal consists in no violations of DC rather than in a lowered level of violations.

3.3.4 Goals for deontologists: a second example

I have already remarked that the ‘ceteris paribus’ clause in Scheffler’s exposition of the maximizing conception of rationality could be an opening for a reconciliation between that conception and the requirements of deontology. Scheffler seeks to close off that opening, in the following passage where he again attributes to deontologists a teleological outlook (1988, p. 256f):

[S]omeone who wanted to show that there was no conflict between agent-centered restrictions and maximizing rationality might point out that, if the ceteris paribus clause in the formulation of maximizing rationality were fully cashed out, one of its main features would be a provision to the effect that it can sometimes be rational to act in such a way as to worse achieve one goal if that will make it possible to better achieve another. Since that is so, it might be said, views that include agent-centered restrictions need not come into conflict with maximizing rationality when they tell us to further the agent-relative goal of not violating the restrictions ourselves at the expense of the non-relative goal of minimizing violations of the restrictions. By itself, however, this claim is not fully persuasive. The problem is that the agent-relative goal and the non-relative goal appear to be related to each other in such a way as to make the insistence on giving priority to the relative goal puzzling, from the standpoint of maximizing rationality. Since, as our earlier discussion suggested, the fact that violations of the restrictions are objectionable from a moral point of view constitutes at least part of the basis for claiming that individual agents ought not ordinarily to commit such violations, the agent-relative goal looks as if it is derivative from, and given life by, the non-relative objection, and does not appear to represent something independently desirable. Rather, the desirability of achieving the agent-relative goal seems contingent on its serving to advance the non-relative goal of minimizing the morally objectionable. And if that is so, then the insistence that one must satisfy the agent-relative goal even when doing so will inhibit achievement of the non-relative goal is incompatible with considerations of maximization.

In many respects, the most revealing word used here by Scheffler is ‘ordinarily’ in the antepenultimate sentence of this passage. Whereas consequentialists maintain that individual agents ordinarily ought not to transgress deontological restrictions ─ because conformity to those restrictions is ordinarily promotive of good consequences ─ deontological absolutists insist that individual agents ought not to transgress deontological restrictions, tout court. There is no ‘ordinarily’ qualification in what the deontological absolutists claim about the requisiteness of abiding by deontological constraints. Once the unqualified nature of any deontological constraints is duly recognized, they do not at all appear to be derivative of the goal of minimizing the frequency with which those constraints are violated. Rather, they appear to be what they are: namely, limitations on the extent to which (or the ways in which) that agent-neutral goal of minimization can legitimately be pursued.

In the antepenultimate sentence of the passage quoted above, Scheffler refers to one of the earlier discussions in his article. That earlier discussion, which I have quoted in § 3.2, correctly contends that deontologists are committed to the No Contraventions Principle. Because the No Contraventions Principle is centered on the distinction between none and some rather than on the distinction between fewer and more ─ in other words, because it is an absolutist principle rather than a minimizing principle ─ the commitment of deontologists to it scarcely renders puzzling their insistence that agent-centered prohibitions impose moral obligations even when the fulfillment of those obligations will increase the incidence of violations of the prohibitions. Of course, an insistence on that point is at odds with the Minimization Principle. Were deontologists committed to that latter principle, as Scheffler clearly appears to be assuming in the extract quoted in this subsection, they would indeed be muddled. However, as I have sought to underscore, deontologists squarely repudiate the Minimization Principle. Scheffler himself has grasped as much in the earlier portion of his article, by correctly attributing to deontologists an embrace of the No Contraventions Principle.