Liability to Defensive Harm

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Defensive Harm

‘The moral irrelevance of moral coercion’

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Frowe
Keyword(s):  
Correct Account ◽  
Defensive Harm

AbstractAn agent A morally coerces another agent, B, when A manipulates non-epistemological facts in order that B’s moral commitments enjoin B to do what A wants B to do, and B is motivated by these commitments. It is widely argued that forced choices arising from moral coercion are morally distinct from forced choices arising from moral duress or happenstance. On these accounts, the fact of being coerced bears on what an agent may do, the voluntariness of her actions, and/or her accountability for any harms that result from her actions (where accountability includes liability to defensive harm, punishment, blame and compensation). This paper does not provide an account of the wrongness of moral coercion. Rather, I argue that, whatever the correct account of its wrongness, the mere fact of being coerced has no bearing on what the agent may do, on the voluntariness of her action, or her accountability for any resultant harm, compared to otherwise identical cases arising from duress and happenstance.

Responsibility and Liability

2020 ◽  
pp. 133-159
Author(s):  
Victor Tadros
Keyword(s):  
Defensive Harm ◽  
Luck Egalitarian ◽  
Broad Consensus

There is a broad consensus that something like responsibility or choice impacts on a person’s liability to defensive harm. But beyond that, there is little consensus. This chapter considers several influential views about the significance of responsibility. Some, such as the luck egalitarian view, are found to be badly incomplete. Others, such as the protective value of choice, fail to explain the significance of a person’s relationship with a threat for liability. However, the chapter broadly defends the significance of choice in some cases of culpable and non-culpable threat-causing conduct.

Rights and Evidence

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Jonathan Quong
Keyword(s):  
Moral Rights ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Defensive Harm

Some philosophers endorse a fact-relative account of moral rights against harm. According to this view, if B’s ϕ‎-ing would contravene A’s right not to be harmed if B had access to all the facts, then B contravenes A’s right by ϕ‎-ing regardless of her epistemic position. Chapter 6 argues that moral rights against harm are not fact-relative, but must rather be sensitive, to a certain extent, to the evidence that duty-bearers can reasonably be expected to possess. The chapter argues that this conception of moral rights against harm has important implications for liability to defensive harm. In particular, people who pose fact-relative wrongful harm are not always liable to defensive harm, since such people may not threaten anyone’s moral rights via their actions.

Defending Defensive Killing: Reply to Barry, McMahan, Ferzan, Renzo, and Haque

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 750-766
Author(s):  
Helen Frowe
Keyword(s):  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Defensive Harm

This article responds to objections to the account of permissible harming developed in Defensive Killing, as raised by Christian Barry, Jeff McMahan, Kimberly Ferzan, Massimo Renzo and Adil Ahmad Haque. Each paper deserves much more attention than I can give it here. I focus on Barry’s important observations regarding the liability to defensive harm of those who fail to rescue. In response to McMahan, I grant some of McMahan’s objections to my rejection of the moral equivalence of threats and bystanders, but reject his analysis of my Shield cases. I welcome much of Ferzan’s development of my account of ‘futile’ defence, but offer some concerns regarding her own view of when honour can be appropriately defended. I argue that Renzo’s objections to my account of bloodless invasions are unpersuasive, and identify some problems with Renzo’s own view. Finally, I defend my account of civilian liability against Adil Haque’s critique.

scholarly journals Morally Permissible Risk Imposition and Liability to Defensive Harm

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-408
Author(s):  
Susanne Burri
Keyword(s):  
Defensive Harm ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

AbstractThis paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform it only if she abides by certain duties of care. Those who argue that engaging in such an activity can render an agent liable to defensive harm ground this liability in the luck egalitarian thought that we may justly hold individuals responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices. Against this, I argue that a luck egalitarian commitment to holding people responsible cannot, by itself, ground liability to defensive harm. It can help ground such liability only against the backdrop of a distributively just society, and only if further considerations speak morally in favour of attaching certain well-defined costs to individuals’ risk-imposing choices. I conclude by suggesting that if an account of liability applies robustly across distributively just and unjust contexts alike, then what grounds an agent’s liability is plausibly not her responsibility for threatening objectively unjustified harm, but her culpability for doing so.

Pre-emptive Rules and the Scope of Defensive Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yitzhak Benbaji
Keyword(s):  
Free Competition ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Defensive Harm ◽  
The Right ◽  
Difficult Cases

This essay advances a morality of defensive harm, which I call “Rule-SD.” Rule-SD resolves in a new way two types of difficult cases. It entails that if certain conditions are met, a defender has the right to kill a man who is innocently falling on her, if this is necessary for her survival. Moreover, Rule-SD yields the “free competition resolution” in some symmetrical cases; it implies that two people who innocently threaten each other might have a right to kill each other if necessary for their survival. Rule-SD’s core claim is that a defender’s right of self-defense might arise from a “pre-emptive rule” rather than from facts about the liability of the attacker. In those cases, the defender is subject to a rule that permits self-preference.

Overdetermination and Obligation

2021 ◽  
pp. 355-380
Author(s):  
Victor Tadros
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Defensive Harm ◽  
Mixed Motives ◽  
Negative Outcome

This chapter is concerned with circumstances where a person’s act makes no difference to the occurrence of a negative outcome, but is a member of a group of acts that does make such a difference. In the light of an analysis of these circumstances, it argues against two familiar ideas. One is Derek Parfit’s view that the wrongness of an act directly depends on the consequences of the group of acts of which it is a member. The other is the view that intentions are irrelevant to permissibility. The chapter suggests that wrongness and permissibility, in these cases, is distinguished by the intentions of those who act. It also argues that intentions make a difference to a person’s liability to punitive, compensatory, and defensive harm. Finally, it briefly considers cases involving mixed motives.

Agent-Relative Prerogatives

2020 ◽  
pp. 58-96
Author(s):  
Jonathan Quong
Keyword(s):  
Innocent Person ◽  
Means Principle ◽  
Defensive Harm

Chapter 3 defends the view that we each possess a limited agent-relative prerogative to impose harm on people who are not liable to this harm in defence of things over which we have rightful claims. The chapter argues that this prerogative is needed to satisfactorily explain cases where someone who is not liable to defensive harm threatens an innocent person, for example, cases involving Nonresponsible Threats or Justified Attackers. The chapter also argues that the agent-relative prerogative to defensively harm nonliable persons is constrained by a particular version of the means principle. The chapter concludes by addressing a number of potential objections.

Responsibility without Resentment

2018 ◽  
pp. 220-252
Author(s):  
Vincent Chiao
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Public Investment ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Democratic Equality ◽  
Defensive Harm ◽  
Special Concern ◽  
Rights And Interests ◽  
Taking Responsibility

Why has responsibility been so central to normative theorizing about the criminal law, even as its significance in other areas of political philosophy is diminished? This chapter considers several arguments. First, responsibility is of special concern for the criminal law because reactive attitudes such as blame and punishment are indispensable to our sense of ourselves as responsible agents. Second, when we are faced with actual criminal wrongdoing, we are called upon to respond with blame and punishment, no matter how much we are invested in other means of dealing with crime: the criminal law is inherently retributive and retrospective. Finally, responsibility means people can be liable to harm in ways that are inconsistent with democratic equality. This chapter is devoted to showing why none of these arguments is compelling. Taking responsibility seriously does not require any particular level of public investment in punishment, nor does it imply any particular level of public investment in retrospective punishment as against prospective prevention. Moreover, while people can in certain circumstances render themselves liable to defensive harm through their wrongful acts, this does not entail that public institutions are entitled to discount the rights and interests of the guilty relative to those of the innocent. In short, skepticism about punishment need not rest upon skepticism about responsibility.

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