Can Dead People Have Rights?

So I've been discussing whether or not future people can have rights, and I've started considering the possibility that they don't. But an interesting parallel occurred to me the other day when I was talking to one of my TA's (not the one from the Glue Man debate). Perhaps we could learn a lot about our relationship with future people by thinking about our relationship with the deceased. There are, of course, obvious differences, but in a lot of ways, the questions that we face when thinking about the deceased are very similar to the ones that we face when we think about future people.

For one thing, it's hard to see how we can really harm the deceased. Ignoring the possibility of their souls existing in some other realm, where they would be able to see what we did, it seems like we could fairly say that people who are deceased no longer exist as persons (that is, as beings with moral standing). And very significantly, they will never exist in the future (this is even stronger than what we face when we talk about potential future people). So really, to say that we do anything to them seems shaky at best.

So, then, if we can't do anything to the deceased, can we really say that they have rights? In his essay, Original Rights and Just Redistribution, Hillel Steiner argues that the answer is no. He writes, "...although we undoubtedly do have serious moral duties with regard to dead and future persons, these are not correlative ones. Dead and future persons have no rights." By "correlative," He elaborates, saying, "...in arguing against the notion of a right to bequeath, I don't commit myself to the view that there cannot be utilitarian or interest-based accounts of the practice of bequest. There clearly can be. And insofar as there are, these will go some way to justifying enfranchisement of the dead."

What Steiner has in mind is that we might not respect duties regarding the dead because of rights held by the deceased individuals themselves, but rather because of some other kind of consideration to which we attribute moral significance. For example, a "utilitarian" reason of the sort Steiner is talking about would be the fact that people might be more productive and lead better lives if they believe that after they die, their wishes will be honored. If this were true (and I think it's quite obvious that it is), then it seems like we would have a good reason to think that we are morally obliged to respect the wishes of dead individuals, that reason being that we want our own wishes to be respected after we die.

This kind of reasoning is seemingly dependent on the notion of a veil of ignorance approach to morality (or some essentially similar substitute). In his essay, "Does Reason Tell Us What Moral Code to Follow and, Indeed, to Follow Any Moral Code at All?," John Harsanyi explained this way of choosing between moral codes: "...Taking an impartial point of view, that is, disregarding what your own social position would be in either society, would you prefer to live in a society governed by the first moral code or in a society governed by the second?" And this seems like what some people have in mind when we say that we should respect the wishes of the dead. We would prefer to live in a society governed by a moral code such that the wishes of the dead were respected, because such a society would likely be a much better place to live.

The thing to think about, though, is whether or not it would be unjust to ignore the interests of the dead. That is, whether we would be justified in using coercion against someone who was going to do it. If so, then that seems like it would be very important for my discussion of climate change; it might lead us to a way of denying that climate change infringes on any rights while simultaneously supporting the permissibility of coercion to prevent people from contributing to it. But I'll pause for now and get back to this later.

The Glue Man, Part II

My TA responded to my Glue Man example with the following counterexample: "Imagine that there is a very low probability that while playing touch football you could make a catch so amazing that it causes an epileptic man to have a seizure and drop his baby. I don't think it is therefore impermissible for you to play touch football, nor do I think that it is impermissible for an epileptic man to go to a park where people are playing touch football just because there is such a chance." I disagree that this counterexample demonstrates anything about the ethical status of tearing away from the Glue man, and I'll attempt to show why with a modification of the Glue Man scenario.

Let's say that Linda's pleasurable activity, instead of simply spinning around the darkened room with her arms outstretched, is firing a rifle in a random direction. Let's suppose that instead of the Glue Man being located in the room with Linda, there is instead a Glue-Man shaped board on one of the walls which can detect the impact of a bullet strike. In another room, the Glue Man himself is suspended above the floor in his unanimated state, and suspended from the ceiling above him is a grand piano. Suppose that the pressure sensitive board in the dark room is hooked up in such a way that if it is shot, the glue man will be released from his suspended position, and will land on the ground below. As before, the impact will jar the glue man to life, giving him full moral standing as a person, though he will be stuck to the floor because of the glue. A few seconds after this, the grand piano would be released from the ceiling, crushing the glue man to death.

It seems like this would be a case similar to the touch football example. The relevant question would be whether Linda would be permitted to fire her rifle randomly if she knew that there was a chance that she would hit the board, and this sequence of events would occur, resulting in the death of the glue man. To be honest, I'm not sure what to say about this. But I don't think that this is a good analogy to abortion, and I'll illustrate why by repairing the scenario to fit much more closely with abortion.

Let's say that just like before, Linda is in the dark room with her rifle, the board is set up somewhere along the wall, the glue man is suspended above the ground, and the piano is hanging over him. If Linda hits the board, the glue man will still drop, come to life, and be stuck to the floor (though the glue will eventually wear off). But this time, instead of the piano being released automatically after a few seconds, a lasso connected to the piano fires out of the wall and wraps around Linda's waist. As soon as the rope is secure, the mechanism that was originally holding the piano up releases, and Linda is left holding the piano up (we can suppose that the leverage in the system is such that Linda can support the weight of the piano, but it's an inconvenience to her). Linda could untie the lasso if she wanted to, but doing so would cause the piano to fall and crush the glue man.

It seems that this scenario is very different from the initial one, where the piano just dropped automatically. I agree that it seems somewhat worthwhile to ask whether Linda's shooting the rifle would be morally permissible in either case, and whether the moral status of that choice differs between the examples. My TA seems to be committed to the stance that in the first case, we would be able to construct the scenario in which the chances of Linda killing the glue man were small enough that she would be justified in shooting the rifle (perhaps the room is large enough that the chances of hitting any particular patch of wall are tiny). For my purposes, it won't be important to question whether this is true or not.

All that I want to suggest is that Linda's moral situation changes fundamentally from the first example to the second. We might think it permissible for Linda to fire the rifle in the first example, or we might think it impermissible. The answer seems to depend on how we deal with the concept of risk in our moral theory. But to be certain, if Linda kills the glue man, it will be the direct result of her choice to fire the rifle.

In the second example, on the other hand, the glue man's life is in no way put directly at risk by Linda's choice to fire the rifle. Rather, by firing the rifle, it seems like Linda enters something of a moral lottery. If she misses the pressure sensitive board, the glue man doesn't even come to life; Linda can go about her business without any real guilt. But if she hits the board, then the glue man gains moral standing, and Linda must make a choice: she can either deal with the inconvenience of being attached to the piano (until the glue wears off and the glue man can escape from underneath it), or she can untie the lasso, killing the glue man. It seems that whatever we want to say about the morality of Linda shooting the rifle (thereby "entering the lottery") in the first place, we would want to treat this outcome as morally distinct. And if Linda hits the board, it seems to me that we might very well say that she takes on the obligation to hold up the piano.

In the same way, I wouldn't want to say anything about whether or not it's moral to have sex if you don't want to get pregnant. But if we grant fetuses the same moral status as humans (which we agreed to do earlier), and if someone ends up pregnant in the same way that Linda ends up attached to the piano, then it seems like we might have reason for saying that abortion would be impermissible, just like it might seem impermissible for Linda to crush the glue man by untying the lasso after she had put herself and the glue man in their respective positions by shooting her rifle randomly. Does that make sense?

The Glue Man

So I was talking to one of my TA's the other day about the ethics of abortion. To be honest, I really don't like this issue, because it forces me to acknowledge things like "I'm honestly not sure I can give you any good reason that killing extremely young babies is wrong; if you were from a culture that thought it acceptable to do it, I don't think I could give you any reason to think that you were wrong. I mean, none of the things that I think are morally relevant apply to babies, and if you pointed that out to me and called me irrational, I don't know how I could respond." But in the class which sparked this discussion, we've been making a really interesting assumption (because the authors we're reading grant it): we've taken as given that fetuses are persons. The question, then, is whether abortion would be permissible if we assumed this.

I won't get into the entire discussion, because we've been talking about it for about a week. But one interesting example is Judith Thomson's "violinist," in her essay, "A Defense of Abortion." In this example, a very important violinist has kidney failure, and the only way to save him is to hook him up to a person with the same blood type, so that his blood can be filtered by their kidneys. Unfortunately, his blood type is extremely rare, and you're the only one who has it. In order to save the violinist, a group of music lovers kidnaps you in the middle of the night, while you're asleep, and hooks you up to the violinist. The question is whether, when you wake up, it would be unjust for you to unhook the violinist, resulting in his death. Thomson thinks that the answer is clearly yes; though it would be nice of you to allow the violinist to use your kidneys, you are under no obligation to let him do so, and it would be perfectly justified of you to unplug yourself.

Obviously, the violinist example isn't such a good analogy for abortion in most cases. We might think that it lines up well with a case in which a woman is raped, but it certainly has critical differences regarding a case in which a woman voluntarily has sex and gets pregnant. So as I said, I was talking about this with my TA, trying to figure out a way to repair the thought experiment in order to properly get a handle on the issue at hand. The product was as follows (if you're wondering, I'm posting this because he asked me to write it up for him, and I figured I might as well put it on here while I'm at it).

Imagine that a man, Clarence, has a very large, dark room in his house. Somewhere inside it, completely motionless and undetectable, there stands an unconscious, unliving human-shaped object. Essentially, the object is completely human, except it is not actually alive, and therefore can't be considered to be a person. Its skin is completely soaked in a very strong glue, which has penetrated deep into its skin. The object also has very thin blood, like a hemopheliac, and so if something were stuck to the glue on the object's skin, and then pulled free, the human-shaped object would bleed dry (however, the glue will wear off after some time, so something that gets stuck to the object is not permenantly attached). But if something strikes the object, it will suddenly come alive, achieving the status of full personhood.

So to recap the critical features of this object: Initially, it is not a person. If something strikes it, then it will come to life, becoming a person. But if the thing that struck it is subsequently torn off, it will bleed to death.

Now imagine there's a woman, Linda, who wants to use Clarence's room so that she can spin around in circles with her arms held out parallel to the ground, moving aimlessly about the room in a state of sheer euphoria. Linda knows that the human shaped object is in the room (or should know), and knows what will happen if she accidentally strikes it, but she spins anyway. Suddenly, her hand catches onto the object, and it comes to life. Linda can't believe her bad fortune; here she is with this person now stuck to her hand until the glue wears off.

Would Linda be justified in tearing her hand away, causing the person to bleed to death? Keep in mind, I'm not arguing that this case is analogous to abortion. What I will say is that if we grant fetuses personhood, then this case does seem to be pretty analogous. It needs to be modified somewhat to describe rape, sex with contraceptives, etc. But as far as voluntary, unprotected sex is concerned, it seems like this is pretty much the same kind of case. And to be honest, I'm feeling like Linda would be acting unjustly if she pulled her hand away.

[Read the second part of this conversation here]

The Role of Consequentialism and Respect for Personal Liberty in Discussing the Non-Identity Problem

I met with Dan Hausman again today to further discuss the Non-Identity problem, and several important things came out of it. The first was that Dr. Hausman agreed with my view that we can't legitimately say that climate change infringes upon the right of any individual to inherit an unspoiled Earth, because no individual has this right. And he pointed out that my use of the term "Emergent" to describe the rights possessed by a generation as an abstract entity might not be the best idea. He suggested that when we talk about Emergent Rights, we're not simply talking about rights possessed by groups, but rather rights that seem to "result" from groups of people coming together in some organized fashion. Since we don't want to say that the potential groups which make up the abstract entity of a generation are "coming together" or "organizing," it seems that we might want to find a different term. I foresee difficulties with the term "Group Rights," since it might be confused with the idea that people have new rights as members of certain groups, and I'm wondering whether "Cohort Rights" would be better. In any case, I'll need to think about it. But one thing is clear; if libertarians already object to Emergent Rights, then they're sure to really object to "Cohort Rights."

Another idea that came out of the conversation was that perhaps we have duties that don't correspond to rights that people have. This was a topic of some debate, and I want to think about it some more before I comment on it. So consider this as a note to myself to think about this.

The other main thing that came out of the meeting was a reference to an essay by James Woodward called "The Non-Identity Problem" (a truly audacious and edgy title, I must say). I've started reading it, and I want to just say that there's a really interesting feeling that comes with thinking about something for days, and then reading your ideas in an essay that was published over 20 years ago. But Woodward's essay has been really good so far, and it's giving me a lot to think about.

One thing that came up near the beginning was that on page 807, Woodward writes, "...while Parfit denies that an appeal to rights and fairness can explain what is wrong with certain choices in some Non-Identity cases...he explicitly allows for the possibility that an appeal to rights and fairness may be relevant in a wide variety of other Non-Identity cases. He does not endorse the claim I criticize below--that the Non-Identity Problem precludes an appeal to rights and fairness in general and forces us to adopt a purely consequentialist approach to large areas of population policy. At least in connection with the Non-Identity Problem, Parfit's usual claim is merely that the cases he discusses cannot be wholly solved by an appeal to nonconsequentialist considerations; that a principle of beneficience has some role to play in their solution."

I agree wholeheartedly with Woodward's intuitions, and that's why I've been trying so hard to explore the nonconsequentialist considerations Woodward describes. But I want to frame his point in the context of libertarian thought. Generally, libertarians don't like to think of the principle of beneficience as having direct justice implications. That is, beneficience is generally considered supererogatory in the sense that we would not be justified in forcing someone to act according to it.

Accordingly, there's a lot riding on whether we can find a nonconsequentialist reason for saying that causing climate change is unjust. In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick famously wrote, "...there is no social entity with a good that undergoes a sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more. What happens is something is done to him for the sake of others. Talk of an overall social good covers this up...To use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has. He does not get some overbalancing good for his sacrifice, and no one is entitled to force this upon him--least of all a state or government that claims his allegiance (as other individuals do not) and that therefore scrupulously must be neutral between its citizens." What Nozick is arguing, and I think quite effectively, is that we aren't justified in forcing costs upon individuals for the benefit of others. We can still say that "It would be nice" or "It would be socially beneficial" for people to act according to some principle of beneficience, but we generally wouldn't think we could coerce someone into acting that way.

It's critical to note that sometimes, we might have reason to disagree with Nozick. In her book, Rights, Risk & Restitution, Judith Thomson argued convincingly that in certain extreme situations, we might have reason to infringe on rights for the greater good (I'll add the quotation later; I don't have the book with me right now). The idea was put best, I think, by Douglas Lackey in his essay, "Taking Risk Seriously," when he wrote, "I am far from squeamish about defeating rights with...appeals to utility, but the balance of good over bad must be considerable before rights violations become justifiable." In the absence of some kind of impending catastrophe, though, it would be difficult to justify coercively limiting people's freedom in order to prevent climate change, unless (and this is a big "unless") we could find some reason for saying that climate change was wrong for nonconsequentialist reasons (e.g., it violates rights). Hopefully, that explains why I've been so obsessed with finding such reasons.

With that said, I'm going to get back to reading.

On Super-Groups and Generational Rights

So earlier, I was working on the idea that a future generation could have the right to inherit an unspoiled Earth, and I wanted to continue that a little bit here. I had drawn a distinction between the set of all the Groups of potential people that could have existed in the case where we spoil the Earth (I called the set Super-Group X) and the set of all of the Groups that could have existed in the case where we don't spoil the earth (Super-Group Y).

I left off with the idea that perhaps we might want to say that we infringe Super-Group Y's rights if we bring it about that none of its members inherit the Earth (because that would mean that we spoiled it). On further reflection, I don't think I like this way of looking at it for two reasons. The first is that if we bring it about that Super-Group Y's rights are infringed, then we also bring it about that Super-Group Y is nothing but an abstract notion. None of its members would exist. Accordingly, it seems odd to say that we infringe the rights of a set of Groups of people, where none of the people in the set ever actually exist.

The second reason that I resist this notion is that nothing could be said about our relationship with Super-Group X (or the particular Group, C, that would end up inheriting the Earth) if we only thought of ourselves as infringing Y's rights. Accordingly, we would automatically rule out the easiest avenues for talking about compensation or prohibition: that C is at least somehow tied to the rights infringement. If we draw the line so that C is on the outside, despite the fact that it's the only Group of the lot that actually exists, it seems like we create more trouble for ourselves than we need to. To be clear, I see this as more of a practical point, rather than a genuine philosophical issue, but I do think that the first objection should give me enough justification to abandon the view that we infringe Super-Group Y's rights when we cause a member of Super-Group X (Group C) to come into existence.

So instead, I'll stick to the idea that we infringe on the Generation's rights (where the Generation, L, is conceived of as an abstract entity which is the set of all Groups of potential people that could have existed at a particular time) if we spoil the Earth. I've already said that we wouldn't be violating any right that Group C could meaningfully be said to possess. But perhaps we'd want to say that Generation L had the right to inherit an unspoiled Earth, and therefore to bring about C's existence would constitute an infringement on that right (as I wrote previously, all of this discussion is in the context of suspending Nozick's rejection of the concept of emergent rights).

If we assent to this (and that's an enormous "if"), then at least it seems somewhat clear what we might think should be done about it. Generally, when we say someone has a right to something, and that right is infringed, we demand that some kind of restitution be made. Perhaps on this basis we might be able to say that even though Group C's rights weren't violated by their inheritance, we should "compensate" Generation L for infringing its rights by ensuring an outcome that would somehow be "as good" as leaving an unspoiled Earth. But I need to think about all this a little more before moving on, and I want to actually address the question of whether it's acceptable to talk about emergent rights in the way that I have been in these posts.