Jakob Lohmar
University of Oxford
According to non-consequentialist moral theories, there are optimific wrongs: morally wrong actions that have at least as good consequences as every available alternative. Intuitively, if there are indeed optimific wrongs, we ought to prevent them if this is feasible by morally innocuous means. Consider, for example, the well-known transplant case where one person is killed to save five others with the victim’s organs. If we could prevent this action just by making ourselves visible to the offender, for example, we intuitively ought to do so. It is unclear, however, how to explain this intuitive verdict. Since the action is optimific, preventing the action would not have good but rather bad consequences. At the same time, the non-consequentialist duty that explains why the action is wrong does not seem to explain why permitting the action would be wrong: unlike the action itself, permitting the action would not amount to killing or doing harm to the victim. Rather, it seems to be a case of allowing harm, which is outweighed by the benefits to the five saved people.
This paper argues that the problem of optimific wrongs is exacerbated by another intuitive desideratum that is crucial for non-consequentialists: we ought not to prevent actions that are wrong in virtue of violating some non-consequentialist duty D if that requires violating D oneself. In other words, while it seems that we ought to prevent immoral actions by morally innocuous means, we ought not to prevent immoral actions by immoral means. The paper argues that this rules out one prima facie plausible solution: acknowledging an additional duty to prevent immoral actions. There remains a promising solution, however: we could (re-)interpret non-consequentialist duties as defeaters that diminish consequentialist reasons rather than adding further reasons against performing immoral actions.
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SOPhiA 2026 