The Evil of Refraining to Save: Liu on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing

Main Article Content

Jacob Blair

Abstract

In a recent article, Xiaofei Liu seeks to defend, from the standpoint of consequentialism, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: DDA. While there are various conceptions of DDA, Liu understands it as the view that it is more difficult to justify doing harm than allowing harm. Liu argues that a typical harm doing involves the production of one more evil and one less good than a typical harm allowing. Thus, prima facie, it takes a greater amount of good to justify doing a certain harm than it does to justify allowing that same harm. In this reply, I argue that Liu fails to show, from within a consequentialist framework, that there is an asymmetry between the evils produced by doing and allowing harm. I conclude with some brief remarks on what may establish such an asymmetry.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

How to Cite
Blair, Jacob. 2017. “The Evil of Refraining to Save: Liu on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing”. Diametros, no. 52 (June):127-37. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.52.2017.1063.
Section
Discussions
Author Biography

Jacob Blair, CSU East Bay

Jacob Blair, Ph.D.LecturerCSU East BayPhilosophy Dept.25800 Carlos Bee BlvdHayward CA 94542 USA

E-mail: jacob.blair@csueastbay.edu

Share |

References

Cruft R. (2010), “On the Non-Instrumental Value of Basic Rights,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 7 (4): 441–461.

Kagan S. (1998), “Rethinking Intrinsic Value,” The Journal of Ethics 2 (4): 277–297.

Liu X. (2012), “A Robust Defense of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing,” Utilitas 24 (1): 63–81.