One way of justifying the normative force of the duties that arise from our relationships is to appeal to the instrumental value of these relationships. The claim is that the duties grounded in certain types of relationship should be seen as having normative force because of the key role they play as a means to some further end (i.e.
one that lies beyond the specific goal of continuing any particular relationship) that is valuable for its own sake.72 A common version of this view starts with the uncontroversial claim that it is valuable for us to discharge our general duties (i.e. duties we owe to everyone), and then goes on to claim that our relationships with particular
71 For discussion of the issues raised by the value condition see, e.g., Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, pp.34-5; Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain, pp.40-3; Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, esp. chaps.3 and 6; Abizadeh and Gilabert, 'Is there a genuine tension?'; Mason, 'Special Obligations to Compatriots'; P. T. Lenard, and M. R. Moore, 'Ineliminable Tension: A Reply to Abizadeh and Gilabert's 'Is There a Genuine Tension Between Cosmopolitan Egalitarianism and Special Responsibilities?'', Philosophical Studies, 148 (2009), 399-405.
72 According to standard usage, the instrumental view does not, strictly speaking, justify the existence of ‘associative’ duties proper, since the ‘associative’ label tends to be reserved for duties that arise as a direct result of the intrinsic value of relationships. However, it seems to me that both the instrumental and intrinsic arguments for the existence of special, relationship-based duties share the same basic structure (i.e. they both agree on the three conditions on duty-grounding relationships and only disagree about the interpretation of the value condition). If this is right, then it seems to make sense to characterise the disagreement they have as being about the correct justification of associative duties, and not (as is currently the case) as being about whether the duties we owe to those with whom we stand in some kind of significant relationship are associative duties or some other kind of duties.
people (and the associative duties they entail) are valuable insofar as they contribute to this end. Thus, it has been argued that the relationships between parents and their children are instrumentally valuable because assigning responsibility to particular adults to look after particular children makes it much more likely that we will successfully discharge the general duty we all have to ensure that all children are looked after.
Similarly, it has been claimed that relationships between members of the same nation are instrumentally valuable because assigning responsibility to particular groups to satisfy their members’ needs makes it much more likely that we will successfully discharge our general duty to ensure that everyone’s needs are met.73
These kinds of instrumental justifications of associative duties have been subjected to numerous powerful criticisms, but the central objection usually takes the same general form, and comes in two parts.74 The first part highlights the vulnerability of associative duties’ normative force, on the instrumental account, to empirical circumstances. Take, for example, the argument that the allocation of associative duties is a particularly effective way of ensuring that our general duties are discharged. In a world where the resource holdings of individuals are more or less equal it may be true that the most effective way of discharging our general duty to help the needy is to assign people special duties to look after their compatriots. But in a world as unequal as ours, if our aim is to help needy people in general, then, as Miller says, ‘to put Swedes, with a per capita annual income of $24,000, in charge of their own needy, and Somalis, with a per capita annual income of $120, in charge of their needy would seem grossly irrational’.75 This example demonstrates the fact that if the normative force of associative duties is justified by appeal to the wider goal or value such duties promote, then, if it turns out that there is a better way of promoting the goal or value in question, the justification will fail.
73 For examples of these types of argument, see, R. E. Goodin, 'What is So Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?' Ethics, 98 (4) (1988), 663-686; M. C. Nussbaum, 'Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism', in J. Cohen (ed.), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 2-20.
74 See, e.g., Miller, On Nationality, pp.58-65; Mason, 'Special Obligations to Compatriots', pp.429-37. 75 Miller, On Nationality, p.63.
The second part of the objection to the instrumental justification of associative duties says quite simply that this contingent account of the normative force of our associative duties does not in fact reflect the way we think about their normative force.
This point is best brought out by an example famously discussed by Bernard Williams.76 Imagine a person faced with a situation in which he can save either a stranger’s life or his wife’s life, but not both. Most people would say that there is no need for the man to decide who he should save through some fair decision procedure (say, by flipping a coin). Instead, they would say that he is obviously justified in saving his wife’s life, and indeed that he is probably required to. When asked why the man is justified in eschewing the coin toss and favouring his wife over the stranger, most people will answer, ‘because she is his wife’ (while perhaps adding that this is what husbands should do for their wives).
For the proponent of the non-instrumental justification of associative duties, however, this answer simply raises a further question, namely, why, in these sorts of situations, are people justified in saving their wives instead of strangers? And it is the fact that the proponent of the instrumental justification believes this further question needs asking that exposes the flaw in this account of associative duties. Such a belief reflects a failure to understand that to value my relationship with a particular person
‘just is, in part, to see that person as a source of special claims in virtue of the relationship between us’.77 To look outside the value of the relationship one has with one’s friend or sibling or partner in order to explain why one owes associative duties to that person is, in Williams’ famous phrase, to have ‘one thought too many’.78 If it turns out that the relationship the potential rescuer has with his wife (or, to recall the earlier example, the relationship a Swedish person has with his co-national) is an instance of a widespread practice that generally contributes to the promotion of some independently valuable goal, then this is at most a welcome bonus – it is not the reason why the rescuer is justified in favouring his wife over the stranger, or the Swedish man is
76 B. Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp.17-9.
77 Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, p.100.
78 Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, p.18.
justified in providing benefits to his co-nationals rather than to the more needy citizens of Somalia.79