La crisis de la credibilidad

The concept of duty is related to various other important philosophical concepts, including the concepts of permission, prohibition and rights. The connection between permission, prohibition and duty is relatively “straightforward: if we are permitted to do something, then we do not have a duty not to do it; if we are prohibited from doing something, we have a duty not to do it” (Frazier 1998).

The relationship between duties and rights is however not as obvious. One important view of the relationship between duties and rights holds that “there is a correlation between, at least some rights and duties” (Frazier 1998). WD Ross (1930:48), for example, argues that (i) “A right of A against B implies a duty of A to B” and (ii) “A duty of B to A implies a right of A against B”. Essentially what Ross proposes is this: If you have a right against someone, they have a duty toward you, and if you have a duty to another, they have a right against you. For every right a person has, someone else has a duty. So, for example, if you borrowed money from a friend with the

103 promise to repay it, your friend has a right against you and you have a duty (grounded in the duty of promise keeping) to repay your friend. Similarly, someone’s right to not be harmed posits a concomitant duty on others to not harm them (at least not without a valid defence).

One problem with the view - that there is a general association “between rights and duties, where right implies duty and duty implies a right” (Duff 1998) - is that it compels us to grapple with questions about the sorts of entities that can have duties and rights and against whom there can be rights, where a right can simply be defined as justified claim.12 For example, can fetuses, animals and the environment have rights and duties? This question has important implications. If, for example, fetuses are the sorts of beings that have rights, then others are obliged to respect their rights, i.e. others, including pregnant women, have duties to it. However, if they are not the sorts of beings that have rights, it seems that others do not have duties to it. But we tend to think that one can have duties to something, even if that thing does not have rights, so in an effort to address this problem, another view of the relationship between duties and rights holds that while being a person or having moral agency is a necessary condition for being the bearer of duties, it is not a necessary condition for being the object of duties of others. This view therefore recognises that one may have duties to an entity even though that entity does not have rights. In other words, that one may have duties towards another being even if that being does not have a concomitant right to have it fulfilled.

12

By contrast, a privilege is ordinarily understood to be something that we may be offered or have taken away from us.

104 2.3.2. Types of duties

A number of distinctions have been offered between different types or kinds of duty (Frazier 1998). The most important distinctions include those between positive and negative duties, those between prima facie and “all things considered” duties and the distinction between duties and obligations.

2.3.2.1. Positive and negative duties

Often a distinction is made between positive duties of beneficence and negative duties grounded in the principle of non-maleficence. Underlying the distinction between positive and negative duties is the more fundamental and contentious claim that there is a morally significant difference between acting (i.e. taking positive steps) and refraining from acting (i.e. doing nothing or omitting to act). The general idea is that positive duties concern what we are required to do e.g. help those in need and care for others, while negative duties concern what we are required to refrain from doing e.g. not to kill or wrongly injure someone. The implication of the distinction between positive and negative duties is this: if we believe that morality consists largely or exclusively of constraints on our action, i.e. mostly negative duties, then we may believe them to be more stringent or important than the positive ones. Indeed, it is sometimes held that there can be a duty not to bring about something, while there is no duty to prevent it from occurring. For example, we may believe that we have a duty not to drown another person, but at the same time, believe that we do not have a duty to save them if they are in the process of drowning. Equally, in medicine, while physicians are not allowed to kill their patients, they are not obliged to make futile attempts to save a patient’s life. So while we may have a duty to not harm or to kill others, it is debatable whether we have a duty to rescue or save them from harm.

105 If, however, one is more inclined to consequentialism and believes that outcomes are what matters in the moral evaluation of our actions, then the claim that there is sometimes a morally significant distinction between an act and an omission is somewhat problematic. This is because consequentialists, even if they do recognise a distinction, do not generally consider it to underpin a morally relevant difference between positive and negative duties. Consequentialism, as an approach, is concerned with promoting values (rather than with motives for action or adherence to duties), and it does not matter whether acting or refraining from acting is promoting those values. What matters are the consequences of our actions or failure to act (omissions), so by consequentialist standards it doesn’t really matter whether or not one had a duty to act in a particular way, what matters are the consequences of our decisions and actions - be it to act or to not act.

2.3.2.2. Prima facie and ‘all things considered duties’

WD Ross (1930) offers another important distinction between kinds of duties, i.e. what he calls prima facie duties and “all things considered” duties. Contrary to its literal meaning, a prima facie duty is not one that merely appears to be a duty. It is a conditional moral duty that can be morally outweighed, or overridden by other moral considerations. It is one that does not overwhelm other considerations in all circumstances (Murray 1991; Steinbock 2001). So, it is a duty we ought to fulfill if there is not a more important moral duty to override it. For example, assume that a person can choose between telling the truth and protecting someone from harm, but cannot do both. Telling the truth and protecting someone from harm are both prima

facie duties. By contrast, an “all things considered” duty is what duty requires, all

106 2.3.2.3. Duty and obligation

Some philosophers e.g. WD Ross (1930) make a distinction between the concepts of “duty” and “obligation”. They restrict their use of the term “duty” to refer only to those “moral requirements” that “apply to all” people “irrespective of status or acts performed and which are owed by all persons to all” other persons (Simmons 1979). Duty is thus used to refer only to our non-voluntarily assumed responsibilities, i.e. our

natural duties or those that we have vis-à-vis everyone else, simply in virtue of our

being human. By contrast, the term “obligation” is restricted to those (special) responsibilities or duties, which individuals owe to only some limited class of persons, and which consequently justify us giving preferential treatment to them. Unlike the concept of duty, which is justified by the intrinsic nature of persons, the basic or fundamental justification for recognizing the concept of obligation has to do with the special relationships that exist among people. We stand in a special relationship to those with whom we voluntarily enter into contract or to “whom we have made promises or commitments of some sort” (Jeske 2008). Obligations therefore include those duties that we freely choose to take on but also those duties that derive from our social roles or status in society, even when these positions are neither voluntarily nor explicitly chosen by a person (Hardimon 1994; Jeske 2008; Manning 2001). What we may call role responsibilities are also special obligations. Role responsibility involves the duties one has for doing various things which come with occupying a certain role in society, whether those social roles have been voluntarily assumed by us or delegated or given to us.

Although the idea of obligations and special relationships seems counterintuitive to utilitarianism and modern thinking about human equality, which urges us to be

107 impartial13 when weighing the interests of different people, the idea is widely accepted in common morality that places value on personal relationships and expects us to treat intimates in partial (or preferential) ways. The idea can, however, be defended on consequentialist grounds. A consequentialist can argue that there is instrumental value in recognizing the concepts of obligation and special relationships because each person acting so as to benefit her children, family, friends, promises and so forth will have the best overall consequences. John Stuart Mill (1863) notes “that few hurts which human beings can sustain are greater, and none wound more, than when that on which they habitually and with full assurance relied fails them in the hour of need” (Mill 1863, Ch. 5). What Mill is suggesting is that we have certain natural affections and expect others to act on them. When they don’t act in accord with these expectations, pain is caused by deviations from them.

Setting aside the philosophical debate about the concepts of duty and obligation, I will use the terms duty and obligation interchangeably since little, if anything, of moral significance seems to ride on my choice of terminology. By duty I will therefore mean one’s natural duties and one’s obligations, whether acquired voluntarily or derived as a consequence of one’s social and professional role in society.