Importancia del control fiscal en el derecho comparado.

There are many ways in which social factors may affect an agent’s phe- nomenology of moral obligation. Bysocial factors I mean the values, expec- tations and practices of an agent’s community. There is an obvious sense

15_{Jan Narveson seems to want to defend an account of our obligations like this, claiming}

that insofar as we can talk about duties to the faraway needy, they are fairly minimal, and that when people do more than this, it is “nice”, but not obligatory (2003).

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in which these factors will affect one’s obligations. If, for example, people around you regularly participate in certain dangerous sports, this may affect your obligations in that you will more often face situations where you are able to provide aid. Similarly, if they have certain values, certain behaviours may offend or upset to them to the point that their welfare will be signifi- cantly diminished, and we might think that this grounds obligations around such behaviours. Of course, these sorts of examples do seem relevant, but they are not what I am concerned with here. What I am concerned with is ways social factors may affect obligations that are not obviously accounted for by changes in welfare.

In this section I consider three ways in which social factors may affect obligations. First, they may make certain acts easier or more difficult to perform, and could affect obligations that way. Second, other agents not doing their ‘fair share’, will often make the best action an agent could per- form considerably more demanding, and if we think morality cannot demand more than what is fair (in some sense), theories which do not take this into account will be inadequate. Third, we might think that the social factors have some role in constituting what our obligations are. I consider these options in turn.

How can the number of people performing some act make it more dif- ficult? And how could this affect what one is actually required to do? We might consider the effect of peer pressure. If many people in a given social group or community perform a certain charitable act – and the act is such that knowledge of those performing it is publicly available or readily com- municated – an agent is more likely to feel compelled that they should also perform that act. Not only will good behaviour affect the sense of obligation and willingness to perform such acts, but it also seems like this type of factor may alter the perception of howdifficult it is to perform.

For an example of this sort of behaviour and the perceptions of it by the agents concerned, we may look at the villagers of Le Chambon during World War II. Lawrence Blum gives this example when discussing the role of communities in sustaining virtuous behaviour (1998).17 Le Chambon is a French village, which during World War II sheltered around 3,000 refugees. Sheltering refugees was a serious crime at the time, punishable by impris-

17_{Blum notes that this is an oft-cited example, but himself draws heavily from discus-}

onment and potentially death, though none of the villagers of Le Chambon were executed. Three village leaders were jailed during this time for aiding refugees.

It may be surprising that so many villagers helped out with assisting refugees. The effort clearly involved large numbers of the community, as the village only had a population of about 3,000. What is more pertinent for my purposes here is how the villagers later described their actions. Blum notes that though we see the actions of these villagers as extremely admirable, “The Chambonnais did not see their actions and practises as having been virtuous in the ‘noteworthy’ sense. When pressed to say why they helped the refugees, they said, ‘It was simply what one had to do’, ‘She [a refugee] was standing at my door; how could I fail to help?’ and things of that sort” (1998, p.242).

Clearly, however, their behaviour was noteworthy. The risks taken by the inhabitants of this small village for the good of strangers were truly exceptional. Given that this type of collective action was not replicated in other similar villages, it seems plausible that the social environment within the village had a huge impact on what was perceived as required of them.

Being surrounded by people acting virtuously can be seen as promoting virtuous behaviour in several ways. The presence of exemplars demonstrates that the virtuous behaviour is possible.18 When a significant proportion of a community acts in accordance with some virtue, this is bound to be even more pronounced. On the other hand, if a virtuous person is seen as the exception, thoughts like “I could never do that” or “That person is just extremely impressive” might make it more plausible for an agent to believe they simply are not able to act so virtuously. If surrounded by people similar in all salient factors to oneself, it seems apparent to a person thatthey too

can act that way. Others performing a virtuous act makes it seem more like

we could do it too. That the presence of others who act similarly makes it easier for us is supported by Hallie’s suggestion that we “fail to understand what happened in Le Chambon in we think thatfor them their actions were complex and difficult” (1979, p.284).19

18

This thought is noted and substantially developed in exemplarist virtue theory, e.g. Zagzebski (2017).

19

Vanessa Carbonell argues that the presence of moral saints can increase our moral obligations. Witnessing others perform saintly acts, bearing heavy burdens or making huge personal sacrifices, provides us with “a special kind of evidence that bears on what

When we consider acts that are available to us, it seems very plausible that how difficult it is to commit to an act depends on how difficult one

regards the act. If then, the virtuousness of others in our local environment alters our perception of how difficult an act (or lifestyle) is, it also alters how difficult it is for us to actually commit to that act. It is natural to think it is more demanding to perform hard actions than easier actions. Accepting this, it seems that the easier a given good action is, the lower the benefit would have to be to make it morally required. We can imagine reacting particularly harshly to an agent who chooses not to help someone in dire need when doing so would be very easy, and doing so because they couldso easily have helped. In this way, being surrounded by a virtuous culture (at least indirectly) alters what one’s obligations are.

We may also look at how an agent’s obligations might change from a lack of virtues within a community. While in the case of Le Chambon, the general community may have found it easier to act virtuously, if an agent is surrounded by others who seem to do little or nothing to help others, they may respond to feelings that they should help by comparing to others. Though recognising that it would be good to act in an other-regarding way, they may think “No one else is helping” or “I’m doing as least as much as those guys”. Seeing no exemplars, they may perceive the acts in question as so exceptional that acting like that is something they just couldn’t do.

Is this type of difficulty accommodated by existing moral theories? It seems that the only way ordinary (welfarist) consequentialist theories may count this difficulty as a reason ‘against’ performing an action is if it is regarded as some cost to wellbeing. However, it is not clear that this can be done. It seems extremely implausible – or at least I think so – to view the difficulty of an action one has performed, ceteris paribus, as affecting one’s current welfare.20

Another way social factors could (conceivably) affect one’s obligations arises when we consider fairness within a community. Someone may agree with Singer in thinking that everyone in the western world should donate a proportion of their disposable income so that collectively we might eliminate

we can reasonably believe about our obligations” (2012, p.228). While Carbonell does not put her thoughts in terms of difficulty, instead viewing exposure to moral saints as removing ignorance, much of what she says seems expressible in the terms I have used here.

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famine, or deaths from certain diseases. But, they might think, very few others in the western community donatethat amount, which means that to accomplish the same good, those who are donating would have to give a lot more. They may wonder “Why should I give away so much of my money, just because other people aren’t doing their bit?”

The types of thought above suggest that there are some ways that the ex- pectations or compliance of others might affect one’s obligations. However, this might strike us as puzzling. Why should other people acting morally or immorally have an effect on how demanding my obligations are?

Singer discusses this in “Famine, Affluence and Morality”. He compares his basic pond case with the global poverty case and notes that there is an asymmetry, because in the pond case there is only one person who can save the child, whereas there are millions of affluent westerners doing nothing (or negligible amounts) to aid the global poor. When discussing whether this asymmetry is morally salient, he discusses an amended pond example, where there are several onlookers doing nothing. As it seems we would be under no less of an obligation in that case, Singer concludes that we should see “the absurdity of the view that numbers lessen the obligation” (1972, p.233).

However, simply because in this particular situation, the numbers of potential saviours does not seem to affect what one must do, this does not mean fairness does not have some role in determining what one ought to do. Singer’s amended pond case does not obviously lend itself to a sensible division of labour, whereas in the case of global poverty, we can divide the costs of saving people between those who are able and arrive at a fair amount (perhaps a percentage of income, or of disposable income). In the pond case, it does not make sense to see the saving of the child as a group project. If, as Murphy (2000, p.96) and Cullity (2004, p.78) suggest, this is an important distinction, Singer’s ruling out of numbers having a role therefore seems too quick.

If an obligation-generating theory takes no account of social factors which affect agents’ perceptions of obligation, they are likely to miscalculate what obligations agents actually are subject to. Murphy provides a response to demandingness objections which at least attempts to attempt to account for some social factors. His particular response will be considered in 4.2.

compliance can affect an agent’s obligations in a variety of ways. The pres- ence (or absence) of exemplars may reduce the perceived difficulty of an action, consequently reducing itsactual difficulty, which in turn may affect its obligation-status. Behaviours being seen as common or expected within a community may also make those actions comparatively easier because of threats of social sanctions if one does not ‘toe the line’. That is, not acting in accordance with some norm carries a risk of drawing criticism, and com- plying with that norm will not carry that risk.21 It also seems that there is something unfair about a requirement to ‘pick up the moral slack’ when other agents fail to do their bit, though it is not obvious if or how a moral theory should respond to this.

If a moral theory does not factor any of these social features into its assessment of which acts are obligatory, as I’ve suggested that typical wel- farist consequentialism will struggle to do, it may be impoverished as a result. Given the variety of ways considered here that social factors might affect our obligations, and that these are factors which seem unaccounted for by standard moral theories, it could be that a failure to appreciate these factors will, in any otherwise plausible theory, make it overly demanding in some instances.

It is difficult to evaluate whether this type of inadequate sensitivity to so- cial factors is necessary to make a theory overly demanding, simply because it is unclear what a proper appreciation for these factors would entail in a theory. As with previous considerations, we might be tempted to conclude that an insensitivity to social factors cannot be necessary for demanding- ness on the basis of iterative cases. We might think that as long as we commit to the claim that ‘an agent has an obligation to perform an action involving negligible cost to relieve significant suffering’ then by the parity of similar cases, which may be iterated, an extremely demanding conclusion is inevitable. However, if the way an obligation is generated is sensitive to issues of fairness or general compliance, the iteration may be halted, by claiming that an agent has done one’s part or contributed significantly.22

21

It is notable that if agents believe practices are more common, they are typically more likely to believe that these practices are permissible Lindstr¨om et al. (2017).