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- Title
THE EVIL OF REFRAINING TO SAVE: LIU ON THE DOCTRINE OF DOING AND ALLOWING.
- Authors
Blair, Jacob
- 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.
- Subjects
CONSEQUENTIALISM (Ethics); ENDS &; means; GOOD &; evil; CONDUCT of life; HUMAN behavior
- Publication
Diametros: An Online Journal of Philosophy, 2017, Issue 52, p127
- ISSN
1733-5566
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.13153/diam.52.2017.1063