Duties

Establishing that a duty arises on the part of a particular actor is perhaps the most common type of principled argument that a debater will have to make. Almost all debates concern the conduct of particular actors (parents, the state, corporations, nations, international institutions etc…) and their impact upon particular stakeholders (children, the population at large, shareholders, minority groups, poor states etc…). Where those actors cause harm, a duty arises on the part of the actor to undertake particular actions compensating that stakeholder and to abstain from causing future harm. Depending upon the actor (often in debates where government is concerned) a positive duty may also arise to confer some benefit upon a stakeholder, independent of any “guilty conduct” on the part of the actor. The general form of a duty argument is very simple: “given x, A has a duty to B to do y.” In this post I’ll briefly explain why arguments from and to moral duties have such force in debates. I’ll then go through the typical structure of a duty argument. Finally I’ll discuss proportionality and conflicts in duties. I’ll provide practical examples throughout. Please leave a comment or get in touch if anything’s unclear! As always, all positions adopted here are for the purposes of example only and reflect neither my personal views, nor the view of the Macquarie University Debating Society.

Why Are Moral Duties Important in Debates?

There are at least three reasons why duty arguments are often important in debates. I don’t pretend that these are the only reasons why duty arguments are important, or that everyone will agree with the reasons that I have given (especially the second). Nonetheless; here they are.

The first and most obvious reason is common to all principled arguments (or at least all non-utilitarian principled arguments); they trump consequentialist arguments. Intuitively, it is morally impermissible for a state of affairs to be adjusted by morally impermissible means. The violation of a duty is, ordinarily, morally impermissible. As such, a consequentialist argument that violates a moral duty is unacceptable (note that I mean this in a principled sense; in a debate, a team can of course win the principled argument but still lose the debate on consequentialist arguments, depending upon the weights given to each by the adjudicator). Consider the following:

“You’re sitting on the train and an obviously wealthy man gets on. His wallet is sticking out of his pocket and you steal it without him noticing. You notice the considerable amount of cash inside. Pleased with your good fortune you suddenly undergo a moral crisis; you realise that stealing is wrong and resolve to return the wallet to the man. However, just as you’re about to do so, you’re struck by an altruistic notion: at the other end of the carriage is a woman trying to manage five children. A few moments ago you heard her mention that their father is dead, and that she’s working quite a low-paying job and is having trouble making ends meet. She wishes that she had the money to pay to send them to a college in order that they might have a better future. Whilst you’re pondering this, the man who owns the wallet turns around and you notice that it is in fact a well-known lawyer who famously was born into poverty and worked his way into his profession by his own labour only. Ought you give the wallet with the cash in it to the mother, or return it to the wealthy man?”

The obvious answer is that you clearly ought to return the wallet to the man. By depriving the lawyer of property which he had justly acquired, you have a clear duty to compensate him for the harm that you have done. The woman might be able to make better use of the money, but that’s only a side issue; it fails to establish why she’s entitled to the money at all. Generally, potential gains in welfare (i.e. the benefit that the woman would receive) are trumped by moral duties. This is obviously contentious when we’re considering big gains in welfare, or really small sacrifices in rights. It might also be problematic where actors face multiple, conflicting duties. Nonetheless, accept it as a provisional conclusion for the moment; we’ll deal with complexities later.

The second reason is related to the first. Arguments from duty, like all principled arguments, are almost always at the centre of the “clash” in the debate. This is because, an argument that a particular actor has a duty to undertake a particular action, regardless of the consequences, is in itself a response to every consequentialist argument raised against it.

For instance, in the topic: That Individuals Who Have Been Trained in Social Valuable Professions In the Developing World Should Be Forced To Work In Their Home Nation For A Period of Time, the negative would almost certainly argue that the individuals in question would make far more money overseas than they would in their country of origin and would be likely to return much of that money to their family in remittances which would in turn improve that family’s prospects. They might also argue that in offering the chance to emigrate from poorer nations, powerful incentives to pursue tertiary education are created (something that’s valuable whether or not the individuals wind up leaving) and that networks of educated, wealthy individuals overseas are an asset to the community which they have left (i.e. they’re the people most likely to reinvest their wealth in that nation which is good for economic development, they may also encourage the companies for whom they may work to do the same and make that process easier). Each of these are solid consequentialist arguments and, depending upon how well they are made, might win a debate. The affirmative would almost certainly argue that as these individuals have received state resources in their training, they have a duty to make good upon the investment that the rest of the community has made in them. The community funds the training of doctors to meet the social need in question. As such, a duty arises to honour the purpose for which community resources were allocated to them. It would therefore be unjust to let them emigrate, independent of the consequences of their doing so. Here, the duty argument is a response to all the consequentialist arguments raised by the opposing bench. As such it is relevant to every aspect of the debate. This does not meant that the duty argument will always win the debate (much will depend upon the weighting of the issues and upon the way in which the teams engage). It does, however, mean that it is likely to be central to the outcome of the debate because it is central to the discussion.

Finally, duty arguments are important in debates simply because they often have plenty of intuitive force which tends to mean that teams seek to clash with them. Hopefully, you’ll see why in the next section!

The Structure of a Duty Argument

Moral duties arise for a variety of reasons and as such the format in which you make your duty argument needs to be a little flexible. It’s also important to note at the outset two types of moral duty – positive and negative. Positive duties are duties to perform some particular action (for instance, some would argue that we have a positive duty to aid those in extreme distress [e.g. giving to charity for famine relief]). Negative duties are duties to (a) refrain from particular conduct and (b) compensate those harmed when we engage in the conduct in question (e.g. a duty to refrain from causing harm to others and to compensate those whom we harm when we fail in that duty). As a rough schematic as to the structure of a duty argument, you could do worse than the following;

1. State who owes a duty to whom and the content of that duty (i.e. the obligation that that duty actually imposes upon the actor in question).

2. State why that duty arises. This will largely depend upon the circumstance in question. I’ll separate a few different varieties here for the sake of clarity.

3. Negative duty to respect the rights of others. This is easy – if others have rights and choose to exercise them, you’re under a duty not to interfere with that conduct. For instance, if we concede individuals have a right to bodily security, you have a negative duty not to violate that right.

4. Note that there is an additional layer of complexity here, however. Some rights may require positive actions on the part of others to be fulfilled. The extent to which others are obligated to provide for these rights is heavily disputed (especially between egalitarians/equalitarians [e.g. Rawls and Dworkin] and libertarans [e.g. Nozick]). For libertarians, there is no positive duty to provide for these rights (though, see below, it may be possible to argue that a negative duty arises). This is grounded in the basic intuition that a duty to sacrifice for the sake of others almost always only arises where one is responsible for the state of affairs in which others find themselves. If we’re not responsible, we’re not morally proximate to that state of affairs and owe nothing to those whose rights are violated. For instance, everyone probably has a moral right to a minimum standard of living sufficient to guarantee them a minimally decent life. It does not, however, automatically follow that those who fall below that standard are automatically entitled to receive resources from those whose standard living is higher. Others dispute this analysis and suggest that other factors (for instance the contingency of birth and the morally arbitrary distribution of unearned wealth and natural talents and abilities) give rise to a positive duty to provide for certain rights. I raise this only to highlight a potential clash area where these issues are concerned.

5. Causal responsibility. For instance, if I through my negligence cause a reasonably foreseeable injury to another I have a moral (and in this case legal) duty to compensate him for the injury which I have caused. I also have a moral duty to modify my practices in the future so as to cease causing similar harms.

6. Designated responsibility. Many liberals would argue that the state is the designated guardian of particular ideals and institutions (e.g. a fairly common [though probably mistaken] view of the state is that where rights and liberties are surrendered to the state, the state has a duty to use what has been conceded to it by its population to secure benefits only possible through collective action). Similarly, parents have a delegated responsibility to care for their children etc…

7. Conclude. Therefore, because of [insert reasons], [party/parties one] owe/owes a duty to [party/party two] to do [content of the duty].

Consider a simple worked example. We’ll use a duty from causal responsibility for the motion THW Force Religions To Pay Compensation To Womens’ Groups.

1. The major religions of the world have a duty to compensate womens’ groups internationally and reform their discriminatory practices.

2. This duty arises because religions are, to a significant extent, causally responsible for the social disadvantages many women experience. This is for a variety of reasons;

3. Religion is an extremely powerful normative force. At almost all points in the cycle of social development, the majority of individuals look to religions for ethical and practical guidance.

4. This then means that the beliefs that religions promulgate have serious practical consequences. Many people take what religions teach as unimpeachable, divine moral and metaphysical truth which they are obligated to act upon. Even those who do not accept everything uncritically at least are likely to accept that religion is an important normative influence in their lives.

5. In some instances, violence against women is not only condoned, but enforced by particular religious institutions (think, for instance, justice in some Islamic theocracies). In this case there is an obvious direct responsibility on the part of the institution.

6. In other instances, religions have promulgated particular beliefs which have created harmful social conditions that legitimate acts of violence and discrimination against women (for instance, if religions have taught that women are less than full persons, or do not deserve the same consideration as men, even if they do not directly promote violence, they at least create the background conditions against which harmful acts are likely to take place as the societies over which religions wield influence adopt that view, and feel more at ease with their misogynist conduct).

7. Finally, by diminishing the social status of women by their practices and teachings, they are responsible in part for the fact that women face continuing discrimination by institutions. They perpetuate an incorrect and harmful view of women that makes it harder for them to access the same opportunities as men.

8. Finally, it’s important to note that even in societies where religion now no longer preach these messages, the beliefs that they historically promulgated have intergenerational force. Ideas do not die with changes in the institution that once promoted them. Many people still hold to views independently of the religious institutions that once promoted the idea.

9. Therefore, because religions are causally responsible for the discrimination faced by women, they owe a moral duty to compensate women for the harms that they have caused, and a duty to modify their practices to cease causing that harm.

Two Additional Considerations: Proportionality and Conflicts Between Duties

One obvious weakness in the example just presented is that the claim it makes is probably too strong: “religions are causally responsible for the discrimination faced by women”. Whilst it does seem right that religions are partially responsible for the social disadvantage experienced by women, it cannot be that they are entirely responsible. For one thing, non-religious ethnic traditions are often deeply discriminatory and are just as, if not more, repressive to women (think Subcontinental and Central Asia). Moreover, religions didn’t actually perpetuate the harms to women in most instances. Instead, they offered people a particular view of the world that diminished womens’ status. The society itself still had to make the decision to accept that worldview and act upon it.

This obviously raises questions of causation (i.e. to what extent did religions actually cause people to believe their teachings and act in the ways they did), but that’s an issue for another post. Instead, the issue that’s worth raising here is that of proportionality. Consider the following two hypotheticals.

Number One: “Country x has, once, by accident, purchased a very small amount of oil from a nasty dictator who then used the money he got from the x to buy five-hundred AK47s, fifty of which broke. Civil war then breaks out in the dictator’s country. The militia on the side of the dictator are armed with those same AK47s.”

Number Two: “A civil war has broken out in a state. The conflict is between a group inside that country that wants their own state and the government. The reason that the insurgents don’t have a state is that the x and other colonial powers carved up the country in such a way that there was always going to be fighting inside it – minority vs majority. Let’s also say that the x has continued to purchase significant amounts of oil from this country, knowing full well that the money it was giving to the regime was being used to buy weapons that would certainly be used to fight against the minority. Any money left over was stolen by the regime which has created even more public anger and lead to an increased cycle of violence. Finally, the weapons that the regime bought came from x arms manufacturers that paid tax to x’s government.”

In which of these hypotheticals might country x have a duty to intervene in the civil war? The obvious answer is the second. The content of the duty which you owe is a function of the extent to which you are morally implicated in the relevant state of affairs. Whilst in both cases, x is implicated in the conflict, the degree of responsibility in the second is significantly more extensive than in the first. As such, it is more likely that a duty arises in the second hypothetical than in the first. In each instance, x is under a duty to “compensate” the nation in which the civil war in occurring. Their duty however, is proportionate to the extent of that responsibility.

This is important to recognise for at least two reasons. Firstly, in order to guard against making claims that are obviously exaggerated or silly (e.g. breaking someone’s thumb does not give rise to a duty to provide a pension for that person in perpetuity). Secondly, in order to highlight a strong line of attack against duty arguments (i.e. that a particular duty suggested by the opposition is in fact disproportionate to their degree of responsibility).

The other interesting issue to consider here is the question of conflicting duties. It’s fairly well accepted that the state has a duty to act in the interests of its citizens. However, that state is also under a negative duty not to harm others. Instances where these two duties might conflict are obvious. The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy is (arguably) in the interests of the EU’s member states as it guarantees a market for agricultural exports for European nations. The avoidable consequence of this policy, however, is a contraction in agricultural production in states on the European periphery and elsewhere that, but for CAP, would be selling produce to Europe. This is obviously deleterious for living standards in those nations. EU member states have a duty to act in the interests of their populations. They also have a duty not to harm others.

Which duty wins out?

The answer to this question is obviously contentious and I can’t give an answer that will work in all circumstances. In a principled sense, negative duties usually trump positive duties (that is, where the two conflict, one should refrain from harming, rather than pursue a positive benefit). This ought to be enough for simple cases (e.g. should we keep buying cheap resources from dictatorships, knowing that they’ll use that money to repress their populations? No, the negative duty not to harm others wins).

However there are plenty of instances in which it’s possible to construct a further conflict. For instance, the USA conducts drone strikes in the FATA region of Pakistan to kill leaders of the Afghan Taliban. Those strikes occasionally result in civilian casualties. The same conflict arises – a duty to advance the national interest (drone strikes) vs a duty not to foreseeably harm (civilian casualties). Matters may be further complicated however. Suppose that the USA is faced by the following dilemma. The USA has just spotted the former leader of the Afghani Taliban government Mullah Omar in conference with the leaders of the other Taliban militia. It has an armed drone above, ready to conduct a strike. Next door to the leaders’ meeting, five children playing in a yard and will certainly be killed by the drone strike. The clash of duties has obviously arisen. Complicating the situation, however, is the fact that the United States, by waging war in Afghanistan, is largely responsible for the violent state of affairs and owes a duty to Afghanistan to pacify the nation and quell the violence its prescence has sparked. There would be no better way to do that than to assassinate the spiritual and operational heads of the Taliban. Thus there’s a tripartite conflict here. A positive duty to advance US national interest, a negative duty not to harm the children, and another negative duty to compensate for the fact that Afghanistan is in a state of civil war by pacifying the Taliban.

I don’t have a good answer as to how this dilemma might be resolved, and certainly not a prediction as to the outcome of this discussion in a debate. Nonetheless, the following issues would certainly be relevant;

1. What is the content of each duty morally. Is the United States in fact obligated to launch a strike against Omar and the others?

2. What are the other relevant moral concerns? Is it permissible to cause some collatteral damage when in pursuit of, hopefully, noble strategic objectives? If so, then that would seem to head off the conflict in duties because the duty not to cause harm is suspended in cases such as this.

3. Will, empirically, conducting the strike actually fulfil the duties in question. Are the some considerations, for instance, that might point to drone strikes in fact being anathema to US interests? Will assassinating the heads of the Taliban in fact help pacify Afghanistan or will it bring firebrands to power in those movements and further radicalise them?

Thanks very much guys!

Lachlan