Frameworks, Wide and Narrow (Part I)

A wide framework accepts the importance of morethan one kind of ethical consideration. This kind of framework used to be awidespread practice in national circuit LD, and it may even have been anunstated default assumption of many judges. But, over the years, wide frameworkshave been mostly replaced by narrow, preclusive frameworks that only count onekind of moral consideration as relevant. My aim in this series is to pushagainst today's somewhat conventional wisdom that wide frameworks are untenablein LD. 

Before I do that, I need to clear up a common misconception.Debaters often assume that consequences only matter on one view:utilitarianism. There are two reasons why this is misguided. The first is thatutilitarianism is different from consequentialism, although debaters oftenconflate them. According to consequentialism (roughly), the rightness of an actis just a function of how good its consequences are -- in other words,consequences are all that matters when it comes to our moral obligations.But consequentialism says nothing about which consequences count as good.Utilitarianism is consequentialism plus the view that utility, or wellbeing, isthe only intrinsic good. You could  be a consequentialist about fairness,freedom, or fine dining, or about a plurality of intrinsic goods. I knowmany debaters like to say "util" as an abbreviation for anythinghaving to do with consequences, but it's simply misleading. 

This distinction may be especially important on this topic.Suppose the retributive theory of punishment means that deserved punishment isintrinsically good. Debaters sometimes argue that this means retributivism mustbe non-consequentialist. Not so. We can be consequentialists about deservedpunishment. But it is incompatible with utilitarianism, sinceutilitarians deny that things other than wellbeing are intrinsically good.There are lots of thorny issues here, including whether "retribution"means the retributive theory of punishment, but let's leave them aside fornow. 

But second, even if consequentialism (not just utilitarianism)is false, non-consequentialists can still care about consequences. In fact, thevast majority of them do! John Rawls, one of the most influential deontologicaltheorists, wrote, "All ethical doctrines worth our attention takeconsequences into account in judging rightness. One which did not would simplybe irrational, crazy." I am inclined to agree with Rawls, but even if youdisagree with him, you should still grant that the view is kosher in a debate round. 

For example, almost everyone would agree that, other thingsbeing equal, we ought to make the world better rather than worse. Butdeontologists would add that other things are not equal whenthere is some relevant side constraint, special relationship, strict duty, orother kind of consideration. Consequences still matter on this view -- justthink of them as outweighed by the side constraint (or whatever theoutcome-independent consideration happens to be). When I say"outweighed," I don't mean that the outcome is worse because theconstraint is violated -- this view is not like ruleconsequentialism. I mean that, although the outcome may be better, the act iswrong in virtue of violating some constraint. This kind of wide frameworkis not just coherent, but very plausible! 

In the next article, I plan to argue against the view that astandard must be exclusively ends-based or exclusively means-based. 

POSTSCRIPT

There are other assumptions about what deontological standardsimply and rule out. For example, some debaters simply assume that adeontological standard means that intent is the only thing that matters --excluding merely foreseen consequences (in criminal law, the distinction isbetween "purposeful" and "unpurposeful" consequences).Given that most deontologists are not this extreme, I don't think any standardgets this distinction for free, or any similar distinction that wouldcompletely exclude offense that would otherwise be relevant to thestandard. 

One final comment on the topic of deontological standards.Debaters sometimes claim that if both sides violate a deontological standard,then both sides are merely permissible. This is defended on the grounds thatdeontological wrongdoings are binary, not scalar, and cannot be compared. Ifthat were true, then murder could not be a worse or more severe wrongdoing thanpetty theft. No deontologist  thinks that. So there must be some way toweigh deontological violations; they don't just lead to permissibility. 

*Thanks to Eric Palmer, Jeff Liu, and Larry Liu for discussionon some of these issues (in this article and in the rest of the series) at MBA.