hanser permissibility and practical inference 461-3 switches to ext assessment illicitly

8/12/2019 Hanser Permissibility and Practical Inference 461-3 SWITCHES to EXT ASSESSMENT ILLICITLY

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Permissibility and Practical InferenceAuthor(s): by Matthew HanserSource: Ethics, Vol. 115, No. 3 (April 2005), pp. 443-470Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/428457.

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444 Ethics April 2005

in doing what he does. For reasons that will emerge in Section II, I callthis the inferential account of permissibility. I shall not here try to provethat this account is superior to its rivals. My aims are more modest. Ishall develop the inferential account, exhibiting some of its attractionsalong the way, and then show that it is invulnerable to a number ofinfluential objections to the very idea that an agents reasons for actingcould be directly relevant to whether he acts permissibly. If these ob-

jections have seemed decisive, it is because we have not considered thefull range of possible accounts. The inferential account of permissibilityis both plausible and attractiveit deserves to be taken seriously.

I

Let us begin by distinguishing between the things an agent does when

he acts and his doing of those things. One thing I did this morning wasdrink a cup of coffee. Millions of others did the very same thing. Thethings we do, then, such as drinking cups of coffee, are act types that

we can instantiate by acting. My drinking of a cup of coffee this morning,by contrast, was a particular, unrepeatable instantiation of that type,distinct from anyone elses drinking of a cup of coffee. I shall reservethe term action for such particulars. An action, then, as I shall be usingthe term, is not something an agent does, but his doing of something.

And I shall take it for granted that an action can instantiate more thanone type, that it can be the doing of more than one thing.

Permissibility judgments can be divided into two main categories.Adjectival permissibility judgments (e.g., fing is [im]permissible; it is[im]permissible tof) concern act types: they specify things agents mayor may not do. In ordinary circumstances, for example, driving to thestore is permissible, while driving there in your neighbors car, withouther permission, is not. Adverbial permissibility judgments (e.g., x acted[im]permissibly), by contrast, concern particular actions, either actualor hypothetical. Some adverbial permissibility judgments include aphrase that characterizes the action as one instantiating a certain acttype (e.g., xfd [im]permissibly; x acted [im]permissibly in fing). Insuch cases the characterizing phrase, whether a verb phrase or a ge-rundive phrase, can be interpreted as occurring either opaquely ortransparently, so to speak.2 On the opaque reading, the truth valueof the permissibility judgment depends upon how the action is char-acterized. Suppose that I drive to the store in my neighbors car, without

her permission. On the opaque reading we can say that although I actpermissibly in driving to the store, I act impermissibly in driving therein my neighbors car, without her permission. On the transparent

2. I say so to speak because the phrases that may or may not be substitutable forone another are not singular terms both denoting the agents action.

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Hanser Permissibility and Practical Inference 445

reading, however, the truth value of the permissibility judgment doesnot depend upon how the action is characterized. On this reading it

would be incorrect to say that I act permissibly in driving to the store.If I drive there in my neighbors car, without her permission, then I actimpermissibly in driving there. I do not drive to the store permissibly.Transparent adverbial permissibility judgments enable us to expressoverall verdicts about actions. They enable us to say not just whetheran agent acts permissibly insofar as his action instantiates this or thattype, but whether he acts permissibly full stop. In what follows, all ad-

verbial permissibility judgments should be understood transparently.The question naturally arises whether permissibility judgments of

the one type (adjectival or adverbial) are reducible to, or are concep-tually posterior to, judgments of the other. There are three possibilities.

First, adverbial permissibility judgments might be reducible to adjectivaljudgments. Perhaps, for example, the claim that an agent acts permis-sibly simply amounts to the claim that he does nothing impermissiblein acting as he does. The inferential account, however, rejects the re-duction of adverbial permissibility judgments to adjectival ones. A strong

version of the account maintains that the reduction properly runs inthe other direction; a weak version denies that judgments of either sortcan be reduced to those of the other. Someone defending the weak

version must of course provide an account of how judgments of the twosorts are related, since it cannot be a complete coincidence that judg-ments of both sorts employ variants of the same concept (permissibility).I return to this in Section III. In the remainder of this section, I brieflyexplore how the strong versions reduction of adjectival permissibility

judgments to adverbial ones might go.Adjectival permissibility judgments fall into two main types. We can

judge fing to be permissible or impermissible in such and such cir-cumstances, or we can judge it to be permissible or impermissible sim-pliciter. Let us begin with the judgments that are relativized to circum-stances. As we have already observed, from the fact that it is permissibleto f in circumstances C, it does not follow that an agent who fs in Cacts permissibly. There may be many ways offing in C, and it may bethat byfing in the particular way he does the agent acts impermissibly.If there is no way to f permissibly in C, however, I think that it followsthatfing is impermissible in those circumstances. So here is a plausiblereduction for those adjectival permissibility judgments that are relativ-

ized to circumstances: to say thatfing is permissible in C is to say thatit is possible tof permissibly in C, while to say thatfing is impermissiblein C is to say that it is not possible to f permissibly in C.

Given this analysis, one might expect the claim thatfing is permis-siblesimpliciterto amount to the claim that it is possible to f permissiblyin every circumstance. But no matter how benign a given act type is in



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itself, we can surely always imagine a situation in which it would be im-possible to instantiate it permissibly. So if this proposal were correct, prettymuch everything would be impermissible. A more promising reductionis this: to say that fing is permissible simpliciter is to say that in somecircumstances, it is possible to f permissibly, while to say that fing isimpermissiblesimpliciteris to say that in no circumstances is it possible tof permissibly. On this analysis, unrelativized adjectival impermissibility

judgments express absolute prohibitions. Now we do indeed sometimesuse expressions of the form fing is impermissible in this way. Often,however, we use them to assert merely pro tanto prohibitions. We might,for example, judge stealing to be impermissible, while at the same timeadmitting that under exceptional circumstancescircumstances in whichspecial justifying conditions obtaina person might steal permissibly. We

should thus supplement the proposed reduction as follows. When fingis impermissible is used to assert a prohibition that is at least pro tantoin strength, it amounts to the claim that there are no nonexceptionalcircumstances in which it is possible to f permissibly. (This is, of course,consistent with there being no circumstances at all in which it is possibletofpermissibly, in which case the prohibition is absolute.) When fingis impermissible is used to assert a merely pro tanto prohibition, itamounts to the claim that there are circumstances, but only exceptionalones, in which it is possible to f permissibly.

II

Both strong and weak versions of the inferential account reject thereduction of adverbial permissibility judgments to adjectival ones. How,then, are adverbial permissibility judgments to be understood? The in-ferential accounts essence lies in its answer to this question.

Actions are occurrences: they are among the things that happen.But they are not just occurrences: they are also exercises of our rationalpower to do things. (I here set aside the less full-blown actions oflower animals.) When we judge an agent to have acted permissibly, weevaluate his action not merely qua occurrence but qua action, qua ex-ercise of rational agency. In order to determine what it is to act per-missibly, then, we must inquire further into the nature of action. Nowaccording to a widely accepted view, every action is someones doing ofsomething intentionally.3 Not everything an agent does in performinga given action is done intentionally, according to this view, but some of

them must be. It is also widely held that to do something intentionally

3. See Donald Davidson, Agency, in Agent, Action, and Reason, ed. Robert Binkley,Richard Bronaugh, and Ausonio Marras (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971),325, reprinted in Davidsons Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980),4361, 46.



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is to do it for a reason. If both these views are correct, then every actionis someones doing of something for a reason. There is admittedly roomfor disagreement here. Sometimes when an agent does something in-tentionally, he does it, as we say, for no particular reason. Some thinkthat such cases provide counterexamples to the claim that to do some-thing intentionally is to do it for a reason.4 Others think that when anagent says he is fing for no particular reason, he means only that hehas no further end in view in fingthat he is fing simply because he

wants to, or because he enjoys it, these being genuine, although perhapsdegenerate, reasons for acting.5And even if it is possible to do somethingintentionally without doing that something for a reason, it might stillbe that every action is someones doing of something or other for areason. Suppose that I pluck a blade of grass for no particular reason.

In performing this action, I move my hand in a certain way, and it isplausible to say that I move my hand in that way both intentionally andfor a reason, namely, to pluck the blade of grass. So my act of pluckingthe blade of grass is still the doing of something for a reason. If thereare cases in which an agent acts without thereby doing anything for areason, they must presumably be cases in which the agent moves hisbody in a certain way for no particular reason. I shall return to thispossibility shortly. For the moment, however, let us assume that everyaction is indeed someones doing of something for a reason.

An agents reason for doing something purports to justify his doingof that for which it is a reason. We can represent the normative natureof this relation by thinking of actions as embodying practical inferences:

when an agentfs for reason R, it is as if he reasons, R; therefore let mef! (I say it is as if he reasons this way because I mean to imply nothingabout what thoughts, if any, must precede or accompany action. Onecertainly neednt say to oneself, R; therefore let me f! in order for Rto be ones reason for fing.) But if actions embody inferences, thenactions can be evaluated with respect to the quality of these inferences.That is the idea upon which the inferential account of permissibility seizes.

As a preliminary formulation, we might say that according to the in-ferential account, an agent acts permissibly if and only if the practicalinference embodied by his action is a good oneif and only if, that is,the premises of that inference justify, or provide adequate grounds for,the acceptance of its conclusion. But this cannot be quite right as anaccount of moral permissibility. An agent who has insufficient reason

for doing what he does need not on that account be acting morallyimpermissibly. So let us say that an agent acts morally permissibly if and

4. See G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), 2425.5. See Donald Davidson, Actions, Reasons, and Causes, Journal of Philosophy 60

(1963): 685700, reprinted in his Essays on Actions and Events, 319, 6.



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only demonstrativelyhis ultimate conclusion, were he explicitly tothink it, would be something like, so Ill f like this (as he moves hisright hand in a certain way). The conclusion of the practical inferencemust be taken to include more than the mere so let me f if theinferential account of permissibility is to be plausible. Suppose an agentconsciously reasons, I can protect the baby from the cold draft byclosing this door; so let me close this door. He then closes the doorquite forcefullyforcefully enough to awaken the baby. Assuming thathe could easily have closed the door quietly, it is arguable that he actedimpermissibly. The inferential account would be unable to capture thisif the inference embodied by his action were to encompass no morethan what the agent explicitly thought, for there was no reason why heshouldnt close the door. What he had a decisive reason not to do was

close the door so forcefully.The inferential account of permissibility must not be confused with

the superficially similar view that an agent acts permissibly if and onlyif he acts from a morally admirable motive, such as universal benevo-lence or respect for the moral law. The inferential account does noteven imply that an agent acts impermissibly if he acts from a morallydiscreditable motive, such as malice or greed. What matters is not themoral status of the agents reason for acting, considered on its own, butthe justificatory relation between that reason and that for which it is areason. What matters is whether the agents reason for acting is sufficientto justify him in doing what he does. Suppose an agent rescues a drown-ing swimmer because he expects a reward. He may not act virtuously,and his action may lack moral worth, but he acts permissibly. A moreadmirable reason for saving the swimmers life was available, and a moreadmirable agent would have availed himself of it, but the agents actualreason nonetheless provided him with sufficient justification for doing

what he did. Finally, note that the inferential account makes a purelyformal claim, in the following sense: while it links the notion of actingpermissibly to that of an agents acting for a reason sufficient to justifyhim in doing what he does, it says nothing substantive about what con-stitutes a successful justification. On this issue it is, I think, quite properlysilent.

III

Let us return now to the relationship between adverbial and adjectival

permissibility judgments. According to the strong version of the infer-ential account, adjectival permissibility judgments are reducible to ad-verbial ones. A multipronged reduction was proposed in Section I. First,it was suggested that it is permissible to f in circumstances C reducesto it is possible to f permissibly in circumstances C. Putting this to-gether with the inferential account of what it is to act permissibly, we



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get that it is permissible to fin C if and only if it is possible for an actoffing in C to embody a permissible practical inference. Next, it wassuggested that when it is impermissible to f [simpliciter] expresses anabsolute prohibition, it reduces to in no circumstances is it possible tofpermissibly. Putting this together with the inferential account of whatit is to act permissibly, we get that it is absolutely impermissible to f ifand only if there are no circumstances in which it is possible for an actoffing to embody a permissible practical inference. Finally, it was sug-gested that when it is impermissible to f expresses a merely pro tantoprohibition, it reduces to there are circumstances, but only exceptionalones, in which it is possible to f permissibly. Putting this together withthe inferential account of what it is to act permissibly, we get that it ismerely pro tanto impermissible to f if and only if there are circum-

stances, but only exceptional ones, in which it is possible for an act offing to embody a permissible practical inference. In each case, whatmakes it possible or impossible for an act offing to embody a permis-sible practical inference is the availability or unavailability, either in thespecified circumstances or in some circumstances or other, of an ade-quate justification for acting in a way that involves fing. Simplifyingsomewhat, then, the picture is this: it is permissible to f if and only ifan adequate justification for acting in a way that involves fing isavailable.

The strong version of the inferential account arrives at this pictureby means of its reduction of adjectival permissibility judgments to ad-

verbial permissibility judgments, taken together with its account of ad-verbial permissibility judgments. The weak version, which holds thatneither sort of judgment is reducible to the other, can accept essentiallythe same picture but must arrive there directly, by means of its accountof adjectival permissibility judgments. This account can state that it ispermissible tof in C if and only if considerations obtain in C sufficientto justify an agent in acting in a way that involves fing; that it is absolutelyimpermissible tof if and only if there exists a pro tanto moral objectionto fing that can in no circumstances be overcome (or, in other words,if and only if nothing could justify an agent in acting in a way thatinvolvesfing); and that it is merely pro tanto impermissible tof if andonly if there are pro tanto moral objections to fing that can be overcomein exceptional circumstances (or, in other words, if and only if consid-erations capable of justifying an agent in acting in a way that involves

fing can arise, but only in exceptional circumstances). I remarked inSection I that the proponent of the weak version must explain howadjectival and adverbial permissibility judgments are related. The con-nection is now apparent. According to the weak version, adjectival andadverbial permissibility judgments both concern practical justification.

Adjectival judgments, which have act types as their subjects, concern



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the availability of justifications for acting in various ways. Adverbial judg-ments, which have particular actions as their subjects, concern agentsactual justifications for acting as they do. Again simplifying somewhat:fing is permissible if and only if an adequate justification for acting ina way that involves fing is (at least potentially) available, and an agentacts permissibly if and only if he actually avails himself of an adequate

justification for acting as he doesif and only if his reason for actingprovides him with an adequate justification for doing what he does.7

IV

Although the inferential account of permissibility entails that whetheran agent acts permissibly depends upon his reasons for acting, andhence upon the intentions with which he acts, it is distinct from, and

independent of, the principle of double effect. Since the principle ofdouble effect and the thesis that intentions are relevant to permissibility

7. In Intention and Permissibility I and Moral Assessment and the Agents Pointof View, Scanlon argues that moral principles, which on his view tell us that certainconsiderations normally count decisively for or against acting in certain ways, have twouses: agents can use them as guides to deliberation, and others can use them to assessthe quality of agents deliberations. The former, action-guiding use yields permissibility

judgments, which depend only upon whether the available reasons count for or againstthe proposed action. The latter, critical use yields judgments about how well this or thatagent has governed himself; judgments of this sort obviously depend upon the agentsreason for acting as he did. Scanlons view and mine might thus appear to be notational

variants of one another: he treats all permissibility judgments the way I treat adjectivalpermissibility judgments, and where I would say that an agent acts impermissibly, he would

say that the agent governs himself badly. But our disagreement is not just terminological.Scanlon draws a sharp distinction between permissibility judgments, which he takes toplay a role in deliberation, and judgments about the degrees to which agents are at faultfor acting as they do. And he equates assessments of agents self-governancewith judgmentsabout fault (see Moral Assessment and the Agents Point of View, 33). In Sec. VI, however,I argue that both adjectival and adverbial permissibility judgments, understood as theinferential account understands them, play guiding roles in deliberation, and in Sec. V Iargue that adverbial permissibility judgments, understood as the inferential account un-derstands them, are independent of judgments about fault. If this is right, then the judg-ments about whose classification Scanlon and I apparently disagree belong on the per-missibility side of his divide. He and I dont just give these judgments different names;

we see them as playing different theoretical roles. We have other substantive disagreementsas well. Scanlon takes all permissibility judgments, whether adjectival or adverbial, toconcern concrete actions (Moral Assessment and the Agents Point of View, 3). I takeadjectival judgments, which I agree do not depend upon agents reasons for acting, to

concern act types. Only adverbial judgments, which I think do depend upon agentsreasons for acting, concern concrete acts. And whereas I see adverbial permissibility judg-ments as our most basic evaluations of actions, Scanlon sees assessments of agents self-governance as evaluations not of actions but of agents. Finally, if the strong version of theinferential account is correct, adverbial permissibility judgments are conceptually prior toadjectival ones. Scanlon, however, would presumably reject the idea that assessments ofagents self-governance are conceptually prior to permissibility judgments.



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have not generally been distinguished in the literature, it is worth paus-ing to explore exactly how the two are related.

If an agentfs in order to achieve end E, he fs intentionally, andhe does so with the intention of achieving E. Now according to theinferential account, an agent acts permissibly if and only if his reasonfor acting is not on moral grounds insufficient to justify him in doing

what he does. So if an agents reason for acting is instrumental, he actspermissibly if and only if, given his circumstances, his end is not onmoral grounds insufficient to justify his means. Whether an agent actspermissibly thus depends upon the identity of both his end and hismeans: change either and you risk changing the actions normativestatus. Suppose that an agentfs with the intention of achieving E andthat he thereby acts permissibly. The inferential account entails that hemight have acted impermissibly had he either (i) done something else

with the intention of achieving E, or (ii) fd with the intention of achiev-ing something else.8 As I have already noted, however, the inferentialaccount of permissibility is purely formal: it says nothing about whichends justify which means.

The principle of double effect, by contrast, makes a more substan-tive claim. In order to see what this claim is, let us consider a standardexample. Pilot 1 proposes to advance his sides war effort by bombingan enemy munitions factory. Because of the inaccuracy inherent in thissort of bombing, he foresees that he will almost certainly kill a numberof patients in the adjacent childrens hospital. Pilot 2 proposes to ad-

vance his sides war effort by bombing a childrens hospital: he believes

that such terror attacks weaken the enemys resolve. He foresees thatin doing this he will almost certainly damage the adjacent munitionsfactory. Both pilots expect to kill the same number of children. Nowsuppose that they carry out their plans, with the expected results. Pilot2 intentionally kills the children, with the intention of thereby furtheringhis sides war effort. Pilot 1 intentionally damages the factory, with theintention of thereby furthering his sides war effort, but he does not,let us grant, intentionally kill the children.9 Suppose that pilot 2 acts

8. Everyone agrees that the agent might have acted impermissibly had he done some-thing else in order to achieve his end. The controversy concerns clause ii. Furthermore,those rejecting the inferential account would say that the reference to the agents end inclause i is unnecessary. In their view the relevant point is simply that if the agent had

done something else instead of f

ing, the moral status of his action might have beendifferent.9. Some would insist that pilot 1 does kill the children intentionally. If they are right,

then this is not a proper example for illustrating the principle of double effect. Somewould deny that any example can coherently illustrate the principle, since the distinctionbetween doing something intentionally and doing it with mere foresight is incoherent.

As our aim is simply to understand the principle, we can safely ignore these worries.



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with insufficient justification. His practical inferenceI can advancemy sides war effort by killing these children; so let me kill these chil-drenis a poor one. Does it follow that pilot 1 likewise acts with in-sufficient justification? Does it follow that his practical inferenceI canadvance my sides war effort by damaging this factory; so let me damagethis factoryis likewise, given his circumstances, a poor one? (Obvi-ously one of the relevant circumstances is that if he attempts to damagethe factory, he will almost certainly kill a number of innocent children.)

There are two positions one can take here:

Position A: If pilot 2 acts with insufficient justification, then so toodoes pilot 1.

Position B: It is not the case that if pilot 2 acts with insufficient jus-

tification, then so too does pilot 1.

Position A is in turn an application of the following more general thesis,which we may call the A Thesis:

If an agent would not be justified in drawing the practical con-clusion let me cause N.N. to suffer a harm of type h on the basisof the premise causing N.N. to suffer a harm of type h wouldpromote E, and if he knows that if he were to fhe would causeN.N. to suffer a harm of type h, then, other things being equal,neither would he be justified in drawing the practical conclusionlet me f on the basis of the premise fing would promote E.

Put more simply and roughly, the A Thesis states that if a given end is

insufficient to justify intentional harming, then, other things beingequal, that end is also insufficient to justify foreseen but unintendedharming. Position B is an application of the denial of this thesis. Let uscall this denial the B Thesis.

Both theses make substantive claims about what is capable of jus-tifying what, and both are consistent with the inferential account ofpermissibility. If we conjoin the inferential account with the A Thesis,

we get a view according to which if pilot 2 acts impermissibly, then sotoo does pilot 1. If we conjoin the inferential account with the B Thesis,

we get a view according to which it is not the case that if pilot 2 actsimpermissibly, then so too does pilot 1. So now, finally, we can say clearlyhow the principle of double effect is related to the inferential accountof permissibility. The principle of double effect states that there can inprinciple be circumstances in which an agent would act impermissiblyif he were to harm someone as a means to his end, but in which he

would act permissibly were he to pursue that same end by doing some-thing that will foreseeably result in someones suffering an equivalentharm, provided that he would not be harming that person intention-



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ally.10

And as we have seen, this view is simply the result of conjoiningthe inferential account with the B Thesis. So interpreted, then, theprinciple of double effect presupposes the inferential account of per-missibility but is not presupposed by it. Since my aim in this article isonly to defend the inferential account, I thankfully need take no standregarding the principle of double effect.

Although one cannot, as many have thought, refute the formalthesis that intentions are relevant to permissibility simply by refutingthe principle of double effect, some of the familiar objections to theprinciple of double effect are also objections to the formal thesis. I shalladdress these objections, among others, below.11

V

The question whether an agent acts permissibly is distinct from, andindependent of, such questions as whether he is at fault for, deservescredit or discredit for, or shows himself to be a bad person by, acting ashe does. It is possible, for example, for an agent to act impermissibly

without being at fault (traditionally recognized excuses include duress,nonculpable ignorance, mental abnormality, uncontrollable passion, andtemporary insanity), and it is possible for an agent to be at fault eventhough he acts permissibly (this is arguably the case when he does whathe falsely believes to be impermissible). Opponents of the view that in-tentions are relevant to permissibility often attribute others acceptanceof the view to their failure to recognize that permissibility is independentof fault, blameworthiness, and the like. Typically this is put forward as a

(partial) diagnosis of why the view finds adherents: those accepting theview must have mistakenly inferred the relevance of intentions to per-missibility from their evident relevance to fault, blameworthiness, andthe like.12 The plausibility of this diagnosis can be questioned, but thatneed not concern us here. The diagnosis does not aim to establish thatintentions are irrelevant to permissibility; it aims to explain why peoplehold a view that has supposedly already been shown to be mistaken. Inone article, however, Judith Jarvis Thomson seems to make a strongerclaim: she appears to argue that the view that intentions are relevantto permissibility is inconsistent with the independence of permissibilityfrom fault. In the following passage she is discussing the case of Alfred,

10. The final clause is more often formulated as requiring that the agent not intendthe harm. The difference between the formulations need not concern us here.11. For objections to the principle of double effect that do not challenge the formal

thesis, see Nancy Davis, The Doctrine of Double-Effect: Problems of Interpretation,PacificPhilosophical Quarterly65 (1984): 10723; and Jonathan Bennett, The Act Itself (Oxford:Clarendon, 1995), chap. 11.

12. See, e.g., Thomson, Physician-Assisted Suicide, 517.



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who wants to kill his wife and proposes to achieve this end by givingher some stuff that he mistakenly thinks is poison:

If fault is irrelevant to permissibility, then so also is intention. Ifit is irrelevant to the question whether Alfred may give the stuffto his wife whether Alfred would be at fault if he did it, then itmust also be irrelevant to this question what intention he wouldgive her the stuff with if he gave it to her. Alfreds intention is ofmoral interest only via its being the case that he will be at fault ifhe acts on it, and therefore his intention has no bearing on thepermissibility of his acting if his being at fault itself has no suchbearing.13

If one were to focus exclusively on the second sentence of this passage,one might take Thomson to be concerned only with the bearing ofintentions on adjectival permissibility judgments. In this sentence sheconcludes that the intention with which Alfred would give his wife thestuff is irrelevant to the question whether he may give her the stuffit is irrelevant, that is, to the question whether giving his wife the stuffis permissible given his circumstances. And this conclusion is of courseconsistent with the inferential account, according to which giving herthe stuff is permissible if and only if an adequate justification for actingin a way that involves doing so is available. I think that it is clear fromthe rest of the passage, however, that Thomson means to argue againstthe relevance of intentions to any sort of permissibility judgment.

The arguments key premise is that Alfreds intention is of moralinterestonlyvia its being the case that he will be at fault if he acts on

it. Only by ruling out in advance the possibility that intentions are rel-evant to permissibility directly, in a way that is unmediated by theirrelevance to fault, can Thomson use the irrelevance of fault to permis-sibility to establish the irrelevance of intentions to permissibility. ButThomson offers no justification for this premise. She thus begs thequestion against the inferential account of permissibility.14 For according

13. Thomson, Self-Defense, 295.14. The quoted passage occurs after Thomson has already presented otherarguments

for the irrelevance of intentions to permissibility. Her aim in the present argument is toexplain why intentions are irrelevant to permissibility: they are irrelevant because fault isirrelevant. So perhaps she does not intend the argument to have independent force. Butthe argument is no more successful on this more modest interpretation. If intentions areirrelevant to permissibility, then they are relevant neither indirectly, via their acknowledged

relevance to fault, nor directly, in the manner suggested by the inferential account. Theirrelevance of fault to permissibility can be singled out as the explanation why intentionsare irrelevant to permissibility only if the second way in which intentions might have beenrelevant to permissibility can be ruled out as an obvious nonstarter. But of course if the

view that intentions bear directly on permissibly is an obvious nonstarter, Thomsonsargument has independent force after all. I thus see no reason to prefer the more modestinterpretation.



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to this account, the intentions with which an agent acts bear directlyon whether he acts permissibly, quite independently of whether he isat fault for acting as he does. Treating moral permissibility as a speciesof inferential permissibility precludes none of the traditionally recog-nized excuses. An agent can be free of fault for making an impermissiblepractical inference, and hence for acting impermissibly, if his error isattributable to duress, nonculpable ignorance, mental abnormality, un-controllable passion, or insanity. Conversely, he can be at fault for mak-ing a permissible inference if, for example, he makes it believing it tobe an impermissible one.15 The independence of permissibility fromfault is entirely consistent with the relevance of intentions to both.

VI

I turn now to what is probably the most powerful and influential objectionto the view that intentions are relevant to permissibility. A number of

writers have raised essentially the same objection. This is Thomsons ver-sion:

It is a very odd idea . . . that a persons intentions play a role infixing what he may or may not do. What I have in mind comesout as follows. Suppose a pilot comes to us with a request for advice:See, were at war with a villainous country called Bad, and mysuperiors have ordered me to drop some bombs at Placetown inBad. Now theres a munitions factory at Placetown, but theres achildrens hospital there too. Is it permissible for me to drop thebombs? And suppose we make the following reply: Well, it alldepends on what your intentions would be in dropping the bombs.

If you would be intending to destroy the munitions factory andthereby win the war, merely foreseeing, though not intending, thedeaths of the children, then yes, you may drop the bombs. On theother hand, if you would be intending to destroy the children andthereby terrorize the Bads and thereby win the war, merely fore-seeing, though not intending, the destruction of the munitionsfactory, then no, you may not drop the bombs. What a queerperformance this would be! Can anyone really think that the pilotshould decide whether he may drop the bombs by looking inwardfor the intention with which he would be dropping them if hedropped them?16

15. It is an entirely objective matterone about which the agent can be mistakenwhether his reasons for acting are sufficient to justify him in acting as he does. Thus,

although whether an agent acts permissibly depends in part upon his subjective states,it is still in a perfectly good sense an objective question whether he acts permissibly.16. Thomson, Self-Defense, 293. Scanlon endorses Thomsons argument (Inten-

tion and Permissibility I, 3045), Bennett offers a similar argument (Morality and Con-sequences, 97), and James Rachels presents an analogous argument against the relevanceof intentions to moral rightness (The End of Life[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986],95). Bennetts version is the earliest I have encountered.



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Here too it might seem that Thomson is concerned only with adjectivalpermissibility judgments. The idea she calls odd is that an agentsintentions should play a role in determining what he may or may notdo (i.e., what it is permissible for him to do), and her pilot asks not

whether he would be acting permissibly if he were to drop the bombsbut only whether dropping them is permissible in his circumstances.

And of course the inferential account does not claim that the intentionswith which an agent would be acting, if he were to act, help determinewhat it is permissible for him to do. On the contrary, the account claimsthat dropping the bombs is permissible in the pilots circumstances ifand only if a sufficient justification for doing so is available in thosecircumstances, and whether a justification is available does not dependupon the pilots intentions. But here too I think that Thomson means

her argument to rule out the relevance of agents intentions to any sortof permissibility judgment. So let us imagine that her pilot does ask us

whether hed be acting permissibly if he were to drop his bombs. I takeit that Thomson would still see something absurd in our answering,Well, it all depends upon what your intentions would be in droppingthe bombs.

Before attempting to reconstruct and evaluate Thomsons argu-ment, I would like to suggest a few more minor modifications to herexample. First, she has the pilot ask us for advice; the absurd speechthen comes from us. Since this introduces an unnecessary complication,let us instead imagine the exchange Thomson describes as an internaldialogue: the pilot asks himself whether hed be acting permissibly ifhe were to drop his bombs, and he answers, Well, it all depends on

what my intentions would be. That Thomson would not object to thisalteration is evident, I think, from the last sentence of the quoted pas-sage. Second, her pilot is under orders to drop the bombs. This toointroduces an unwanted complication, so let us suppose instead thatthe pilot comes up with the idea himself. This modification should notaffect the soundness of the argument.

Now for a not-so-minor point: I think that we should try to ignorethe fact that Thomsons example involves an application of the principleof double effect. This may be difficult. One might think that whatsabsurd in the imagined answer to the pilots question is precisely thesuggestion that this particular difference in intention should have aneffect on whether he acts permissibly. The children will die either way,

and the pilot knows it. Why should it matter whether he aims at theirdeaths or merely foresees them? Surely the only pertinent question iswhether the good he hopes to achieve by dropping the bombs is suf-ficient to justify the sacrifice of so many innocent lives. But there isanother (seeming) absurdity in the imagined answer, and I believe thatit is this other absurdity that Thomson is trying to expose. Thomsons



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point is that when a deliberating agent must choose a course of conduct,he should turn his attention outwardhe should consider the circum-stances in which he finds himself and weigh the likely effects, bothdesirable and undesirable, of the available options. To turn his attentioninwardto reflect upon the intentions with which he would be acting

would, in Thomsons view, be absurd, a queer performance. I thussuggest that we try to ignore the details of Thomsons example andfocus instead upon the supposed absurdity of reaching decisions bylooking inward rather than outward.

The general thrust of Thomsons argument is clear enough: the viewthat an agents intentions have a bearing on whether he acts permissiblyis incompatible with a certain fact about deliberation, a fact to which herexample is designed to draw our attention. But what exactly is this (sup-

posed) fact? I can think of two possibilities and, correspondingly, two waysof interpreting Thomsons argument. On the first interpretation, theargument goes like this. There would be nothing absurd in a deliberatingagents asking himself whether he would be acting permissibly if he wereto do this or that. Permissibility judgments, both adjectival and adverbial,can play a guiding role in deliberationthey can help agents reach de-cisions. But it would be absurd for a deliberating agent who wants toact permissibly to decide what to do by reflecting upon the intentions

with which hed be acting. Whether he would be acting permissiblyconsequently cannot depend upon the intentions with which he wouldbe acting. Here, then, is a condensed statement of the argument, onthis first interpretation:

1. It would generally be absurd for a deliberating agent, concernedto act permissibly, to reflect, as part of his decision-making process,upon the intentions with which he would be acting.

2. Therefore, whether an agent acts permissibly cannot generally de-pend upon the intentions with which he acts.

My response to the argument, so interpreted, is to deny its premise.Before we can see why the premise is false, however, we must understandthe distinctive deliberative role that the inferential account assigns toadverbial permissibility judgments.

According to the inferential account, to ask oneself whether onewould be acting permissibly if one were to pursue a certain course ofaction is to inquire into the quality of a proposed first-order practical

inference. It is thus to engage in a sort of practical metareasoning. Ofcourse, competent practical reasoners do not typically engage in suchhigher-order reasoning about the quality of their proposed first-orderinferences; typically, they simply make the first-order inferences. But nordo competent practical reasoners typically make explicit permissibility

judgments in the course of their deliberations. A practical reasoners



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views about permissibility are most often simply implicit in his actions:they are revealed by the inferences he makes, not explicitly avowed.17

Even good practical reasoners, however, are sometimes unsure howmuch weight certain moral considerations deserve, or how to adjudicatebetween conflicting moral claims. These are the occasions on whichthey are likely explicitly to ask themselves whether they would be actingpermissibly if they were to act this way or that, and to answer thesequestions they must ascend to higher-order reasoning about the justi-ficatory force of competing first-order reasons. Suppose, for example,that an agent is for some reason considering fing but that he is unsure,in light of the pro tanto moral case to be made againstfing, whetherhe would be acting permissibly in doing so. To resolve his practicaldifficulty he must determine whether, given his circumstances, the con-

siderations on whose strength he proposes to f are really sufficient tojustify him in doing so.

It is in such higher-order practical reflection, and not in first-orderpractical deliberation, that adverbial permissibility judgments find theirdeliberative home, according to the inferential account. For even whenan agent does explicitly judge, before the fact, that he would be actingpermissibly if he were to f, this judgment expresses no part of hissubsequent reason for fing. Suppose once more that an agent has inmind a reason for finglet it be Rbut that he is unwilling to act onthis reason until he has satisfied himself that he would be acting per-missibly in doing so. And suppose he determines that he would indeedbe acting permissibly: he determines that there are no first-order moralreasons againstfing sufficient to defeat the justificatory force of R. Hispermissibility judgment helps justify a higher-order judgment to theeffect that his proposed first-order practical inference is a good one.There is a sense, then, in which the permissibility judgment expressespart of his justification for acting: he would not have made that inferencehad he not thought it a good one. But the permissibility judgmentexpresses no part of his reason for fing. His reason for fingthe con-sideration he now confidently takes to justifyfingis still simply R. Justas it would be a mistake to include the overtly higher-order judgment,The inference from R to Let me f is a good one, among that veryinferences premises, so also it would be a mistake to include the covertlyhigher-order judgment, Infing I would be acting permissibly, amongthe premises of ones first-order inference to the conclusion let me f.

(Suppose that a theoretical reasoner is considering judging that p onthe basis of R but that he is unsure whether the inference is a good

17. An agents practical inference can of course fail to reflect his views about moralpermissibility. This can happen because of carelessness, but it also happens when an agentquite deliberately acts contrary to his own moral judgment.



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onehe is unsure whether R really is a good reason for judging thatp. If he subsequently satisfies himself on this score and makes the in-ference, his inference will run, R; therefore p, not R; the inferencefrom R to p is a good one; therefore p. His judgment that theinference is a good one may express part of his reason for making theinference, but it does not express part of his reason for judging that p.It does not state one of the premises on the basis of which he drawsthe conclusion p.)

Just as the fact that one would be acting permissibly in fing is nota reason to f, the fact that one would be acting impermissibly in fingis not a reason not to f. When an agent judges that he would be actingimpermissibly in fing, he judges that his case in favor offing is insuf-ficient to overcome some moral objection to fing in his circumstances.

The fact that he would be acting impermissibly in fing thus implies theexistence of a first-order moral reason not to f, but it does not itselfconstitute such a reason. Like permissibility, impermissibility is a higher-order moral concept. When an agent acts impermissibly, it is becausethere is some more specific, first-order moral objection to what he does,an objection whose force his case in favor of acting in that way has failedto overcome. The judgment that he acts impermissibly reports this fail-ure; it does not report the existence of some further moral objectionto what he does.

Let us return now to the premise of the argument under consider-ation: that it would generally be absurd for a deliberating agent, con-cerned to act permissibly, to reflect, as part of his decision-making process,upon the intentions with which he would be acting. Consider how thepermissibility question typically arises. An agent has an end in view (ha-rassing the enemy, let us say) and then hits upon a possible means forachieving this end (bombing a certain munitions factory). So he setsabout planning his attack. He then notices that there is a childrenshospital next to the factory, and he wonders whether he should proceed.

Would it really be so absurd if he were to say to himself: Why, again,was I going to drop my bombs there? What exactly was I hoping toachieve? And is achieving that end really worth the lives of all thosechildren? I hear nothing queer in this performance. But in reflectingupon the adequacy of his proposed reasons for dropping the bombs,he is reflecting upon the intentions with which he would be droppingthem. So the premise must be rejected.

There was admittedly something queer about the speech Thomsonimagined in her original version of the example. Her pilot had beenordered to drop his bombs. Not being privy to his superiors deliber-ations, he did not know why he was supposed to drop them. He wasthus in no position to assess the adequacy of those reasons. The speechthat Thomson rehearsed suggested that the pilot could instead simply



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choose an intention with which to drop his bombs. But of course thatis not how it works: the intentions with which one acts reflect onesgrounds for choice; they are not, as such, objects of choice. That it

would be absurd to reflect upon intentions in the manner exemplifiedin Thomsons speech, however, does not entail that it is absurd to reflectupon them in other ways. And I have already described how a delib-erating agent, concerned to act permissibly, might properly reflect uponthe intentions with which he would be acting. (I return briefly to Thom-sons original version of the example in Sec. VIII.)

There is, however, another, better way of interpreting Thomsonsargument. Perhaps what is supposed to be absurd is not the idea thata deliberating agent might properly reflect upon his intentions but,rather, the idea that he must do this in order to be confident that he

would be acting permissibly. Consider once more the pilot who wonderswhether he would be acting permissibly if he were to drop his bombs.Perhaps he could, without absurdity, reflect upon the adequacy of hisreasons for dropping them (and hence upon the intentions with whichhe would be dropping them), but he neednt do this. Instead of turninghis attention inward he can keep it focused outwardhe can ask himself

whether an adequate reason for dropping them exists. Then, havingsatisfied himself that dropping bombs is justifiable in his circumstances,he can simply go ahead and drop them, confident that in doing so he

will be acting permissibly. Having determined that it is permissible toinstantiate a given act type, he can move directly to instantiating thatact type, without ever having to ask himself what his intentions in doingso would be. But if he can do this, then whether he would be actingpermissibly cannot depend upon what his intentions would be. Or sothe argument would go. Here is a condensed statement of Thomsonsargument, on this second interpretation:

1. A deliberating agent generally need not reflect upon the intentionswith which he would be acting in order to be confident that hewould be acting permissibly.

2. Therefore, whether an agent acts permissibly cannot generally de-pend upon the intentions with which he acts.

My response to the argument, so interpreted, is to accept its premisebut deny that the conclusion follows. If it seems to follow, this is because

we have failed to appreciate the distinctive perspective a deliberating

agent has on the question of whether he would be acting permissibly.In order to understand what is special about this perspective, let us firstexamine the perspective of an external observer. If the inferential ac-count is correct, an observer cannot determine whether an agent wouldbe acting permissibly in fing by asking whether an adequate reason forfing exists. Even if one does exist, it might not be the agents reason



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for fing. In order to determine whether the agent would be actingpermissibly, the observer must first discover, and then assess the ade-quacy of, those considerations on the basis of which the agent wouldactually be fing. The observers inquiry thus has two stages, and thefirst stage, in which he attempts to discover the intentions with whichthe agent would be fing, is psychological in nature. On the presentinterpretation, Thomsons argument assumes that the agents perspec-tive on the permissibility question is essentially the same as the ob-servers. It assumes that if the inferential account is correct, then, likethe observer, the deliberating agent must begin his inquiry into whetherhe would be acting permissibly in fing by determining what his reasonsfor fing would be. Given this assumption, the fact that a deliberatingagent need not inquire into the intentions with which he would be fing

in order to be confident that he would be acting permissibly does indeedseem inconsistent with the thesis that the permissibility of his fing de-pends upon the intentions with which he fs.

In fact, however, the deliberating agents perspective on the ques-tion whether he would be acting permissibly is radically different fromthe observers. From the agents perspective, the reason for which he

will be acting is not something to be discovered by means of psycho-logical self-inquiry. It is something that will be settled by the very processof deliberation in which he is currently engaged. So unlike the observer,the agent can base a judgment about whether he would be acting per-missibly in fing on the results of an inquiry into whether an adequatereason for fing exists. He can do this because he is in a position tomake the consideration he judges to justify fing into his reason forfing. The deliberating agents interest in the question whether thereis sufficient reason to f is practical: he makes this inquiry with a viewto being guided by its results. Suppose the inquiry issues in the judgmentthat R is sufficient to justifyfing. The agent knows that if he then decidesto f, this decision will be made in response to his determination thatR is sufficient to justifyfing, and that if he decides to f in response tothis determination, he will thereby be making R his reason for fing.Once he has determined that R justifies fing, then, he need conductno further inquiry into the identity and justificatory adequacy of hisreason for fing. He need never direct his attention inward. That hisreason will be adequate is something he can simply infer.18 The delib-

18. The inference from this is a good reason forf

ing to I will act permissibly ifI f is not infallible. The inference presupposes that the agents inquiry into the availabilityof an adequate reason for fing is genuinely deliberativethat the inquiry is truly for thepurpose of guiding his decision. But this is something about which an agent might deceivehimself. Without his realizing it, his inquirys purpose might really be to rationalize (inthe popular sense) a course of action that he has already decided upon for some other,inadequate reason. And even if his inquiry is for the purpose of guiding his decision, he



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erating agent need not actually make this inference, however, in orderto be justifiably confident that he will be acting permissibly. The mereavailability of the inference entitles him to act on the basis of his as-sessment of the applicable reasons, without having to worry about

whether he will thereby be acting permissibly.In sum, while the truth conditions of adverbial permissibility judg-

ments are the same no matter who is doing the judging, the deliberatingagent has a way of knowing that his action will satisfy these conditionsthat differs radically from the observers. The observer must begin byidentifying the reason for which the agent will f. Only then can hedetermine whether that reason justifies the agent in fing. The delib-erating agent can reverse this procedure. He can begin by determining

whether a given consideration justifies fing. If it does, he can thensimplyf for that reason, confident that in so doing he will be actingpermissibly. He will be mistaken about whether he is acting permissiblyonly if he was mistaken about that considerations justifying force.

This is not to deny that an agent can take an observers perspectiveon his own future actions. Suppose an agent is well aware that if he fs,it will not be on the basis of any consideration he has identified as asufficient reason for fing. He will do so on the basis of some otherconsideration, one whose motivational force he knows he cannot resist.In such a case the agents way of determining whether he would beacting permissibly were he to f must parallel the observers. The agentmust first identify the reason for which he would be fing and then assessthe adequacy of that reason. By approaching in this way the question

of whether he would be acting permissibly, however, the agent wouldbe abandoning the deliberative perspective. He would be treating hisreason for fing as something to be discovered or predicted.

The premise of Thomsons argument, on the second interpretation,is that a deliberating agent generally need not reflect upon the intentions

with which he would be acting in order to be confident that he wouldbe acting permissibly; its conclusion is that whether an agent acts per-missibly cannot generally depend upon the intentions with which he acts.It should now be evident why this inference is faulty. The deliberatingagents entitlement to act directly on the basis of his assessment of therelevant external considerations justifying force is consistent with

whether he acts permissibly depending upon the adequacy of his reasonsfor actingor, in other words, with its depending upon the intentions

with which he actsbecause the considerations he takes to justify actingin that way become his reasons for acting when he acts on them. Theinferential account of permissibility does not entail that the pilot must

could still end up fing for some reason other than the one that that inquiry tells himwould justifyfing.



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reason: If I drop my bombs, I will be doing so with the intention ofdestroying the munitions factory and thereby winning the war, thedeaths of the innocent children being foreseen but not intended; there-fore, I will act permissibly if I drop my bombs. The account is consistent

with his reasoning: The destruction of the munitions factory is a con-sequence of sufficient value to justify bombing it, and this despite thefact that the bombs will inevitably kill a number of innocent children;therefore, I will act permissibly if I drop my bombs. The pilot can keephis deliberative gaze fixed firmly outward.

VII

Having discussed certain differences between the perspective of a de-liberating agent and that of a passive observer, I turn now to the per-

spective of someone who has been asked for advice.Suppose that an agent has already done some practical reasoning

and suspects that he has a good reason to f. Lacking confidence in hisown judgment, however, he seeks anothers advice. Should I go aheadand f? he asks (meaning, roughly, Do you think that this would be agood idea?). There are at least three approaches an advisor can takein answering this question. First, he can imagine the agents actualreasoning to be his own. An advisor taking this approach will tell theagent to go ahead and f only if he (the advisor) thinks the agent wouldthereby be making a permissible practical inference. Second, the advisorcan try to determine whether an adequate case for fing can be madeout from the agents point of view. He can, in other words, deliberateon the agents behalf. If he succeeds in assembling premises from whichlet me f can permissibly be inferred, he will advise the agent to goahead and f. Otherwise, he will advise the agent not to f. An advisortaking this second approach will not delve into the agents psychology;he will advise the agent to f only if he (the advisor) thinks that that is

what the agent has most reason to do. Finally, the advisor might try todetermine whether the agents fing is favored by the reasons availableto him (the advisor). If reasons can be agent-relative, the second andthird approaches can yield different results. Suppose that the agent mustchoose between saving either one drowning swimmer or two others, andsuppose that the one is the advisors child. If the advisor were to takethe third approach, he might advise the agent to save the one, this beingthe course of action that would produce the best outcome as evaluated

from his (the advisors) point of view, even though no adequate justi-fication for saving the one rather than the two would be available fromthe agents point of view.

Since the agents own reason for acting might be a poor one, anadvisor taking the second or third approach might end up knowinglyencouraging him to act impermissibly. Consider the following example.



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A wishes to take over Bs job and proposes to achieve this goal bymurdering him. Before acting, however, he asks for a friends advice.The friend knows what A does not: that B is himself about to murderC and that C can be saved only if A kills B first. Let us suppose thatsaving C would be a sufficient justification for killing B but that ad-

vancing ones career would not. If the friend were to take the firstapproach, he would have to advise A not to carry out his plan. Realizingthat this would leave C at the mercy of B, however, the friend insteadadvises A to go ahead (quickly) with his plan to kill B. Now it mightseem that what the friend should really do is tell A why he should killB, in the hope that A would then kill B for that reason, and so actpermissibly. (There is surely a strong moral presumption against en-couraging people to act impermissibly.) But perhaps the friend has notime to explain why A should kill B, or perhaps he knows that thisapproach would be counterproductive. In that case the friend might

well be justified in giving the go-ahead to As original plan. The friendsreasoning would be this: B will kill C unless someone kills B first; theonly person in a position to kill B is A; so let me get A to kill B; theonly way I can get A to kill B is by encouraging him to go ahead withhis plan; so let me encourage him to go ahead with his plan. And thismight well be a permissible practical inference on the friends partin advising A to go ahead with his plan to kill B, the friend might wellbe acting permissibly.

I have suggested that it may sometimes be morally permissible toencourage others to act impermissibly. Some might consider this un-

acceptable. Here is Thomson again:Suppose we are there at the time of Eisenhowers ordering theinvasion [of Normandy] to begin and he whispers to us, If truthbe told, all Im really intending in issuing the order is to causethe deaths of a lot of American soldiers. And suppose we believehim. Presumably we should telephone Roosevelt and say, Cancelit! For if thats all Eisenhower is intending in issuing the order,then there is real ground for worry about his planning of theinvasion, and thus about what will go on in it: it is likely that there

will be more deaths than are needed, not more than are neededfor his purpose, of course, but more than are needed for theliberation of Europe. But if, perhaps per impossible, these concernscould be proved groundless, if i.e., we could become convinced

that all will go exactly as it would go if that were not his intention,then there would be no reason to cancel the order. If which in-tention he acts with will make no difference to what happens, thenhis intention bears, not on whether he may act, but only on him.19

19. Thomson, Physician-Assisted Suicide, 516 n. 19.



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(Even the weaker claim may be false, however. If agent-relative moralreasons are possible, then perhaps there can be cases in which an advisor

would have a compelling justification for encouraging an agent to f,but in which a parallel case for fing would be unavailable to the agent.)

Indeed, Thomson must herself reject premise ii, if it is interpretedto mean what the inferential account says it means. For if premise ii

implies that one never acts permissibly in encouraging another to acton a morally inadequate reason, then her own case provides a coun-terexample, since by stipulation, Eisenhower is acting for a morally in-adequate reason, yet we may encourage him to go ahead. In order touse premise ii to argue that an agents reasons for acting are irrelevantto whether he acts permissibly, Thomson would have to interpret it ina manner inconsistent with the truth of the inferential account. But

then she would simply be begging the question against the inferentialaccount.

VIII

In Section VII, I discussed the perspective of someone advising an agentwhether to proceed with his plan. Suppose now that when he requestsadvice the agent explicitly raises the question of permissibilityhe asks,May I f? If he already has in mind a reason for fing, he may mean

to choose the permissible option, but in saying this we do not disparage the significanceof adverbial permissibility judgments: the agent will act impermissibly no matter whatcourse he takes, and so the advisor cannot base his advice upon that. In scenarios of thesecond kind, multiple permissible options are available to the agent, but one is much

better than the others, morally speaking. Suppose an agent proposes to do somethingsupererogatory, but he would act impermissibly if he were to do it. Depending upon thedetails of the case, an advisor might well act permissibly in encouraging him to go ahead

with his plan. Here the advisor would be encouraging the agent to act impermissibly whenhe (the advisor) could instead have encouraged him to act permissibly. But this does notshow that it is unimportant whether agents act permissibly. It shows only that certain endsare so important that they can sometimes override the pro tanto duty to refrain fromencouraging others to act impermissibly. In rejecting premise ii I reject only the idea thatthere is an unbreakable logical link between whether an advisor acts permissibly in givingadvice and whether the recipient acts permissibly in following it. Whether an advisor actspermissibly depends upon the adequacy of his reasons for giving the advice he gives. Thatthe recipient of the advice would act impermissibly if he were to follow it gives the advisora strong pro tanto reason not to give it, but no matter how strong that pro tanto reasonis, there can be no logical guarantee that it will always be decisive. In fact, I think thatadverbial permissibility judgments are extremely important. They are our most basic eval-

uations of actions. Recall the earlier example in which A, for purely selfish reasons, pro-posed to kill B, who unbeknownst to him was about to kill C unjustly. We supposed thatalthough killing B would be justifiable in the circumstances, A would nonetheless actimpermissibly if he were to carry out his plan. If that is right, then in my view if he wereto carry out his plan, his action would be every bit as bad as it would be if C were in nodanger at all. The mere availability of an adequate justification for killing B does nothingto improve the moral status of As action.



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having a bad intention make it impermissible for him to do whatsheneeds for life?)22

As we have seen, the inferential account of permissibility does not re-quire us to say that Alfred may not give his wife the stuff. Furthermore,if we know that the stuff is the only cure for what ails her, then we havea strong reason to encourage Alfred to go ahead with his murderousplan. Once all this has been granted, however, I see nothing counter-intuitive in adding that if Alfred gives her the stuff in order to kill her,he will act impermissibly. I see nothing counterintuitive in saying that,cases of justified euthanasia aside, an agent who tries to kill his spouseacts impermissibly.23

22. Thomson, Self-Defense, 29394.23. It should be noted that the inferential account of permissibility does not by itself

entail that Alfred will be acting impermissibly if he gives his wife the stuff in an attemptto kill her. This judgment depends upon substantive claims about what can and cannot

justify an agent in giving his wife stuff which he believes will harm her but which will infact benefit her.

hanser permissibility and practical inference 461-3 switches to ext assessment illicitly

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