Might I be incapable of meeting my obligations?

Clayton Littlejohn
cmlittlejohn@yahoo.com

No, you might think, because obligations are the sorts of things that cannot
be unless they can be met. Or, better put, you might think that you must
be able to meet your obligations if indeed they are your obligations because
“ought” implies “can”:
Necesarily, if you ought to φ, you can φ (OIC).
OIC has come under attack (again). The latest attack due to Graham (forth-
coming) is novel and not without its intuitive force, so it is worth taking a look
to see if OIC has finally met its match.
According to Graham, there are cases where an agent has an obligation
where the agent has not both the opportunity and ability to act in such a way
as to fulfill that obligation. This example poses no threat to OIC, but it is
where we should start:
A surgeon has ten patients, each of whom will die of organ failure
if he does not receive an organ transplant. The surgeon wants to
save her patients and is convinced by philosophical arguments to
the effect that it would be morally permissible to kill two people in
order to save them. She notices that in another room of the hospital
there are two innocent and unconscious tonsillectomy patients who
are perfect organ matches for her patients. The only means by which
the hospital janitor, who is aware of the situation, can stop the
surgeon from chopping up the two and redistributing their organs
among the ten is by shooting her with his pistol. He does so and
thereby kills her (TRANSPLANT).
It is intuitive to say:

(1) It is morally permissible for the janitor to kill the surgeon.

Let’s assume this is so. Graham says that if this is so (which it is), we should
also say:
(2) If the janitor had not killed the surgeon, the surgeon would have
impermissibly killed the two patients.

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This also seems correct and I agree with Graham that (2) is an important part
of the explanation of (1).
Now, consider a variant on TRANSPLANT:
Everything is as it is in TRANSPLANT except that the surgeon
cannot refrain from killing the two because the ten are her grand-
children, and she is as compelled to save them as is the most severe
kleptomaniac to steal (COMPULSION).
Concerning COMPULSION, Graham observes that (1) still seems true. He also
observes that the doctor’s compulsion seems irrelevant to the fact that (1) is
true concerning COMPULSION. So, he concludes that we should say that (2)
is true concerning COMPULSION as well. And now we can see why OIC is in
trouble. The surgeon could not have met his (alleged) obligation not to kill the
two patients.
Like Graham, I think the janitor is permitted to shoot in both cases. He
thinks I should thus reject OIC:

As in TRANSPLANT, in ... [COMPULSION] (1) is true. But not

only does the addition of the surgeon’s compulsion not change this
fact, it also seems irrelevant to it. In other words, whatever explains
the truth of (1) in TRANSPLANT, it seems, must also explain the
truth of (1) in COMPULSION. But if this is right, then OIC must
be false. For if, as I shall argue, what explains the truth of (1) in
TRANSPLANT is (2), and what makes (1) true in COMPULSION
is the same as that which makes (1) true in TRANSPLANT, then
it must be the case that (2) is true in COMPULSION (forthcoming,
pp. 7).
I worry about his inference from the (correct) observation that (2) explains (1)
in TRANSPLANT to the further claim that (2) explains (1) in COMPULSION.
First, while I agree that the surgeon’s compulsion seems irrelevant to the
fact that (1) is true in COMPULSION, I do not see why this should lead us to
conclude that the proper explanation of (1) is the same in COMPULSION and
TRANSPLANT. We know, for example, that if you fiddle with the right details,
you can construct pairs of cases where the effects to be explained are the same
in both cases, the potential causes are the same in both cases, but differences
between the cases determine which cause explains where the differences are
irrelevant to the fact that the effect was produced in these cases. If the cause of
some effect was sufficient but not needed because the effect would have occurred
anyway had the cause been removed (e.g., there was a backup cause), modifying
details of the case that seem intuitively irrelevant to the fact that the effect
was produced might involve modifying the very details that determine which
potential cause is the actual cause and so determines which causal explanation
is the correct one. I see no reason to think that moral explanation will not
involve similar complications.

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 I want to do two things. First, offer an alternative explanation for (1) in
COMPULSION. Second, argue that we have no good reason for preferring Gra-
ham’s explanation to mine even if we accept his explanation of TRANSPLANT.
Our janitor has to decide whether to shoot or not to shoot. Suppose our
janitor believes OIC and so believes the conditional that if the surgeon cannot
avoid killing the two, he cannot act impermissibly in so doing. But, suppose
our janitor does not initially believe that the doctor is compelled to act while
removing his pistol from his utility belt. He would, let us assume, shoot the
doctor if he thought that the doctor was acting freely in the way we might
imagine he did in TRANSPLANT and do so from the same motive. I imagine
that this was a concern for the patients and not a pathological dislike of imper-
missible actions. But, now our janitor comes to learn (never mind how) that
our surgeon is not acting freely and so has to decide whether to carry out his
intention. Perhaps matters are complicated for him because he thinks (rightly
or wrongly) that the doctor is not acting impermissibly since the doctor cannot
refrain from trying to kill the two patients. It would be strange, I think, for
the janitor to put his pistol away. What could his reason be? If he decided not
to save them because he knows how their organs will be distributed, it is hard
not to think of this case as one where the janitor is deliberately allowing some
to die in order that others might be saved. This seems very unKantian.1 We
might cite, then, the prohibition against acting on maxims that involve treating
others as mere means as the explanation as to why (1) is true in COMPUL-
SION. As for TRANSPLANT, the relevant moral facts can be explained in part
by this, but we could also say that the janitor acted permissibly because he was
preventing another from murdering two. We have the materials to explain the
relevant moral data even if the doctor would have acted impermissibly in only
one of the cases.
Is the explanation I have offered as to why (1) is true in COMPULSION
fare better than Graham’s explanation? It has this much going for it. My
explanation allows us to remain agnostic as to whether OIC is true. Since there
is (presumably) a default presumption in its favor, conservatism gives us some
reason for preferring my explanation to his. I would also note that there are
further modifications of COMPULSION that involve the permissible killing of
the doctor where it is clear that the doctor does not act impermissibly in the
relevant scenario:
Everything is as it is in TRANSPLANT with two exceptions. First,
the surgeon cannot refrain from killing the two because the surgeon is
controlled by remote by a neurosurgeon who has wired our surgeon’s
brain forcing the surgeon to act and reason as the surgeon did in
TRANSPLANT. Second, this surgeon would not normally reason
and act in this way were it not for the neurosurgeon. (CONTROL).
The neurosurgeon’s goal is to distribute the patient’s organs so that the greatest
number can be saved. If the only way to save the patients is to kill the surgeon,
1 See Scanlon for 2000 for discussion of cases that involve treating someone as a mere means

by allowing something to happen to them.

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my own view is that the janitor would be permitted to shoot knowing that
this would eventuate in the surgeon’s death. This is so even though the janitor
knew (never mind how) that it was not the surgeon who was acting. If the
surgeon did not act, she did not act impermissibly. Still, I say, the intuition
that it is permissible for the janitor to use force to intervene is as firm in this
case as in Graham’s. So, even if Graham gives us the right explanation as
to why intervention is permissible in TRANSPLANT, I say this gives us little
reason at all to think the same explanation holds true in COMPULSION since
CONTROL illustrates that there are cases nearby where the permissibility of
shooting the surgeon tells us nothing about the moral status of that surgeon’s
actions.
Graham anticipates this sort of response and offers this challenge that I shall
try to meet in closing the paper. Consider:
A bystander can redirect an out-of-control train away from ten trapped
track workers and toward two other trapped track inspectors. If the
bystander does nothing, the train will kill the ten, and if she redi-
rects the train, it will kill the two. From a distance, a hunter sees
that the bystander is about to redirect the train and realizes that
he can prevent her from doing so only by shooting her with his rifle.
He does so and thereby kills her (TRAIN).
Graham says that it is not permissible for the hunter to do this, and I agree.
But, Graham asks, what is the difference between this case where the hunter
acts impermissibly and my case where the janitor kills a “passive threat” (forth-
coming, pp. 15)? It is what I suggested earlier. In COMPULSION as well as
CONTROL, the decision to do nothing would involve letting some die as a
means to some end and so would violate the Kantian prohibition that tells us
we must not act on maxims that involve treating others as mere means. This is
not a feature of TRAIN and it is a mistake to think of the hunter’s situation and
the situation of our heroic janitor as the same. Two differences are immediately
apparent. The first is that the Kantian reasoning that helps us understand why
it is that the janitor acts permissibly seems not to apply TRAIN to help us
understand why someone in the hunter’s position might shoot. The second is
that in TRAIN, we have an agent who is using violence to prevent someone
from acting justifiably whereas this is not so in CONTROL, COMPULSION,
or TRANSPLANT.

References
1. Graham, Peter. Forthcoming. “Ought” and Ability. Philosophical Review.
[http://people.umass.edu/pgraham/Home_files/%27Ought%27%20and%20Ability.pdf]
2. Scanlon, Thomas. 2000. Intention and Permissibility. Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society (Supplementary Volume) 74: 301-17.