Ethics

Where in philosophy does the question of "cost" arise, if at all? If someone presents us with a "moral imperative," is it even permissible to ask "what does it cost?" or do we simply abdicate that answer to economists and psychologists?

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The question of cost arises in different accounts of morality in different ways.

Consequentialist accounts may center around the moral imperative to act so as to make the outcome best. Here cost is factored in by considering how a candidate course of conduct will affect various people, including the agent. I shouldn't try to help a stranger, for example, if the cost to me and third parties of doing so is larger than the benefit to the stranger and other beneficiaries.And I should not help this stranger if doing so came at the expense ("opportunity cost") of something even better I might do instead.

Duty-focused moralities often say very little about cost. They may issue the moral imperative not to lie, for example, without addressing the cost that such abstention might impose on the agent and on others. Kant was famously taken to task for this by Benjamin Constant (see also Sartre's much later story "The Wall"). Some duty-focused moralists have addressed the question of cost by delimiting the relevant duties in such a way that excessive costs cannot arise. For example, one is assigned a duty "not to lie unless the harm the lie will prevent is very large and much larger than any harm the lie produces".

An interesting and severely understudied question is that of moral cost. What should a duty-focused morality say about an agent's compliance with her duties when such compliance foreseeably leads to a great deal of non-compliance by others with their duties? And, similarly, what should a virtues-focused morality say about an agent's devotion to developing her own moral excellences when this devotion foreseeably leads to a great deal of vice on the part of other people?

Moralities that command people to comply with simple moral imperatives regardless of consequences are not plausible in a world where such conduct can really make the heavens fall. Economists and psychologists can and do talk about costs, of course, and often in very illuminating ways. But they cannot solve the philosopher's task of formulating a plausible, conduct-guiding morality that is sensitive to also the remoter effects our conduct has on ourselves and others. Economists can model how a homo œconomicus would rationally take certain costs into account in a strategic environment, and psychologists can help us understand how people actually tend to do so. But all this still leaves us with the philosophical questions of whether it is morally right to act like a homo œconomicus or to think, feel and act the way people generally tend to do -- the question what we morally ought to do in situations where otherwise morally attractive conduct options are foreseeably associated with substantial moral or prudential costs for the agent and/or others.

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