Topics Ethics

Question Many people (not all) who object to such things as torture, indefinite detention, or animal testing, object regardless of what the benefits of those things might be. Some of those people are liberals. That doesn't seem very coherent -isn't a lot of modern liberalism based on ideas about what the best outcome for everyone is? I know there are some social contract theories that might be an alternative to utilitarianism, but that doesn't work for the animal advocates, since presumably they don't believe that you have to be able to enter a social contract to have your rights respected. Is there some way for these people to have a coherent position?

Accepted:
September 3, 2008

Comments

I think a liberal can support a ban on torture unconditionally from a conseqentialist point of view. She would say perhaps that if society follows such a policy, then while in one or two cases the effects might be unfortunate, on the whole they would be better than the alternative. This could be a rule utilitarian attitude, and seems quite plausible to me. The argument against it would be that it would be better not to have such a rule, i.e. not to ban torture unconditionally, and then one would have to argue which policy involved the best consequences on the whole. That is where you should apply your argument, not against the liberal's use of consequentialism, but against the facts of the case about what that use implies.