The Consequences Matter - But to What?

This paper is part of a larger project on how we should regulate conduct that is socially productive, but poses some risk of harm to others. The official technique for risk regulation in the modern administrative state is some form of cost/benefit analysis: we tote up the expected social benefits and expected social costs of alternative courses of conduct, and opt for that course that is expected to generate the largest aggregate benefits (net of costs). There is a vast and growing critical literature on the normative, conceptual, and administrative problems with cost/benefit analysis. Fried agrees with many of those criticisms. But her particular interest in this project is the objection raised to any aggregative procedure, on the familiar deontological ground that it fails to respect the distinct rights and interests of individuals. Accepting the moral impulse behind that objection as understandable, maybe even compelling, the question she wants to address is whether nonconsequentialists have offered—or could offer‐‐ any coherent alternative to aggregation in this context.

This chapter mostly focuses on the central deontological objection to aggregative solutions to regulating potentially harmful conduct: that it violates our duty not to act in a fashion that will result in harm to others.