Topics in Moral and Political PhilosophyPaternalism

Justifications for restricting liberty

Harm Principle: it is permissible to interfere with someone’s liberty in order to prevent harm to someone else.

Offense principle: it is permissible to interfere with someone’s liberty in order to prevent offense to others.

Paternalism: it is permissible to interfere with someone’s liberty in order to protect her from harm or to make her better off.

Moralism: it is permissible to interfere with someone’s liberty in order to ensure that she acts morally.

Paternalism

“It is permissible to interfere with X’s liberty, against X’s will, in

order to make X better off or protect X from harm.”

Governmental forms

• Pension system

• Helmets

• Drugs

• Consent to assault

• Unenforceability of certain contracts

• Civilly committing people who are a danger to themselves

• Blood transfusion

• Euthanasia

Non-governmental forms

• Should doctors always tell the truth about their patients’ medical

conditions?

• Should physicians always tell the truth about how much someone

suffered before dying?

• May a husband hide the sleeping pills from his depressed wife?

• May philosophy department require students to take logic courses?

OVERDETERMINATION

When these policies are justified solely on the grounds that the

person affected would be better off as a result of the policy, but

the person in question would prefer not to be subject to them,

they constitute a form paternalism.

3 components

X acts paternalistically towards Y by doing T when:

1. T interferes with the liberty or autonomy of Y

2. X does T without the consent of Y

3. X does T only because T will improve the welfare (or promote

the interests) of Y

Strong vs weak paternalism

Strong paternalism: it is legitimate to prevent people from achieving

ends that are mistaken or irrational (e.g. preferring the wind rustling

through my hair to my safety).

Weak paternalist: it is legitimate to interfere with the means agents

choose to achieve their ends, if those means are likely to defeat those

ends.

We may interfere with mistakes about the facts but not mistakes about 

values.

“What’s your reason to jump out of the window?”

Paternalism and consent

What are the cases in which paternalism seems more easily

justifiable? What do they tell us?

“Future-oriented consent”: although children do not welcome

their parents’ intervention now, they will in the future.

“Parental paternalism may be thought of as a wager by the

parent on the child’s subsequent recognition of the wisdom of

the restriction” (Gerald Dworkin).

Future-oriented consent

Can we extend this idea to adults?

Problems:

• Is it plausible to say that we consent to everything we subsequently

come to welcome?

• “future-oriented consent” does not tell us much ex ante about when

and how we can justifiably interfere.

• Which future moment should we privilege?

• What if the person who is interfered with never comes to accept the

intervention simply because the person is stubborn or stupid?

Hypothetical consent

Paternalistic interference is justified if fully rational agents would 

consent to it.

Example: health or security seem to be goods that any person would

want in order to pursue what they value, no matter what it is that they

ultimately value.

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We would consent to paternalistic interference, at least when it is not

too onerous, in order to have access to these goods.

Problems with hypothetical consent

We often disagree as to the value to be attached to competing 

values.

Example: for a Jehovah’s Witness it might be more important to

avoid “impure substances” than to survive. Can we simply rule

out her position as irrational?

3 types of cases

1. Cases in which we reasonably disagree as to the importance of

competing values (Jeovah’s Witness)

2. Cases in which we attach incorrect weights to some of our values

(seatbelts vs security)

3. Cases in which we fail to act in accordance to our preferences and

desires.

Weak paternalism

Are we really “imposing a good” on someone else in 3? Or is the

good one that the person has chosen for herself?

• Mill’s bridge example.

• “Cocktail”: imagine you are about to drink a cocktail and I

know that you are seriously allergic to one of the components.

Can I justifiably prevent you? Why?

Stronger paternalism

Consider 2): What does it mean that you are attaching an incorrect

weight to the inconvenience of fastening your seatbelt?

Doesn’t it mean that we can assume that if you were to be involved in a

serious accident you would look back and agree that you were

misjudging the inconvenience of not wearing seatbelts?

What about 1)?

Paternalism and autonomy

Do Paternalism and Autonomy necessarily conflict?

Raz: “persons are autonomous when they are author of their own lives”

Some restrictions on liberty improve our opportunities to be authors of

our own lives because they enhance the “conditions of autonomy”.

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Valuing autonomy give us reasons to enact a paternalistic law