"For the common good"

Aquinas thinks that for something to be a law, it must be “for the common good” (in addition to satisfying other conditions). Otherwise, the legislation (as we might still call it) is not really a law, and does not morally require obedience except to avoid chaos.

But suppose we have a cynical view of legislative activity, thinking that many cases of legislation are imposed not in order to the further the common good but in order to get the legislators reelected. One may worry that even if such a piece of legislation happens to further the common good, it is not for the common good but for reelection, and hence is not a valid law on Aquinas’ criteria.

Here is a possible way out. We should limit our cynicism. Start with a multiplicity of different options here, perhaps importantly different: the legislator may think the law would be popular with their constituents; voting for the law may help the legislator get an alliance with other legislators that will help getting reelected; or, the legislation will secure a large campaign contribution from an interested party. The last is the most crass, of course. But even so, it is reasonable to think that in most cases the legislator thinks that their getting reelected serves the common good. There may be some cases of serious corruption or power pursuit where even this is gone, but in those cases we really should worry about the validity of the supposed law. But in many cases even when there is corruption, I expect the legislators think it is good for their country that they be in office.

This solution reads “for the common good” broadly. The having of the legislation need not be aimed at the common good, but it is enough if the passing of the legislation—or maybe just the legislator’s voting in favor of it—is aimed at the common good. One may worry that this is overbroad: that the content of the legislation has to serve the public good.

But that would be too strict a criterion. The common good is the common good of the relevant political entity, say a country. But international negotiation can result in treaties where two countries each pass a coordinated piece of legislation such that: (a) the content of each piece of legislation harms the citizens of the country it is passed in and benefits the citizens of the other country; but (b) the benefits outweigh the harms in such a way that the coordinated deal is for the common good of each country. In this case, it is not the content of the legislation that serves the good of the people governed by it, but the fact of there being such legislation serves their good, by getting the other country to pass the coordinated legislation. And this seems like it could be a perfectly legitimate case of valid legislation, assuming the harms are not of a kind that are morally impermissible (e.g., the legislation invidiously harming a vulnerable group).

In fact, the case of the legislator voting for a piece of legislation in order to get reelected is not very different from such international negotiation. In each case, the legislation as such may not directly serve the common good, but its promotion is nonetheless thought to lead to the common good. So it is important to read the “for the common good” criterion broadly. But if we read it this broadly, then apart from really serious cases of corruption or power madness, we have good reason to think that most of the legislation we are under in democratic societies is “for the common good”, unless it is clearly immoral (further discussion here would require separate analysis of the two ways legislation can be immoral: by requiring immoral action from one or by being an immoral imposition that doesn’t require immoral action from one).

Individual and group interest, and infinity

There are infinitely many people. A random process causes each one to independent develop a cancer, either of type A or of type B. The chance that a given individual develops a type A cancer is 9/10 and the chance that she develops a type B cancer is 1/10. It is not possible to diagnose whether an individual has type A or type B cancer. There are two drugs available, either of which—but not both, because they are toxic when combined—could be distributed by you en masse to all of the infinitely people. There is no possibility of distributing different drugs to different people—the logistics only make it possible for you to distribute the same drug to everyone. Drug Alpha cures type A cancer but does not affect type B, and drug Beta cures type B cancer but does not affect type A.

What should you do? Clearly, you should distribute Alpha to everyone. After all, each individual is much more likely to have type A cancer.

But now suppose that an angel reveals to everyone the following interesting fact:

• (F) Only finitely many people have type A cancer.

You're very surprised. You would have expected infinitely many to have type A cancer and infinitely many to have type B cancer. But even though F is very unlikely outcome—indeed, classically it has zero probability—it is possible. So, what should you do now?

The obvious answer is that you should distribute Beta to everyone. After all, if you distribute Alpha, finitely many people will be cured, while if you distribute Beta, infinitely many will be. Clear choice!

But not so fast. Here is a plausible principle:

• (I) If you're choosing between intrinsically morally permissible options X and Y and for every relevant individual x, option X is in x's best interest, then option X is the best option to choose.

But there is an argument that it is in every individual's interest that you distribute Alpha to her. Here's why. Let x be any individual. Before the angel's revelation of F, it was clearly in x's best interest that she get Alpha. But now we have all learned F. Does that affect what's in x's best interest? There is a very convincing argument that it does not. Consider this proposition:

• (F_x) Among people other than x, only finitely many have type A cancer.

Clearly, learning F_x does not affect what is to be done in x's best interest, because the development of cancer in all the patients is independent, so learning about which cancers people other than x have tells us nothing about x's cancer. To dispute F_x is to buy into something akin to the Gambler's Fallacy. But now notice that F_x is logically equivalent to F. Necessarily, if only finitely many people other than x have type A cancer, then only finitely many people have type A cancer (one individual won't make the difference between the finite and the infinite!), and the converse is trivial. If learning F_x does not affect what is to be done in x's best interest, neither should learning the equivalent fact F. So, learning F does not affect what is in x's best interest, and so the initial judgment that drug Alpha is in x's best interest stands.

Thus:

1. Necessarily, if I is true, then in the infinitary case above, you should distribute Alpha.

But at the same time it really was quite obvious that you should save infinitely many rather than finitely many people, so you should distribute Beta. So it seems we should reject I.

Yet I seems so very obviously true! So, what to do?

There are some possibilities. Maybe one can say deny I in cases of incomplete knowledge, as this one is. Perhaps I is true when you know for sure how the action will affect each individual, but only then. Yet I seems true without the restriction.

A very different suggestion is simply to reject the case. It is impossible to have a case like the one I described. Yet surely it is possible for the outcome of the random process to satisfy F. So where lies the impossibility? I think the impossibility lies in the fact that one would be acting on fact F. And the best explanation here is Causal Finitism: the doctrine that there cannot be infinitely many things among the causal antecedents of a single event. In the case as I described it, the angel's utterance is presumably caused by the infinitary distribution of the cancers.

Harming a group without harming an individual

Imagine that a dart with a perfectly defined tip is going to be thrown by a monster at a circular target, with the impact position uniformly distributed over the target and every point equally likely. There are uncountably many people, and there is a one-to-one assignment of points on the target to people, with every point and every person assigned. There is a monster who will throw a dart with a perfectly defined tip, in such a way that its impact point is uniformly distributed over the target with each point equally likely. The monster will then eat anyone whose point is hit by the dart.

People come in two kinds. There are pointy-eared and round-eared people. The pointy-ears are assigned the left half of the target and the round-ears are assigned the right half, and the dividing line is divided as fairly as can be, too. But along comes a racist who changes all the assignments, moving the pointy-ears to a tiny circle in the middle of the middle of the target containing 1% of the target, and spreading the round-ears over the remaining 99% of the target, but ensuring still that each point is assigned to one person and each person to one point.

The racist harmed the round-ear group. For increasing the chance of harm to a group or individual is a form of harm to the group or individual. (Endangerment is not a victimless crime, even if the danger does not actually befall anyone.) But the racist harmed no individual. No round-ear had her probability of being eaten go up. After all, every point on the target had equal probability of being hit. John, a man with round ears, was first assigned, let's say, to a point right by the middle. Later he was reassigned to a point near the rim. That does nothing to affect the chances of John being eaten.

Thus, it is possible to harm a group without harming any individual from the group.

But perhaps this doesn't give group-rights proponents quite as much as might at first sight seem. Certainly our racist harmed the round-ear group. But she also benefited many other groups of people, each group of the same size as the round-ears. For we can subdivide the benefited pointy-ear group into infinitely many groups, each with the same number as the round-ears, and many of these groups will have been benefited. In fact, there need be no difference between how many groups of that cardinality were benefited and how many groups were harmed. So how can we blame our racist rearranger? She harmed infinitely many groups and she benefited infinitely many groups.

Well, you might say: But the round-ears are a non-arbitrary (maybe more natural in the David Lewis sense) grouping of people, while most of the benefited groups are completely arbitrary groupings.

That may be. If so, then the argument supports the idea that it makes sense to talk of group harm in the case of non-arbitrary groups.