Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the Practical Insignificance of Irrelevant Alternatives (in short PIIA) is
not applicable to cases like those Hare discusses. According to Graham,
'...PIIA may fail to hold when the desirability of one of a person's
options depends on what other options that person has.' 27 As an
example of such a case, Graham imagines that he has made a solemn
promise to give $10 to the Tom DeLay re-election campaign, whenever
he has the option of eating a worm. Now, imagine that Graham is
facing three options:
S Worm - in which he does eat a worm and does not give $10 to the
campaign
S Give - in which he does not eat a worm and does give $10 to the cam-
paign.
S Keep - in which he does not eat a worm and does not give $10 to the
campaign.
Faced with all three options, Graham claims that he should chose S Give.
After all, because of the promise, he must give money to the campaign,
whenever he faces the option of eating a worm, and he does face the
option. If, however, only options S Give and S Keep were open to Graham,
it is not the case that he rationally ought to actualise S Give . He has no
option of eating a worm, and therefore he is not required to give the
money away.
The problem that utilitarians are likely to have with this example is
that it crucially depends on the non-utilitarian claim that having made
a promise is directly morally relevant to what Graham ought to do.
According to a utilitarian, faced with those three options Graham ought
to do what will maximise utility. This is likely to be S Keep , no matter what
the options are.
In order to show that PIIA fails in cases like those Hare discusses,
Graham has to point out that in those cases the desirability of an option
depends on what other options are available. Graham claims that this
is the case. According to Graham, the desirability of S James depends on
whether or not S Janus is an option. If it were an option, than choosing
S James would wrong someone: it would make some individual worse off
than he could have been. If only S James and S Jane are possible, choosing
S James does not wrong anyone. Thus, according to Graham, the desir-
ability of S James depends on what the other options are, and therefore
PIIA is not applicable in those cases. Here, again, the problem a utili-
tarian would have with this argument is that it depends on the non-
utilitarian notion of 'wronging someone'. For a utilitarian, whether a
particular individual could be better off would be irrelevant, unless he
Search WWH ::




Custom Search