Agriculture Reference
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one for whom it is worse (or better)
in any respect
.'
18
This claim, also
known as 'the slogan', has been described as the modern-day Ockham's
razor of moral reasoning.
19
Implicit adherence to the Person-Affecting
Restriction has been attributed to different moral thinkers, such as
Rawls, Nozick, Locke, and Scanlon.
20
Some utilitarians have explicitly
affirmed the Person-Affecting Restriction as a basic assumption. In this
case, the Person-Affecting Restriction is meant to restrict the domain
of what utilitarianism should be about. It is presented as a 'restric-
tion on the utilitarian principle'.
21
Maybe instead of a 'restriction' it
should be understood as a particular interpretation of the utilitarian
principle. This results in Person-Affecting Utilitarianism. The alterna-
tive to Person-Affecting Utilitarianism is Impersonal Utilitarianism.
22
Impersonal Utilitarianism strives for the outcome that contains the
maximum quantity of welfare, rather than the maximum aggregate
net benefit. Impersonal Utilitarianism evaluates outcomes by taking
into account the welfare that an outcome contains, no matter whether
sentient beings are harmed or benefited by it.
The Person-Affecting Restriction and the Impersonal View are funda-
mentally different views on what matters in the evaluation of outcomes.
Should we be concerned with harms and benefits of sentient beings,
or with maximizing an abstract value as such? The Impersonal View
is an intrinsic aspect view, according to which the goodness of an
outcome depends only on its intrinsic aspects and not on its relations
with alternative outcomes. One only needs to count the welfare that the
outcome contains. The Person-Affecting Restriction, in contrast, holds
that 'whether B is better than A depends on the precise relation between
them, in particular, on who their members are or how they have come
about.'
23
According to the Person-Affecting Restriction, one has to know
whether and to what extent sentient beings benefit or are harmed in
an outcome. As I already mentioned, this necessitates a comparison.
Therefore, it cannot be decided on the basis of the outcome's intrinsic
aspects, i.e. its amount of welfare, alone.
One might wonder what the difference of these views is in practice.
After all, the value to be maximized according to both views is welfare
and welfare never comes in a free-floating way. It is always the welfare of
someone. The practical differences come to the fore in 'different people
choices'. In different people choices, the Person-Affecting Restriction
and the Impersonal View differ. Let me explain what characterizes these
choices. In comparing any two acts, we can ask: Would all and only the
same people ever live in both outcomes? If yes, we are faced with a same
people choice. If no, we are dealing with a different people choice.
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