The philosophical literature on state legitimacy has recently seen a significant conceptual revision. Several philosophers have argued that the state's right to rule is better characterized not as a claim right to obedience, but as a power right. There have been few attempts to show that traditional justifications for the claim right might also be used to justify a power right, and there have been no such attempts involving the principle of fair play, which is widely regarded as the most (...) promising basis for a claim right to obedience. William Edmundson argues that the principle of fair play cannot generate power rights, and so any attempt at a fair play account of legitimacy must fail. I explain how fair play could generate a power right, owing to its stipulation that the rules of a cooperative scheme specify the form of participants' repayment. (shrink)

In our thinking about what to do, we consider reasons which count for or against various courses of action. That having a glass of wine with dinner would be pleasant and make me sociable recommends the wine. That it will disturb my sleep and inhibit this evening’s work counts against it. I determine what I ought to do by weighing these considerations and deciding what would be best all things considered. A practical reason makes sense of a course of action (...) by recommending it, by highlighting some good or desirable feature of it which could move a reasonable agent to perform it. When thinking about what to do, we also attend to our obligations. Perhaps I have promised to remain clearheaded this evening. Given this I am obliged not to drink. How should this consideration affect my deliberations? According to Davidson, the fact that an action would be a breach of a promise ‘is a count against the action, to be weighed along with other reasons for the action’ (Davidson 2004: 177). This suggests that obligations are a sub-set of our reasons, they are one input into the process of determining what action would be reasonable or justified all things considered. One can see why Davidson might say this. After all, having carefully considered the matter, I may decide not to keep my promise. Furthermore this may be the right thing to do, the most reasonable course of action available to me in the light of all the relevant factors. Nevertheless this description seems to miss something important about a promise. The fact that I promised not to drink does not merely recommend not drinking as does the prospect of a restless night; it places a demand on me. Drinking would not be just inadvisable; it would now be a wrong. And even if such a wrong might on the whole be justified, even if committing this wrong is the right thing to do, in drinking I refuse a demand, I don’t just reject a recommendation. It is widely held that a promise provides you with a moral reason to fulfill it, whereas the fact that drinking would make you lose sleep does not, typically, constitute such a reason.. (shrink)

The role of responsibility in our common-sense morality of self-defense is complex. According to common-sense morality, one can sometimes use substantial, even deadly, force against people who are only minimally responsible for posing a threat to us. The role of responsibility in self-defense is thus limited. However, responsibility is still sometimes relevant. It sometime affects how much force you can use against a threatener: less if they are less responsible and more if they are more responsible. Is there a well-motivated (...) theory that can explain both why the role of responsibility is limited and why it is sometimes relevant? It is hard to see what theory could unify these disparate elements of our common-sense morality, and if one cannot be found then we may simply have to revise some of our pre-theoretic beliefs. But it would be an important advantage of a theory if it could justify those beliefs. I will argue that there is a theory of this kind: surprisingly, the familiar rights theory of self-defense, defended by Judith Thomson, can do so if it is suitably supplemented. Along the way I will survey some alternative theories of self-defense and show why they are not up to the task. (shrink)

It is a truism that we ought to be rational. Despite this, it has become popular to think that it is not the case that we ought to be rational. In this paper I argue for a view about rationality—the view that what one is rationally required to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses—by showing that it can vindicate that one ought to be rational. I do this by showing that it is independently very plausible that what (...) one ought to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses. Thus, the paper also makes a contribution tos the debate about the nature of our obligations. (shrink)

The formal theory of rational choice as grounded in desire-satisfaction cannot account for the problem of such deformed desires as women's slavish desires. Traditional “informed desire” tests impose conditions of rationality, such as full information and absence of psychoses, but do not exclude deformed desires. I offer a Kantian-inspired addendum to these tests, according to which the very features of deformed desires render them irrational to adopt for an agent who appreciates her equal worth.

This paper argues against the unity of the virtues, while trying to salvage some of its attractive aspects. I focus on the strongest argument for the unity thesis, which begins from the premise that true virtue cannot lead its possessor morally astray. I suggest that this premise presupposes the possibility of completely insulating an agent’s set of virtues from any liability to moral error. I then distinguish three conditions that separately foreclose this possibility, concentrating on the proposition that there is (...) more to morality than virtue alone—that is, not all moral considerations are ones to which some virtue is characteristically sensitive. If the virtues are not unified, the situationist critique of virtue ethics also turns out to be more difficult to establish than some have supposed. (shrink)

NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) refers to an oppositional attitude from local residents against some risk generating facility that they have been chosen to host either by government or industry. The attitude is claimed to be characteristic of someone who is positive to a facility but who wants someone else to be its host. Since siting cannot be provided if everyone has this attitude, society ends up in a worse situation. The attitude is claimed to be egoistic and irrational. Here (...) it is argued that the NIMBY critique rests on questionable assumptions about the rightness of weighing total benefit against total cost. This weighing-principle will sometimes have to yield so that the rights of individuals can be acknowledged. (shrink)

Can all goods or bads be broken down into smaller and smaller pieces? Can all goods or bads be added together with some other good or bad to get a larger amount? Further, how does moral significance track the disaggregation and the aggregation of moral goods and bads? In Part 1, I examine the limits placed on aggregation by moderate deontological moral theories. This paper focuses in particular on the work of Judith Thomson and T.M. Scanlon as well as on (...) some of my own past work on the question of aggregation in the context of overriding rights. In Part 2, I examine consequentialist criticism that harms and benefits can be broken down into smaller pieces than the deontological theory allows and the argument that the moderate deontological view is too permissive since it allows aggregation of benefits within a single person's life. In Part 3 I suggest how a moderate deontological moral theory might respond to the criticisms. I cast my answer in terms of the existence of lumpy goods and bads. I argue that consequentialist critics of deontology are wrong to insist that all goods and bads can be disaggregated and aggregated at will. Instead, I offer the suggestion that most, or many, goods and bads come in morally significant lumps. That said, it will not always be obvious what those lumps are. Determining the texture of moral value is a substantive project in normative ethics. All I have hoped to do in this paper is suggest that two standard positions on how to group moral value are mistaken and give hope that we need not adopt one of the two. Part 4 of the paper responds to an objection and sets the stage for further work in value theory. (shrink)

In “Imposing Risks,” Judith Thomson gives a case in which, by turning on her stove, she accidentally causes her neighbor’s death. She claims that both the following are true: (1) she ought not to have caused her neighbor’s death; (2) it was permissible for her to turn her stove on. In this paper it is argued that it cannot be that both (1) and (2) are true, that (2) is true, and that therefore (1) is false. How this is so (...) is explained, and the implications of this position regarding the relation between rights and duties is explored. (shrink)

Most management researchers pause at the threshold of objective right and wrong. Their hesitation is understandable. Values imply a “subjective,” personal dimension, one that can invite religious and moral interference in research. The dominant epistemological camps of positivism and subjectivism in management stumble over the notion of moral objectivity. Empirical research can study values in human behavior, but hard-headed scientists should not assume that one value can be objectively better than another. In this article, we invite management researchers to rethink (...) this presumption. We show how accepting at least a limited form of moral objectivity, namely, an epistemic orientation that seeks objective moral reasons, can benefit management research by 1. guiding research practice; 2. using patterns of moral objectivity as clues for formulating empirical hypotheses for psychological explanations; and 3. adding prescriptive power to empirical theories. (shrink)

In recent years, the practices of work organizations have raised increasing concerns regarding individual privacy at work. It is clear that people expect and value privacy in their personal lives. However, the extent to which privacy perceptions influence individuals’ work attitudes is less clear. Research has explored the extent to which employee perceptions of privacy derive from characteristics of the programs themselves. However, there is a paucity of research that examines how the characteristics of the individual employee may influence perceptions (...) of these programs. In this study we seek to shed light on this issue, as we examine how the individual ethical orientation of employees influences perceptions of a variety of human resource programs that have the potential to be perceived as invasive. Results indicate that ethical orientation exerts direct effects on perceived invasiveness of programs and exerts both direct and indirect effects on perceived appropriateness of programs. Implications for research and for managers adopting privacy-related programs are discussed. (shrink)

Since the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and more recent Federal legislation, managers, regulators, and attorneys have been busy in sorting out the legal meaning of fairness in employment. While ethical managers must follow the law in their hiring practices, they cannot be satisfied with legal compliance. In this article, we first briefly summarize what the law requires in terms of fair hiring practices. We subsequently rely on multiple perspectives to explore the ethical meaning (...) of fairness in hiring. Ethical fairness underlies the law and regulations in this area, but goes beyond them as well. We conclude by demonstrating that ethical hiring practices enable managers to make better hiring decisions. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a theory of how claims about an agent’s normative reasons are sensitive to the epistemic circumstances of this agent, which preserves the plausible ideas that reasons are facts and that reasons can be discovered in deliberation and disclosed in advice. I argue that a plausible theory of this kind must take into account the difference between synchronic and diachronic reasons, i.e. reasons for acting immediately and reasons for acting at some later point in time. I (...) provide a general account of the relation between synchronic and diachronic reasons, demonstrate its implications for the evidence-sensitivity of reasons and finally present and defend an argument for my view. (shrink)

In this paper I present an argument for the claim that you ought to do something only if you may believe that you ought to do it. More exactly, I defend the following principle about normative reasons: An agent A has decisive reason to φ only if she also has sufficient reason to believe that she has decisive reason to φ. I argue that this principle follows from the plausible assumption that it must be possible for an agent to respond (...) correctly to her reasons. In conclusion, I discuss some implications of this argument (given that some other standard assumptions about reasons hold). One such implication is that we are always in a position to be justified in believing all truths about what we have decisive reason (or ought) to do. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism is a meta-ethical theory that explains moral motivation and also provides a conception of how to carry out moral deliberation. It supports non-consequentialism – the theory that both consequences and deontological considerations are morally significant in moral deliberation. Regarding the issue of punishment, non-consequentialism allows us to take account of the need for deterrence as well as principles of fairness, justice, and even desert. Moreover, Scanlonian contractualism accounts for permissibility in terms of justifiability: An act is (...) permissible if and only if it can be justified to everyone affected by it. This contractualist thesis explains why it is always impermissible to frame an innocent person, why vicarious punishment is impermissible, and why there has to be a cap on sentences. Contractualism therefore allows us to take deterrence as a goal of punishment without the excess of utilitarianism. This paper further argue that the resulting view is superior to pure retributivism. Finally, it shows why legal excuses and mitigation can be justified in terms of the notion of negative desert. (For access to this paper: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/sJ2JBVXkztyFMGmxS7tS/full ) . (shrink)

May lethal autonomous weapons systems—‘killer robots ’—be used in war? The majority of writers argue against their use, and those who have argued in favour have done so on a consequentialist basis. We defend the moral permissibility of killer robots, but on the basis of the non-aggregative structure of right assumed by Just War theory. This is necessary because the most important argument against killer robots, the responsibility trilemma proposed by Rob Sparrow, makes the same assumptions. We show that the (...) crucial moral question is not one of responsibility. Rather, it is whether the technology can satisfy the requirements of fairness in the re-distribution of risk. Not only is this possible in principle, but some killer robots will actually satisfy these requirements. An implication of our argument is that there is a public responsibility to regulate killer robots ’ design and manufacture. (shrink)

This paper deals with the conditions of liability to self-defense. When I use the term liability, I mean moral liability. This is different from desert. If I am liable to be killed in self-defense, it does not follow that I deserve to be killed. In short, desert entails liability but liability does not entail desert. My use of the term in this paper may be stated succinctly as follows: if killing a person will neither wrong him nor violate his rights, (...) he is morally liable to be killed. A person poses an unjust threat when he threatens harms that are neither justified nor excused. A person is culpable for an unjust threat if he intends the threat he poses, is a morally responsible agent, and there are no mitigating circumstances, such as duress, that excuse his actions. A person is at fault, but not culpable, for an unjust threat if he is a morally responsible agent, has acted unreflectively, recklessly, though not maliciously, in a way that poses risks to others. Though culpability entails fault, fault does not entail culpability; as I will explain later, a person does not have to be culpable in order to be at fault for an unjust threat. (shrink)

The connection between health and human rights continues to play a prominent role within global health law. In particular, a number of theorists rely on the claim that there is a relation of interdependence between health and human rights. The nature and extent of this relation, however, is rarely defined, developed or defended in a conceptually robust way. This paper seeks to explore the source, scope and strength of this putative relation and what role it might play in developing a (...) global health law framework. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the relationship between forgiving and punishment. We set out a number of arguments for the claim that if one forgives a wrongdoer, one should not punish her. We then argue that none of these arguments is persuasive. We conclude by reflecting on the possibility of institutional forgiveness in the criminal justice setting and on the differences between forgiveness and acts of mercy.

In contrast to eminent historical philosophers, almost all contemporary philosophers maintain that slavery is impermissible. In the enthusiasm of the Enlightenment, a number of arguments gained currency which were intended to show that contractual slavery is not merely impermissible but impossible. Those arguments are influential today in moral, legal and political philosophy, even in discussions that go beyond the issue of contractual slavery. I explain what slavery is, giving historical and other illustrations. I examine the arguments for the impossibility of (...) contractual slavery propounded in the Enlightenment and their offspring expounded in recent writings, including those by Barnett, Cassirer, Ellerman, Rawls, Roberts-Thomson, Satz and Steiner. I show that they involve confusions between abilities and rights, free will and freedom, directing and doing, what may be true sequentially and what may be true simultaneously, default rights and universal rights, impermissibility and impossibility, and metaphorical and literal uses of language. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between a person's claim right not to be harmed and the duties this claim confers on others. I argue that we should reject Jonathan Quong's evidence-based account of this relationship, which holds that an agent A's possession of a claim against B is partly determined by whether it would be reasonable for A to demand B's compliance with a correlative duty. When B's evidence is that demanding compliance would not be reasonable, A cannot have a (...) claim against B. I suggest that some of the putatively problematic cases that Quong identifies can be resolved by plausibly narrowing the scope of the right not to be harmed. I also argue that Quong's view leads to implausible conclusions, and that his account of what happens to A's claim in the face of lesser-evil justifications is inconsistent with his broader view. I then defend the view that agents are required, and not merely permitted, to act on lesser-evil justifications. I further argue that A may not defend herself against the infliction of harms that are justified on lesser-evil grounds. However, she may defend herself in cases where B is only evidentially, and not objectively, justified in harming her. (shrink)

Some philosophers defend the fact-relative view of moral rights against harm:Whether B infringes A's right not to be harmed by ϕ-ing depends on what will in fact occur if B ϕs. B's knowledge of, or evidence about, the exact consequences of her ϕ-ing are irrelevant to the question of whether her ϕ-ing constitutes an infringement of A's right not to be harmed by B.In this paper I argue that the fact-relative view of moral rights is mistaken, and I argue for (...) an alternative view whereby our rights against harm depend on what we can reasonably demand of others. I illustrate the importance of this conclusion with a discussion of liability to defensive harm. (shrink)

This paper argues that a putative conflict between negative rights and positive rights is not a genuine conflict. The thought that they might conflict presupposes, I argue, that the two rights are valid. This is the first assumption of my argument. The second is that general rights impose duties on everyone, not just the party who faces a conflict of correlative duties. These two assumptions yield the conclusion that positive rights impose enforceable duties on the holder of the negative right; (...) no right is thus infringed if this duty is enforced so no conflict occurs. If this is correct, it means that we can include welfare or socio-economic rights in a set of general rights without generating conflicts with negative rights to non-interference; this might clear some space for arguments that favour egalitarian redistribution although it does not show that general positive rights do exist. (shrink)

Recently Jason Hanna has argued that a particular type of susceptibility to framing effects—namely, the tendency to reverse one’s choice between certain logically equivalent frames—invalidates actual tokens of consent. Here I argue that this claim is false: proneness to choice-reversal per se between the relevant types of frames does not invalidate consent.

The self-ownership thesis asserts, roughly, that agents own their minds and bodies in the same way that they can own extra-personal property. One common strategy for defending the self-ownership thesis is to show that it accords with our intuitions about the wrongness of various acts involving the expropriation of body parts. We challenge this line of defense. We argue that disgust explains our resistance to these sorts of cases and present results from an original psychological experiment in support of this (...) hypothesis. We argue further that learning that disgust is responsible for pro-self-ownership intuitions should reduce our confidence in those intuitions. After considering and rejecting some prominent “debunking” arguments predicated on disgust’s evolutionary history, we provide alternative reasons for thinking that disgust is not a reliable source of moral judgments. Rejecting the reliability of disgust as a mechanism for producing moral beliefs coheres with our considered judgments about the general kinds of considerations that are morally relevant and a range of particular moral problems. (shrink)

In recent decades "virtue ethics" has become an accepted theoretical structure for thinking about normative ethical principles. However, few contemporary virtue ethicists endorse the commitments of the first virtue theorists---the ancient Greeks, who developed their virtue theories within a commitment to eudaimonism. Why? I believe the objections of modern theorists boil down to concerns that eudaimonist theories cannot properly account for two prominent moral requirements on our treatment of others. ;First, we think that the interests and welfare of at least (...) some others ought to give us non-instrumental reason for acting---that is, reason independent of consideration of our own welfare. Second, we think others are entitled to what we might call respect, just in virtue of their being persons. Eudaimonist accounts either cannot account for these intuitions at all, or they give the wrong sort of account. ;My dissertation assesses the resources of eudaimonism to meet these lines of criticism. Chapter 2, 3, and 4 survey the views of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, to discover insights that are important for a successful response. In Chapters 5 and 6, I offer my own account, based on what I call empathic identification. This is the habit or disposition of seeing things, in effect, through the eyes of others. Empathic identification is a process through which the interpersonal transmission of reasons for actions between persons becomes possible. I argue first that our interest in our own eudaimonia justifies us in identifying empathically with others as a general habit or disposition. Second, I argue that empathic identification explains our intuitions about the respect others are due. So empathic identification generates the right sort of explanation of our intuitions about the constraints others and their interests impose upon us after all, and renders eudaimonist virtue ethics a viable form of ethical theory. (shrink)

When, in spite of our good intentions, we fail to meet our obligations to others, it is important that we have the correct theoretical description of what has happened so that mutual understanding and the right sort of social repair can occur. Consider an agent who promises to help pick a friend up from the airport. She takes the freeway, forgetting that it is under construction. After a long wait, the friend takes an expensive taxi ride home. Most theorists and (...) non-theorists react to such cases by either judging the agent's action as a violation of her obligation to help or as having satisfied the only obligation she really had, namely to try to help. However, as I show, there are serious difficulties that arise from categorizing this agent's action as satisfying or violating her obligation – difficulties that are avoided if we instead add “mere moral failures” to the basic categories for moral evaluation. An agent merely fails when she neither satisfies nor violates her obligation. She is responsible fo.. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore how to accommodate non-consequentialist constraints with a broadly value-based conception of reasons for action. It turns out that there are two grades of non-consequentialist constraints. The first grade involves attaching ethical importance to such distinctions as the doing/allowing distinction, and the distinction between intended and unintended consequences that is central to the Doctrine of Double Effect. However, at least within the value-based framework, this first grade is insufficient to explain rights, which ground weighty reasons against (...) infringing those rights that need not be outweighed even when infringing those rights is necessary for preventing a larger number of people from having their rights infringed in the same way. Such rights form a second grade of non-consequentialist constraints: within the value-based framework, this second grade is best explained in terms of the intrinsically relational values and disvalues of interpersonal interactions and relationships. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the view that persons have a claim to deserved treatment, including many forms of punishment, against an objection resting on the principle that it is not possible to have a claim to harmful treatment. I do not challenge this principle, but argue, rather, that the harms wrongdoers typically deserve either (a) are not genuine harms at all (for reasons relevant to their being deserved) or (b) are not relevant to the content of these wrongdoers' claims.

Ethical intuitionists regard moral knowledge as deriving from moral intuition, moral observation, moral emotion and inference. However, moral intuitions, observations and emotions are cultural artefacts which often differ starkly between cultures. Intuitionists attribute uncongenial moral intuitions, observations or emotions to bias or to intellectual or moral failings; but that leads to sectarian ad hominen attacks. Intuitionists try to avoid that by restricting epistemically genuine intuitions, observations or emotions to those which are widely agreed. That does not avoid the problem. It (...) also limits epistemically genuine intuitions, observations or emotions to those with meagre content, and the intuitionists offer no plausible explanation for how inference from such insubstantial propositions can engender substantial moral knowledge. Instead of moral knowledge, intuitionism offers the prospect of mutual name-calling between intellectually stagnant groups. I criticise and reject the principle of phenomenal conservatism, to which intuitionists sometimes appeal. (shrink)

On some popular accounts of promissory obligation, a promise creates an obligation to the person to whom the promise is made . On such accounts, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a wrong committed against a promisee. I will call such accounts ‘directed obligation’ accounts of promissory obligation. While I concede that directed obligation accounts make good sense of many of our promissory obligations, I aim to show that directed obligation accounts, at least in their current forms, cannot (...) accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. While the term 'deathbed promise' refers to any promise made to a person who is dying, I focus specifically on deathbed promises which will not, or even cannot, be fulfilled until after the promisee's death. In what follows, I examine two prominent types of directed obligation account: rights-based accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise gives the promisee certain rights, and harm accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise puts the promisee in a special position to be harmed. I argue that neither version can accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. (shrink)

Sidgwick gives various tests for highest certainty. When he applies these tests to commonsense morality, he finds nothing of highest certainty. In contrast, when he applies these tests to his own axioms, he finds these axioms to have highest certainty. The axioms culminate in Benevolence: “Each one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual as much as his own, except in so far as he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable (...) or attainable by him.” The axioms face challenges from two sides.First, one test requires that a claim not be denied by someone of whom one has no more reason to suspect of error than oneself. For Sidgwick, then, the egoist must not deny the axioms. But it would seem that an egoist would reject benevolence. Second, Sidgwick thinks he must show that the commonsense moralist agrees to the axioms. Benevolence seems to say that the only reason for departing from being bound to treat others like oneself is that more good would be produced. But the commonsense moralist will not agree that this is the only reason. In reply to the threat of an egoist's disagreement, this essay argues that many of the axioms should be read as having as their antecedent “from the point of view of the universe.” The essay replies to the objection that this makes these axioms analytic. In reply to the threat of a commonsense moralist's disagreement, this essay argues that each axiom states, in effect, a prima facie duty. The argument against the commonsense moralist concerns not benevolence but whether there are further duties that pass the tests. The essay raises the worry that here Sidgwick is unfair since sometimes he criticizes all-things-considered versions of commonsense duties; such criticisms would count against benevolence as well. (shrink)

Considerable attention has been devoted to the peculiar obligating force of interpersonal promises. But paradigmatic promising is not an orphan in the family of our moral concepts, and the focus on interpersonal promises has overshadowed sibling phenomena that any account of promises should also cover. I examine the case of single-party promises and argue, against the prevailing view, that we have good reason to take the phenomenon of making promises to oneself seriously. This supports what I call ‘the breadth criterion’: (...) theoretical accounts of promising should cover the entire breadth of the phenomenon of promising. I then argue that the breadth criterion poses a novel and formidable obstacle for two prominent views of promising, the social practice view and the expectation view. I conclude by suggesting that there is reason to think that the normative power view of promising may fare better. (shrink)

A number of criticisms of Utilitarianism – such as “nearest and dearest” objections, “demandingness” objections, and “altruistic” objections – arise because Utilitarianism doesn’t permit partially or wholly disregarding the utility of certain subjects. A number of authors, including Sider, Portmore and Vessel, have responded to these objections by suggesting we adopt “dual-maximizing” theories which provide a way to incorporate disregarding. And in response to “altruistic” objections in particular – objections noting that it seems permissible to make utility-decreasing sacrifices – these (...) authors have suggested adopting a dual-maximizing theory that permits disregarding one’s own utility. In this paper I’ll defend two claims. First, I’ll argue that dual-maximizing theories are a poor way to incorporate disregarding. Instead, I’ll suggest that “variable-disregarding” theories provide a more attractive way to incorporate disregarding. Second, I’ll argue that the right way to handle these “altruistic” objections isn’t to permit disregarding one’s own utility, it’s to permit disregarding the utility of those who consent. Together, these two claims entail that the best way to modify Utilitarianism to handle “altruistic” objections is to adopt a variable-disregarding view that disregards the utility of those who consent. (shrink)