I agree with Scanlon that the morality of an action relates to the relationships of the people involved. But of course I don't want to accept this blindly and so I have been desperately trying to come up with an example if a case that doesn't have a recipient of an action that we would still assign moral value too. But the truth is I don't think there is an action that doesn't effect anyone else at least indirectly. Even simply wasting time and as such your potential is depriving others of beneficial things you could have done. (We give such inaction a bad connotation but this does assume that everyone should do at least some net good otherwise they are somehow blame worthy, which is interesting but not necessarily relevant right now.)
I couldn't find any cases where we don't effect others however I did realize not all these cases involve relationships. We think it is praiseworthy to do things like plant trees and recycle. But you can do these things without anyone ever knowing and without it affecting any relationships. Likewise it is blameworthy to do things like polluting but still you can do these without anyone ever knowing.
Perhaps Scanlon's ideas on morality in this chapter are simply a part of a greater whole for action or maybe he would have a relationship that would be affected by these actions but I question the fundamentality of the link between relationships and morality. It seems very accurate for the cases it applies to but it does not apply to all cases,
I really like the cases about pollution as an attempt to show that people can be blamed for doing things that do not effect their relationships with others-- this what I was trying to make a case for in class the other day. When I was trying to evaluate what the core difference between my view and Scanlon's was, I concluded that Scanlon's fundamental view of blame is different than mine.
ReplyDeleteSo even though I agree with your opinion, I am going to predict an counterargument that Scanlon would have to the pollution case. Scanlon states that blame occurs when an individual alters their relationship with a person based on their action (145). Claiming that a person is blameworthy is to claim that they have done something that may impair a relationship-- but the person is only "blamed" per relationship and only ever "blamed" if this action impairs a relationship (145). So based on Scanlon's model, an individual who pollutes would be blamed for this action if it negatively affected one of his/her relations-- even though they can still be blameworthy; the polluter is never actually blamed until the action leads to an impairment of a relationship. This also implied that the act of pollution has to be known about for the person to be blamed for it-- even though they can still be blameworthy.