Department of Philosophy

The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and Incomplete Information

Fei Song, The University of Hong Kong

Abstract:
The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (hereafter DDA) states that there is a significant moral difference
between an instance of doing and an instance of allowing. The rights-based account of DDA holds that the moral difference between doing and allowing harm is attributed to the moral difference between negative rights and positive rights. The rights-based account of DDA has intuitive plausibility but the theory is inadequate in providing a sound philosophical argument for strong negative rights and weak positive rights. The key feature of a system endorsing strong negative rights and weak positive rights is that it gives people more freedom to choose which projects they wish to pursue and the security needed to pursue those projects. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a better argument for why a system as such is desirable. My argument is based on the idea argued by Partha Dasgupta: when certain relevant information is incomplete and hard or costly to obtain in a society, leaving certain space for individual decision making is instrumental in promoting overall social welfare. Positive rights to goods and services involve some private information that is usually very costly or even impossible to obtain, such as an individual’s type and character or the action that she takes. Weak positive rights seems to be much more natural than stringent positive rights when society is modelled as having incomplete information.

Date: Thursday, April 26
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Venue: Room 10.27, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

For inquiries: Jennifer Nado (nado@hku.hk)