Doing and Allowing Harm

257 Pages·2015·2.21 MB·English

by  Fiona Woollard

Doing and Allowing Harm

Doing and Allowing
Harm
Fiona Woollard
1
1
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This book is dedicated to Ryan Alastair Lambert, Philippa May
Woollard Lambert, and ‘Baby Brother’ Woollard Lambert

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Brad Hooker and John Cottingham, my doctoral supervisors.
Their influence on this book cannot be overstated. I could not have asked for better
supervisors or to be around better philosophers. I would like to thank my external
and internal doctoral examiners, Frances Howard-Snyder and Philip Stratton-Lake.
Frances Kamm and Tim Scanlon both inspired me with their work and generously
spent time discussing my ideas during a Harvard Visiting Fellowship in Autumn 2011.
Damien Sereni was an invaluable help with the mathematics in the Appendix. I would
also like to thank: fellow graduate students and members of the Philosophy depart-
ment at the University of Reading from 2005–2008; colleagues at the University of
Sheffield from 2008–2010 (particularly Jimmy Lenman, who was a wonderful official
mentor); colleagues at the University of Southampton from 2010 to the present. A spe-
cial thank you goes to Peter Momtichiloff and the anonymous readers at OUP whose
advice greatly improved the manuscript. There are many individuals who have read or
listened to my work and given helpful comments and advice. It is inevitable that I will
miss some of the most obvious ones out, but I shall take that risk and thank Elizabeth
Ashford, George Botterill, Bob Brecher, Jonathan Dancy, Kai Draper, Brian Feltham,
Guy Fletcher, Ian Folland, Helen Frowe, Max de Gaynesford, Ulrike Heuer, Shelley
Kagan, Gerald Lang, Matthew S. Liao, Gerhard Øverland, Samuel Rickless, Yonaton
Shemmer, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Pekka Väyrynen, Kadri Vihvelin, Jonathan Way,
Bryan Weaver, Daniel Whiting, Ralph Wedgewood, and Andrew Williams. I ask those
whom I have forgotten to forgive me.
Finally, I thank my darling husband, Ryan Lambert, for unfailing love and support.
This work has been supported financially by an AHRC Doctoral Fellowship from
2005–2008 and a six-month Early Career Fellowship from the Mind Association
October 2011–April 2012.
Some of the material included has already appeared elsewhere. The Appendix repro-
duces much of ‘Most of Most Ways I Could Move: Bennett’s Act/Omission Distinction
and the Behaviour Space’, Mind 120(477) (2011): 155–82. Passages from Woollard,
‘If This Is My Body . . . A Defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’, Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2013): 315–41 and Woollard, ‘Doing and Allowing, Threats
and Sequences’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89(2) (2008): 261–77 appear in Parts
I and II.

Contents
Part I: Analysis of the Doing/Allowing Distinction
1. Introduction 3
2. The Distinction between Doing and Allowing 21
3. Substantial Facts 36
4. Removing Barriers 62
5. Counterexamples and Objections 80
Part II: Defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing
6. Doing, Allowing, and Imposing 97
Part III: Obligations to Aid
7. Saving Strangers: Analysis of Intuitions 121
8. Saving Strangers: Duties to Prevent Harm 144
Part IV: General Ethical Theories and the Doctrine of Doing
and Allowing
9. Contractualism, Rule Consequentialism, and Doing and Allowing 175
10. Final Thoughts 206
Appendix: A Measure on the Behaviour Space 211
Bibliography 227
Index of Cases 233
Index of Names 235
Index of Subjects 237