Part One is Goodness

There are two different senses in which we speak of the good, an evaluative and a final sense. Any moral theory must account for both why the term good is used in both sense and their relationship. Korsgaard:In order to clarify the thesis I am defending, I need to make some distinctions. This will also give me an opportunity to explain the relationship between my thesis and some other things that philosophers have been saying lately about the good. We tend to use the concept of the good in two different ways, and the relation between them, as I have argued elsewhere, is a little unclear.12 First of all, good is our most general term of evaluation. Nearly any kind of thing, certainly anything we have a use for, or interact with, can be characterized as good or bad. We characterize [such as] machines and instruments, dogs, cats, and people, food and weather, jobs and schools, and myriad other things as good or bad. I will call that good in the evaluative sense. Second, we speak of something we call the good or, (interestingly) the human good, or (traditionally) the summum bonum, which is supposed to be the end and aim of all our strivings, or the crown of their success, the ultimate thing that we want or ought to want to achieve or obtain. I will call that good in the final sense.

The final good and evaluative good are inherently relational and related to one another. We are evaluative good with regards to our final good, which itself depends on our role. Korsgaard 2:Admittedly, that would be a rather surprising move for such an admirer of Aquinas, who made much of the idea of a summum bonum. But in any case it is not what it is happening. The idea of good-for in the sense of good-for someone makes an appearance in Geachs remarks here: death is bad-for an organism, but being murdered as Caesar was is good-for a man who seeks to be worshipped as a god. So apparently Geach thinks that being good-for someone supports the attributive use in something like the same way that having a role or a function does. That means that Geach thinks there are two different ways in which good can be attributive: speaking roughly, we say X is good-for P or sometimes good-at P when P is a purpose that X serves or a role that X carries out, and we also say X is good-for P when P is a person or an animal who is benefited by X.20, 21 In other words, there is both a final and an evaluative sense of good-for. So the summum bonum will survive, but presumably as something that is good-for human beings considered just as such. Now that is a conclusion I am perfectly happy with. It suggests Geach would agree with me that good in the final sense is a relational notion a form of good-for. But that is exactly the conclusion that I think needs a further defense here. For I also agree with Geach that when we say something is good, we should convey a standard of goodness. And I think that this second use of good-for namely good-for some person or animal does not carry with it the same straightforward standard of goodness that being good-for a purpose or goodat a role does. When we seek a standard for applying this notion, we will run into the question I mentioned earlier, namely, how we can say that some thing is good-for someone without appealing to some prior notion of what is good.22 One might suppose that by deploying Philippa Foots notion of natural goodness we can make this problem go away, although Foot herself does not think this, as I will notice below. Foot observes that we can identify natural goodness and defect in the properties of organisms simply by considering how the organism carries on its activities and what it needs in order to do so. So for instance, there is no mystery about how we can say that stealth and swiftness are good properties in a tiger. And we might think it is just as obvious that these properties are good-for the tiger. A similar point seems in order when we think about someone as occupying a role. A steady aim and a stony heart are good properties in an assassin, and they are also good properties for you to have, in the sense of good-for you, if you are an assassin. Or anyway, that is true, at least insofar as you identify with the role. That is a qualification that I will come back to.Since good is relational it must be good for an agent. This means aggregation doesnt make sense because there is no aggregate agent created.

This is a meta-standard that the neg must specifically link into.Only rationality can capture both notions of the good. Korsgaard 3:The idea of somethings being rational to want is helpful in this context because when we are using the term good in the evaluative way, it captures the same content that the idea of somethings role or function does. Since knives are ordinarily wanted for cutting, a good knife is a sharp one, and if you want a knife for the usual reasons, sharpness is a property it is rational to want in your knife. So instrumental or functional properties, broadly speaking, coincide with the properties it is rational to want. But, with Rawlss idea of the life plan in hand, we can extend the idea of rational to want to a persons ends. Earlier, when I asked what the notion of good end might mean, I asked whether ends have a role or a function, and I denied that they did. But in effect, Rawlss move does assign our ends a kind of role or function. Their role or function is to serve as an element in a persons rational plan; some of them are better than others at playing that role. But theres another way to characterize Rawlss move here that I think is even more important. I have now described the evaluative notion of the good in two different ways: first, as invoking the plain, descriptive idea that something has the properties that enable it to serve its function well; second, as invoking the slightly more normative idea that something has the properties it is rational to want in that kind of thing. The difference between these two ways of thinking of evaluative goodness is that when we think of the object in the slightly more normative sense of being rational to want, we consider its functional properties from the point of view of someone who wants that sort of thing.[it] This enables Rawls to establish[es] a continuity between the evaluative and the final good, since the final good as Rawls conceives it is also characterized from the point of view of the one whose good it is. That is, it is characterized as what it is rational for that person to want, given his rational plan. So both evaluative and final goodness are relational; they are goodness relative to someones plan, and therefore goodness for that person. Even the most general evaluative use of good, when it is not relativized to the point of view of any particular person, evokes a relation to a point of view. If I just say, for instance, the Honda is good car, without any qualification, I mean, rational for pretty much anyone in want of a car to want, given what such things are generally used for. That ties the goodness of the car to pretty-muchanyone- in-want-of-a-cars point of view. In my view this is no accident, for the concept of the good always makes an essential reference to someones point of view. In fact, that is putting it too mildly, for as we will see there is only such a thing as the final good because there are beings who have points of view. That is why the final good is a relational concept, as I will now try to show.This also means the only way to evaluate ends is in relation to what is rational to want, meaning it defaults to Kantianism.What creates the final good is the way that we perceive our evaluative good. We see it as our good, as important in its own right. Respect as an end just is respecting this relationship that all individuals necessarily have with themselves. Korsggard 4:Earlier I pointed out that when we attribute health and other forms of fitness to an organism, we are describing a form of evaluative goodness. The organism which is fit and healthy will be good-for or good-at survival and reproduction, in an ordinary functional sense. But as a conscious organism, an animal stands in a special relationship to her own fitness. If she is to survive at all, she must have evolved in such a way as to monitor the relation between her own condition and what is going on in the world around her. She must, however roughly and defeasibly, respond positively to the things that promote her fitness and negatively to the things that [promote or threaten fitness] threaten it.43 It is only to the extent that animals do this that perception can contribute to fitness. The fact that the animal stands in this relation to her own relation to the world, to her fitness for it, is what explains the existence of the final good. In responding positively to the things that promote her own evaluative goodness, and negatively to those that harm it, an animal in effect identifies with her evaluative goodness, and this is what makes it her good. The things that are good-for her in the evaluative, functional sense, present themselves to her as things that are worthy of pursuit; the ones that are bad as worthy of avoidance. Her awareness of her condition is an evaluative awareness, presenting her condition itself to her as something worth attending to. Here, as elsewhere, a form of consciousness or perception creates its own object.44 That object is the final good. Let me make it clear that I am not advancing what is sometimes called an evolutionary account of the good. I am not positing that what is good-for human beings, or for any other animals, is, in fact, whatever makes them healthy and fit in the evolutionary sense. Rather, my claim is that the final good is grounded in a relation in which conscious animals stand to their own evaluative goodness: they are motivated to monitor and attend to [their final good] it, and in that sense, to make it their end.45 The other animals have little choice but to accept the purposes that nature sets for them, which is why I said earlier that they have no choice but to identify with the role that nature gives them. But that is not the case with us human beings. In the human case, the focus will switch to your [is] fitness for carrying out the roles that I have elsewhere called your practical identities,- the roles and relationships that give our lives meaning and value. Above all, the focus will switch to your fitness for constituting yourself as a unified human agent that last being, according to my own view the human role or function.46 My point is simply that an entitys evaluative good becomes a final good when an entity is placed in her own keeping. That placing an entity in her own keeping is what conscious agency does.This means utilitarian concerns are not normative in their own right, rather pain and pleasure only become important after we recognize the value of humanity. Pain and pleasure, along with other positive and negative dispositions, arise as responses to the relationship activities and objects have with our conception of the good. Which means you default aff on the util debate because only I can explain the nature of pain and pleasure. And, this is the only way to resolve skepticism. The skeptic still begins from the normative question of whether an action is justified. He still has to answer affirmatively when he acts, in the sense that there must be some reason for which he acts. Korsgaard 4 explains that that means that he must respect the value of humanity.Finally, the normative question arises from the first-person deliberative standpoint. Ethics is not directed from the point of view of the universe, rather it deals with the actual decisions that people must make. Any other view alienates ethics from its purpose, to guide the actions of real people. This means all objections must be linked explicitly to this first-person standpoint or they arent real objections. Thus the standard is consistency with a system of mutual respect.Underview to the Framework Publicity

Collective action requires both the publicity of reasons and respecting each as an end in themselves. This link turns all contract or governmental frameworks since it frame our ability to act together. Korsgaard 5:

But on the public conception of reasons, we do not get this result. On the public conception I must take your reasons for my own. So if I am to think I have a reason to shoot you, I must be able to will that you should shoot me. Since presumably I cant will that, I cant think I have a reason to shoot you. So it is only on the public conception of reasons that a universalizability requirement is going to get us into moral territory. 9.4.6 I just claimed that if personal interaction is to be possible, we must reason together, and this means that I must treat your reasons, as I will put it, as reasons, that is, as considerations that have normative force for me as well as you, and therefore as public reasons. And to the extent that I must do that, I must also treat you as what Kant called an end in yourselfthat is, as a source of reasons, as someone whose will is legislative for me. To see why, consider a simple coordination problem. Suppose you and I are related as student and teacher, and we are trying to schedule an appointment. Stop by my office right after class, I say, thinking that that will be convenient for me, and hoping that it will also be convenient for you. It isnt, as it turns out. I cant, you say, I have another class right away. So I have to make another proposal. Its important to see why I do have to do this: its because having the meeting is something that we are going to do together. The time I suggested isnt good for you, and therefore it isnt good for us, and it follows from that that it isnt after all good for me, and so I need to suggest another time. To perform a shared action, each of us has to adopt the others reasons as her own, that is, as normative considerations with a bearing on her own case. Thats why the fact that the time is not good for you means that it also is not good for me. So we both keep making suggestions and considering them until we find a time thats good for both of us. The aim of the shared deliberation, the deliberation about when to meet, is to find (or construct) a shared good, the object of our unified will, which we then pursue by a shared action. And it follows from the fact that the action is shared that if either of us fails to show up, we will both have failed to do what we set out to do. Our autonomy and our efficacy stand or fall together.Even if I lose every other argument you look to my framework if I win this one because the resolution assumes a deliberative context. This is the only way we can think under the resolution.

Presumed consent best coheres with a Kantian system of law. It best respects the wishes of the living, respects their ability to determine what happens to their bodies after death, and promotes a system of mutual respect. Altman1Matthew C. Altman, Kant and applied ethics: The uses and limits of Kants practical philosophy. (Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 106-109.

11:The opt-out model treats people differently. The American Medical Association insists that people must be made aware of their tacit consent under the law and that ways of opting out must be accessible and effective.30 Similarly, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein claim that people must be able to opt out easily if their fundamental freedom is to be preserved.31 If these safeguards are in place, then people are not being tricked or coerced, and conceivably people would be more aware of what they have consented to allow after their death than they are under an opt-in policy, where, if the deceased has never indicated his preference, the decision is left to other decision-makers. If an opt-out policy is clear and promulgated, a person can be presumed to have consented, and this is more likely to conform to the persons intentions than if his family members were to make the decision after his death. Indeed, studies show that when a patients wishes are unknown to the family, the family is more likely not to consent to the donation.32 Under an opt-in system, a lack of express consent is typically equated with a refusal to donate. That is, patients who have not declared themselves to be organ donors are assumed to have decided not to participate. However, if 78 percent of people want to donate their organs (as the U.S. government survey indicates), then assuming their consent (unless they indicate other- wise) is more likely to accord with patients actual wishes than assuming that they do not want to donate. In other words, if silence on the part of the decedent is taken to indicate acceptance rather than refusal, then the persons choice is more likely to be respected by doctors and by next of kin if organs are extracted as a matter of course, given the fact that a greater percentage of people want to donate rather than not. There is evidence that an opt-out system would increase organ donation rates. A recent statistical analysis finds that, other things being equal, a countrys donation rate increases by roughly 16 percent when it switches from an opt-in system to an opt-out system.33 Nonetheless, support for presumed consent is far from unanimous, and some people have suggested other alternatives. For example, the AMA recommends mandated choice instead, where each person must decide whether or not to donate; no one can simply fail to choose one way or the other, so nothing needs to be presumed. Thaler and Sunstein do not express a preference between mandated choice and presumed consent.34 However, if our goal is to bring peoples actions into accordance with a respect for others without thereby violating peoples right to self-determination, then evidence suggests that presumed consent is a better policy. Although mandated choice respects the personal autonomy of the potential donor, it fails to advance the ends of those who are in need. Where this policy has been implemented, it has actually led to a decrease in the number of available organs.35 Still, people are concerned about the erosion of personal freedom under an opt-out policy. For example, Robert Veatch has objected to the policy of presumed consent by claiming that it fundamentally transforms the rela- tionship between the individual and the society. Under an opt-out model, he says, a significant number of people would have their organs taken against their will, simply because they do not indicate their preference not to donate. These people cannot be presumed to have consented to donate, which is why Veatch rejects the language of consent. Instead, Veatch calls it a kind of routine salvaging whereby the state is taken to have a claim on a persons organs. In a liberal system, the presumption should be in favor of individual rights, not using the individual to advance the greater good.36 As we saw in the Introduction, the prohibition against using peoples bodies without their consent is an important implication of Kants ethics, and it is a basic assumption of modern medical practice, as expressed in the Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report. Whether consent can be presumed depends on how transparent the process is and how easy it is for the person to opt out. The easier the process, the more a policy of presumed consent begins to resemble a policy of man- dated choice which, incidentally, is the position endorsed by Veatch. As examples, Veatch recommends requiring patients to indicate whether or not they agree to donate when they are given routine physicals, or having poten- tial drivers check a box when they complete their license applications.37 A similar model could be devised under an opt-out policy: a doctor or someone at the Department of Motor Vehicles would inform the person about the policy and give him a card to sign and return to the office if he wants to opt out. Such a minor policy shift given ample opportunity to indicate no, as opposed to being pressured to answer yes or no hardly amounts to a step down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism. If it is implemented cor- rectly, an opt-out policy is no more coercive than an opt-in policy or a policy of mandated choice. A clearly promulgated opt-out policy would also avoid the high number of false positives that Veatch anticipates. He claims that the state would be harvesting organs from unwilling donors about 30 percent of the time, since approximately 70 percent of people are very likely or somewhat likely to donate their organs.38 In making this claim, however, he assumes that none of the people who do not want to donate would in fact opt out; they would all be the victims of routine harvesting. If all of these people are given the means to opt out, in a simple and straightforward way, then presumably the vast majority of them would refuse to donate. Their freedom to choose would be respected. Of course, this does not imply that a person who says nothing has freely chosen to donate. Some people who end up donating under an opt-out system would not have volunteered under an opt-in system. Even people who say they want to or are likely to donate their organs ultimately may have decided not to donate; their intention may be a mere wish rather than the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control (G 394). The question here, though, is not whether everyone who fails to opt out is choosing to donate. Rather, we must ask if, in the absence of a clear choice by the decedent, doctors can be legally allowed to extract the dead persons organs in order to save the lives of those in need. If the law is made clear to people and opting out is not a difficult process, then respect for the value of the living can better be coupled with a respect for personal auton- omy with an opt-out system. An opt-out system would best adhere to a Kantian conception of the law: people would have the option to choose what happens to their bodies after death, just as they can choose what happens to their (other) property, but the law would be devised such that it encourages us to act in a way that is consistent with the value of rational agency. It would respect the autonomy of the decedent while also respecting the autonomy of the still-living.And, the purpose of the law is to habituate us into moral behavior. Altman 2:The law cannot force people to do the right thing, but it can shape their choices and thus can impact their ability to develop morally and to choose rightly. Kant is a great defender of personal freedoms, and in particular freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. However, as we saw at the end of chapter 3, Kant claims that certain restrictions on our freedom under the law can actually increase our ability to use our freedom rightly. Ethically, being constrained by the demands of reason is true autonomy. Doing oth- erwise would amount to being pulled around by whatever inclinations we happen to have. Similarly, under the law, true freedom is made possible by the right kinds of limitations on our freedom: A greater degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a peoples freedom of spirit and neverthe- less puts up insurmountable barriers to it; a lesser degree of the former, on the other hand, provides a space for the latter to expand to its full capacity (WE 41). That is, properly constraining our actions makes us freer than we would be if our actions were completely unchecked. This conception of freedom is very different from that of someone such as Thomas Hobbes, who equates freedom with a lack of constraint and who sees our consent to the social contract as an exchange of freedom for security. According to Kant, a lack of constraint would make us capricious rather than free.27 Legal restrictions ought to make us better people by bringing our actions at least in conformity with respect for others and thereby helping to habituate us to morally appropriate behavior. Only an opt-out system properly resolves the balancing act of personal freedom in the law. Altman 3:With regard to organ donation, the question becomes: What sort of law would encourage respect for other rational end-setters while also hon- oring each individuals right over his or her own [their] body? Authoritarian governments would simply force people to donate, and one could make a case that Kant would agree with such a policy. After all, we saw in chapter 3 that Kant believes the government is justified in forcing people to pay taxes in order to redistribute wealth to the poor. It seems that the govern- ment would also be justified in taking peoples organs when they die so they could be redistributed to those who need them. However, there are key differences between these two policies that make the routine removal of organs a violation of peoples autonomy. Supplying the poor with health care is justified because it helps perpetuate a state to which the citizen has consented. This is not a violation of autonomy because such a state is neces- sary to protect the very freedoms that the person values.[Whereas] Redistributing wealth keeps a whole class of people from being susceptible to an asym- metric power relationship with members of the richer classes of society. By contrast, organ failure affects members of all classes of society. The deaths of those people would not pose a threat to society as a whole, and the risks the people face do not engender possible class warfare. Kant would add that those with healthy organs do not benefit in any way from those with organ failure, and so the former people are not indebted to the latter which, again, is different from the potential for injustice between rich and poor. Distributing cadavers organs to those who need them is not necessary to maintain the state. Therefore, Kant would conclude that, unlike forced taxation, forced organ donation is an unjust policy. On the other hand, the opt-in strategy that now exists in the United States is insufficiently constraining. A U.S. government survey in 2005 showed that only 52.7 percent of eligible adults have granted permission for organ donation, even though 78 percent of survey respondents said that they would be likely or very likely to donate their organs.28 The disparity between the two figures demands a different policy, since thousands of lives are at stake. People are not doing what they know they ought to do and what they claim to be committed to doing. The balancing act between personal freedom and our regard for one another as fellow citizens, as constituents of a society that we strive to maintain, would be better achieved by a so-called opt-out system, a system of presumed consent. Under this policy, the state assumes that citizens want to donate their organs unless they explicitly refuse to do so. Refusal to participate would not be punishable because the law cannot require us to help one another. As a society, we respect a persons right to dispose of his body and his property however he wishes, as long as it does not harm others. At the same time, a policy of presumed consent would encourage us to do the right thing. Some people [will] who do not opt out will do so purposely, out of respect for others and a desire to save lives. These are the same people who choose to donate under an opt-in system. Others will fail to opt out because they are lazy or absentminded, and their actions would not be morally praiseworthy. Unintentionally donating is in accord- ance with duty but not for the sake of duty. Nonetheless, an opt-out system makes it more likely that people will perform the right action, whether or not it is done for the right reason.

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