## 1. The concept of impartiality



It is all too easy to assume that the word impartiality must denote a
positive, unitary concept - presumably a concept closely linked
with, if not identical to, morality. This, however, is simply not the
case. Rather, there are various sorts of behavior that may be
described as 'impartial,' and some of these obviously have
little or nothing to do with morality. A person who chooses an
accountant on the basis of her friends' recommendations may be
entirely impartial between the various candidates (members of the pool
of local accountants) with respect to their gender, their age, or
where they went to school. Yet if her choice is motivated solely by
rational self-interested considerations then it is clear that the
impartiality she manifests is in no way a form of moral impartiality.
To take a more extreme case, consider an insane serial killer who
chooses his victims on the basis of their resemblance to that some
celebrity. The killer may be impartial with respect to his
victims' occupations, religious beliefs, and so forth, but it
would be absurd to regard this as a form of moral impartiality.



It is also worth noting that some types of impartiality may in
themselves be immoral or morally questionable. Suppose that I decide
to pass along a treasured family heirloom to one of my two sons, Bill
and Phil. Flipping a coin would constitute one type of impartial
procedure for choosing between the two. But suppose that I have
already promised the heirloom to Phil on several occasions. In this
case it would be quite wrong to allow a coin toss to determine whether
he gets it. Deciding by means of a coin toss would be an impartial
procedure, but many would claim that it would be the wrong sort of
impartiality here, for it ignores the moral obligation created by my
previous promises.



The word 'impartiality', then, picks out a broad concept
that need not have anything to do with morality. In this broad sense,
impartiality is probably best characterized in a negative rather than
positive manner: an impartial choice is simply one in which a certain
sort of consideration (i.e. some property of the individuals being
chosen between) has no influence. An analysis along these lines has
been proposed by Bernard Gert, who holds that "*A* is
impartial in respect *R* with regard to group *G* if and
only if *A*'s actions in respect *R* are not
influenced at all by which member(s) of *G* benefit or are
harmed by these actions" (Gert 1995, 104). Thus, for Gert,
impartiality is a property of a set of decisions made by a particular
agent, directed toward a particular group.



Gert's analysis captures the important fact that one cannot
simply ask of a given agent whether or not she is impartial. Rather,
we must also specify with regard to whom she is impartial, and in what
respect. Gert's analysis, then, permits and indeed requires that
we make fairly fine-grained distinctions between various sorts of
impartiality. This is necessary, since one and the same agent might
manifest various sorts of partiality and impartiality towards various
groups of persons. Consider, for instance, a university professor who
is also a mother of five children, and who is currently acting as a
member of a hiring committee. Such an agent might be impartial between
her children with respect to the care they receive (while preferring
her own children over others in this respect), and also impartial
between the various job candidates; but it is clear that these two
uses of the word 'impartial' denote very different
practices. In particular, the idea of merit applies in one case but
not the other: to be impartial between job candidates is presumably to
select between them on the basis of merit, whereas to be impartial
between one's children is *not* to think of merit at all,
but rather to provide equal protection and care to all.



Many attempts to characterize impartiality fail to respect the
distinction between the broadest, most formalistic sense of the
notion, and a more specifically moral impartiality. To say, for
instance, that an impartial choice is one that is free of bias or
prejudice is to presuppose that we are dealing with a certain sort of
impartiality, that which is required or recommended by morality, or at
least worthy of moral approbation. 'Bias' and
'prejudice' are loaded terms, suggesting not only that
some consideration is being excluded, but also that the exclusion is
appropriate and warranted. Similarly, the idea that impartiality
requires that we give equal and/or adequate consideration to the
interests of all concerned parties goes well beyond the requirements
of the merely formal notion. (In the coin toss case, it is quite clear
that Phil's claims to the heirloom are not being given equal or
adequate consideration.) As a characterization of moral impartiality,
however, this suggestion is perhaps more promising, at least in some
contexts.


## 2. Morality and impartiality


### 2.1 The impartial point of view



It is characteristic of modern moral thought to see impartiality as a
requirement of, if not a fundamental component of, morality. However,
while nearly every moral theory requires some forms of impartiality in
at least some contexts, and forbids some forms of partiality in at
least some contexts, there is little general agreement beyond that.
One straightforward thought is that to act morally is simply to act
from the standpoint of impartial benevolence. Many writers have simply
assumed that to assert the importance of impartiality in the context
of morality just is to accept the idea of acting from such a
perspective. It is generally agreed that some sort of close connection
obtains between morality and impartiality. Indeed, the phrases
'moral point of view' and 'impartial (or
'impersonal') point of view' are sometimes used
interchangeably to refer to the imagined impersonal perspective from
which, it is supposed, moral judgments are to be made (Baier 1958,
chapter 8; Harsanyi 1982; Scheffler 1982, 1985; Smith 1976 [1759];
Wolf 1992; see also Blum 1980, Chapter 3). As noted above, however,
the word 'impartial' is a general term with many
particular species; it follows that the phrase 'impartial point
of view' is itself ambiguous. At most, it might be that the
moral point of view constitutes one sort of impartial point of
view.



It is not clear, however, that the demands of impartial benevolence
are sufficient to exhaust those of morality. Treating a person
appropriately and respectfully may well require certain sorts of
emotional and/or cognitive responses: sensitivity to her needs and
values, empathy for her suffering, and the like. But if these
responses are pictured as the results of *positive* traits or
attributes (and not simply as, say, the result of a lack of bias or
prejudice), then it is not clear that merely being impartial between
persons is sufficient to guarantee that one will possess and display
the necessary sensitivities. Indeed, characterizations of impartial
agents which proceed in negative terms (that is, by defining various
preferences, emotions or bits of information that she does not possess
or that do not move her) often risk picturing the impartial agent as
impersonal and even indifferent (Henberg 1978; Brandt 1954).



A second problem for the claim that the moral point of view is
identical with (some version of) the impartial point of view -
or indeed, for any view which identifies morality and impartiality in
the direct sense - is that it seems plausible to regard some
forms of moral partiality as morally admirable, and perhaps even
morally required (Blum 1980; Cottingham 1983, 1986, 1996; Jeske &
Fumerton 1997; Jollimore 2001; Kapur 1991; Kekes 1981; Keller 2013;
MacIntyre 1984; Oldenquist 1982). Loyalty to one's family,
community or country, for instance, is commonly regarded as a virtue.
Yet such an attitude is a clear and indeed paradigmatic example of
partiality, requiring that an agent feel and act differently toward
one set of persons than she does toward humanity in general.
Similarly, certain specific moral duties arising from certain
particular relationships seem to involve partiality in an irreducible
manner. Parents, for example, are thought to be morally obliged to
take special care of their own children; to regard one's child
as merely one among millions would be regarded as highly eccentric if
not monstrous. Of course, some moral duties do require that an agent
be impartial in performing them. But on common sense moral views at
least, impartiality seems mostly to be required in the context of
specific roles - such as when a person is acting as a judge, an
umpire, a journalist, or a representative of some public institution;
or, perhaps, when we are evaluating and selecting first-order moral
rules. (Baron 1991; Blum 1980; Cottingham 1983). The idea that
impartiality is a pervasive and universal moral requirement that
should be directly manifested in our thoughts and practices during
daily life seems to contradict our ordinary moral intuitions.



One can, though, grant impartiality a significant, even central and
foundational, role while allowing that our actions and motives may
often be partial in nature. As Brad Hooker has pointed out, there are
at least three levels at which assessments of moral impartiality may
be made. First, one may ask whether moral rules are being impartially
applied. Second, impartial benevolence may be used as a direct guide
to practical decisions. And third, the content of first-order moral
rules may be assessed from an impartial standpoint (Hooker 2010) More
recently he has suggested that for the purposes of moral and political
philosophy, it may be less useful to focus, as Gert's analysis
does, on the notion of impartial treatment, than on
"impartiality in the application of rules" and
"impartiality in justification of behavior." After all, he
writes, "impartial treatment, according to [Gert's]
account of it, not only is not always a moral requirement but also is
sometimes morally forbidden" (Hooker 2013, 722). According to
Hooker's account of impartial application of rules, "When
a rule is applied across a set of cases, the rule is not applied
impartially if and only if both (a) the agent is at least sometimes
guided by partiality and (b) this conflicts with being guided by the
distinctions identified by the rule as pivotal" (2013, 721). The
analysis is intended to allow that some rules might (legitimately)
require partiality--for instance, a rule requiring parents to
take care of their own children. Such a rule could nonetheless be
partially or impartially applied, and agents might be blameworthy for
failing to apply them impartially even when they are not blameworthy
for engaging in the various forms of partiality that are required by
the rule.



Hooker himself, then, adheres to the view that an adequate moral
theory "puts forward an impartial foundational principle for
assessing possible moral rules, and this impartial foundational
principle selects rules that allow considerable scope for
partiality," seeing both contractualism and rule
consequentialism as examples of theories of this sort. (See (Hooker,
2000) for his development of a particular rule consequentialist view.)
Such a theory would admit various forms of morally admirable and even
morally required partiality, while holding that the rules permitting
such partiality are countenanced by, and perhaps even reducible to,
impartial moral principles.



Whether irreducible morally admirable partiality exists is frequently
seen as the main issue separating the so-called *partialists*
from the *impartialists*. Partialists, in general, tend to
claim that morally admirable partiality does exist, that it cannot be
reduced to any form of impartiality at a more fundamental level, and
that these facts pose a serious problem for those who claim that
morality and (some form of) impartiality are identical, or even
closely related. Impartialists, by contrast, either deny the existence
of morally admirable partiality altogether, or hold that any apparent
cases are in fact ultimately reducible to impartial standards (see
section 6). Thus impartialists hold that - contrary, perhaps, to
appearances - impartiality is, indeed, a pervasive and universal
requirement of morality.


### 2.2 The ideal observer theory



Rather than being put in terms of an impartial point of view, the
relation between morality and impartiality is sometimes made out in
terms of an impartial agent or observer - a person who makes
moral judgments without being influenced by the sort of contaminating
biases or prejudices that tend to arise from the occupation of some
particular point of view. (Smith 1976 [1759]; Hume 1978 [1740]; Firth
1952; Brandt 1954; Hare 1989.) The observer may also be defined as
'ideal' in various other ways. It is generally stipulated
that she is in possession of all the nonmoral facts that are relevant
to the judgments she has to make (Firth 1952). It is also fairly
common to assume that she is an ideal reasoner, and thus immune to
logical fallacy or mistaken inference, etc. (Indeed, Hare goes so far
as to state that his 'archangel' possesses
"superhuman powers of thought, superhuman knowledge and no human
weaknesses" (Hare 1989, 44).) The 'ideal observer
theory' of morality, in its most straightforward form, states
that moral judgments simply are the judgments an ideal observer of
this sort will make.



Any advantage it has over the conception of morality as an impartial
point of view presumably arises from the fact that the ideal observer
is not completely defined in terms of impartiality. (If she were, the
two conceptions would simply coincide.) Yet many ideal observer
theorists seem to accept a characterization of the ideal observer
which concentrates on her impartiality and impersonality. Firth, for
example, suggests that the ideal observer is both
'disinterested,' in the strong sense of being
'entirely lacking in particular interests,' and
'dispassionate,' in that she is 'incapable of
experiencing any emotions at all.' (Firth, 1952) Defined in this
way, however, the ideal observer sounds not only impersonal but deeply
indifferent; and the idea that the moral judgments of a person who had
neither emotional responses nor particular interests could be trusted,
let alone that they might be considered definitive of morality,
strikes some critics as highly implausible (Brandt 1979).



Suppose, then, that the ideal observer theorist decides that the
definition of the ideal observer *must* include more than the
bare idea of impartiality - that in addition the observer must
be, say, compassionate (and thus not indifferent); and that she must
possess a considerable facility for proper moral judgments -
practical wisdom, in the Aristotelian sense. Such a theorist will now
face a different problem: the more we build into the definition of our
ideal observer, the less useful it becomes as a heuristic device.
Stipulating that the ideal observer is very wise, for example, is not
very helpful if we ourselves are not wise, and so have no idea what an
ideally wise observer would choose. Indeed, ideal observer analyses
that go too far in this direction seem to become circular - the
'ideal' observer is ideal because she always makes proper
judgments, those being defined as just those judgments the ideal
observer would make (Broad 1959, 263). A circularity of this sort
seems to be present in John Stuart Mill's claim:



> 
> Impartiality, in short, as an obligation of justice, may be said to
> mean, being exclusively influenced by the considerations which it is
> supposed ought to influence the particular case in hand; and resisting
> the solicitation of any motives which prompt to conduct different from
> what those considerations would dictate. (Mill 1861/1992, 154; see
> also Firth 1952, 336)
> 



The ideal observer, then, to be useful, must be given some independent
definition, and not simply defined as 'an agent who always gets
it right.' The challenge is to find such a definition. Here, as
with the conception of morality as defined by an impartial point of
view, the phenomenon of morally admirable partiality proves a
particularly difficult issue. Should we define the ideal observer as
being loyal to her country, or as being above loyalty? If the former,
can she serve as an adequate moral example to people who do not share
her allegiances? If the latter, how can she serve as an adequate
example to anyone? Any process of idealization of the sort required to
make such a conception work seems likely to result in an individual so
removed from the concrete lives and concerns of actual human moral
agents, that her moral judgments will turn out to be in large part
irrelevant to the question of how such agents ought to live (see
Walker 1991).


### 2.3 Moral impartiality and equality



The plausibility of identifying the moral point of view with the
impartial point of view, or of defining morality in terms of an
impartial observer, presumably lies in the thought that such views
capture the idea that morally speaking, every person is equally
important. Whatever such conceptions may get wrong, then, one thing
they seem to get right is the idea that there is a close and important
connection between moral impartiality and equality (see especially
Nagel 1991, Chapter 7).



Some clarification, however, is required. To say that from the
impartial point of view, no one is seen as intrinsically more
significant than anyone else, is not to say that there is no reason
whatsoever for which a person might demand more moral attention or
better treatment than others. Many moral theorists, after all, will
suppose that from the impartial point of view, properly conceived,
some individuals will count as more significant, at least in certain
ways. William Godwin (Godwin 1793) provides an influential and
infamous example. Fenelon, the archbishop of Cambrai, Godwin writes,
may be supposed to be more significant than a mere chambermaid; so in
an emergency (Godwin imagines a building on fire) the archbishop ought
to be rescued first. The reason, however, is not that the archbishop
is intrinsically more significant; rather, the claim is grounded on
the fact that the archbishop makes greater contributions to
society:



> 
> [T]hat life ought to be preferred which will be most conducive to the
> general good. In saving the life of Fenelon, suppose at the moment
> when he was conceiving the project of his immortal
> *Telemachus*, I should be promoting the benefit of thousands
> who have been cured by the perusal of it of some error, vice and
> consequent unhappiness. Nay, my benefit would extend further than
> this, for every individual thus cured has become a better member of
> society and has contributed in his turn to the happiness, the
> information and improvement of mankind. (Godwin 1793, 41-42)
> 



In Godwin's consequentialist view, impartiality requires that we
consider all people who will be affected by our decision, not just
those who are directly affected. Thus, taking into account the
interests of those whom Fenelon's writings stand to benefit, it
is clear that the right thing to do is to save him from death. One
clear implication of the example is that viewing persons from an
impartial point of view need not imply that we view them equally, in
every sense of the word; and it certainly does not imply that everyone
must receive *equal treatment*. In Godwin's Archbishop
Fenelon case, if we assume that only one person can be saved, the only
way to give the archbishop and the chambermaid equal treatment would
be to let them both perish in the flames.



What impartiality requires, many would argue, is not that everyone
receive equal treatment, but rather that every person be *treated
as an equal* (Dworkin 1977, 227). While the distinction between
equal treatment and treatment as equals is difficult to make out with
precision, the main idea is fairly clear: treatment as equals requires
that persons are *not* treated equally, but rather treated in
accordance with what rights they possess, what legitimate claims they
put forward, and, in general, with what they deserve. (Recall
Hooker's related distinction between impartial treatment and
impartial application of partiality-permitting rules). Thus, to
inflict a one year jail sentence on all accused persons, regardless of
whether they are guilty or innocent, is to provide equal treatment to
members of that group; but it is not to treat them as equals. As
mentioned, however, the concept of being treated as an equal is a
somewhat elusive one, and there is certainly room to wonder whether
the chambermaid, in being sacrificed for in the interests of those who
stand to benefit from Fenelon's survival, truly is being treated
as an equal. (Someone with Kantian intuitions, at any rate, is
unlikely to think so.)



The most famous and controversial element of Godwin's example,
of course, is yet to come. Let's suppose that the chambermaid is
not just *any* chambermaid, but has some relationship to the
agent who must choose whom to save:



> 
> Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother or my
> benefactor. That would not alter the truth of the proposition. The
> life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the
> chambermaid; and justice - pure, unadulterated justice -
> would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would
> have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expense of the
> other. What magic is there, in the pronoun 'my' to
> overturn the decisions of everlasting truth? My wife or my mother may
> be a fool or a prostitute, malicious, lying or dishonest. If they be,
> what consequence is it that they are mine? (Godwin 1793, 41-42)
> 



Of course, since his thought experiment concerns an unusual emergency
case, it might be suggested that, since we are not frequently faced
with the choice of who to pull from a burning building, Godwin's
position, as radical as it is, has few implications for everyday moral
decision-making. But as Singer (1972) has argued, those of us who live
in economically privileged countries can, by choosing to donate some
of our incomes to charity, prevent people elsewhere on the planet from
dying of hunger, easily preventable diseases, etc.; and this seems to
imply that we are always in the situation of choosing who lives and
who dies - whether or not we explicitly acknowledge the fact.
(See also Unger 1996 and Singer 2009. Singer's work has given
rise to the movement popularly known as 'effective
altruism,' composed of people who attempt to dedicate their
lives to doing as much practical good as possible. One popular
strategy is to donate as much as possible to those charitable
organizations judged to be most effective. Such views, like
Godwin's, adhere to the view that we owe as much moral attention
and effort to those who are distant and unrelated to us as to our
neighbors, close friends, and even family.



Many have resisted the extreme position defended by Godwin, Singer,
etc. If nothing else, such positions are quite clearly incompatible
with the apparent existence of morally admirable partiality. (Williams
(1981) holds that even to consider sacrificing one's wife for
the sake of impersonal justice constitutes a kind of moral error in
its own right.) Moreover, despite the fact that the ultimate
evaluation is made on the grounds of perfectly general properties, it
is not entirely clear that the objects of the evaluation really are
being treated as equals, in the relevant sense - the fact that
the chambermaid's life is to be sacrificed for the overall good
at least suggests that her standing as a moral being is not really
being taken into account, and that the suggested understanding of
moral impartiality is therefore deficient. Deontological prohibitions
on using people as mere means to an end may be seen as expressing a
commitment to a kind of impartiality in which everyone is seen to be
equally in possession of a kind of worth that grounds inviolable
rights against certain forms of treatment. Such prohibitions are
compatible with what Kant referred to as *imperfect duties* to
provide benefits to others, though they place limits on what may be
done while fulfilling those duties.



One need not deny the very possibility of an agent-neutral ranking of
states of affairs in terms of value, in order to recognize the
existence of deontological prohibitions of this sort. One need only
hold that such an impersonal ranking does not in itself determine our
moral obligations. Philosophers such as John Taurek have taken the
further step and argued that the various goods of individual persons
cannot be added up to a total 'overall' good in any
meaningful sense, and that the traditional consequentialist conception
of right action as maximizing the overall good is therefore incoherent
(Taurek 1977). Indeed, Taurek claims, such decision-making actually
fail to show equal respect for all persons concerned. (Taurek's
denial that one can aggregate various individual goods can be regarded
as a strong version of the Rawlsian claim that morality must respect a
'distinction between persons.') Suppose a lifeguard must
choose between saving one drowning person or saving five; whomever she
chooses not to save will drown, and she cannot save both groups. Most
consequentialists (and many others) would take it as obvious that, at
least in the absence of very special circumstances (the solitary
drowner's being the potential author of Telemachus, for
instance) the five should be saved rather than the one. But to assume
this, Taurek argues, would be to fail to show the one the same respect
one shows the five: after all, this response leaves the single victim
no chance at all of being rescued. Taurek's controversial
suggestion is that the lifeguard would show equal respect by flipping
a coin, as this would offer every person involved an equal chance
(fifty percent) of being rescued. Not surprisingly, Taurek's
argument has engendered a substantial amount of discussion and
criticism (see for instance Kamm 1993 Chapters 5 & 6, Kavka 1979,
Otsuka 2000, Parfit 1978.)



## 3. Moral impartiality I: Consequentialist moral theories


### 3.1 The nature of consequentialist impartiality



Consequentialist moral theories hold that moral evaluations and
justifications must ultimately be grounded in the value of the
consequences of the actions, rules, policies, strategies, character
traits, etc. that are being evaluated (Hooker 1994). That is, the
ultimate question to be asked of any action, rule, or character trait
under evaluation is, "Does it [the action, rule, or trait in
question] promote the good?" For the purposes of this entry,
three important assumptions will be made regarding consequentialist
theories. First, consequentialist theories will be assumed to hold
that the overall values of sets of consequences can be determined, and
thus ranked, independently of the identity of any particular agent.
Second, such theories will be assumed to hold that the impersonal good
is largely if not entirely composed of the interests of individual
persons, and that the interests of each person count for just as much
as those of every other person. Finally, it will be assumed that we
are dealing with act consequentialist theories - theories, that
is, which hold that the consequentialist standard is to be applied
directly to the actions of agents, and that what is required is that
every action (or overall pattern of action) maximize the impersonal
good. Such a theory, then, requires that every agent always choose an
action that will bring about consequences at least as good as those
that would be brought about by any other available action.



In so characterizing consequentialism I am defining it as applying
directly to the evaluation of an agent's actions. (It should be
pointed out that this still leaves it open whether or not an agent
should be *motivated* by explicit thoughts about
consequentialist requirements. It might be that an agent will perform
better in terms of consequentialist standards if she is most often
moved by other sorts of considerations--a point that is important
to the sort of 'sophisticated' consequentialism advanced
by Peter Railton, Frank Jackson, and others, and briefly discussed
below.) One might instead adhere to a theory according to which
first-order moral rules should be chosen in accordance with their
tendency to promote the overall good, impartially (and impersonally)
conceived. Such theories typically go by the name 'rule
consequentialism', though there has been some debate as to
whether they constitute genuinely consequentialist theories at all
(Howard-Snyder 1993). For the purposes of understanding impartiality,
at any rate, it is most useful to group rule consequentialist theories
not with act consequentialist theories but with deontological
theories, which are more similar in terms of their underlying
normative structure.



As we are understanding it, then, consequentialism seems to place each
agent under a pervasive obligation to be strictly impartial between
all persons, by requiring her always to exclude from her practical
deliberations (almost) all considerations that do not bear directly on
the ways in which people's interests might be advanced or
injured by her actions.



The consequentialist standard, then, is strictly impartial in a very
direct manner and in a very rigorous sense. A consequentialist agent
is not permitted to prefer herself, nor any of her loved ones, in
choosing a distribution of benefits and burdens. She may not accept a
pleasure for herself if doing so involves passing up the opportunity
to bring about a slightly larger pleasure for a stranger. Nor is she
permitted to feed her own children if she could do more good by
feeding hungrier strangers instead. She must sacrifice the life of a
spouse, parent or child if, by doing so, she would save more lives, or
even (as in Godwin's Archbishop Fenelon case) save the life of
one other person whose contribution to the overall good would be
greater than that of the person sacrificed. It is for reasons such as
this that consequentialist impartiality is accused of being too
demanding. By refusing to allow the agent's personal concerns to
play a special role in her practical deliberations, it is claimed,
consequentialism threatens her integrity and alienates her from
herself and others (Kapur 1991, Scheffler 1982, Stocker 1976, Williams
1973, 1981). As Brian Barry has written, the effect of
consequentialist impartiality "is, in effect, to extend to the
whole of conduct the requirements of impartiality that on the
common-sense view are restricted to judges and bureaucrats acting in
their official capacities" (Barry 1995, 23).


### 3.2 Is consequentialist impartiality too demanding?



The fact that consequentialist impartiality turns out to have such
strict and demanding implications is, for the consequentialist, a
double-edged sword. On the plausible and popular assumption that a
moral theory must be deeply impartial, consequentialism meets this
criterion with flying colors. And consequentialists have typically
been adept at exploiting this fact with powerful rhetoric
(Godwin's famous query, 'what magic is there in the
pronoun 'my'?' being a noteworthy example.) On the
other hand, the impartial demands of consequentialism are so strict
and so extreme that many critics have found them unacceptable:
consequentialism, they claim, simply demands too much and must
therefore be rejected (Scheffler 1982, Slote 1985, Williams 1981).



One form of this worry is a version of what we referred to above as
the problem of morally admirable partiality. The common-sense view is
that it is permissible for an agent to be partial toward herself; that
is, to treat her own projects and concerns as if they had special
significance (Scheffler 1982). (From her point of view, of course,
they do have special significance.) This sort of self-concern, then,
constitutes a form of partiality which seems, from the vantage point
of common sense, to be morally endorsed. Similarly, certain sorts of
partiality directed toward other people - friends, family
members, and the like - are also forbidden by consequentialist
impartiality, but regarded as justifiable, and in many cases
admirable, from the standpoint of common sense (Blum 1980, Cottingham
1983, Kekes 1981, Keller 2013, Slote 1985). A related concern focuses
not on morality *per se* but on the needs and conditions of
agenthood and personal flourishing. James Griffin, for example, writes
that "Many prudential values involve commitments--to
particular persons, institutions, causes, and careers. One cannot live
a prudentially good life, one cannot fully flourish, without becoming
in large measure partial. That partiality then becomes part of one; it
is not something one can psychologically enter into and exit from at
will" (Griffin 1996, 85). Bernard Williams argues that, in
prohibiting an agent from seeing their own persona projects and
commitments as no more significant than those of any other agent,
consequentialist theories violate the integrity of agents and
undermine any reason they might have for being moral (Williams 1973,
1981; cf. Hurley 2009). (It should be noted that Williams sees Kantian
deontological theories as to some degree vulnerable to these
objections as well.)



There are a number of possible responses to this objection. First, a
consequentialist might argue that *any* genuinely impartial
moral theory will make extreme demands of agents--at least, if we
understand the concept of impartiality correctly. This strategy faces
a serious difficulty: namely, it at least seems to be the case that
certain non-consequentialist moral theories - in particular,
deontological theories - also incorporate impartial elements in
a fundamental manner, and yet make demands on the moral agent which
are considerably less extreme than those of consequentialism. Thus,
while some consequentialists (e.g. Brink 1989) have argued that the
truth of consequentialism can be logically derived more or less
directly from the requirement that morality be impartial, this seems
to be a mistake (Scheffler 1992, 105-109). Of course, it is open
to the consequentialist either to deny that deontological moral
theories are genuinely impartial (Kagan 1989; Scheffler 1982, 1985),
or to argue that, properly understood, any plausible ethical theory
will be seen to make demands comparable to those made by
consequentialism (Brink 1989, Ashford 2000). Both of these strategies,
however, face difficulties; as we will see in section 4, there is in
fact a very strong case in favor of viewing at least some
deontological theories as genuinely and fundamentally impartial
- a case which nevertheless does not prohibit us from viewing
such theories as less demanding than their consequentialist
rivals.



A consequentialist adopting this strategy also presumably needs to
show that human agents are *capable* of living up to the kinds
of demands placed on us by consequentialism (or else to argue that it
does not matter whether or not we are capable). As James Griffin
writes, our "natural perhaps genetic partiality limits our will.
Some acts fall just outside the motivational range of a normal human
being. Since *ought* implies *can*, what lies outside
natural human motivation does not even enter contention for being a
moral requirement. Norms are not fashioned in a vacuum; they are cut
to fit agents like us" (Griffin 1990, 129). While Kagan (1989)
argues on behalf of consequentialists that available empirical
evidence supports the view that humans, given sufficient information
and vivid representations, can be brought to overcome their inherent
tendencies to be partial, Griffin regards the evidence as
insufficient, concluding that "complete impartiality is beyond
human capacity" (Griffin 1996, 92).



A second possible consequentialist response is to argue that those who
object to consequentialism on the grounds that it is too demanding are
placing too much importance on the role of morality in practical
reasoning (Brink 1989; Wolf 1982, 1992). If moral considerations
dominated practical reasoning - if, that is, they were the only
or at any rate by far the most significant considerations in
determining our actions - then consequentialism would be
untenable, on account of its demanding too much. But when put in their
proper place then in the larger scheme of practical reasons and
requirements, the extreme demands of consequentialist morality will no
longer seem threatening. To borrow a pair of phrases from David Brink,
what appear to be 'moral worries' about the tendency of
consequentialism to make excessive moral demands, might really be
'worries about morality' - worries, that is, about
whether or not we have reason to act as morality requires. Whether the
view of morality presupposed by this strategy is true, however, is
questionable; at the very least, it does not seem to be the case that
the majority of those who have defended consequentialism as a
normative theory of ethics have intended it to be viewed as a theory
that could be frequently or easily overridden or ignored (see Railton
1984, Miller 1992 Chapter 10, Jollimore 2001 Chapter 3). One possible
exception is Alastair Norcross (2006a, 2006b), who has proposed a
modification of utilitarianism he calls "scalar
utilitarianism," which ranks possible actions in terms of moral
rightness but makes no claim as to which acts are morally required.
Since scalar utilitarianism sees rightness as a matter of degree
rather than as a binary property, and refrains from identifying any
action as required, he claims that it avoids the demandingness
objection and related objections.



A third strategy is perhaps the best known and most frequently
employed. It is argued that, given a reasonable and accurate view of
human nature and the abilities of agents, it will be seen that what
consequentialism requires is *not* a radically different sort
of life from the one most of us currently live; rather,
consequentialism will require (in most cases, at least) only
reasonable, and relatively minor, adjustments in our current
lifestyles. In particular, it is argued that consequentialism permits
the agent both to give preference to her own projects and concerns,
and to favor particular other individuals (friends, family members,
etc.), and that all this is consistent with the agent's having
as her overriding project the maximizing of the good. The *locus
classicus* of this argument is found in Mill's
*Utilitarianism:*



> 
> The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with
> representing it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among
> them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested
> character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high
> for humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people
> shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general
> interests of society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a
> standard of morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive
> of it [...] The great majority of good actions are intended, not
> for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which
> the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most
> virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular
> persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself
> that in benefiting them he is not violating the rights - that
> is, the legitimate and authorized expectations - of any one
> else. The multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian
> ethics, the object of virtue: the occasions on which any person
> (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an
> extended scale, in other words, to be a public benefactor, are but
> exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider
> public utility; in every other case, private utility, the interest or
> happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to. (Mill 1992
> [1861], 64-66)
> 



Even Godwin (1801 [1968]) endorses a version of this argument, writing
that



> 
> True wisdom will recommend to us individual attachments [...]
> since it is the object of virtue to produce happiness; and since the
> man who lives in the midst of domestic relations will have many
> opportunities of conferring pleasure, minute in the detail, yet not
> trivial in the amount. (Quoted in Cannold, *et al*., 1995)
> 



(This position, it will be noted, appears to be in some amount of
tension with the more extreme consequentialist position attributed to
Godwin in section 2.3).



More recent versions of this argument follow Mill's basic
strategy. Peter Railton (1984) argues that a
'sophisticated' consequentialist will develop patterns of
decision-making that do not, except on rare occasions, refer
explicitly to consequentialist aims and goals, and that both the
psychology and the outward behavior of such an individual will be
similar to that of the typical non-consequentialist. Similarly, Frank
Jackson (1991) argues that the most efficient strategy for a dedicated
consequentialist is to concentrate on small groups of particular
persons, rather than trying to promote the well-being of humanity at
large, and that this will involve the formation of close personal
relationships with other individuals. Others who have deployed
versions of this argument include Bales (1971), Brink (1989), and
Pettit & Brennan (1986).



The evaluation of this consequentialist strategy is a difficult issue.
Consequentialists are surely correct to point out that obsessive
consequentialist strategizing is likely, at a certain point, to turn
counter-productive, and that a consequentialist agent is therefore
well-advised to develop more moderate approaches. On the other hand,
Mill and many other consequentialists seem to underestimate the amount
of good that a dedicated consequentialist agent might be able to
contribute, and thus, to underestimate the amount of good that she
will be required to contribute. Moreover, our powers to influence the
lives of strangers have increased considerably since Mill's day.
As Susan Wolf writes, "[T]his argument is simply unconvincing in
light of the empirical circumstances of our world. The gain in
happiness that would accrue to oneself and one's neighbors by a
more well-rounded, richer life than that of the moral saint would be
pathetically small in comparison to the amount by which one could
increase the general happiness if one devoted oneself explicitly to
the care of the sick, the downtrodden, the starving, and the
homeless" (Wolf 1982, 428; see also Singer 1972). This thought
is borne out by the empirical facts. If we look at the lives of actual
'effective altruists,' who are motivated by a commitment
to make as great a contribution to general well-being as possible, we
find that such people have indeed found it necessary to transform
their lives in fairly radical ways and to make large sacrifices in
terms of time, money, and comfort, and often in terms of relationships
and personal happiness (see examples in MacFarquhar 2015).



Moreover, even if a theory such as Railton's sophisticated
consequentialism can allow a sophisticated consequentialist agent to
sometimes knowingly bring about less than maximally good consequences,
such a theory must nonetheless insist that each particular act of
doing so is indeed morally wrong - an insistence which seems
contrary to our moral intuitions (Jollimore 2001). It is not clear,
then, that an appeal to the limits of human powers can succeed in
converting what is a fundamentally radical moral theory into a
comfortably conservative one.


### 3.3 Consequentialist impartiality and justice



In addition to claiming that consequentialist impartiality is too
demanding, many critics have also argued that it is too permissive.
Since consequentialism makes the permissibility of an action entirely
dependent on the value of that action's consequences, it follows
that there is no *type* of action that can be prohibited on
consequentialist grounds (except, of course, for that
'type' which is defined explicitly in terms of sub-optimal
consequences.) Thus instances of torture, premeditated murder, rape,
and other violations of fundamental human rights are at least
potentially justifiable on a consequentialist basis; no such action
can be ruled out, morally speaking, until the comparative value of the
state of affairs it will bring about has been determined.



The effect of this complaint, like the previous one, is not to deny
the claim that consequentialism is a deeply impartial moral theory,
but rather to suggest that it incorporates the wrong sort of
impartiality. Suppose, to take an example common in the literature,
that consequentialism recommends that a person be convicted of, and
punished for, a crime they did not commit, in order to prevent the
public from rioting (Nielsen 1972). Such an action would, according to
common intuitions, constitute a gross violation of justice; and it
seems a weak reply to point out that the recommendation was arrived at
through an impartial calculation - a calculation that took the
interests of every individual (including the framed man) into equal
account. For while the claim is, strictly speaking, true, there is
nevertheless a clear and compelling case in favor of concluding that
the framed person was *not* treated impartially, in the sense
that ought to matter here. We expect a judicial system to allocate
punishments in accordance with degree of guilt, not in accordance with
the expected value to society of the consequences in each case; and
the fact that both methods constitute forms of impartial
decision-making does not imply that they are equally morally
acceptable.



Again, there are many ways the consequentialist might respond. As with
the demandingness objection, perhaps the most common response is to
argue that something resembling ordinary rules and practices can be
justified on the basis of consequentialist considerations. The classic
version of this response dates back to Mill's Utilitarianism
(1992 [1861]). If institutions of justice are to be given a general
justification, Mill argues, this justification must find its ultimate
grounding in utility to society; for what else could explain why
justice is valued at all, other than the fact that it serves and
protects our interests? But since a justice system will only succeed
in this role if it is governed by common principles of justice -
principles including, for instance, that only the guilty should be
punished, and that the punishment ought to be proportional to the
crime - it follows that such principles are not opposed to
consequentialism at all. Rather, at the deepest justificatory level,
consequentialism and the demands of justice coincide. (See also
Neilsen 1972)



The claim that such a coincidence generally obtains is probably easy
to establish. The challenge for Mill, and for other consequentialists,
arises in those particular cases in which the coincidence fails.
Assuming that the possibility of such cases does not move one to
simply abandon consequentialism in favor of some more justice-friendly
conception (such as the rule consequentialism Mill himself sometimes
seems to find attractive), there are two general defense strategies
for consequentialists to employ. The first strategy argues that there
are good consequentialist reasons for being the sort of agent who
respects the dictates of justice even in cases in which the
coincidence between the demands of justice and those of
consequentialism fails (Pettit 1997; cf. Railton 1986). The second
strategy admits that there are cases in which unjust actions can be
given a consequentialist justification, but holds that when so much as
it stake, justice must give way to consequentialism's demands
(Smart 1973; Kagan 1989; Pettit 1997). Whether either approach is
sufficient, given the apparent depth and force of our common
intuitions about the requirements of justice, is a matter of ongoing
debate.


## 4. Moral impartiality II: Deontological moral theories


### 4.1 Deontological impartiality and the personal point of view



In section 3.2 we noted that while consequentialist impartiality is
one possible interpretation of the demand that morality be impartial,
it is not by any means the only available interpretation; nor is it
clearly the most plausible. The considerations related to justice
discussed in section 3.3 may help us to appreciate this. For consider
once more the position of the framed innocent, whose fundamental
interests have been sacrificed for the sake of the greater good. Such
a person may well complain that he has *not* been treated
impartially, in the appropriate sense; for, while it is true that his
interests were counted in determining the nature of the overall good,
it is nevertheless also true that ultimately, he became the victim of
a form of abuse that was both harsh and undeserved. The framed
innocent might also back up his complaint by making the plausible
claim that, had he been in a position to choose, he would never have
consented to a moral system that allowed *anyone* to be
accorded such treatment. Thus, while there is a sense in which his
interests were counted equally, there is another and very important
sense in which his interests - and perhaps more importantly, his
claims and rights - do not seem to have received full or
adequate consideration at all.



Many deontologists insist that consequentialism errs by failing to
accord proper significance to the moral agent as an individual; in
John Rawls' words, consequentialism "does not take
seriously the distinction between persons" (Rawls 1971, section
5). (Rawls has utilitarianism in particular as his target, but the
point applies more widely.) Paul Hurley writes, "Morality
enslaves us to the impersonal standpoint unless we recognize the
independent moral significance of persons. Recognition of the moral
significance that persons have independent of their impersonal moral
significance is necessary both to secure the rational authority of
moral requirements and to fend off enslavement of the agent to the
impersonal standpoint by morality" (Hurley 2009, 178). And
Samuel Scheffler suggests that "for human beings as creatures
with values, the normative force of certain forms of partiality is
nearly unavoidable. If that is right, then for morality to reject
partiality in a general or systematic way would be for it to set
itself against our nature as valuing creatures. And that, I believe,
would make morality an incoherent enterprise" (Scheffler
2010).



Thus, the fact that consequentialist impartiality makes extraordinary
and, to many, unreasonable demands on the individual (section 3.2)
might be taken to indicate that consequentialism fails to take
individuals seriously as *agents*. At the same time, the fact
that consequentialist impartiality permits the individual to be used
as a mere means when doing so promotes the greater good (section
3.3)might indicate that consequentialism fails to take individuals
seriously as *patients*. The conception of impartiality that
tends to be favored by deontologists avoids such implications by
refusing to view impartial action simply as a matter of maximizing
interests (or some other version of the impersonally determined good.)
Deontologists take *the right* rather than *the good* to
be fundamental to ethics, and tend to see moral action in terms of
acting in accordance with principles that are rationally acceptable to
all.



Exactly what these principles are, and exactly what method should be
used to determine them, are matters of some disagreement among
deontological theorists. But there does seem to be a general consensus
among deontologists that moral impartiality does *not* require
that an agent be strictly neutral between her own good and the good of
other people in ordinary decision-making contexts. Rather, an agent is
permitted on deontological views to give special attention to her own
projects and interests. Impartiality might be required in certain
special contexts--for instance, when one is serving on a hiring
committee or a jury, grading student papers, or designing
legislation--but it is not seen as a general and pervasive
requirement applying to everyday decisions and behavior. In one sense,
this places a limit on impartiality's scope and demands; but it
is compatible with viewing impartiality as having a central and
irreducible role in morality. After all, on many deontological views
the rules and principles permitting partiality at the everyday level
(to oneself, to friends and relatives, to one's own projects,
etc.) are justified in terms that appeal directly to impartial
considerations. It might be claimed, for instance, that
*everyone's* autonomy and dignity--which are
understood as moral features possessed equally by all--are best
respected by adopting a set of moral rules and practices according to
which each person is permitted to carve out a space for their own
projects and relationships, within which the requirement to be
impartial does not generally apply. This is just to say that
*first-order partiality* is compatible with *second-order
impartiality* (Barry 1995; see also Hooker 2010).



The fact that deontological theories generally permit (some degree of)
first-order partiality - that is, that agents are permitted to
pay special attention to their own interests, projects, and loved ones
- should not, then, be taken to imply either that the
agent's interests are *objectively* more valuable than
those of other persons, or that the agent is justified in viewing them
as such. Rather, the deontologist will claim, it reflects the fact
that it is morally legitimate (perhaps, again, because justifiable in
second-order impartialist terms) for an agent to regard her own goals
and interests as especially important *to her*. Thus,
deontological moral systems tend to incorporate an irreducible element
of agent-relativity of a sort that consequentialist theories reject
(Nagel 1986; McNaughton & Rawling 1992, 1993, 1998; Jollimore
2001; Kamm 2007 ).



The incorporation of agent-relativity of this sort into deontological
theories allows such theories to escape the most straightforward
versions of the claim that they demand too much of moral agents.
Nevertheless, various versions of that objection have been leveled
against deontological theories. It has been claimed, for instance,
that Kantianism, by insisting that only actions performed out of the
motive of duty have moral worth, delegitimizes or even forbids the
type of motives which typically (and perhaps necessarily) operate in
the context of close personal relationships (Stocker 1976; Williams;
1981). Typically, Kantians have responded by distancing themselves
from the view that *only* actions motivated by duty have value,
and acknowledging instead that a commitment to duty need only function
as a limiting condition, rather than as the primary source of
motivation in all cases (Baron 1995). The Kantian account of moral
value, of course, is not essential to deontological theories; and
those theories which eschew it may well be able to avoid the
demandingness objection altogether.


### 4.2 Impartiality and universalizability



On many deontological views, particularly Kantian ones, the
significance of moral impartiality is seen as arising from the fact
that a core role is given to the concept of universalizability (Gert
1998; Hare 1981; Kant 1964 [1785]; Kohlberg 1979). The requirement
that moral judgments be universalizable is, roughly, the requirement
that such judgments be independent of any particular point of view.
Thus, an agent who judges that *A* ought morally to do
*X* in situation *S* ought to be willing to endorse the
same judgment whether she herself happens to be *A*, or some
other individual involved in the situation (someone who, perhaps, will
be directly affected by *A*'s actions), or an entirely
neutral observer. Her particular identity is completely irrelevant in
the determination of the correctness or appropriateness of the
judgment.



Universalizability, thus formulated, does imply at least one sort of
impartiality: an agent whose judgments are universalizable will be
morally consistent, in the sense that she will judge her own actions
by the same standards she applies to others. Such an agent will not
make an exception of herself by allowing herself to break a rule she
regards as binding for others, or to perform any other action which
she would not accept if performed by another agent. Impartiality of
this sort, however, does not necessarily imply any sort of
impartiality with respect to other individuals' interests,
rights, or claims. On a minimally demanding interpretation of the
universalizability requirement, the judgments made by a person whose
conception of the good was intrinsically racist - that is, a
person who held that the well-being of members of some one particular
race mattered more (or less), objectively speaking, than the
well-being of members of other races - could very well turn out
to be universalizable, so long as the racist held that his judgments
were objectively correct, and so ought to be assented to by all
individuals - including those individuals who would be
disadvantaged by the general adoption of those views (cf. Gewirth
1978, 164; Gert 1998, Chapter 6; Wiggins 1978; Williams 1985,
115).



However, the conclusion that the racist's judgments are
universalizable presupposes a very minimal account of what
universalizability requires. On this account, it requires only that an
agent be sincerely committed to the objectivity of his judgments, in
the sense that he views them (from his current perspective) as correct
from all perspectives, and thus as calling for everyone's assent
(whether or not that assent is actually given.) (Cf. Parfit 2011, I,
323-24) There are two ways of making the universalizability
requirement more demanding. The first is to appeal to certain
counterfactual claims about what the agent *would* endorse if
he actually *did* occupy various perspectives. On this view, a
particular judgment by *A* is universalizable if and only if
*A* endorses that judgment from his current perspective,
*and would endorse the same judgment from any other
perspective*. Given this understanding of universalizability, it
is much less likely - indeed, extraordinarily unlikely -
that racist views will turn out to be universalizable; for it is not
generally true of individuals that they would endorse the view
"The well-being of members of race *R* matters less than
the well-being of members of other races" if they themselves
were members of race *R*. However, such a view may well require
too much, for there are few if any moral judgments or principles that
would be endorsed from *every* perspective any given agent
might occupy.



A different approach to universalizability eschews the appeal to
psychological facts altogether, and holds that whether or not a
particular judgment is universalizable is a logical fact rather than a
psychological one. Kant's categorical imperative test, for
example, holds that universalizability is the distinguishing feature
of correct moral judgments, and that a judgment is universalizable if
and only if it can, without contradiction, be willed as a universal
practical law (Kant 1964 [1785]). Since the test hinges on whether the
willing of a judgment as a universal law results in a
*contradiction*, it follows that whether or not a judgment
*is* universalizable in this way is a matter of practical
reason, and does not depend on which particular individual's
will happens to be involved.



The types of impartiality implied by both of these more demanding
versions of the universalizability requirement are likely to be
considerably more substantial than the formal consistency required by
the minimal version. Kant, for instance, seems to hold that
universalizability implies a certain level of altruism or charity, in
the form of the imperfect duties we owe towards other individuals.
There are problems, however, with Kant's argument for this. In
particular, it is not clear just how the universal willing of a maxim
such as "When others are in need of help, I always ignore their
needs" give rise to any sort of *contradiction*. It is
true, of course, that, were we actually in a position to choose the
universal maxims on which all rational persons would act, this would
be a poor choice, for we might someday be in need of assistance from
another. But to say that the willing of this maxim as a universal law
would be *imprudent* is not to say that doing so is
*contradictory*. Moreover, as David Wiggins (1978) points out,
certain other actions that seem as if they ought to be morally
permissible - the act, for instance, of releasing a debtor from
his debt out of generosity - have maxims that seem to fail the
universalizability test so conceived. These examples may point to a
general problem with the attempt to derive impartiality from
universalizability: whereas the latter, at least on a Kantian
interpretation, is a formal property of moral judgments, moral
impartiality, as we have seen, is a substantive rather than a formal
concept. (See Herman 1993 and Korsgaard 1996 for attempts to respond
to these problems.)



It should be mentioned that some moral theorists have attempted to
derive various versions of consequentialist impartiality more or less
directly from the universalizability requirement (Hare 1981, Cummiskey
1996, Pettit 2000; see also Harsanyi 1982). However, the claim that a
conception of impartiality that is not only substantive but also
extraordinarily demanding can be derived from a requirement which, as
just pointed out, is essentially a formal one, continues to strike a
majority of moral philosophers as dubious.


### 4.3 Other Deontological Approaches



The Universalizability Formulation is one of four formulations of the
categorical imperative Kant provided, and some recent Kantian
theorists have de-emphasized it, placing more weight on other
formulations. Houston Smit and Mark Timmons suggest that the
humanity formulation, "which commands individuals to treat
humanity as an end in itself, never merely as a means" (2017,
175) be read as attributing to autonomous beings an "elevated
status of dignity" which "is something all rational agents
possess (and possess equally) as far as dignity qua autonomous agents
goes [...]. This equal status is the basis of a *principle of moral
equality*" (187). This in turn implies two principles
of impartiality. The positive principle of impartiality states that
"one is to adopt maxims and perform corresponding actions that
manifest a positive concern for the ends [especially the needs] of
others." The negative principle of impartiality states that
"one is to avoid adopting maxims or performing actions that
manifest a negative concern for the ends (especially the needs) of
others." Both of these principles, they point out,
"concern the welfare of persons." (187-8) Smit and
Timmons go on to argue that these principles of impartiality imply a
duty of beneficence which "involves adopting an unselfish maxim
that disposes one to promote the well-being of others in need without,
as Kant says, 'hoping for something in return.'"
(206) There is some common ground here with utilitarian approaches,
though of course on a Kantian account the duty of beneficence is an
imperfect duty: one need not do everything one can by way of helping
others in need in order to demonstrate the proper sort of respect for
the humanity of others. (This leaves open, of course, the question of
just how much one is required to do.)



Many moral theorists, including Kant himself, have noted similarities
between his universalizability formulation of the categorical
imperative and the Golden Rule ("We ought to treat others as we
would want others to treat us," in Derek Parfit's
formulation (2011, I, 321). Kant himself argued that the
universalizability formulation was superior, though some have
disagreed. Parfit argues that Kant's reasons for rejecting the
Golden Rule are generally unconvincing, and largely relied on
Kant's smuggling his own assumptions into the presuppositions of
the rule. Ultimately, Parfit argues for a principle that combines the
fundamental insight of the Golden Rule with elements of
universalizability and contractualism, which he calls "the
Kantian Contractualist Formula": "Everyone ought to follow
the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally
will." "This formula," he writes, "might be
what Kant was trying to find: the supreme principle of morality"
(2011, I, 321).



Other deontologists have emphasized the importance of seeing morality
as fundamentally interpersonal in nature. Paul Hurley (2009) argues
that consequentialists misconstrue moral impartiality by interpreting
it as fundamentally impersonal: "whereas the impersonal
conception captures a form of equal concern for persons that is
appropriate, in the first instance, for the evaluation of overall
states of affairs as better or worse, this interpersonal conception of
impartiality is relevant, in the first instance, to the evaluation of
potential courses of action as right or wrong. [...] Moreover, such a
fundamental role for interpersonal impartiality in the moral
evaluation of actions provides a rationale for the agent-centered
restrictions and permissions that are central to ordinary
morality." (Hurley 2009, 179) Although this interpersonal
standpoint does not offer an agent-neutral ranking of outcomes, and
thus "generates agent-centered reasons and claims, reasons and
claims to do and not to do, not to prevent or promote overall
outcomes," Hurley argues that it nevertheless captures a robust
and substantial understanding of moral impartiality--an
understanding, moreover, that fits our ordinary moral beliefs and
practices and better accommodates the rational authority of morality
than the agent-neutral impersonal framework endorsed by
consequentialism. "If practical reason has a fundamentally
interpersonal structure, then it is structured by an equal concern by
each person for each other person. Each person has an independent
rational significance that is reflected explicitly in reasons that
others have not to interfere with them, and in claims that each person
has not to be interfered with by any other person" (Hurley 2009,
220).


### 4.4 Contractualist models of deontological impartiality



Parfit's "Kantian Contractualist Formula," mentioned
in the previous section, adheres to the contractualist approach to
moral theorizing, which gives expression to two insights fundamental
to Kantian thinking: that morality is objective, and not simply a
matter of personal opinion or expression of interest and desire; and
that from the standpoint of morality, each person matters just as much
as, and no more than, any other person. Contractualism borrows from
the social contract tradition the idea that morality may be viewed as
the result of an agreement between those who are to be bound by its
dictates. Two variants of this approach can be distinguished. The
former, sometimes referred to as *contractarianism*, identifies
the participants in the bargaining process with actual individuals,
and thus is broadly historical. The latter approach, by contrast,
appeals to what agents *would* choose under various, quite
possibly unrealizable conditions, and is thus *hypothetical*
rather than historical. It is the latter approach that will concern us
here.



The hypothetical contractualist model, then, regards moral principles
as the result of a bargaining process among a group of agents, subject
to certain restrictions that are specified so as to guarantee that the
chosen principles will meet the demands of second-order impartiality.
The most famous example of this approach is John Rawls'
'veil of ignorance', as described in (Rawls 1971).
According to Rawls, the principles of a just society are those that
would be chosen by self-interested rational agents in the
'original position' - a position in which agents
possess broad knowledge about human history and the nature of the
world they live in, but are denied specific information regarding
their own particular identities or prospects in the society in
question, the nature of that society, and, crucially, the nature of
their own particular conception of the good. Since nobody knows who
they will be or what social position they will occupy, there is no
opportunity for anyone in an advantaged position to take advantage of
that position in order to force a less privileged party to concede to
an otherwise unacceptable outcome. It is this fact that allows Rawls
to claim that principles chosen under the veil of ignorance are
guaranteed to be impartially acceptable to all - and thus,
guaranteed not to be unjust.



It should be noted that Rawls does not intend that morality in its
entirely be derived from the original position. Rather, the function
of the original position is limited to the choice of the most general
principles of social justice in a well-ordered society (Rawls 1971,
section 2; 2001, section 12). Nevertheless, Rawls' mechanism is
intended to draw the broad outlines of what many see as the most
important part of morality: its public or political aspect. By viewing
political morality as the result of an agreement between contractors
limited by the strictures of the veil of ignorance, Rawls intends to
develop a political philosophy that reflects his commitment to the
idea of liberal neutrality: the idea, that is, that each person has a
private right to her own conception of the good, and that particular
conceptions of the good therefore ought not to be legislatively
instituted, nor legislated against.



An especially difficult task attending a project of this sort is that
of determining what shape this political morality will take -
that is, determining which principles would be chosen by agents in the
original position. On Rawls' account, the contractors settle on
principles that guaranteed as much liberty as possible for all and,
within the limits set by this guarantee, a roughly egalitarian
distribution of goods in which inequalities are allowed only if they
are to the benefit of the worst off (Rawls 1971, section 11; 2001,
Part II). The claim that such principles would recognize all persons
as equals - and thus, their claim to reflect the demands of
moral impartiality - is supported by several considerations, of
which three are perhaps most significant: first, that all persons are
guaranteed equal (and substantial) civil liberties; second, that the
resulting allocation of resources is broadly egalitarian, and in
particular, ensures, so far as is possible, that the fundamental needs
of all persons are met; and third, that since the only inequalities
that are permitted are those that would benefit the least advantaged,
it can presumably be assumed that the least advantaged would give
their assent to the existence of such inequalities (they would not,
even if they could, veto the system.)



In Rawls' scheme, the function of the veil of ignorance is
necessary to prevent rational self-interested persons from using their
knowledge of their own positions to win unfair advantages over others.
(Whether such an approach can provide genuine impartiality between
competing conceptions of the good is a difficult question that will be
further considered in section 5.) An alternative approach abandons
both the veil of ignorance and the assumption that the bargaining
parties are primarily self-interested. This is the strategy favored by
T.M. Scanlon, whose contractors are motivated not by self-interest but
by 'the desire for reasonable agreement' (Scanlon 1982,
115 n. 10; see also Scanlon 1978, 1998; Barry 1995). On the resulting
account of moral permissibility, "an act is wrong if its
performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any system
of rules for the general regulation of behavior which no one could
reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general
agreement" (Scanlon, 1982, 110). The requirement of impartiality
is captured here by the basic fact that the question is whether
*everyone* who is to live under the selected rules can
reasonably accept them. As in Rawls' theory, however, the
principles of second-order impartiality accepted at the contract level
allow for considerable first-order partiality at the level of
agent-choice. Somewhat similarly, Gert (1998) argues for a list of
moral rules which "all impartial rational persons would favor
including [...] as part of the moral system" (158).



Since interpretations of impartiality, what it requires, and how it
connects with other moral concepts can vary considerably,
contractualist theories that recognize impartiality as a core element
can nevertheless vary widely in terms of what they requires of agents.
Harsanyi (1977) argues that a version of utilitarianism can be
defended on the basis of an "equiprobability model,"
according to which an agent ought to choose between social systems
"under the assumption that, in either system, he would have the
same probability of occupying any one of the available social
positions" (Harsanyi 1982, 45; cf. Hare 1981). Gauthier (1986)
also views his theory as meeting the demands of impartiality, even
while explicitly denying that a substantial notion of equality plays a
major role: "Equality is not a fundamental concern in our
theory. In arguing that social institutions and practices are
justified by appeal to a hypothetical *ex ante* agreement among
fully informed rational persons, we have appealed to the equal
rationality of the bargainers to show that their agreement satisfies
the moral standard of impartiality. But impartial practices respect
persons as they are, the inequalities among them as well as the
equalities" (270). Obviously, such a combination of claims is
not uncontroversial; while it is clear that a notion of impartiality
can be defined that respects existing inequalities as well as
equalities, it will not be immediately obvious to everyone why such a
notion ought to have deep moral significance or to be reflected in our
moral practices.


## 5. Impartiality: Its demands and scope


### 5.1 The cognitive challenge of impartiality



In addition to objections directed specifically toward
consequentialist or deontological conceptions of impartiality, there
are also objections aimed at the very idea that impartiality ought to
be viewed as fundamental to morality. Some would argue that
impartiality, as conceived by traditional ethical theories, makes
extraordinary and unreasonable cognitive demands on moral agents. This
worry must be distinguished from the objection to consequentialist
impartiality considered earlier, which claimed that the
*sacrifices* demanded by consequentialist impartiality were
unreasonable and excessive. The objection now being considered is not
that impartiality asks the agent to give up too much, but rather that
the cognitive feats demanded by these moral theories will exceed the
capacity of the typical moral agent. Indeed, one popular version of
this objection alleges that an agent will require an unreasonable
amount of knowledge or cognitive ability simply to be able to identify
what the demands of impartiality *are* (Friedman 1989; Walker
1991). Given the conception of the impartial point of view as a
'God's eye' point of view, for example (Baier 1958),
it seems questionable whether it is ever reasonable to expect a human
moral agent to be able to occupy such a perspective. God, quite
obviously, possesses far more knowledge than does any human being;
moreover, God's point of view is both objective and impersonal
in ways that an individual human's perspective cannot be. (As
Margaret Urban Walker points out, it is often said that human beings
have to live with their decisions, but it sounds very odd to say that
of God (Walker 1991, 765).)



Similar remarks apply to the conception of the impartial point of view
as 'the point of view of the universe' (Sidgwick 1907), to
Hare's conception of the ideal moral agent as a so-called
'archangel' (Hare, 1981), and, Walker claims, to
Firth's conception of the ideal impartial observer (Firth,
1952.) Similarly, Marilyn Friedman points out that even if a person
did manage to occupy such a point of view for a period of time -
supposing such a thing to be possible - there would be no way to
be certain that she had successfully done so: standard conceptions of
impartiality, she claims, prescribe "methods of normative
thinking [which] represent psychological and epistemic feats, the
achievement of which we have no independent way to confirm"
(Friedman 1991, 645).


### 5.2 Impartiality, Impersonality, and Indifference



A second objection to traditional conceptions of moral impartiality
finds fault with the traditional tendency to define impartiality in
negative or abstract terms - in terms, that is, of which
elements must be *absent* from the psychology of the agent, or
which we must *pretend* are absent in the process of
idealization. M.C. Henberg, for instance, claims that most if not all
procedural accounts of impartiality confuse it with disinterest or
impersonality, and thus, ultimately, with indifference. (It should be
noted that many impartialists are quite explicit about the link
between morality, impartiality, and the lack of emotion; Baier (1958),
for instance, writes that "the moral point of view [is] that of
an independent, unbiased, impartial, objective, dispassionate,
disinterested observer" (201; see also Firth 1952).) Similarly,
Richard Brandt argues that it is a mistake to define moral
impartiality with reference to an ideal observer who is defined as
(among other things) disinterested; for after all, "it is not
clear that a purely disinterested being would support a moral system
at all" (Brandt 1979, 227). While Brandt's complaint is
particularly directed at the ideal observer theory of (Firth 1952),
this objection seems to apply much more broadly; it is obvious, for
instance, that Rawls's veil of ignorance is designed precisely
to prevent the contractors from acting in an interested manner.



The problem is not only that impersonal persons of this sort are
likely to suffer from massive indifference, but also that there is
alleged to be a conceptual difficulty with the very idea of conceiving
impartiality in such terms. An abstract or impersonal evaluator, it is
argued, could not possibly make reliable judgments about substantive
moral matters (whether or not he was motivated to), since he would be
unable to appreciate the particular concerns of the contesting
parties. Both of these difficulties - the motivational and the
cognitive - are well expressed by Iris Marion Young, who rejects
altogether the idea that morality is primarily a matter of
impartiality:



> 
> The ideal of impartiality is an idealist fiction. It is impossible to
> adopt an unsituated point of view, and if a point of view is situated,
> it cannot stand apart from and understand all points of view. It is
> impossible to reason about substantive moral issues without
> understanding their substance, which always presupposes some
> particular social and historical context; and one has no motive for
> making moral judgments and resolving moral dilemmas unless the outcome
> matters, unless one has a particular and passionate interest in the
> outcome [...] when class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and
> age define different social locations, one subject cannot fully
> empathize with another in a different social location, adopt her point
> of view; if that were possible then the social locations would not be
> different. (Young 1990, 104-5; cf. Benhabib 1987, 90)
> 


### 5.3 Impartiality, Objectivity, and Neutrality



One can agree with critics like Young in being skeptical regarding
naive interpretations of impartiality without wholeheartedly rejecting
impartiality as either unrealistic or undesirable. Even if our ability
to empathize with others, or to genuinely put ourselves in their
place, is limited by psychological constraints, the attempt to do so
may represent an ideal that is worth aspiring to. Moreover, we need
not follow Young in identifying impartiality with "an unsituated
point of view." An aspiration toward impartiality might instead
involve an attempt to avoid parochialism by being open to as many
different voices and viewpoints as possible. Amartya Sen finds such an
aspiration in the work of Adam Smith, writing that "one of
Smith's major methodological concerns is the need to invoke a
wide variety of viewpoints and outlooks based on diverse experiences
from far and near, rather than remaining contented with
encounters--actual or counterfactual--with others living in
the same cultural and social milieu, and with the same kind of
experiences, prejudices and convictions about what is reasonable and
what is not, and even beliefs about what is feasible and what is
not" (Sen 2009, 45).



It is on this basis that Sen distinguishes between what he calls
'open' and 'closed' impartiality. The
distinction "turns on whether or not the exercise of impartial
assessment is confined ... to a fixed group." Since the
contractors behind the veil of ignorance are aware that they are part
of a certain society (and do not see themselves in any sense as
representing the world as a whole), the veil of ignorance represents
an impartial system only in the closed sense. Therefore, Sen complains
that "As a device of structured political analysis, the
procedure is not geared to addressing the need to overcome group
prejudices" (Sen 2002, 446). By contrast, open
impartiality, which Sen finds recommended in the works of Adam Smith
(see Smith 1759), demands "that the viewpoints of others,
whether or not belonging to some group of which one is specifically a
member, receive adequate attention." Sen applies this
distinction to John Rawls's view of justice as grounded in a
contract devised by hypothetical contractors under a veil of
ignorance, writing that:



> The Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance' in the
> 'original position' is a very effective device for making
> people see beyond their personal vested interests and goals. And yet
> it does little to ensure an open scrutiny of local and possibly
> parochial values .... The Smithian procedure includes ...
> the insistence that the exercise of impartiality must be open (rather
> than locally closed) since "we can do this in no other way than
> by endeavoring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other
> people are likely to view them." (Sen 2009, 128; Smith
> 1976[1759], III, 1, 2, 110)



For Sen, the attempt to be impartial by opening conversation (and
directing one's own attention) to as many different perspectives
as possible is closely related to aspirations to ethical objectivity:
"to the extent that we look for ethical objectivity, the
reasoning that is necessary has to satisfy what can be seen as the
requirements of impartiality" (Sen 2009, 46). Objective moral
reasoning, that is, requires a willingness to consider arguments and
considerations presented by all members of the moral community, and
this receptivity must ideally be extended to all on an equal basis.
Such impartiality, as conceived by Sen, seems closely related to the
virtue identified by Miranda Fricker as "testimonial
justice," the "specifically *anti-prejudicial*
current that the virtuous hearer's sensibility needs to contain
in order that the hearer may not be led into perpetrating testimonial
injustices" (Fricker 2007, 86). Testimonial injustices, as
understood by Fricker, occur when people silence, ignore, or refuse to
take seriously other people's views and ideas for certain sorts
of reasons--for instance, because they have been led by their
acceptance of a stereotype to believe that people like the speaker are
generally not worth listening to. (Thus Fricker describes the central
case of testimonial injustice as an "*identity-prejudicial
credibility deficit*" (28).) Moreover, Sen's comments
about impartiality suggest he would agree with Fricker that the
relevant character trait "serves not one but two ultimate
values: it simultaneously protects both truth and justice"
(Fricker, 120).)



Sen, as mentioned, identifies Rawlsian liberalism as one target of his
concern. The idea of picturing society, as Rawls and other
contractualists picture it, as guided by a hypothetical agreement
between persons, each of whom is equally empowered to revoke the
agreement, is to capture the idea that the rules governing society
must in some sense be acceptable to all, and must embody, in some deep
way, the ideal of equal respect. Sen's complaint about the
'closed impartiality' of such systems, however, draws our
attention to the fact that this approach risks leaving those not party
to the contract out in the cold. But surely it is plausible to think
that a society, in order to be just, must not only treat (and avoid
treating) *its own* citizens in certain ways, but must also
respect certain rules regarding its behavior towards members of other
societies. As Charles Jones (1999) writes, "Unlike Rawls
... I see no reason to restrict our moral focus to the basic
structure of any particular nation-state; on the contrary, if
one's concern is with the justifiability of the institutions
which determine people's life chances, there are compelling
grounds for taking a wider view." There are various responses
open to Rawlsian theorists. Rawls himself suggests that we imagine a
second veil of ignorance behind which representatives of various
societies can meet in order to set fair and impartial ground rules for
international relations. Much like justice within states, Rawls
writes, "Justice between states is determined by the principles
that would be chosen in the original position so interpreted. These
principles are political principles, for they govern public policies
toward other nations" (Rawls 1971; for relevant later
developments see Rawls 1999b).



Others, particularly feminist critics, have worried that the Rawlsian
approach might exclude certain people *within* any given
society. Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum, and others have pointed
out that *A Theory of Justice* pays little specific attention
to the family as an institution for structuring society; rather, it is
simply assumed that society will be composed of families, and while
the rules of justice govern relations between various "heads of
households," Rawls's attitude often seems to be that as a
private institution, what goes on within the family is immune to
criticism from the perspective of justice (Okin 1989; see also Okin
1994). Such a view, of course, would ignore the fact that a great many
injustices can take place within families: neglect, child and spouse
abuse, and inegalitarian distributions of resources and of labor, and
various forms of testimonial injustice, among others. Thus, in a
society in which males tend to command more power and resources than
females--which, of course, describes most
societies--adherence to the principles arising out of the
Original Position would be insufficient to avoid certain forms of
discrimination and oppression. (Here, too, Rawls modified his views
somewhat in later writings, in light of such criticisms (Rawls 1993,
Rawls 1999a).) More generally, feminist philosophers have frequently
raised concerns about the ways in which liberal conceptions of
neutrality and impartiality presuppose and reinforce traditional
male-dominated, individualistic approaches to moral theory, and in
doing so reinforce the social status quo (Gilligan 1982; Noddings
1984; Benhabib 1987; Young 1990). As Benhabib has pointed out,
"Universalistic moral theories in the Western tradition from
Hobbes to Rawls are *substitutionalist*, in the sense that the
universalism they defend is defined surreptitiously by identifying the
experiences of a specific group of subjects as the paradigmatic case
of the human as such. These subjects are invariably white, male adults
who are propertied or at least professional." (Benhabib 1987,
81) As a result, the dominant social positions of such parties tend to
be protected and even enhanced in the social and political theories
resulting from such allegedly neutral liberal theories.



The general concern is that contractualists and others claiming to
ground moral theory in impartial considerations might smuggle in their
own substantive moral positions and biases under the guise of
neutrality. Rawls's use of the veil of ignorance, for example,
has been criticized by Thomas Nagel and others on the basis that, by
requiring that agents lack knowledge of their conceptions of the good
(a necessary stipulation of the bargainers are to achieve a
consensus), the veil of ignorance excludes from the original position
information that is morally relevant, and indeed may put some of the
bargainers at a disadvantage. "The original position,"
Nagel writes, "seems to presuppose not just a neutral theory of
the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception according to which
the best that can be wished for someone is the unimpeded pursuit of
his own path, provided it does not interfere with the rights of
others" (Nagel 1973; see also Teitelman 1972; Schwartz 1973;
Sandel 1982; Benhabib 1987). Such a conception, it is held, clearly
does favor some conceptions of the good over others: in particular,
atomic, individualistic conceptions focusing on personal fulfillment
(constituted, perhaps, through the acquisition of consumer goods) are
privileged over more communal or social ideals that focus on
solidarity and mutual interaction between persons (Sandel 1982; cf.
O'Neill 1997, Chapter 1).



The problem of neutrality is a pressing one for liberals: given the
importance to their view of the thought that an impartial government
must be neutral between various moral conceptions (it must, that is,
respect what Rawls calls 'the fact of pluralism'), it is
essential to show that liberal impartialism does not simply represent
another such moral conception (or 'sectarian view') in its
own right. Liberal impartialism, then, must turn out to be a framework
that can be agreed to by all relevant parties, even as they continue
to disagree regarding particular substantive moral issues.



How is the liberal to establish this? Nagel (1987) endorses what he
calls 'epistemological restraint,' which holds that it can
be reasonable for an individual to hold certain beliefs yet
simultaneously unreasonable to attempt to decide matters of public
policy on the basis of such beliefs. Such beliefs, which tend to be
moral or religious in nature, are said to be viewed differently from
the inside (from which standpoint they have perfect authority) than
from the outside (from which standpoint they are regarded as
questionable). The difficulty, as Barry (1995) and Raz (1990) have
pointed out, is to explain why doubts visible from the outside would
not infect the internal point of view, thus weakening these
beliefs' internal authority as well. (It should be noted that
Nagel himself has expressed doubts about this argument; see Nagel
1991.)



Rawls's view appears to be similar to Nagel's (and thus,
subject to the same difficulty). According to Rawls, to endorse a view
of justice is not to claim that it is true; moreover, the
acceptability of liberal impartialism is not to be derived from its
truth; rather, such a view will be accepted (it is to be hoped)
because, in societies of the relevant sort, it will form a common
element (an 'overlapping consensus') in the various
competing conceptions of the good that occupy the public sphere (Rawls
1993). (Again, the criticisms contained in Raz 1990 are especially
trenchant.)



While both Nagel and Rawls explicitly reject the idea that liberal
impartialism is to be justified on the basis of skepticism toward
various conceptions of the good, Barry (1995) explicitly endorses this
form of justification. (Barry emphasizes that the relevant form of
skepticism does not involve eschewing one's moral and religious
beliefs, but rather rejecting the claim to be *certain* of the
truth of those beliefs.) This approach has been criticized on the
basis that such skepticism itself constitutes a sectarian view, and
therefore is not neutral (Larmore 1987, Mendus 2002) However, as Barry
points out, the decisive issue is not whether some people would reject
skepticism, but whether it can *reasonably* be rejected -
and given Barry's definition of skepticism, its claim to resist
being so rejected seems considerably stronger than the claims of the
various conceptions of the good themselves, which must indeed be
excluded from the public sphere.


## 6. Partiality and Impartiality


### 6.1 Relationships and the Justification of Partiality



While some philosophers reject the moral significance of partiality
altogether, holding that morality is both fundamentally and thoroughly
impartial, many agree with Nagel (1991) that morality includes both
partial and impartial elements, and that neither is reducible to the
other. In particular, the context of "special" or
"personal" relationships constitutes an area in which it
seems plausible to many to think that partiality to certain people is
not frequently permissible and sometimes morally admirable and/or
obligatory. There is, however, no generally accepted account of what
justifies partiality in this area.



One influential account of partiality's justification appeals to
the value of personal projects. Since personal projects and/or the
ability to pursue personal projects are important, and since agents
who were required to be completely impartial in every aspect of life
would be unable to pursue such projects, we should allow that people
are not required to be absolutely impartial in every aspect of life.
Bernard Williams (1981) famously argues that at least some of an
agent's projects - he calls them "ground
projects" - are fundamental components of the
agent's identity, and an agent who gives them up, because she is
required to do so by morality, or for any other reason, will find
herself with no reason to be moral, to go on living, or to do anything
at all. Other philosophers, including Wolf (1992; see also 1982),
MacIntyre (1984), Sandel (1982), and Stroud (2010) also base the
justification of partiality on the value and significance of personal
projects and commitments. (For Sandel and MacIntyre this means,
largely, commitments to the political community that has formed
one's identity and to which one owes one's
allegiance.)



A second possible account sees our personal relationships as the
source of partiality's justification. Kolodny (2003) argues that
personal relationships bear "final value" and that this
grounds special obligations toward those people to whom we are
related. Similarly, Scheffler (2004), argues that valuing a
relationship non-instrumentally necessarily involves seeing it as
giving rise to certain reasons that will be partial in nature. A
variation on this sort of view agrees that relationships are
significant but suggests that we should view reasons, rather than
value, as fundamental. On such views our reasons for giving
preferential treatment to those to whom we are related are not
grounded in the value of those relationships and indeed need not be
reduced to or grounded in anything else at all; they carry inherent
and irreducible normative significance. Views of this sort are put
forward by Scanlon (1998) and Jeske (2008).



Keller (2013) criticizes both the projects-based view and the
relationship-based view, and argues instead for a third alternative,
which he calls "the individuals view." According to the
individuals view, reasons that justify the special treatment of those
to whom we are related "arise from facts about the individuals
with whom our special relationships are shared" (79). Rather
than acting as reasons for treating those persons better than others,
our relationships act as enablers -that is, background
conditions that explain why some facts count as reasons for a given
agent. (Keller borrows the idea of an enabler, and the term, from
Jonathan Dancy; see especially Dancy (2004). For similar views, which
also draw on Dancy's work, see Jollimore (2011) and Lord
(2016).)



The question of how to justify partiality to friends, relatives,
intimates, and others to whom we bear "special"
relationships has implications for many questions concerning
impartiality and our broader obligations, and to the issue of who gets
included in the community of moral recognition. Consider, for
instance, the moral questions that arise with respect to our treatment
of non-human animals. While it may once have been plausible (or
generally regarded as such) to see the fact that a given organism
belonged to the human species as indicating that it possessed
intrinsic properties grounding a special moral status, and hence was
entitled to better forms of treatment than "mere" animals
were entitled to, such a view is no longer clearly defensible.
Accordingly, in recent decades many consequentialists have used some
form of "marginal cases" argument to argue that we have
more moral obligations to non-human animals than has generally been
recognized. If we would object to killing and eating a human
individual for food--even a severely cognitively disabled human
individual who is, say, no more intelligent than the average
pig--how can we justify killing and eating pigs for food? How we
think about marginal cases arguments, and obligations to non-humans,
will likely reflect what we think regarding the nature of partiality
to particular humans. Holding some version of the individuals view,
for instance, would seem to lend support to the common
consequentialist contention that obligations to individuals (whether
human or non-human) must depend on the intrinsic qualities of those
individuals, rather than on our relations to them. Thus, to eject some
individual from the community of moral recognition merely because it
belongs to a different species, and not our own, would constitute a
violation of moral impartiality at least somewhat comparable to
regarding some *human* as not worthy of moral consideration
because they belonged to a different ethnic group (Singer 1974; see
also McMahan 2002, 218-28).



Other philosophers, by contrast, have endorsed a version of the
relationship-based view with respect to our moral duties to humans and
non-human animals, holding that we have special obligations to the
former, and not to the latter, in something like the way we have
special obligations to distant relatives. When Bernard Williams
writes, "There are certain respects in which creatures are
treated one way rather than another simply because they belong to a
certain category, the human species," he is not merely
describing but endorsing the view that species membership is relevant,
at least for human beings (Williams 2008, 142). Similarly, T.M.
Scanlon sees his contractualism as justifying the significance of
such ties, writing that "The mere fact that a being is 'of
human born' provides a strong reason for according it the same
status as other humans. This has sometimes been characterized as a
prejudice, called 'speciesism.' But it is not prejudice to
hold that our relation to these beings gives us reason to accept the
requirement that our actions should be justifiable to them. Nor is it
prejudice to recognize that this particular reason does not apply to
other beings with comparable capacities, whether or not there are
other reasons to accept this requirement with regard to them"
(Scanlon 1998, 185). (See also Diamond 1991, 2018.)



Of course, it is perfectly possible to hold a relationship-based view
of partiality to special relations while rejecting the claim that
membership in the same species constitutes the relevant sort of
relationship--just as many who think *being A's
friend* grounds special obligations toward A might reject the view
that *belonging to the same ethnic group as A* does so as well.
(The challenge, as always, is to explain what kinds of relationships
do ground obligations, and which do not. (Kolodny, 2010a) provides
some helpful discussion and defends a proposal for where and how to
draw the line.) By the same token, a commitment to the idea that
legitimate special obligations (those to friends, for instance) are
grounded by some version of the individuals view leaves it quite open
precisely *which* qualities of one's friends do the
grounding, and just how the grounding relation is conditioned by the
existence of the friendship. Merely knowing, then, that someone holds
the relationship view, the individuals view, etc, does not *in
itself* tell us much about whether they endorse obligations to
non-humans. Still, their ultimate view on that matter, whatever it
might be, will inevitably be influenced by their position regarding
the nature and grounding of special obligations and other forms of
partiality. The of justifying partiality toward intimates and
relatives, then, is by no means an abstract or inconsequential one, as
our views on such matters bear on such larger questions as who gets
included in, and who ends up excluded from, the community of moral
considerability.


### 6.2 The Partialist-Impartialist Debate



Although many people continue to speak of a 'partialist vs.
impartialist debate,' it should by now be clear that neither
'partialism' nor 'impartialism' unambiguously
denote any single moral position; at best, they designate two poles of
a continuum, one of which attributes no moral significance to the
demands of (any sort of) impartiality, the other of which sees
morality as exhausted by (some version of) impartiality. While a
somewhat general distinction can be usefully maintained, it is
misleading to think of the partialist-impartialist debate as a dispute
between two clearly defined, and clearly opposed, camps (Deigh 1991;
Barry 1995, 191-5). Maximilian de Gaynesford goes so far as to
argue that "debates about partialism and impartialism thrive on
tacit assumptions about the way each relates to the first person.
These assumptions rest on mistakes and confusions ..." (de
Gaynesford 2010).



Thus, any general claim beginning with the words 'partialists
(or impartialists) think that...' is bound to be both
misleading and contentious. In particular, there is good reason to be
wary of objections to impartialism which claim that all impartialists
endorse extreme moral demands, or that they require that practical
reasoning be completely expunged of every vestige of the partial. It
is true, of course, that at least some impartialists, such as Godwin,
have endorsed such claims. But many do not. Deontologists, as we have
seen, hold impartiality to be a deep and significant element of
morality, but they also tend to allow for a considerable degree of
first-order partiality. And even many consequentialists are prepared
to admit the legitimacy of partial reasoning in some contexts, if only
on an instrumental basis. It is useful, then, to draw a distinction
between two sorts of impartialist moral theory. Impartialist theories
which require all agents to display first-order impartiality at all
times (Godwin's, for example) might be referred to as *strict
impartialist theories*. Impartialist theories which allow for some
first-order partiality, but which nevertheless insist that all such
behavior be justified in second-order impartialist terms, might be
referred to as *fundamentally impartialist* moral theories. The
class of fundamentally impartial theories will include not only
contractualist, Kantian, and rule consequentialist theories, but also
certain act consequentialist theories (e.g. Railton 1986) which allow
the practice of first-order partiality as a means of promoting the
impersonal good. Such theories allow for partiality that is
permissible, justifiable, and perhaps even admirable in moral terms.
At the same time, however, they insist that all such partiality is
ultimately reducible - that is, justifiable in impartialist
terms at some deeper level.



Within the partialist camp, a *strict partialist* might be
defined as holding that no sort of impartiality plays any moral role
whatsoever - a logically possible, but uncommon, position. A
*moderate partialist*, by contrast, would admit that
impartiality of some sort plays a moral role, but deny that this role
encompasses, or grounds, all of morality; in particular, such a figure
would be committed to the existence, in some contexts at least, of
irreducible morally admirable partiality. A virtue theorist, for
instance, might make a significant place for impartiality by selecting
it as one of the virtues; but a virtue of this sort would presumably
have to compete with other deeply partialist virtues such as loyalty,
which would override impartiality in at least some contexts.



To the extent that a deep issue between partialists and impartialists
can be identified, it is presumably the question of whether
(irreducible) morally admirable partiality does indeed exist; and it
is along this line of dispute that the debate seems likeliest to
continue. (Whether this debate is identical to the so-called
'justice-care' debate, as contended in Cannold, *et
al* (1995), is questionable, though it is undeniable that there
are important parallels.) However, this way of classifying the
disputants, and of characterizing the issue itself, is meant to be
suggestive rather than definitive. The fact remains that there are
many types of partialist theories, and many types of impartialist
ones, and that continuing to speak of the
'partialist-impartialist debate' in loose and imprecise
terms is more likely to obscure than to illuminate.


## 7. Epistemic partiality and impartiality



Commonsense morality agrees with most deontological theories that
personal relationships involve various forms of morally admirable
partiality. Until now most philosophers who have examined this
phenomenon have focused on practical obligations: the ways in which we
are obligated to treat our friends and relatives better than we treat
people whom we do not know and to whom we are not significantly
related. Disagreements regarding the extent and nature of such
practical obligations have dominated the partialist-impartialist
debate.



Recently, however, a number of philosophers have focused their
attention on a second sort of obligation we seem to have to friends
and relatives. In addition to treating them differently, commonsense
thought seems to hold that we ought to adopt different patterns of
belief formation and evaluation with respect to them - patterns
of belief formation and evaluation that make it more likely that we
will think highly of them and regard them in a positive light. Thus,
it has been suggested that friendship and similar relationships
involve epistemic partiality: there are forms of epistemic bias which
are recommended and possibly required by such relationships. As Simon
Keller has written, "when good friends form beliefs about each
other, they sometimes respond to considerations that have to do with
the needs and interests of their friends, not with aiming at the
truth, and that this is part of what makes them good friends"
(Keller 2004, 333).



Similarly, Sarah Stroud has argued that when it is a friend's
behavior that is in question, rather than that of a stranger,
"we tend to devote more energy to defeating or minimizing the
impact of unfavorable data than we otherwise would. ... [A]t the
end of the day we are simply less likely to conclude that our friend
acted disreputably, or that he is a bad person, than we would in the
case of a nonfriend" (Stroud 2006, 505-6).



As both Keller and Stroud point out, these are not simply descriptions
of typical friendship behavior; rather, they seem to be generally
accepted as requirements of friendship. If so - and if it really
is true that epistemic partiality makes us less likely to form true
beliefs (but see Jollimore 2011 for a challenge to this claim) -
then we seem to face a difficult choice: we must either accept that
forming true beliefs is not the only goal with respect to which
epistemic standards should be evaluated, or else accept that the
requirements of friendship and other forms of love can conflict with
the requirements of epistemic rationality: being an ideal epistemic
agent, that is, is not always compatible with being an ideal
friend.



As always, the issue is complicated by the effects of context. Whether
they are motivational or epistemic (or some combination of the two),
partial biases that are entirely appropriate in some contexts, such as
friendship, will be deeply inappropriate in others, such as the making
of hiring or sentencing decisions. (This assumes, of course, that we
are rejecting the consequentialist view that the requirements of
strict impartiality are pervasive in all aspects of our lives.) As
mentioned above, empirical research on implicit bias strongly suggests
that even when we recognize that we are acting in the latter sort of
context, and believe ourselves to be acting in a thoroughly impartial
and unbiased manner, we may well be fooling ourselves. Thus,
formulating a correct theoretical understanding of the scope and
demands of partiality and impartiality, as difficult as that task is
in itself, may not be sufficient for acting as a truly good or
virtuous agent. The more practical task of training our perceptions,
inclinations, and motivations in order to see and respond to the
world, at least where appropriate, in an impartial way - or, if
this is not possible, then to see and act in ways that take into
account and correct for our inherent biases - would also seem to
be necessary.