The Capacity to Aid

Photo by Anastasia Taioglou on Unsplash

Under what conditions does it become your responsibility to attend to the needs of the suffering (call this a "remedial responsibility")? In "Distributing Responsibilities," David Miller sets out to answer this question. Consider one possible (and by no means exhaustive) answer:

• The Capacity Principle:  remedial responsibilities ought to be assigned according to the capacity of each agent to discharge them.

Following this principle, we can say that the strength of Sam's obligation to aid someone in need is proportionate to Sam's capacity to aid that person. The greater the capacity, the stronger the obligation to aid [1]. There's something intuitive about this. The best and strongest swimmer on the beach seems to have the greatest responsibility to save the drowning child.

However, Miller argues that the principle "seems to blend together two different factors which may not always point in the same direction" (p. 461). These factors are effectiveness and costliness. Miller writes:

The strongest swimmer may also be fearful (so that although he is an effective rescuer, the rescue causes him considerable distress)––or perhaps he simply dislikes the kind of attention that goes along with a successful rescue. If A is slightly stronger than B, but A's costs are also much higher, is it obviously the right solution to hold A responsible for rescuing P?...[T]o apply the capacity principle, it seems, we have to begin by weighing effectiveness against cost to determine whose capacity is the greatest in the morally relevant sense (p. 461). 

I'm puzzled by this. Why is costliness a consideration for determining capacity? When I think of "capacity" as a morally relevant consideration for determining obligations of aid, I think I have in mind something like sheer ability and opportunity to perform the task. Sam has the sheer physical ability to rescue the child. Not only that, she has the opportunity to do so (as compared to a case where Sam is physically able to rescue the child but is not anywhere near the beach). Those factors matter. Costliness may be morally relevant in a different way, but it does not seem relevant for determining capacity. Of course, Sam's fearfulness might have a bearing on her capacity to rescue in the sense that her fear might undermine her chances of accomplishing the task (e.g., she might "freeze up" under the pressure and let the child drown). Hence, in addition to physical ability, psychological ability also goes into our evaluations of capacity [2]. A Capacity Principle sensitive to this notion of "capacity" gets our intuitions right: If Jill is an equally good swimmer and lacks any mental attributes that would hinder her ability to rescue the child, we tend to think that Jill has a stronger obligation than Sam to rescue the child. But notice that psychological costliness (how much mental pain it would put her through) is not a factor that bears on her capacity. What matters is whether the fear impacts the ability to rescue. If it does, it impacts capacity, but not otherwise. On this view of the Capacity Principle, therefore, we do not need to weigh "effectiveness against cost to determine whose capacity is the greatest in the morally relevant sense." We just stick with effectiveness (or "ability and opportunity").

To further support this way of framing the Capacity Principle, consider two cases (the first less intuitive than the last...perhaps):

• CASE 1: A and B are on the beach and each is able to save the drowning child. However, since A is less physically fit than B, A will expend more energy during the swim. By the time the rescue is over, she will be quite fatigued, have an ache in her gut and be sore the next morning. Still, her fitness level is not low enough to prevent her from rescuing the child. In fact, we can imagine that, relative to the circumstances and to each person's ability, both A and B have the same chances of rescuing the child (e.g., each will swim equally fast, etc.). The only difference is that the event will be more physically costly for A than for B.
• CASE 2: A and B are on the beach and each is able to save the drowning child. However, A is wearing normal work clothes while B is wearing a swim suit. A's clothes will be ruined [3].

This is common between each case: rescuing the child is more costly for A than for B. Nonetheless, my intuition is that A and B have equally strong obligations to rescue the child. Just as important, my sense is that A and B have the same capacity to rescue the child. A capacity principle that is only sensitive to facts about ability and opportunity (or "effectiveness," to use Miller's term), and not to facts about costliness, can accommodate this intuition. 

Maybe Miller has this distinction in mind: capacity to fulfill the responsibility vs. the capacity to psychologically handle the responsibility. But I don't see why the latter sort of capacity bears on the kind of morally relevant capacity captured by the Capacity Principle unless it hinders the former capacity.

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Footnotes:

[1] You could easily think of this in terms of reasons as well: the greater Sam's capacity to aid Jill, the stronger her pro tonto moral reason to aid Jill.
[2] In fact, all sorts of abilities probably go into our notion of "morally relevant capacity" (e.g., financial ability, cognitive ability, technical ability, etc.).
[3] I owe this case to Maggie Flamingo. Thanks!