Act-Omission Doctrine

How it relates to libertarianism

act-omission doctrine  It is a matter of debate in ^*moral ^*philosophy, whether there is a real moral distinction between acting and failing to act when the outcome is the same. For instance, is there a moral difference between pushing someone into a river with the outcome that he drowns and failing to throw someone a lifebelt with the outcome that he drowns? The act-omission doctrine is simply that there is a significant moral difference. ^*Consequentialism is often (but superficially) interpreted as rejecting the distinction; in which case failing to act is seen as just as immoral.

There is a logical problem with the thesis that failure to help other people is immoral rather than neutral, or innocent. This is because, conversely, failure to inflict ^*harm on other people must then be positively moral rather than neutral. However, it is generally easier to harm people than to help them. Therefore, we fail to do more harm (e.g., pushing ten other people into the river) than we fail to help (e.g., saving the one drowning person). Consequently, we are both moral and immoral if we simply do nothing; but more moral than immoral. This paradox is avoided by allowing that there is moral neutrality, or innocence.

^*Libertarians are often sympathetic to this distinction, and can see it as always permissible not to act in the sense that one is merely not getting involved. However, physical action and inaction cannot seem to capture the central idea. One can, for instance, fail to act and thereby break a ^*contract, which cannot in itself be libertarian. In whatever way the physical distinction is worded, it seems to fall foul of some such ^*criticism. There is, nevertheless, a causal and moral distinction that is often detectable in many such examples: that between withholding a benefit and ^*initiating an imposed ^*cost (inflicting harm). Interpersonal ^*liberty can even be theorised as the “absence of initiated imposed costs”. This is a more abstract distinction than the physical act-omission one, though, and so more open to debatable interpretation.

(This is an entry from A LIBERTARIAN DICTIONARY: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)