Copyright © 2003, Glenn Mason-Riseborough - where what I mean by "copyright" is spelled out eloquently by Peter Suber on his Copyright page (and taking it as read, in the context, that where Suber refers to his documents, pages, and site I am referring to my documents, pages, and site).

However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.

Back to My Homepage | Back to What is Philosophy? (in a nutshell) | Back to My Writings

Weakening Role-Differentiation

Glenn Mason-Riseborough (10/04/2003)

 

I.  Introduction

In recent discussions of the role-differentiation thesis (RDT)—the idea that ethical obligations and permissions are role-differentiated—two separate but interrelated themes have emerged.  One is to do with the relationship between role ethics and virtue ethics.  I won’t talk about this at all.  The other is to do with RDT itself—whether, and to what extent, the obligations and permissions attached to roles are informed and constrained by some specified broad-based general moral theory (or “ordinary morality”).  There are stronger and weaker versions of such role-differentiation—stronger versions place fewer constraints whereas weaker versions place greater constraints.  I’ll start out with an overview of role-differentiation, before moving into some criticisms.

 

II.  The Role-Differentiation Thesis

Tim Dare writes in at least two places that the central component of RDT is that “the obligations and permissions to which we are subject vary as we move between roles.”[1]  In addition to differentiation between roles, the obligations and permissions attached to some role might differ from the obligations and permissions of ordinary morality.

What does this mean?  First off, RDT takes it as a given that we all have different roles into which we fit ourselves, from time to time—we wear different hats at different times of our lives.  For example we might be any one of, or more than one of, a citizen, a parent, a child, a student, a neighbour, a member of a sports team, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a rubbish collector, an entertainer, and so on.  We occupy many different roles over the course of our lives, and we typically occupy multiple roles at any one time.

Furthermore, according to RDT, different ethical obligations and permissions are attached to each of these roles.  My obligations and permissions sometimes change as I move between roles, or when I compare the obligations and permissions I have while occupying some role versus the obligations and permissions I have on the basis of ordinary morality.  An example.  Sometimes I occupy the role of teacher, while at other times I occupy the role of student.  As a teacher, amongst other things I am obliged to prepare adequately for my classes, and impart some sufficient level of knowledge and/or skills to my students.  But when I adopt my role as a student, these obligations change.  While it might be prudential for me to prepare adequately for my classes, it is hard to see how I am morally obliged to do so.  And moreover, my preparation is different.  As a teacher, I have to prepare a plan of how the lesson will be structured, but this is unnecessary in my role as a student.  As a student (at best) I merely have to have familiarised myself with the relevant content of the course, and be prepared to discuss it.  In addition, as a student I have no obligation to my fellow students to impart any knowledge or skills to them.  In the classroom, my obligations, qua teacher, are different from my obligations, qua student.

But at this stage there is no suggestion that the obligations might come into conflict.  Granted, the obligations are different, and may even sometimes be mutually exclusive—for example, qua teacher I am obliged to have some degree of control over the lesson structure, but qua student I am obliged not to take over the overall structure of the lesson (and if I do, I am considered a dominator, and a difficult student).  But since there can never be a situation where I am simultaneously occupying the roles of both teacher and student, no conflict (and hence no ethical dilemma) arises.

At first blush then, RDT comes across as quite plausible.  I decide what my obligations and permissions are, and hence how to act appropriately, based on a consideration of which role I am occupying at that time and the obligations and permissions associated with that role.  In some roles I have certain obligations and permissions, and in other roles I have other obligations and permissions.

 

III.  The Role-Conflict Thesis

But things are never so simple.  A worry of role ethics is what is known as the role-conflict thesis (RCT).  This is the thought that the obligations and permissions attached to some role sometimes conflict with each other, or conflict with the obligations and permissions attached to some other role one is simultaneously occupying, or conflict with ordinary morality.  For example, I might be obliged to act in one way, qua occupant of some role, but I am also simultaneously obliged not to act in that same way, qua occupant of some other distinct role.  If we accept RCT, then we must accept RDT, but if we accept RDT we need not accept RCT.

Why might we accept RCT?  I’ll give three cases of role-conflict, ranging from easy to most difficult, for the role ethicist.

First, an easy case.  Let’s look at the role of assassin.  Attached to the role of assassin are certain obligations and permissions associated with killing.  At the most simple level, one who occupies the role of assassin is surely obliged to carry out efficiently and without question all killings s/he is contracted to do.  This, clearly, goes against ordinary morality, which prohibits such killings (and it also presumably goes against the obligations and permissions attached to the role of citizen).  The question is how one might adjudicate between following ordinary morality (where the obligation is to not kill) and following the role-differentiated morality attached to the role of assassin (where the obligation is to kill).  If one is an assassin, ought one kill or not kill?

The answer, from the perspective of the role ethicist, is that one shouldn’t be an assassin in the first place.  Not just any old role is acceptable.  Why is this?  At the first level of analysis, one must start by looking at the institution in which the role is embedded.  What is the institution?  Is it itself good?  Does it play a certain function in the good life of humans?  To answer this with respect to the assassin case, we need to get more factual information.  Are we are talking about bushido in feudal Japan?  Or are we are talking about mob warfare in prohibition-era USA?  Or what?  Whatever the case, it is difficult to see how such institutions could either be good in themselves or feature in an account of what makes up the good life for humans.  An institution in which there is the role of assassin is surely not a good institution.  And so since we ought not have assassins in the first place, the problem of role-conflict does not arise.

Second, a more difficult case.  Let’s look at the role of lawyer.  The role of lawyer is often taken to be an extremely difficult role for role ethicists to deal with.[2]  The common worry is that of zealous advocacy—how far can a lawyer go in representing her/his client while still staying within the letter of the law?  It seems like lawyers are sometimes permitted to do certain things, qua lawyer, which would be impermissible from the perspective of ordinary morality (and impermissible, qua citizen).  There are numerous case examples—the defendant’s lawyer using stalling tactics so as to bump up the costs to the plaintiff until the plaintiff can no longer afford to continue, excessively strong cross-examinations of rape-victims, presenting prejudicial or biased or partial information in court, and so on.  The lawyer case is more difficult, because we cannot give a similar reply to that given in the assassin case.  That is, it seems fairly plausible to say that the institution of law, on the whole, is a good institution, and would feature in some account of the good life for humans.

Dare[3] attempts to reply to this problem, and has a number of responses, as he replies to each specific case in turn.  I’ll just briefly run through the two main types of response he gives.  One response is to bite the bullet and claim that an adequate account of ordinary morality should vindicate the lawyer’s actions in some cases.  Dare’s explanation of the Artists’ Cooperative Case is a case in point.

But suppose that ordinary morality does not vindicate the lawyer’s actions, in some cases.  Recalling that we granted that the legal institution is good, as it plays a useful part in the good life of humans, we then look at the function of the role of lawyer in the legal institution.  It is not good enough to have the perceived function; we need to have the correct function.  That is, lawyers are not there to “win at all costs” or to “use every non-prohibited means to further the interests of their clients”,[4] as that is antithetical to the proper functioning of the legal institution in a flourishing society.  Rather, lawyers are there “to assist individuals to avail themselves of the rights allocated to them by communities”.[5]  With this in mind, we can then draw out the obligations and permissions attached to this role, properly understood.  And we find that lawyers are not ethically permitted to use “hyperzeal” when representing a client.  That is, there are certain ethical constraints, in addition to the legal constraints.  For example, it follows from this analysis of the role of lawyer that lawyers are not permitted to engage in stalling tactics until the plaintiff is forced to drop her/his case.  Those who do are simply not performing the role of lawyer.[6]

Third, another more difficult case.  Let’s look at the role of parent.  Again, there are variants on this family of objections.  To begin with, attached to the role of parent are certain obligations and permissions associated with caring for one’s children, and attending to their needs in preference to the needs of strangers.  A parent is obliged to be partial to the needs of her/his children.  But, the problem goes, there are situations when, qua occupant of some other role, the parent is obliged to be impartial with respect to her/his children and other members of society.  One such situation might be when the parent is also the teacher of her/his child.  Qua teacher, the parent ought not attend to the needs of her/his child in preference to the needs of the other students.  Qua teacher, the parent is obliged to be impartial.

One response to this case is to once again point out that we need to articulate the proper function of the role.  Plausibly, the role of the parent is not merely to help one’s children in preference to strangers, but rather to assist one’s children to become fully flourishing members of society.  And this means that the parent ought not mark her/his child’s assignment favourably, for example, as doing so does not help the child to develop into a fully flourishing individual.  This seems like a fair response to this case.

But we might upgrade the problem by considering a situation in which being impartial is detrimental to the child’s potential to flourish.  Suppose the child has committed a crime, and overall it would be detrimental to the child for the parent to report the child to the authorities.  Thus, qua parent, the parent is obliged not to report the crime.  But, qua citizen, the parent is obliged to report the crime.[7]

This upgrade, I think, is extremely difficult for the role ethicist to reply to.  The role ethicist might try to weasel out by questioning whether any legal system that is detrimental to the offender is a fair and just system.  If it isn’t, then the parent, qua citizen, is not obliged to report the child.  But let’s presume, for the sake of argument, that the legal system is in fact fair.  In this case I don’t see how the role ethicist can respond.  We have reached an impasse, with no way to adjudicate between the obligation, qua parent, and the obligation, qua citizen, within role ethics.  I suggest that the only way to resolve the dilemma is to step out of role ethics.

 

IV.  Weakening Role-Differentiation

One of the motivations for adopting role ethics is the observation that the context matters, when deciding right action.  We need to have all the details of the case at hand, and talk of roles is a way of specifying a lot of detail.  I think this motivation is worthy.  Moreover, the replies to the putative cases of role-conflict, above, all involve introducing more contextual information specific to how the role functions within the institution and how the institution fits into an account of the good life for humans.  But for all of this said above, we could grant that our obligations and permissions change as we move between roles, but say that it was merely because the factual details change as we move between roles.  We could deny that it has anything to do with role-differentiated moral principles.  We might still hold that the fundamental moral principles are non-role-differentiated.

We might, for example, explain role-conflict by pointing out that roles supervene on the detailed sociological facts.  For the most part roles-talk provides sufficient information to decide right action.  But in cases of role-conflict the problem is often that we have insufficient factual details.  This is when we need to refer to the more fundamental level of social interaction.  We need to mention institutions and their functions and the various interactions and relations between individuals.  And ultimately we refer to the role-neutral moral principles that express what the good life for humans is about.  Furthermore, the reason that the citizen-parent conflict was so difficult to explain was that our answer to this depends upon which broad-based general moral theory we adopt.  It is not a role problem; it is a normative ethical problem.  The way to resolve this role-conflict is to appeal to ordinary morality.

Now, it might be replied that this is just begging the question.  The way I resolved the conflict was to refer back to ordinary morality.  But this still leaves unresolved the question of whether ordinary morality should take precedence over role morality (and whether there are any distinct role-differentiated moral principles), and my merely stating it is not an argument.  This requires far deeper analysis,[8] but my quick and dirty thought is that we adopt a principle of parsimony, and adopt the theory that does not multiply principles unnecessarily.[9]

 

V.  Conclusions

I have argued that role-differentiation has a place in a considered account of ethics.  But I have suggested that its place is a secondary one.  I have suggested that role-differentiation is a useful heuristic in deciding right action, as in easy cases roles-talk provides sufficient contextual information to make decisions.  But I have pointed out examples of role-conflict, which show that we need to bring more information to bear on cases, than roles-talk can provide.  And in extremely difficult cases, I suggest that it is more plausible to ignore roles-talk completely, and discuss the case just in terms of our broad-based general moral theory.

 

(2500 words)

Bibliography

 

Cocking, D. & Oakley, J. (1997). Doing Justice to the Lawyers’ Role. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics, 77-85.

 

Dare, T. (1997). Taking the Lawyer’s Role Seriously: Response to Cocking and Oakley. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics, 95-103.

 

Dare, T. (1998). Virtue Ethics and Legal Ethics. Victoria University Law Review, 28, 141-155.

 

Dare, T. (2001). Lawyers, Ethics, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Philosophy and Literature, 25, 127-141.