RT Article
T1 Doing, Allowing, Gains, and Losses
JF Ethical theory and moral practice
VO 21
IS 5
SP 1107
OP 1118
A1 Colombo, Camilla
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2018
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1662929951
AB This paper examines Kahneman and Tversky's standard explanation for preference reversal due to framing effects in the famous "Asian flu" case. It argues that, alongside with their "loss/no gain effect" account, an alternative interpretation, still consistent with the empirical data, amounts to a more reasonable psychological explanation for the preference reversal. Specifically, my hypothesis is that shifts in the baseline induce shifts in the agents' classification of the same action as "doing harm" rather than "allowing harm to occur", and that people are risk-seeking when it comes to avoid causing extra deaths-doing harm-and risk-averse when it comes to preventing more deaths-by the means of allowing other deaths to occur as a side effect. I then survey the two most influential concurrent accounts in the moral literature, with respect to the relation between the loss/no gain and the doing/allowing distinction: Horowitz's reductionist conclusion, which argues that the latter collapses into the former, and Kamm's rebuttal, which claims instead that the two distinctions can be pulled apart. I eventually explain why my interpretation differs from both these positions.
K1 Doing and Allowing
K1 Endowment effect
K1 Loss/no gain effect
K1 Prospect Theory
DO 10.1007/s10677-018-9949-8