Matthew Yglesias demonstrates some of the *big* problem with rights- and duty-based ethics that pretend to take no account of utility:
Matthew Yglesias: Lott and Anonymity: Some thoughts on this Lott/Levitt/Reynolds/Kopel fiasco:
1. It would be really inappropriate for Glenn [Reynolds] or Dave Kopel to reveal who their anonymous source was to anyone, even if this were the only way of clearing up suspicions that Lott was the source. You don't welch on a pledge of anonymity you've given to a source even if making the pledge turns out to have been inappropriate.
2. The use of an anonymous source in this context -- whether or not that source was Lott -- is totally inappropriate. Anonymity is supposed to be a tool for gathering actual information that won't otherwise be revealed. Simply letting someone go off-the-record with unsubstantiated insults has no journalistic value.
3. For Lott to turn around and take an anonymous charge in an NRO article and then write that "media reports" have described Levitt in such-and-such a way is both inappropriate and wildly dishonest, but we've all known for a while that Lott's not a big fan of honesty.
Let's look at the videotape: Levitt has been slimed by Lott. Levitt has been slimed by Reynolds and Kopel. Levitt has been slimed by Reynolds's and Kopel's anonymous source (whom there appears to be good reason to think is Lott).
Reynolds, Kopel, and "anonymous" therefore have a duty of restitution to Levitt. And yet in Yglesias's system of moral reasoning, this duty is checkmated because Reynolds and Kopel have a duty to keep their promise to "anonymous"--a promise that they should not have made in the first place, and a promise which was part of an attempt to injure Levitt...
As I said, utilitarianism seems far preferable to this kind of mess.
Posted by DeLong at April 19, 2003 08:19 AM | TrackBack