On Behalf of Another
We often find ourselves in situations where we must act on behalf of another. This role may be embedded in all sorts of interpersonal relationships, both formal and informal. Sometimes we have the authority to act on behalf of colleagues or clients who are temporarily indisposed to act on their own; other times we must act on behalf of children or dying loved ones who may be either physically or cognitively incapable of deciding and acting for themselves. What should we be taking ourselves to be doing when we are charged with the role of acting on behalf of others? Are we just carrying out their orders? Are we doing what is best for them? Should we be doing what they would want us to do? Or what they themselves would do if they were the ones in a position to act? The particulars of the situation obviously matter. In order to understand the nature of our role as “trustees” we must take into account the sort of relationship we are in with the purported beneficiary, the limits of our own knowledge about their experiences and ends, the limits of their expertise and competence in judgment, the type of decision we are to make on their behalf and the effects that such a decision will have on them and on others. With all these variables, it is tempting to think that there is nothing that we can say in advance of attending to the particulars – that to act on behalf of another just means different things in these different situations. However I think that it is instructive to take seriously the idea that there is still a distinctive task that can be characterized as acting on behalf of another which carries with it common challenges and moral risks, albeit to varying degrees. My dissertation offers a general picture of this task and consequently aims to develop an ethical account of trusteeship.
In the introductory chapter, “On Behalf of Another,” I open my dissertation with a functional account of trusteeship. I argue that the characteristic task of a trustee is to enact the will of the beneficiary through the actions done on her behalf. When one – with the authority do so – acts on behalf of another, one is engaged in a joint venture in which both the trustee and the beneficiary may be held accountable for the actions done and therefore each has a legitimate claim in deciding together how to proceed. Although a joint venture, the relationship of the beneficiary and trustee is marked by asymmetries of power, of access to information and of vulnerability to risk. Since it is the trustee rather than the beneficiary who has the discretionary power to act in the particular domain, the beneficiary is in a uniquely vulnerable position in regards to possible mistaken judgments or abuses of authority on the part of the trustee. It is the trustee who acts, but it is the beneficiary who has stands to lose more from the actions done on her behalf: her health, her financial security, her reputation and other important goods are at risk. This is not to say that the trustee bears no risks involved in acting on behalf of the beneficiary. The beneficiary may be less than forthcoming about her circumstances or may not clearly communicate her values, commitments and personal aims. She may do this either out of ignorance that such information is relevant or more willfully, perhaps out of embarrassment or with the shrewd intention of misleading the trustee. So without due care, the trustee may find herself complicit in a wrongful action done on the beneficiary’s behalf.
That we implicate the beneficiary in our actions on her behalf should be reflected in how we deliberate about what to do. So out of this functional understanding, I offer a normative proposal for how the trustee should deliberate about acting on behalf of the beneficiary. There is a special obligation conferred on a person insofar as she is committed to acting as a trustee; rather than simply respect the agency and will of the beneficiary, the trustee’s actions should be expressions of that agency. In her dealings with the beneficiary, the trustee should treat the beneficiary as a co-subject of the actions done on her behalf. The beneficiary’s own judgment about what the trustee should do has an authoritative role to play in the decision of the trustee. This is the general normative proposal that will be developed and expanded upon for the rest of the dissertation. However in order to do this, I must first defend the general applicability of my functional account of trusteeship. Given the wide array of contexts in which one person acts on behalf of another, is it really appropriate to describe all these activities as joint ventures? While in some situations – such as business partners making deals on each others’ behalf or lawyers filing some claim on behalf of clients – there is ample opportunity for the beneficiary and trustee to deliberate together about what the trustee should ultimately do; in other cases – such as family members deciding about medical treatment on behalf of unconscious patients – it may be difficult or even impossible for the person acting to have had the opportunity to discuss in any meaningful way with the intended beneficiary as to what should be done. In these latter sorts of cases, is it really plausible to view the intended beneficiary as a co-subject of the action? And even if it is plausible to view her this way, does such a perspective mask the disparities in power inherent in the fiduciary relationship and ultimately put the beneficiary at even greater risk of harm done to her on her behalf? The first three chapters of my dissertation, I investigate how we should think about our responsibilities as trustees in situations where shared deliberation with the beneficiary is currently unavailable and what role paternalistic reasoning plays in this deliberation.
When shared practical deliberation is not possible due to situational constraints or cognitive incapacities on the part of the beneficiary, the trustee must find other ways to ensure that she can justify her actions to the beneficiary who is implicated by them. One way to justify one’s actions on behalf of another is to show that the beneficiary could one day come to accept or endorse the action done on her behalf. In chapter 1, “The Problem of Future Oriented Consent,” I argue that such a method of justification by appeal to the future consent of the beneficiary is premised on bad practical reasoning. One cannot justify an action based on a pro-attitude that is causally dependent on that action having been done. There needs to be some other further reason that is doing the justificatory work besides a pro-attitude that is dependent on the action itself taking place. This is evident in the case of paternalistic reasoning for children. Whatever paternalistic measures are taken now may influence the possibility of acceptance in the future. Moreover, the paternalist measure, if it is manipulative enough, may even guarantee future consent on the part of the child; there is no good reason to think that this should also guarantee its justifiability.
An alternative way to justify one’s actions on behalf of another is to show that one’s actions are what would be best overall for the beneficiary. In chapter 2, “The Limits of Well-Being,” I argue that appeal to that the beneficiary’s overall well-being is also problematic. This is because we can conceptually pry apart the role of a trustee from the role of a benefactor. A benefactor conducts herself as acting for the good of the beneficiary whereas a trustee conducts herself as acting on the beneficiary’s behalf. And the trustee should be open to the possibility that the beneficiary may have values that conflict with her well-being. One may object that much of my argument against well-being will depend on which normative account is my target. For instance according to Informed Desire Theories of Well-being, we should aim at promoting what a person would rationally prefer we do in some idealized situation regardless of what the content of those preferences turns out to be. Armed with this more sophisticated account of well-being, which is attentive to things like the religious values and comprehensive projects of the beneficiary, the thoughtful benefactor’s deliberations may begin to mimic the deliberation of a good trustee. So the line between benefactor and trustee can become blurred. But it should be noted that as the sophisticated account of well-being begins to track more closely the wide variety of considerations to which a trustee should attend, it becomes less recognizable as an account of what we would traditionally take to be the well-being of the beneficiary. Such theories no longer emphasize the value of what is good for the person, but rather emphasize the value of promoting what is good according to the person – what the person regards as the most choice-worthy life.
Informed Desire Accounts are therefore concerned with prudential rationality more broadly construed. The move from thinking about what actions would best serve the beneficiary’s wellbeing to what actions they would prefer we take on their behalf in an idealized situation is a promising one. It gets closer to the sort of practical deliberation that I take a trustee to be required to do in thinking about how to justify her actions on behalf of another. In chapter 3, “Vicarious Deliberation and Confronting Hard Cases,” I entertain this suggestion: Perhaps our actions as trustees are justified if we can show that the action is what the agent would want us to do on her behalf if she were in some idealized epistemic situation. Determining what reasons people have in virtue of what they would desire to do under certain idealized conditions has long tradition of proponents – most notably, Bernard Williams. To put it in Williams’ terms, perhaps what we should do on behalf of another is what they have internal reason to prefer that we do on their behalf. While appealing, I argue that such a normative account of trusteeship loses sight of the idea that acting on behalf of another is in fact a joint venture with at least two co-subjects. The trustee cannot extricate her responsibility and do precisely what the beneficiary would want her to do – regardless of how rational the beneficiary’s desires may turn out to be. Rather the trustee must deliberate and act not on what she discerns the beneficiary would most want the trustee to do on her behalf were the trustee herself to have had the opportunity to negotiate with the beneficiary about the joint venture. Imagining what this negotiation would look like goes beyond the two subjects pulling together their knowledge about the relevant information of the situation and then letting the beneficiary decide for herself. The idealized negotiation also allows for non-deliberative attempts at influence by both the beneficiary and the trustee as long as they are done in good faith. When we engage in actual good faith negotiations with others about a joint venture, not only do we aim at achieving our own ends, but our ends may actually change given the personal ends of the other person with whom we are negotiating.
Another way to motivate the importance of negotiation. Is to contrast the role of trustee from the role of a trustworthy advisor. It is important to keep in mind that in advising well, the advisor need not act on the prescriptions that she is offering the advisor. Therefore, what one has reason to do on behalf of another is potentially different from what one would advise that person to do on her own behalf. In chapter 4, “On Advising Well,” I articulate the norms of advising and contrast it with the norms of acting as trustee. Following Austin, I argue that advising is demarcated by its illocutionary force: advising is an action constituted by certain utterances under certain felicity conditions. The action that is so constituted is that of answering the question: “What shall I do?” To advise non-abusively, one must answer this question sincerely, practicably and in well-reasoned manner. These may seem like banal norms that offer little practical guidance. However, these norms drastically narrow the field of what should be counted as trustworthy advice and they nicely distinguish how we think about the reasons of others in an advisory role and how we should think about the reasons of others when we are to act on their behalf. In particular, sincere advice must be done from within the standards of the advisor even when the advisor is aware of a potential conflict between her standards and those of the advisee. Moreover, for it to be sincerely given, the prescription must be something that the advisor believes the advisee can bring herself to do. Therefore, it must be practicable – it must appeal to the motivational set of the advisee at the time that the advisee is to act. In contrast, when a trustee acts on behalf of the beneficiary, she needn’t worry about the limitations of the beneficiary’s motivational set, since it is the trustee that is acting.
In chapter 5, “Reasoning for Trust” I return to the nature of the relationship between the trustee and beneficiary. While it is not necessarily the beneficiaries who have instigated the entrusting and while they, at present, may be incapable of trusting us, nevertheless our actions and decisions should be guided by the need to engender and be worthy of their trust. The following is the general standard evaluation that should guide our actions as trustees.
Reasoning for Trust: Whenever we are to act on behalf of another, we ought to do so in a way that (a) makes us trustworthy
to the beneficiary of our intended action and (b) can inspire trust on the part of the beneficiary.
When we, as trustees, act in a justified manner on the part of the beneficiary, our actions are worthy of the beneficiary’s trust. Acting in a trustworthy manner is therefore a normative achievement; it is something that we can intend to do and succeed or fail at doing. On the other hand, being able to inspire trust in others isn’t something that we can accomplish just by intending it and acting on that intention. Instead we can only aim at indirectly bringing this second condition about by making our trustworthiness apparent and developing our beneficiary’s capacity to trust. Whether or not we are actually capable of inspiring trust on the part of our intended beneficiary depends to some extent on the motivational set of the beneficiary herself. If the beneficiary is overly suspicious, is afraid to take risks, does not know how to trust, or has personal biases against us, then even when we are acting in trustworthy manner we may be incapable of inspiring trust. Because of this, I will take the first condition to have lexical priority over the second condition. We are to do the thing that makes us worthy of trust and, if we can, do it in a way that inspires trust on the part of the beneficiary.
To be trustworthy, we needn’t agree with the beneficiary about what things in life are worth pursuing. Instead, we must be committed to acting on the reasons we take the beneficiary to have. And to inspire trust on the part of the beneficiary, the beneficiary must be able to recognize this commitment. We therefore need not be of one mind when it comes to what we think the beneficiary has most reason to want us to do on their behalf. However, when our judgment diverges from the beneficiary’s about which actions are in fact justified, our trustworthiness may be legitimately challenged. On these occasions, our commitment to acting in a trustworthy manner must be vindicated; we must be able to articulate how we went about deciding to act as we did in terms that the beneficiary should be able to accept.
My final chapter, “Reclaiming Agency and Trusting Others: A Defense of Advanced Directives” offers an extended application of the principles that I have articulated in the dissertation. I defend the policy of encouraging patients to draft advanced directives even when evidence suggests that such directives are not effective in improving the accuracy of surrogate medical decision making. I use the framework presented in this dissertation to defend the continuing practice of encouraging advance directives – not because such directives make the trustee more likely to carry out the directives of the beneficiary carte blanche but rather the drafting of such documents allow the beneficiary and trustees to begin a process of negotiation about what the trustee is to do when the beneficiary can no longer communicate her wishes. Through the process of drafting advance directives, patients can reclaim a sense of agency and strengthen the trusting relationships with loved ones at a time when their bodies and their relationships are particularly vulnerable. Further, they can do this even when they know that the trustees may end up acting against the specific directives that have been set.