Activating the Right to Be Rescued

When a person finds herself in peril her right to be rescued is activated and a rescue duty is imposed on those who are in a position to help. In this article, I argue that the activation of the right to be rescued needs to be suitably constrained so that the rescuee is prevented from arbitrarily controlling the normative situation between herself and potential rescuers. Such control would be in conflict with the moral equality of persons. I argue that the activation of the right to be rescued should be conditional on the person having a justification for the action that caused her peril. One implication of my view is that the right to be rescued cannot fulfill the function that Jonathan Quong ascribes to it. The right to be rescued turns out to be an unsuitable ground for the necessity condition which constrains the permissible use of defensive force.


Introduction
The right to be rescued has turned into a touchstone for many ethical discussions.It is being invoked to explain various moral phenomena and to justify a range of moral requirements.1The right to be rescued is invoked to explain why agents have to provide material resources, personal services, and even Instead of the Coherence Condition, so I argue in section 4, we should endorse the Justification Condition which makes the activation of the right to be rescued conditional on the person having an evidence-relative justification for the action that caused her peril.When a person acts with justification, the change in the normative situation is not arbitrarily subject to a person's control but it rests on independent moral grounds.
Endorsing the Justification Condition has implications for wider moral debates.In the last section of the paper, I discuss the implications for one of those debates.I show that we cannot, as Quong suggests, ground the necessity condition on the right to be rescued.The necessity condition is a widely accepted constraint on the amount of force one may use in order to avert an aggressor's unjustified threat of harm.The necessity condition captures the intuitive idea that one should prefer less harmful means if these are available and effective against the threat.Quong argues that even aggressors usually satisfy the Coherence Condition and therefore have a right to be rescued.Aggressors can demand that their victims rescue them from more serious defensive harm if they can avert the aggressor's threat at a reasonable cost to themselves.Imposing more serious harm is unnecessary and violates the aggressor's right to be rescued.If we instead accept the Justification Condition then the necessity condition cannot be grounded on the right to be rescued.Aggressors do not activate their right to be rescued when they threaten unjust harm.

Changing the Normative Situation
The right to be rescued is a conditional right that is activated under specific circumstances, namely if a person is in need.When in need, a person gains a right and imposes a duty that her rescuer did not previously have.In this respect, the right to be rescued differs from many other rights which we are familiar with.The right against harm or the right to education, for example, are unconditional rights.8An unconditional right is active until the right-holder waives or forfeits the right and thereby inactivates it.As long as the right is active it activating the right to be rescued Journal of Moral Philosophy (2021) 1-24 | 10.1163/17455243-20213593 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2023 12:00:41AM via free access binds a duty-bearer by a correlative duty.A right can also be latent in which case there is no one who is bound by a correlative duty.Conditional rights are latent until special circumstances obtain that activate the right.Whenever a right changes its mode from latent to active or from active to latent, the normative situation changes.When a right is inactivated, the right-holder releases the duty-bearer from her duty.When a right is activated, the right-holder imposes a correlative duty.
To see how the normative situation changes when a right is activated, consider the following rescue case.

Unfortunate
Don crosses a bridge over a gorge.Unbeknownst to him, a plank in the middle of the bridge is rotten.The plank breaks under his step.Mel who is picking flowers by the gorge sees him.She can save him from falling down and breaking his legs.If she does, she won't be able to sell the flowers on the market and miss out on her daily income.
Prior to Don's accident, Mel is free to pick flowers and spend her time out in nature as she pleases.This changes when Don gets in trouble.Don now has a right that Mel bears the costs of his rescue and Mel has a duty to rescue assuming that losing a daily income is a reasonable cost.This change in the distribution of rights and duties is to Mel's disadvantage.To mark the change in the normative situation, we can say that Don has a latent right prior to the accident but an active right after the accident.
It is natural to think of the right to be rescued as a latent right that gets activated only under particular circumstances.Duties correlative to rights limit the duty-bearer's freedom.It therefore makes sense that certain rights are only activated under specific conditions rather than being a continuous restriction of the duty-bearer's freedom.9Imagine that Don knows about the rotten plank.Clearly, we want to say that he should not step on the bridge unless he has a sufficiently strong reason for doing so.We might even want to say that Mel has a right against him imposing rescue costs or a right that he takes precautions to avoid such costs.10This intuition is difficult to explain if Don's right to be rescued was an unconditional right and hence active even prior to his accident.If, already prior to the accident, Mel has a duty to bear any eventual costs, the costs which Don is about to impose do not constitute a reason that speaks against the action.We usually do not have (strong) reason to abstain from imposing a cost on a person who is obliged to bear it.The fact that my new garden fence imposes a cost on my neighbor -he can no longer take illicit short cuts through my garden -is not a reason for me to abstain from putting up the fence.This is because he already had an active duty to bear the cost.I do not have to justify the cost imposition to him.The same would be true if Mel already prior to the accident had an active duty to bear the cost.Don would not have to justify the imposition of rescue costs and he would not wrong Mel by doing so.This, however, conflicts with the intuition that we should take precautions against getting into perilous situations so that we do not burden others unnecessarily with rescue costs.It is, therefore, more plausible to assume that the normative situation changes only once a person comes to be in need of rescue.This explains why there is a presumption against the imposition of rescue costs.Prior to the incident Mel does not have to bear a cost for Don.Nonetheless, Mel might be obliged to bear the costs once Don is in need of help.We can say that, at the very least, the right to be rescued is conditional on an empirical premise -a person needs help -being true.It is then a further question whether the empirical premise being true is also sufficient for the activation of Don's right to be rescued.

The Coherence Condition
The right to be rescued is conditional on an empirical premise being true, that is the right-holder is in need.Furthermore, we can assume that, like most other rights, the right to be rescued is conditional on the potential rescuer being able to fulfill the correlative duty to rescue.This means that the duty may not be too demanding.If the rescuer had to sacrifice her life in order to rescue another person from breaking her leg, the rescuer has no duty to rescue the victim.The victim has no correlative right against this particular rescuer, though she might have a right against those who can rescue her at a reasonable cost.Moreover, the rescuer is not under a duty to save the victim if this would violate any side-constraints, for example if she has to break another person's leg in her attempt to save the victim, or if she could save a greater number.
On the most inclusive of views, the empirical premise and these relevant facts about the duty-bearer are not only necessary but also sufficient conditions for the activation of the right to be rescued.Such a maximally inclusive view can be ascribed to Jonathan Quong.For Quong, the right to be rescued is moral rock-bottom.Everybody has the right to be rescued from (serious) harm activating the right to be rescued Journal of Moral Philosophy (2021) 1-24 | 10.1163/17455243-20213593 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2023 12:00:41AM via free access when others can do so at reasonable cost.Even the most irresponsible person who gets herself into trouble and even those who threaten to wrong others have a right to be rescued.To deny that a person, regardless of her past actions, could raise at least some minimal claims on another would be to deny a person's humanity.A claim to rescue is such a minimal claim because the duty to rescue is constrained in its demandingness.Rescuers can be required to bear a cost that is at most moderate in comparison to the harm averted.This ensures that the right to be rescued always generates a net benefit.11 For these reasons, Quong objects to making the right to be rescued dependent on backward-looking conditions.One such backward-looking condition is my proposed Justification Condition.

Justification Condition
A person has an active right to be rescued if she has a justification for the action that caused her peril.
Quong explicitly grants even those a right to be rescued who are responsible for being in need and had no justification for getting into that situation.12We need not and should not ask whether a person is responsible for getting into a predicament in order to determine whether she has a right to be rescued.Quong notes that "we owe some duties of care and rescue to others even when others are responsible for needing our help."13From this it is clear that Quong would reject the Justification Condition.
The only constraint that Quong wants to impose on the right to be rescued is what I call the Coherence Condition.

Coherence Condition
A person has an active right to be rescued if her moral demand to be rescued now does not depend on her unjustifiably making the empirical premise on which her demand depends true at a later point in time.
Rights are claims on others and, according to Quong, "thinking about what we can coherently demand of others is, at a minimum, a useful heuristic for determining what claims we possess."14The Coherence Condition makes the claim to be rescued conditional on this claim being coherent.As Quong explains, "if a moral demand depends on an empirical premise, and the person issuing the demand [ … ] is also the person whose future decision will make the empirical premise true, then if that person cannot provide a satisfactory justification of why she will choose to behave in a manner that makes the empirical premise true, this undermines the moral demand."15The claimant falsely presents her future need of rescue as something that is pre-determined and not a result of her agency.The problem with such claims is, as Quong notes, that "we cannot treat these [future] decisions as facts without denying our own agency."16 The Coherence Condition rules out that persons have rights to be rescued in some uncommon cases like the following: Anna threatens to kill herself unless Bert hands over 20 pounds.17Bert could rescue her from death later at T2 if he pays the reasonable cost of 20 pounds now at T1.But Anna does not have a coherent claim to rescue.Her claim to rescue at T1 depends on an empirical premise -a threat to her life -that she herself chooses to make true at T2.Her claim is incoherent because it is within Anna's control whether the empirical premise becomes true.But she falsely denies her agency and presents herself as an automaton that cannot help but produce a perilous situation.18 In effect, the Coherence Condition rules out that a person has a claim to rescue unless the empirical premise is true.To explain why Anna does not have a claim to the 20 pounds, we could simply say that Anna's claim is unsound because the empirical premise is false.It is not true that Anna is in need of rescue when making the claim.Whether she will at a later point need rescue depends on her future decisions and we cannot treat her future decision as a settled fact.The situation would be different if Anna's future actions were indeed not under her control.If she was under the control of an evil hypnotist who will lead her into suicide unless she pays her debts to him, her claim to rescue would be coherent.She can coherently say: I have a claim to your 20 pounds because they will save me from killing myself.In this case, she does not untruthfully deny her agency.The empirical premise is true at the point she makes her claim.Thus, the Coherence Condition seems to be just a more cumbersome way of saying that the right to be rescued is conditional on the empirical premise being true.We can thus ascribe the maximally inclusive view to Quong.A person activates her right to be rescued at the moment she can truthfully claim to be in need of rescue.
The Coherence Condition is problematic precisely because it is maximally inclusive.It grants persons a right to be rescued even in cases like the following.

Manipulation
Ivan fantasizes about Mel and him being in a thrilling adventure.He wants to see her as a great hero who can save him from all perils.One day he sees her picking flowers close to the bridge across the gorge.He knows that some of the planks of the bridge are rotten.He seizes the opportunity to realize his fantasy.He breaks through a plank and calls for Mel's help.
Ivan is in need of rescue and the truth of the empirical premise does not depend on his future decisions.Past decisions are settled facts.Claiming help in this situation does not deny one's agency.Ivan can admit that he did not have a justification and was fully responsible for his action.According to Quong, we can treat such past decisions as fixed events and we can make claims on the basis of these events.Therefore, Ivan has an active right to be rescued.
But a weak constraint like the Coherence Condition implies that Ivan gains a right by wronging Mel.As I noted earlier, we actually want to say that prior to the incident Ivan does not have a right that Mel bear costs for him.He wrongs her by deliberately imposing rescue costs.There is something troubling about the fact that the Coherence Condition allows persons to gain a right to be rescued against those whom they have wronged.In Manipulation, the right to be rescued is intrinsically bound up with a wronging.Once we recognize how the right to be rescued comes into existence in this case, it becomes harder to maintain that persons have claims against someone in virtue of an act that wrongs them.Manipulation brings out what I take to be the main problem with accepting the Coherence Condition.Accepting such a weak constraint on the activation of the right to be rescued does not preclude that a person can arbitrarily change the normative situation to their own advantage and someone else's disadvantage.It even allows that persons can gain rights against those they wrong in virtue of wronging them.Manipulation lends intuitive support to the endorsement of a stronger constraint on the activation of the right to be rescued.

The Justification Condition
When the latent right to be rescued is activated, the normative situation changes.Persons in need gain a right and impose a duty on potential rescuers.
The unilateral imposition of duties is deemed problematic in other contexts because it allows persons to exercise arbitrary control over someone else's normative situation.19In order to avoid that the normative situation is under the arbitrary control of the person who gains a right, the activation of the right to be rescued should be constrained by the Justification Condition.To recap, the Justification Condition holds that a person must have a justification for the action that made the empirical premise true.
To further clarify, we can say that an action is justified if it is, based on the evidence available to the agent, the action one has most reason to perform.Evidence-relative justifications strike the right balance between being suitably action-guiding for epistemically constrained agents but still requiring them to exercise suitable care.Fact-relative justifications demand too much of an agent.Agents do not always know the actual facts and can at best act on the evidence available.20Belief-relative justifications, in contrast, demand too little of the agent.I should not simply act on my beliefs but make use of available evidence if it is easy to obtain.The best that agents can do, and the highest standard to which morality can hold them, is to act on the evidence available.
With this clarification of the type of justification out of the way, I now move on to explain why it would be problematic to allow agents to arbitrarily change the normative situation to their own advantage and someone else's disadvantage.

4.1
Control Over the Normative Situation Rights regulate how persons relate to each other and how freedom is distributed between them.21To have a right constitutes a limitation of freedom for those who bear the correlative duty.One of the core commitments of liberal morality is that everyone enjoys the largest possible realm of freedom compatible with an equally extensive realm of freedom for everyone else.People do not have discretion to expand their own realm of freedom through the unilateral creation or activation of rights if this would limit someone else's freedom and thereby distort the equal distribution of freedom.Liberal morality cannot allow persons to have such authority over the normative situation between themselves and others.
Note that it is the expansion of one's own freedom to someone's disadvantage which is at odds with equality.We do, for example, accept that persons can unilaterally change the normative situation by promise and consent.Even though the consenting or promising person can arbitrarily and unilaterally control the normative situation between herself and another person, such a change is rather unproblematic.The person releases another from a duty they previously had or takes on a duty herself.It is within every person's power to limit their own freedom to the advantage of someone else.22 In some cases, we even accept that a person can limit another person's freedom through the imposition of duties.Aggressors, for example, limit the freedom of rescuers by imposing on them duties to assist the victim.Persons might also impose non-directed duties on others or create new reasons for action.An oil company manager's decision to drill in a valuable ecosystem produces decisive reason for conservationists to restore the damaged area.Although the aggressor and manager create new duties and thereby limit others' freedom, we tend to accept such changes in the normative situation.
However, in these cases the normative situation between the imposing and imposed-upon person does not change.The aggressor and the oil company manager do not gain rights against rescuers and conservationists.They do not expand their own moral freedom by imposing those duties.Furthermore, they do not distort the equal distribution of freedoms.After all, both the oil manager and the aggressor themselves incur rescue or restorative duties as a consequence of their actions.They will not enjoy greater freedom than those upon whom they imposed a duty.
To gain a right is to gain a range of claims and privileges attendant to the right.Right-holders may enforce their right and they can claim compensation or an apology for rights infringements.They may resent the infringement and forgive those who wronged them if they so choose.The right-holder can control how another person should act towards her.Because of these changes in the normative situation, the creation or activation of a right arguably constitutes a more significant limitation to someone else's freedom than mere de facto control over their freedom.A duty-imposer is not merely restricting a person's freedom but also changes what the affected person may permissibly do in response to the restriction.To see this, compare the situation of Nina and Tina.Nina has a jealous and controlling husband who under threat of force orders her to stay at home and be at his service.This arbitrary de facto restriction of Nina's freedom constitutes a serious affront.But Nina has recourse to moral complaint and redress mechanisms.She is permitted to resist his orders and his force.Now imagine a different moral system in which husbands have the moral power to impose duties on their wives.Tina's husband orders her to stay at home and be at his service.Thereby, he not only restricts Tina's freedom but also makes it impermissible for her to resist him.He can enforce her duties towards him.Tina is not permitted to complain, resist, or demand redress.Her husband determines what is right and wrong for his wife to do.Tina is at the mercy of her husband in a way that Nina is not since Nina is morally permitted to resist his control.
The arbitrary creation of rights and imposition of correlative duties thus constitutes a serious challenge to the moral equality of people.Jeremy Waldron goes as far as to describe such duty-imposing powers as "so unlike any other ethical idea that it cannot simply be regarded as an intuitive or self-evident truth [ … ] On the face of it, it seems unfamiliar and repugnant."23A morality that is committed to the fundamental moral equality of persons cannot allow that persons have such control over the normative situation between themselves and others.
One can tell from a range of debates within moral and political philosophy that this idea is widely accepted.Debates about the original acquisition of property and legitimacy of political authority are a case in point.Original appropriation and the power to impose duties on citizens are deemed problematic precisely because they allow persons to unilaterally and arbitrarily extend their own freedom and impose duties on others.24Another example is that of duties to reciprocate a benefit.Again, such duties are regarded with skepticism because they could be imposed unilaterally by the person who stands to gain a right.25 Rights activation and rescue duty imposition in cases like Manipulation seem to be similarly problematic.Ivan deliberately gets into peril in order to change the relationship between himself and Mel.If this gave him a right, he would gain control over the normative situation between himself and Mel.He would expand his own realm of freedom at Mel's expense.Ivan could make it the case that Mel owes him a duty and he could enforce that duty as well as any eventual claims to compensation.About such rescue cases, Jeremy Waldron notes that "one feels very queasy about obligations of this sort; one  I do not want to deny that there could be cases in which a person can unilaterally change the normative situation between herself and others to her own advantage and someone's disadvantage.28Kimberley Brownlee, for example, argues convincingly that one can sometimes gain new rights through wrongdoing.Such rights are grounded in the fact that the wrongdoer's illegitimate expectations turn into legitimate expectations after a while, in the fact that the wrongdoer has made great personal investments or in the fact that third parties have strong interests in the wrongdoer having the right.29 These cases are in conflict with the liberal core commitment according to which a person cannot expand her realm of freedom unilaterally at the expense of others.As Brownlee shows, there is sometimes reason to depart form the liberal default.However, none of the reasons she proposes are relevant in rescue cases like Manipulation.Presumably, Ivan's right to be rescued cannot be grounded in his expectations or investments, neither can his right be grounded in another person's interest in him having a right.Thus, I proceed on the assumption that Ivan does not unilaterally change the normative situation between himself and Mel.If there is reason to depart from the liberal default in Manipulation, the burden of proof falls on those who think that we should make an exception here and grant Ivan a right to be rescued.
This still leaves us with the question as to when the activation of the right to be rescued does not constitute a problematic distortion in the distribution of freedom.Clearly, we want to say that in cases like Unfortunate, persons actually do gain rights to be rescued even if this is to the disadvantage of the rescuer.I propose that the activation of the right to be rescued is unproblematic if this change in the normative situation is not under the arbitrary control of the person who gains the right.Since persons do not get to expand their own realm of freedom, the normative situation should be isolated from their arbitrary control.The Justification Condition achieves this end.

4.2
From Direct to Indirect Control Some might say that I have overlooked a crucial difference between the right to be rescued and other problematic instances of rights creation and duty imposition.In fact, so the objection, changes in the normative situation that arise as a consequence of the activation of the right to be rescued are already sufficiently isolated from the arbitrary control of a person.Being in need is an independent ground for Ivan's right to be rescued.All Ivan does is change certain empirical facts that ground his right to be rescued.In contrast, Tina's husband directly imposes a new duty on Tina by his mere say-so.30There is no change in non-normative facts that could independently ground his wife's duty to be at his service.In Ivan's case, the change in the normative situation rests on independent grounds.It is not subject to his arbitrary control.Hence, the activation of the right to be rescued is not problematic for the reasons identified above.
This objection goes back to Bas van der Vossen who argues that activating a duty by changing empirical facts is not morally objectionable in the same way as creating new duties.31If duties are conditional on empirical facts which are independent grounds for the duty and a person makes true these empirical facts, they are not writing new moral laws or assume legislative authority over another.32Moral equality, in Vossen's view, would be undermined only if persons actually got to make the moral law for others.According to this argument we need not be troubled by people unjustifiably activating the right to be rescued.A person who is in need of rescue merely brings about the independent grounds for the right; she does not write new moral laws.
I accept that need constitutes a strong independent ground for the activation of a right to be rescued.But the question is whether it is also a sufficient ground.It would still be at odds with their moral equality if persons could unilaterally expand their realm of freedom at the expense of someone else.Writing new moral laws is one way to expand one's freedom.But unless the activation of conditional rights is suitably constrained, one could also extend one's freedom through the manipulation of empirical facts.
This is what happens in Manipulation.Ivan deliberately brings about the independent grounds that activate his right against Mel.The change in the normative situation is ultimately still under his arbitrary control.The presence  or absence of independent grounds does not reliably separate the problematic from the non-problematic cases.Bringing about the independent grounds of a conditional right is just a more indirect way of exercising control over the normative situation.But indirect control can be just as arbitrary as direct control.Take a case of contrived self-defense as an example.Ordinarily, a person is permitted to use force in order to avert a threat of unjust harm.If an aggressor threatens to punch another for no good reason, the victim may avert his threat by kicking him hard in the shin.However, the situation is different if one deliberately changes empirical facts in order to obtain a justification for harming someone.Imagine that Paul wants to hurt his colleague but does not want to be held responsible for doing so.He slips an aggression-inducing pill into his colleague's coffee.The colleague starts lashing out at Paul who then kicks his colleague in the shin claiming it is self-defense.Paul brings about the independent grounds for the right to self-defense.He would not gain the right by mere say-so.Nonetheless, this contrived change in the normative situation seems problematic and one is less inclined to grant Paul a right to self-defense than the innocent victim of the aggressor.33 If we want the normative situation to be isolated from the arbitrary control of those who stand to gain from a change, then we cannot stop at the last point in the chain leading to the change.We have to ask whether the change in the normative situation rests on independent grounds all the way down.

From Deliberate Acts to Unjustified Acts34
The activation of the right to be rescued is most clearly problematic when the person deliberately made the empirical premise true with the intention to gain rights against another person.In their discussion of problematic cases of duty-imposition, Hugh Breakey and Jeremy Waldron focus on deliberate changes to the normative situation.For them, it would be objectionable if persons could deliberately create rights for themselves and impose duties on others.35To many, a case like Manipulation might seem far-fetched and we should expect such cases to be rare.Presumably, few persons have the imposition of duties as the aim of their action.Thus, if only the deliberate imposition of rescue duties is problematic, we should conclude that, except for a few odd cases, all persons in need activate their right to be rescued.However, the activation of the right to be rescued is problematic not if people deliberately bring about a situation in which they need rescuing but rather if they do so without justification.We need this stricter condition in order to properly isolate the normative situation from arbitrary control.
Consider a further variation of our bridge case.

Careless
Eric is approaching the bridge over the gorge by which Mel is picking flowers.He notices a sign by the bridge which warns in bold letters "Warning!Risk of Accident!Read this before crossing the bridge."The sign gives details about which plank is rotten and should be avoided.Eric ignores the sign out of laziness and promptly steps on the rotten plank.
Eric fails to exercise the care that can be expected of a reasonably prudent person in the circumstances.In contrast to Ivan, Eric does not intend to oblige Mel to help him.But he accepts a change in the normative situation as a consequence of his actions.In a context in which a person's need ordinarily gives rise to rescue duties and in which people can reliably expect to be assisted, Eric's behavior shows disregard for the potential rescuer.36He prioritizes his own convenience over the rescuer's freedom from rescue burdens.Granting Eric a right to be rescued would make the normative situation subject to his arbitrary control.
A person can exercise arbitrary control over another even without intending such control.Here is an example: In order to have an abundant supply of water for my flowers, I build a dam and collect more than my fair share of water from a stream that is running through my garden.I waste no thought for the people living further down the stream who now lack water for their own flowers.The fact that this consequence was an unintended side-effect of my action does neither mean that I do not exercise control over their situation nor that such control is any less objectionable.
If we want to isolate the normative situation from the arbitrary influence of individuals, the activation of the right to be rescued has to be limited to those instances in which the person acts with justification.To act with justification is to act for non-arbitrary reasons.At the very least, this means that a person's action is permissible, that is, not wrong, and that there is a positive moral reason for the action.A justified action is an optimal action or, alternatively, a form of (weak) obligation.37On either interpretation, to say that a person acts with justification is to say that she can offer reason that speaks in favor of that action and that she was neither required to do nor should have done something different in the situation.To anyone who is negatively affected by her actions, the person can say: "there was no other action that I had more reason to perform."38Return to Unfortunate.In order to determine whether Don activates his right to be rescued, we have to ask about his reasons for crossing the bridge.He might be on his way home after a long work day.His children are waiting for him to read a bedtime story.Don knows that there is a longer and safer way home but he considers the risk of accident on the bridge across the gorge to be low.Or take another example: Don is on the run from a hitman who wants to kill him.He knows that if he crosses the bridge, he will break through the plank but will be saved by Mel and the hitman will not get to him.If he takes the long way, his chances of escape are less certain.
In both cases, Don is, based on his evidence, justified at T1 in taking the short way.He has a positive moral reason for crossing the bridge and there is no other action which he has more reason to choose.He activates his right to be rescued.Since he has a justification for the action that brought about the change in the normative situation, the change is not arbitrary but rests on independent moral grounds all the way down.Some clarification is needed, for it might look at first glance as if the normative situation does not change from T1 to T2.One might think that since Don has a justification for crossing the bridge, then Mel does not, at T1, have a right against the costs he imposes.That is not the case.An action can be all things considered justified even though the person who is negatively affected by the action has a right not to bear the negative consequences.While justifications are evidence-relative, rights are fact-relative.39If we assume that there is a fact to the matter of what will happen to Don when he rushes over the bridge back home to his children, Mel has a right against Don crossing the bridge.At T1 she has a right against him since in light of the rather small benefit -his children get a bedtime story -the duty he will impose is too demanding.But still, Don has an evidence-relative justification for crossing the bridge because the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs.Therefore, he activates his right at T2 when he gets into trouble.
In the case of Don fleeing from the hitman, the normative situation does indeed not change when he breaks through the plank.It changed at an earlier point, when he ran from the hitman and saw the bridge as an escape route.But here it is the hitman, not Don, who arbitrarily changes the facts that justify Don crossing the bridge.This shows that, in some cases, we simply have to go further back in the chain of events leading up to the change in the normative situation and we should ask whether the person who gains a right had arbitrary control over the facts that led to the change.40The Justification Condition, thus, ensures that the normative situation is isolated all the way down from the arbitrary control of the person who stands to activate her right.

Addressing Concerns41
The Justification Condition makes the right to be rescued significantly less inclusive than it would be if subject to the Coherence Condition.Some might be concerned that my account is too demanding and will not grant an active right to be rescued in some hard cases in which we intuitively think that the person in need should have such a right.Even if one does not want to fall back on Quong's very inclusive condition, one might want to endorse an intermediary position.For example, one might want to make the activation of the right to be rescued dependent on the rescuee having an excuse rather than a justification for the action that caused her peril.42I argue that we do not need to abandon the Justification Condition in favor of a more inclusive account.
Although many of our mundane activities bear a risk of imposing rescue costs, we should not worry that we will fail to activate our right to rescue when pursuing those activities brings about a situation in which we need help.Many of these activities, for example cycling or driving cars, will be justified precisely because there is merely a risk of imposing rescue costs.Furthermore, the potential rescue costs are capped since rescue duties may not be too demanding for 40 Of course, this raises the question of how far back in the chain one should go.Plausibly, there will be a point which is too far removed from the normative change to be of relevance.41 This section has greatly benefited from the help of an anonymous reviewer who not only suggested further cases to consider but also suggested that by stressing the evidencerelative nature of justification I might mitigate some of the worries about the Justification Condition.42 A reviewer suggested this alternative condition.
activating the right to be rescued Journal of Moral Philosophy (2021) 1-24 | 10.1163/17455243-20213593 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2023 12:00:41AM via free access the rescuer.If the risks of imposing these rescue costs are small, we are justified in taking these risks even for small benefits and we will activate our right to be rescued if we need help.43However, there are many cases in which we mistakenly think that we have a justification for our actions.Making a mistake about facts is common in our daily decision-making.It would be tragic if one did not have a right to be rescued simply for making a mistake.Consider this case: The Mountain-climber On the information board of a popular mountain climbing area, the Mountain-climber reads that this area is unsuitable for inexperienced climbers.Having successfully completed the beginners' course, the Mountain-climber thinks that she is experienced.On her climb she gets into a perilous situation and needs help.
As a matter of fact, Mountain-climber is inexperienced.Had she checked the statutes of the local mountain-climbing club, she could have learnt that one has to complete at least an advanced course in order to count as experienced.But Mountain-climber did not know about the statutes.Since the Justification Condition requires only an evidence-relative justification, we do not need to default to a more inclusive condition in order to explain why Mountainclimber activates her right to be rescued.On the basis of her evidence -she has had some training after all -Mountain-climber considers her climb to be justified.
Demanding only an evidence-relative justification could also help with another case that at first glance appears problematic for the Justification Condition.

The Child
A young child wants to run across the bridge over the gorge in order to get to his mother on the other side.The mother loudly warns the child but the child disregards her warning and breaks through the rotten plank.
What can we say about persons who are in need of help because, like the child, they lack understanding of their actions?People who due to their age or lack of mental ability are ordinarily excused from responsibility are therefore not penalized for the consequences of their actions.44In this case, making the activation of the right to be rescued conditional on the rescuee having an excuse rather than justification seems attractive.
But there is no reason to think that children could not avail themselves of an evidence-relative justification for their actions.Asked why she did not listen to her mother, the child might say that the bridge looked fine to her and she wanted to get quickly to her mother.From the child's perspective, crossing the bridge was the action she had most reason to perform.The relevant question is whether we could have expected the child to take the mother's warning into account.If a child of her age lacks the understanding to judge whose evidence is more reliable, we can grant the child an evidence-relative justification and so a right to be rescued should she come into a situation of need.
Consider a final case that challenges the Justification Condition.

The Smoker
Although she knew that smoking increases the risk of developing lung cancer, Smoker has been smoking for the largest part of her life.She does indeed develop lung cancer and cannot afford treatment.Doctor can save her and pay the expensive hospital treatment.
Smoker knows that smokers have a higher risk of developing lung cancer and that lung cancer treatment is expensive.Despite awareness of the risks and potential rescue costs, Smoker engages in an action whose benefits do not justify the risk of high rescue costs.However, denying Smoker a right to be rescued seems unappealingly harsh.About such cases, I want to say the following: potential rescuers should give the person in need the benefit of the doubt if they are uncertain as to whether the need for rescue is a consequence of an unjustified action.There are two sources of uncertainty.One source of uncertainty is whether the agent had a justification for her action.Another source of uncertainty is whether the (unjustified) action did in fact lead to a person being in need.In our case, we know that Smoker is not justified to smoke.However, Doctor cannot be certain that it was the smoking that caused the lung cancer.Even if Smoker had not smoked, there was a risk, albeit much smaller, that she might develop lung 44 Among those who can claim an excuse for having acted wrongly are also people who were not in control of their bodies or people who acted under duress.My account does not deny either of those groups of people a right to be rescued.Neither of them arbitrarily controls the normative situation.The situation is controlled by forces beyond their control.
activating the right to be rescued Alternatively, one might argue that Doctor has a duty of charity.The duty of charity is an imperfect duty which allows for some discretion on the part of the duty-bearer.The beneficiary of the duty does not have a correlative right.Over recent years, the duty of charity has lost much of its prominence precisely because it does not equip the needy with enforceable claims over those in a position to help.But cases like Manipulation and Careless show that there might be a role left for charity to play.Charity seems particularly appropriate in cases in which the beneficiaries of charity do not have a claim to assistance.
It is true that both these proposals do not entirely isolate the normative situation from Smoker's arbitrary influence.After all, Smoker creates new moral reasons upon which Doctor should act.However, Smoker does not control what Doctor owes her.For example, she could not rightfully force Doctor to save her and she may not claim compensation.The change in the normative situation does not distort the distribution of freedom to her advantage.
We can thus conclude that the Justification Condition allows the activation of the right to be rescued more often than one might initially think and even if it denies the activation of the right, there is still reason to assist those who lack the right.

5
Why the Necessity Condition Cannot be Grounded on the Right to be Rescued Unless we understand the conditions under which a person gains a right to be rescued, we cannot be certain that this right can indeed play the role it is assigned in moral arguments.I argued that the activation of the right to be rescued is subject to the Justification Condition being met.One implication of accepting my argument is that, contrary to what Jonathan Quong proposes, the right to be rescued cannot be invoked as a ground for the necessity condition on defensive harming.The necessity condition is a highly intuitive constraint on the use of defensive force.A person is liable to defensive harm, that is, has forfeited at least some of her rights not to be harmed, if she threatens to harm an innocent person and thereby treats that person as if she did not have rights against that harm.45Aggressors forfeit rights only against proportionate and necessary defensive harm.Consider this case: Two Options Albert and Betty are at a party.Albert has initiated a wrongful attack on Betty.Betty has only two options, both of which will avert a wrongful assault by Albert: (i) leave the party and go home, or (ii) use serious defensive force against Albert.46Most people agree that Betty ought to choose option (i) and go home.This intuition is captured by the necessity condition.Quong does not merely argue that this is what Betty ought to do all things considered.He makes the stronger claim that Albert has a right that Betty chooses option (i).Quong formulates his rights-based necessity condition as follows: rescue: The imposition of defensive harm H, on attacker A is necessary to avert unjust threat T, iff the imposition of H is consistent with the duty of rescue that each person, including the defensive agent, owes to A.47 Leaving the party is a small cost but it saves Albert from the serious harm that Betty would otherwise have to inflict in order to avert the threat.Therefore, Albert has a right that Betty chooses (i).The Coherence Condition is met in this case.Albert does not deny his own agency when demanding to be saved from serious harm.Now assume that Betty can avert the threat only by either (ii) inflicting serious harm on Albert or (iii) jumping out of the window and thereby breaking her legs and arms.Albert has no right to be rescued in this case because the correlative duty would be too demanding for Betty.Inflicting serious defensive harm is necessary in order to avert the threat.
On my account, Albert does not activate his right to be rescued because he lacks a justification for his action.If we accept the Justification Condition, the necessity condition cannot rest on the right to be rescued.But this does not mean that we have to give up on the necessity condition.I proposed two possible pro tanto reasons for rescuing those without a right to be rescued which could ground the necessity condition on permissible defensive harming.
Denying that Albert has a right to be rescued could lead us back to the well-established consequentialist account of the necessity condition.On this view, the necessity condition is "a principle that weighs all the harms that would be imposed by a defensive act against the benefits of averting the attacker's threat, and then compares this moral weighting with other options available to the defensive person to determine whether a given use of defensive force is indeed necessary."48Of course, this also leads back to the problems that Quong identified with the account.His main objections against resting the necessity condition on consequentialist considerations come to the fore in the following case.

Too Many Bystanders
Albert is threatening to wrongfully assault you.You have two options: (i) submit, and allow him to wrongfully assault you, or (ii) roll a large boulder towards Albert that will cause injuries (similar to those he would cause you) and prevent harming you, but the boulder will also kill seven innocent bystanders nearby.49 On the consequentialist necessity condition, harming Albert is unnecessary because you can prevent greater harm by letting yourself be harmed.Quong notes two interrelated problems that the consequentialist grounding of the necessity condition encounters in Too Many Bystanders.First, if one endorses both the consequentialist necessity condition and internalism about liability,50 one would have to conclude that Albert gains a right against the imposition of defensive force because of the harm that others would suffer.Second, the necessity condition is no longer distinguishable from the wide proportionality constraint on defensive harm.51Whereas narrow proportionality weighs the 48   harms averted against the harms inflicted on the liable person, wide proportionality considers whether the harm averted is proportionate to the harm that non-liable bystanders would suffer.The necessity condition seems superfluous as an additional constraint on permissible defensive harming.Thus, it might be preferable to ground the necessity condition on a duty of charity.We might describe the resulting necessity condition as follows: charity: The imposition of defensive harm H, on attacker A is necessary to avert unjust threat T, iff the imposition of H is consistent with the duty of charity that each person, including the defensive agent, has to fulfill.
The duty in charity is not owed to the attacker.Unlike the duty to rescue, the duty of charity is a nondirectional duty.No one can claim the discharge of the duty as her due.The duty specifies what the rescuer should do but not what she owes to the rescuee.Plausibly, the duty of charity just like the duty to rescue is subject to a demandingness constraint.We can assume that the duty is equally demanding or somewhat less demanding than the duty to rescue.Thus, in Two Options, Betty should not harm Albert because she has a duty of charity.In Too Many Bystanders, you do not owe a duty of charity to Albert because it is too demanding for you to suffer the harm.We can also explain why you and the bystanders should bear a small cost if this is an alternative to averting Albert's lethal threat with lethal defensive force.You and the bystanders ought to be charitable.
Appeal to a duty of charity might thus be one way to avoid both the problems of Quong's rescue account of necessity and of consequentialist accounts.But charity might face some problems of its own.For example, the fact that the duty of charity is usually understood as an imperfect duty whose performance is somewhat discretionary might give the persons an undesirable leeway to refrain from sparing the aggressor.However, we can note that there are further possible routes towards the necessity condition that are worth exploring.

Conclusion
It is important to understand under what conditions the right to be rescued is activated because this right is often taken as the starting point in a range of ethical discussions.I have argued that unless the activation of the right to be rescued is constrained by the Justification Condition, a person could arbitrarily control the normative situation between herself and others.Such control over others is incompatible with the moral equality of persons.Requiring a justification for the action that led persons into a predicament forestalls that the change in the normative situation is under the arbitrary control of the person who stands to gain the right.My argument shows that the right to be rescued cannot be a ground for the necessity constraint on permissible defensive harming.Aggressors, by definition, lack a justification for their actions.Therefore, they do not activate their right to be rescued.
Journal of Moral Philosophy (2021) 1-24 | 10.1163/17455243-20213593 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2023 12:00:41AM via free access cancer.In this case, she would have had a right to be rescued since she did not arbitrarily change the normative situation between herself and Doctor.Since Doctor cannot know if the unjustified action caused Smoker's need or if she would have developed cancer anyway, she cannot be certain that Smoker in fact lacks a right to be rescued.It is better for Doctor to err on the side of caution and act as if Smoker has a right to be rescued.Although this is costly for Doctor, she can thereby make sure not to violate Smoker's right to be rescued.Because of the ubiquitous uncertainty in real life, rescuers often have reason to treat those in need as if they have rights to be rescued.But let's assume that it is possible for Doctor to determine that Smoker would not have developed cancer had she not smoked.She knows that Smoker does not have a right to be rescued.Still, Doctor has reason to save her.These reasons might be consequentialist.Smoker's life is a valuable good.Saving her prevents the loss of this valuable good at a reasonable cost to Doctor.Saving her produces a net benefit.Even though Doctor does not owe Smoker a duty she ought, all things considered, rescue her.
Quong, 124.49Quong, 128.50Internalism is the view that a person cannot be liable to the imposition of unnecessary defensive harm, that is, a person always retains rights against unnecessary defensive harm.51 Quong, The Morality of Defensive Force, 129.