David Friedman addressing an instance of this issue:
One puzzling feature of rights as we observe them is the degree to which the same conclusions seem to follow from very different assumptions. Thus roughly similar structures of rights can be and are deduced by libertarian philosophers trying to show what set of natural rights is just and by economists trying to show what set of legal rules would be efficient. And the structures of rights that they deduce seem similar to those observed in human behavior and embodied in the common law. In Part III of this essay I will try to suggest at least partial explanations for this triple coincidence—the apparent similarity between what is, what is just, and what is efficient.”
In his dissertation near the end Josh Greene argues that in everyday cases utilitarianism’s conflict with other moral accounts (like deontology) is less than one might have guessed because large harms or forgone benefits elicit moral campaigning that change moral intuitions (e.g. Mothers Against Drunk Driving making drunk driving seem intuitively bad even when no one is harmed in a particular case).
The opposite seems to happen as well—namely denying that something really is a harm because it is caused by a just policy, or happens to an unpopular group.
David Friedman addressing an instance of this issue:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Property/Property.html
In his dissertation near the end Josh Greene argues that in everyday cases utilitarianism’s conflict with other moral accounts (like deontology) is less than one might have guessed because large harms or forgone benefits elicit moral campaigning that change moral intuitions (e.g. Mothers Against Drunk Driving making drunk driving seem intuitively bad even when no one is harmed in a particular case).
The opposite seems to happen as well—namely denying that something really is a harm because it is caused by a just policy, or happens to an unpopular group.
What is remarkable about this, of course, is the recognition of the need to address it.