Positive and Negative Duties

The heat wave neighbor case

This investigation asks whether people merely have duties not to harm others or also have duties to help when a vulnerable person faces severe danger and assistance would require a limited sacrifice.

Level	Estimated time	Textbook connection
Intermediate	60 to 80 minutes	Chapter 4 pp. 75 to 77 and Chapter 5 pp. 108 to 146

Critical Moral Reasoning skills used facts and judgments, positive and negative duties, stakeholders, moral frameworks, conflict resolution, transfer

Connection to the textbook This public module demonstrates one application of the method developed in Critical Moral Reasoning. The textbook provides the fuller explanations of the concepts and ethical frameworks used here.

Inquiry Focus

When does another person’s urgent need create a moral duty to act

Learning Objectives

Distinguish negative duties from positive duties.
Identify the facts needed to establish whether assistance was reasonably possible.
Analyze stakeholders, vulnerability, costs, benefits, and role-based responsibilities.
Apply multiple ethical frameworks without assuming they reach the same conclusion.
Defend a threshold for when assistance becomes morally required.

Conceptual Starting Point

Negative duties require a person to refrain from an action, such as assault, theft, deception, or intentional harm. Positive duties require action, such as warning someone of danger, providing emergency assistance, or helping a vulnerable person obtain safety. Ethical disagreement often concerns when need, knowledge, capacity, relationship, or low cost turns optional aid into duty (Holcombe, 2025, pp. 75 to 77).

Case Record

In late June 2021, an extreme heat event affected the Pacific Northwest. Portland reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit, and Oregon recorded a sharp increase in heat-related deaths. Older adults, people living alone, and people without effective cooling faced heightened risk (Oregon Health Authority, 2021).

The following scenario is constructed from conditions documented during the heat event. It does not describe an identified victim.

An elderly woman lives alone in an apartment complex. Her neighbors know that she is over seventy-five, has difficulty walking, does not own an air conditioner, and rarely leaves her apartment. Several neighbors have air conditioning, vehicles, and the ability to check on her. No one does. Three days later, she is found dead from heat-related causes.

Initial Position

Did the neighbors fail to perform a genuine moral duty or merely fail to be kind

State your position before applying any ethical theory. Identify one missing fact that could change it.

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Exercise 1 Establish the Facts

What information did the neighbors possess, and how reliable was it?
What actions were reasonably available to them?
What costs or risks would those actions have imposed?
What causal claim can be made about the failure to act, and what remains uncertain?
Did any neighbor have a role or relationship that created a stronger duty than others?

Exercise 2 Duty Analysis

Possible duty	Duty holder	Required action	Basis of duty	Limit or objection
Avoid increasing the danger
Warn or check on the resident
Contact emergency or community services
Offer transportation or cooling

Exercise 3 Stakeholders and Principles

Identify the resident, neighbors, family members, emergency services, building management, and other vulnerable residents. Analyze each party’s power, vulnerability, information, and interests.

Then rank at least four competing principles, including noninterference, beneficence, autonomy, rescue at low cost, fairness in distributing burdens, and special responsibility created by relationship or role.

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Exercise 4 Ethical Frameworks

Framework	Questions for the case
Libertarianism	Did the neighbors violate rights, or would compelled assistance improperly claim their time and property? Does a low-cost emergency create any positive duty?
Rawls Justice as Fairness	What emergency-support rules would people choose without knowing whether they would be healthy, disabled, isolated, or elderly?
Utilitarianism	How do the likely benefits of a check-in compare with the time, risk, and inconvenience imposed on neighbors?
Feminist Ethics of Care	What responsibilities arise from proximity, dependency, attentiveness, and membership in a shared community?
Virtue Ethics	What would compassion, practical wisdom, courage, and generosity require under these facts?

Choose two frameworks that reach different or differently qualified conclusions. Explain the disagreement instead of deciding by majority vote among theories.

Exercise 5 Build a Threshold for Rescue

Complete the rule below and defend each condition.

A person has a positive duty to help when the danger is blank the evidence is blank the person has blank and the expected cost or risk is blank

Test your rule against these variations: the resident refused help the day before; checking requires entering an unsafe building; twenty neighbors know; one neighbor is a nurse; the resident is a stranger across town.

Reasoned Conclusion

Write 400 to 600 words. State whether a positive duty existed, identify who held it, describe the required action, apply two ethical frameworks, answer a serious objection, and state what factual uncertainty limits the conclusion.

Reflection and Transfer

Compare your final position with your initial response. Identify the strongest reason for any change.

Transfer your threshold to one case: a bystander who sees a medical emergency, a roommate who knows someone is in acute psychological danger, a community member who knows an elderly resident lacks food during a disaster, or a neighbor who hears evidence of domestic violence. Explain where the analogy to the heat case breaks.

References

Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford University Press.

Holcombe, M. T. (2025). Critical moral reasoning: An applied empirical ethics approach.

Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state, and utopia. Basic Books.

Oregon Health Authority. (2021). Heat-related deaths during the June 2021 heat wave in Oregon.

Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice (Rev. ed.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1971)

Mark T Holcombe