"Mind Your Own Business!" Relationships and Standing to Give Reasons

The rebuke “mind your own business!” is often used to block or deflect what would otherwise be an acceptable intervention by another. It charges that the addressee lacks standing to intercede as they have, a fact which undermines the validity of their intervention and may also open them up to criticism. For example, theorists have argued that blame, which often functions as a form of influence via the provision of (moral) reasons, is inappropriate if the matter is not the blamer’s business. Perhaps surprisingly, some theorists have also argued that even addressing reasons in the form of advice-giving, requesting, and the like, is subject to this so-called business condition. According to a prominent view, in order to meet the business condition on standing, one must have a stake in the matter or stand in the right kind of relationship to the one blamed or influenced. However, what constitutes such a stake, or how the right kind of relationship makes it your business to intercede, is less than clear. Although being directly harmed by another’s action is sufficient to ground a stake the matter, it is not necessary. For instance, it may be my business, in the relevant sense, to recommend my favorite dish to a fellow diner or advise a friend on a matter of romance. However, on the view I will defend, it is not my business to request that the diner try the dish or demand that my friend follow my romantic advice. Although my relationship to the influencee may make some matter my business, it is not my business to influence them in any way I wish. In this paper I offer a novel articulation of the business condition which illuminates how interpersonal relationships both ground a stake in influencing others on certain matters and affect the appropriateness of influencing in certain ways.
Emma Ruth Duncan completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at UC San Diego, where her doctoral research focused on how relationships shape the norms of interpersonal influence. She received an M.A. in Philosophy from Northern Illinois University and B.A. degrees in Philosophy and Graphic Design from Portland State University. Emma's research interests include the normative dimensions of trust, the ethics of influence in public health initiatives, and the socio-affective structure of human-AI relationships. She is currently working on two projects: (i) understanding and addressing distrust as a driver of vaccine hesitancy and (ii) developing an ethical framework for assessing the integration of conversational AI into therapeutic relationships, particularly in mental healthcare contexts. Emma is an Interdisciplinary Ethics Fellow in partnership with the Stanford d.school.