Abstract

Traditional moral frameworks conflate subjective justification with objective impact, allowing harmful effects to be “washed away” by good intentions or beneficial outcomes. This paper introduces Dual-Ledger Transactionalism (DLT), a diagnostic framework that maintains separate ledgers for objective effects (beneficial/harmful impacts on all parties) and subjective verdicts (moral justifications). Drawing on concepts from W.D. Ross’s prima facie duties and Bernard Williams’s moral remainders, DLT advances a novel principle: harmful effects persist as negative residuals that generate reciprocal effects (structural blowback), regardless of moral justification. Critically, DLT also recognizes that beneficial effects persist as enduring structural facts alongside negative residuals, creating permanent structural changes to reality. Unlike utilitarianism, which permits net calculations to erase negatives, DLT conserves both beneficial and harmful effects on separate ledgers, explaining persistent guilt after “necessary evils” while also acknowledging lasting positive impact. Through analysis of cases like Ursula K. Le Guin’s Omelas and the “Nazi at the door” dilemma, this paper demonstrates how DLT resolves explanatory gaps in existing moral theory while offering practical guidance: minimize negative residuals and their reciprocal effects within one’s epistemic horizon.