Abstract
The classical principle of double effect offers permissibility conditions for actions foreseen to lead to evil outcomes. I shall argue that certain kinds of closeness cases, as well as general heuristic considerations about the order of explanation, lead us to replace the intensional concept of intention with the extensional concept of accomplishment in double effect.
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Notes
According to some moral views, the death of an innocent will not count as an evil in this sense when it saves the same individual from grave suffering and according to some other views it will not count as an evil when it is commanded by God.
Cf. Mangan (1949).
Bennett (2001).
Knobe (2003).
Davidson (1963).
But might we not cite a specific Richter rating of the earthquake in a more precise explanation? We can easily imagine saying that the building survived because it was designed for earthquakes rated up to 8.5 on the Richter scale, while the earthquake in question was an 8.3. This is a more difficult case. I am inclined to say the following. That the earthquake was an 8.3 is equivalent to the conjunction of two claims, namely that the earthquake was at most 8.3 and that it was at least 8.3, and only the fact that the earthquake was at most 8.3 belongs in the explanation [here I am mindful of Wesley Salmon’s maxim that “irrelevancies (are) harmless to arguments but fatal to explanations” (Salmon 1990), though I draw a different lesson than he does], the fact that it was at least 8.3 not making a positive contribution to the explanation, though it might provide pragmatically relevant background information. But I do not need to defend this here in order to defend the particular claim that foreseen deaths of the civilians do not enter into the explanation of the strategic bomber’s action. It is also worth noting that one might instead allow that the agent’s foreseeing the deaths enters into the explanation, but does so negatively by being a factor opposed to the explanandum, and not as expressing the agent’ aim.
An anonymous reader has suggested that perhaps being human explains being a mammal and hence this example does not work. But it does not follow from the explanatory claim that an intention to kill this mammal implies an intention to kill a human. Intention cuts more finely than such explanatory connections. Even if the victim’s being a human in fact explains the victim’s being a mammal, Sam might not agree with this metaphysical claim, and Sam’s intentions depend on what Sam thinks is the case. And even if Sam were to learn that this explanatory claim is correct, his learning it might not be motivationally relevant to him, and hence the explanatory claim would not affect his intentions.
Bennett (2001) considers but does not adopt an extensionalizing of intention as one solution to some of the problems of double effect.
For a defense, see Murphy (1997).
The term is of course from Williams (1976).
Bennett (2001).
Even people like Descartes who think it is possible to have a causa sui should not dispute this principle in the cases in which I need it.
The term is from Cavanaugh (2006).
Some might think that it is likely permissible to impose an evil on someone with that person’s consent. Such ethicists will need to modify PDE2 to be a sufficient but not necessary condition for permissibility.
Delaney (2008).
“The idea that one can determine one’s intentions by making such a little speech to oneself is obvious bosh” (Anscombe 2000).
FitzPatrick (2006).
Kamm (2000).
Olson (1997).
There may also be fine-grained evils, such as the fine-grained event of this innocent human dying. But the fine-grained event of the zookeeper dying perhaps won’t be an evil, since it is not an evil that a zookeeper dies but only that an innocent human zookeeper dies.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Neil Delaney, Daniel Hill, Anthony McCarthy, Jonathan Kvanvig, Christopher Tollefsen, Ryan Wasserman, Helen Watt, audiences at Georgetown and Baylor Universities, and anonymous referees for discussions and comments. I especially would like to thank Mark Murphy, as this paper grew out of years of discussions of double effect issues with him.
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Pruss, A.R. The accomplishment of plans: a new version of the principle of double effect. Philos Stud 165, 49–69 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9925-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9925-4