One of the reasons why most of us feel puzzled about the problem of abortion is that we want, and do not want, to allow to the unborn child the rights that belong to adults and children. When we think of a baby about to be born it seems absurd to think that the next few minutes or even hours could make so radical a difference to its status; yet as we go back in the life of the fetus we (...) are more and more reluctant to say that this is a human being and must be treated as such. No doubt this is the deepest source of our dilemma, but it is not the only one. For we are also confused about the general question of what we may and may not do where the interests of human beings conflict. We have strong intuitions about certain cases; saying, for instance, that it is all right to raise the level of education in our country, though statistics allow us to predict that a rise in the suicide rate will follow, while it is not all right to kill the feeble-minded to aid cancer research. It is not easy, however, to see the principles involved, and one way of throwing light on the abortion issue will be by setting up parallels involving adults or children once born. So we will be able to isolate the “equal rights” issue and should be able to make some advance... (shrink)

The principle of the double effect is one of the most practical in the study of moral theology. As a principle it is important not so much in purely theoretical matters as in the application of theory to practical cases. It is especially necessary in the subject matter of scandal, material cooperation, illicit pleasure and of injury done to oneself or to another. Although it is a fundamental principle, it is far from a simple one; and moralists readily admit its (...) complexity. Moreover, it is not an inflexible rule or mathematical formula, but rather an efficient guide to prudent moral judgment in solving the more difficult cases. (shrink)

Double-effect reasoning (DER) is attributed to Aquinas "tout court". Aquinas's account, however, differs from contemporary DER insofar as Thomas considers the ethical status of "risking" an assailant's life while contemporary accounts focus on actions causing harm inevitably. Since one cannot claim to risk the inevitable, and since there is a significant difference between risking harm and causing harm inevitably. Thomas's account does not extend to cases of inevitable harm. Thus, the received understanding of Aquinas's account is flawed and leads to (...) untenable attributions of the direction of intention to Aquinas and to misunderstandings of contemporary DER. (shrink)

Thomas has been criticized by Alan Donagan (and others) for his use of the principle of double effect (PDE) in justifying defensive homicide. Donagan claims that Thomas uses the PDE in conjunction with a basic moral principle that prohibits us from harming human life. He sees Thomas as using the PDE to reconcile this principle with the traditional Christian doctrine of justifiable homicide in self-defense. Defenders are prohibited from killing intentionally by the basic principle, but the PDE permits them to (...) kill unintentionally. However, according to Donagan, human life is not, as such, absolutely inviolable. When the inviolability of human life is rejected, the PDE becomes irrelevant to the justification of killing. I claim that Donagan misunderstands Thomas's use of the PDE. I then present what I believe to be a radical reinterpretation of what Thomas is trying to do with the PDE. First, Thomas does not regard human life to be inviolable. Only the common good and each person's moral or spiritual good are inviolable, and Thomas does not think that these goods are necessarily harmed by homicide. Indeed, both the common good and the moral good of the victim can be benefited when the victim is a sinner (e.g., an unjust attacker). So it is not the status of the attacker's life vis-à-vis Thomas's basic principle that prohibits a defender from killing intentionally. Thus, the PDE is not meant to permit indirect harm to goods that, because of their moral value, we may never harm directly. Rather, Thomas uses the PDE because he thinks that acting from a certain attitude is wrong even when the consequences of the action are good for the moral values it affects. Thomas believes that persons lacking authorization to kill for the state are capable of killing with a proper attitude toward their victim only if they kill unintentionally. Only publicly authorized persons are capable of killing intentionally from a proper attitude. This is because they have a duty to enforce the law and are therefore capable of killing from (only) felt obligation. Thus, Thomas permits public officials to kill (some sinners) intentionally, something he could not do if he held life itself to be inviolable. I agree with Donagan that Thomas does misuse the PDE in relation to (most kinds of) personal self-defense. But I argue that this does not entail that the PDE is irrelevant to the justification of other kinds of homicide. As Thomas intends it, the PDE may still be relevant to the justification of some kinds of defensive homicide, and maybe (indirectly) to the justification of killing in war. I argue that its relevance to war is not in justifying military actions that kill innocent noncombatants, but rather in determining who is (and is not) justified in undertaking military actions in the first place by virtue of their capacity to do so with proper intention and motivation. (shrink)

Paul Ramsey has argued that the rule of double effect is morally significant because of the existence of indeterminate choices between incommensurable values. I interpret his argument as the following disjunctive syllogism. There are two sorts of principles we can appeal to in dealing with indeterminate choices: the rule of double effect and a commensurate reason principle. The second does not work, so we are left with the first. I respond, first, that this argument commits the fallacy of bifurcation and (...) second, that for all Ramsey has shown, and surprisingly, a commensurate reason principle can deal with indeterminate choices. (shrink)

The Doctrine of the Double Effect is generally associated with Catholic moral theology, and is rarely more than touched on by philosophers. And when philosophers do discuss it, little effort is made to understand it or to take seriously the theological literature. ;As I understand the Doctrine, its essence is contained in the Will Principle, according to which the rightness of an action having some evil effects is determined, at least in part, by the relation between the evil effects and (...) the agent's will. Traditional formulations of the Doctrine can be seen as efforts to answer the question: which relations between evil and the agent's will are morally significant, and how? Briefly, the Doctrine answers this question as follows. There are two morally significant relations between evil and the agent's will, one a closer relation, which can be called "direct willing," and one a more distant relation, which can be called "indirect willing." One directly wills evil when and only when one wills it as end or as means, and one indirectly wills evil when and only when one wills it as side effect. It is never permissible to directly will evil, but it is permissible to indirectly will evil if and only if there is what is usually called "proportionate reason," which is generally taken to involve a teleological weighing of goods and evils. ;Ultimately, I argue that the Doctrine is mistaken. My attack has two parts. First, I construct a variety of counterexamples to the claim that the direct/indirect distinction is morally significant, and then I argue that the Doctrine's fundamental claim embodied in the Will Principle, that the rightness of an action is determined by the relation between the evil produced by the action and the agent's will, is mistaken. Such relations have moral significance, but they are relevant not to the rightness of actions, but rather to the goodness of agents and actions. The distinction between the rightness-evaluation of acts and the goodness-evaluation of acts and agents is, I think, an important one, and proponents of the Doctrine fail to keep it straight. (shrink)