The water is already up to the cavers’ chests and rising fast. If the rescue team doesn’t act quickly, the eight men will be dead in less than half an hour. But what can the rescuers do? There is no way of getting the men out in time, nor of stemming the flow of water. The only option is to divert the flow into the smaller cave nearby. And that’s where the two cavers who got separated from the main party are trapped: perfectly safe and waiting patiently to be brought out. Diverting the flow of water will flood the smaller cave in minutes and the two men inside will drown. So what are the rescuers to do? Sit back and let the eight men die, or save their lives at the cost of their two fellow cavers?
A nasty dilemma and no easy solution. Suppose that there really are only two options: diverting the flow of water, which is a deliberate intervention that causes the death of two people who would otherwise live; and sitting back and doing nothing, which allows eight people to die who could have been saved. Although the latter course is graver in terms of loss of life, many feel that it is worse to act in a way that causes people’s death than to allow them to die through inaction. The supposed moral difference between what you do and what you allow to happen—the so-called act-omission doctrine—predictably divides ethical theorists. Those who insist that the moral worth of an action should be judged purely on its consequences typically reject the doctrine; while it usually commends itself to those philosophers who stress the intrinsic propriety of certain kinds of action and our duty to perform them irrespective of their consequences (see The categorical imperative).
Formulation of the principle that later became known as the doctrine of double effect is generally credited to the 13th-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas. In discussing the moral justification for killing in self-defense, he drew distinctions that are remarkably close to those that appear in modern legal definitions. The classic statement of the doctrine appears in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica:
“Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention … the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in being, as far as possible. And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful.”
Playing God Whatever the strength of our intuitions here, the distinction seems to get shakier the more closely we look at it. Much of its appeal, especially in matters of life and death, plays on our fear that by actively doing something we are “playing God”: deciding who should live and who should die. But in what morally relevant sense is “sitting back and doing nothing” actually doing nothing? It is as much a decision not to act as it is to act, so it appears that in such cases we have no choice but to play God. Would we take a dimmer view of parents who chose to drown their children in the bath or others who decided not to feed them and let them slowly starve to death? Nice distinctions between killing and allowing to die seem grotesque in such cases, and we would be most reluctant to say that the “omission” was in any sense less reprehensible than the “act.”
In morally assessing an action, the agent’s intention is generally held to be crucial. Our actions may be blameworthy even if their bad consequences were unintended (they may show negligence, for example), but the same actions are likely to be judged much more harshly if the consequences were intended. Closely related to the act-omission doctrine, the principle of double effect turns on the idea of separating the consequences of an action that were intended from those that were merely foreseen. An action that has both good and bad results may then be morally justified if it was performed with the intention of bringing about the good results, while the bad results were foreseen but not intended. The principle has been brought to bear in cases like these:
In all these cases the idea of double effect is used to bolster the claim that the actions concerned are morally defensible. The doctrine is often used by thinkers favoring an absolutist or duty-based (deontological) conception of morality in order to explain cases where duties conflict and rights are apparently infringed. The principle stands or falls with the distinction between intention and foresight; whether that distinction can bear the weight that is put upon it has been much debated.
The supposed moral distinction between things done and things allowed to happen is often invoked in ethically sensitive medical areas such as euthanasia. In this case a distinction is usually drawn between active euthanasia, where medical treatment hastens the death of a patient, and passive euthanasia, where death results from withholding treatment. Certainly most legal systems (probably tracking our instincts in this case) choose to recognize this difference, but again it is difficult to see any morally relevant distinction between, say, administering death-inducing drugs (a deliberate doing) and withholding life-prolonging drugs (a deliberate not doing). The legal position is based in part on the notion (mainly religious in origin) of the sanctity of human life; but in terms of the euthanasia debate at least, this is primarily a concern for human life per se, with little or no regard for its quality or for the preferences of the human whose life it is. The law thus has the bizarre consequence of treating a human in a state of extreme distress or suffering with less consideration than would normally be shown to a pet or a farm animal in similar circumstances.
What would have happened had the B-29 bomber Enola Gay not dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945? It is likely that this action, followed by the dropping of a second bomb on Nagasaki three days later, led to a faster end to the Second World War: Japan surrendered on August 14.
It can be argued that, despite the deliberate act causing horrific loss of life, many more lives were saved as a bloody invasion of Japan was avoided. So was the decision to drop “the bomb” justified? In President Truman’s opinion, “That was not any decision you had to worry about.”
the condensed idea
To do or not to do?
| Timeline | |
|---|---|
| c.300BC | The problem of evil |
| c.AD1260 | Acts and omissions Just war |
| 1739 | Hume’s guillotine |
| 1785 | Ends and means |
| 1958 | Beyond the call of duty |
| 1971 | The difference principle |