But murder is defined as the intentional killing of an innocent person, and there is certainly no intent to kill in this case any more than the mother intends to kill her child when she has an operation that saves her life and terminates her pregnancy. She is no more guilty of the sin of abortion than the person who throws the switch is guilty of murder. The inevitable death is a consequence of the act, not the objective.
There is one action. It has one moral object, one end, and two consequences, one good and one bad. The end is obviously to save the five. The consequences are the salvation of the five, and the death of the one. Now, how is the moral object - the conditions of the act itself - intrinsically evil?
Ive argued that case myself - it is a way of seeing the problem and was my first inclination. But if there is one moral object, explain why the act is ordered to saving but not to death, without discussing Intention.
You need to reference the post to which you respond, or readers will have no idea what you are talking about.
I don’t buy this lack of intention argument. Suppose there is a city project which will demolish ten houses in my neighborhood and that it is entirely due to the decision of the mayor of the city. My intention is to stop this city project, so I take a gun, point it at the mayor and pull the trigger. My intention is not to kill the mayor, which is the unfortunate result, but to stop the project. According to your argument, it is not murder because there is no intention to shoot the mayor. The only thing I intend is to stop the project. Also, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with pulling a trigger. A lot of people pull triggers and nothing happens. And the inevitable death of the mayor is a consequence of the act of point the gun and pulling the trigger, but it is not the objective. The objective is to stop the project.
I’m not really sure what you mean by “is ordered to”. The death of the one is certain and comes as a direct result of the action, but isn’t that exactly analogous to the mother’s operation? In that case too the death of the child is certain and comes as a direct result of the action, yet in her case the act is valid. Where is the difference?
The morality of an act is determined by the intent, the object (the nature of the act itself), and to a lesser extent the circumstances. If the intent and the circumstances are good then an act can be immoral only if the object is immoral. In your case the object (the act) is the murder of the mayor. How do you define the act in the case of the trolley such that it is necessarily evil?
Because “one may not do evil in order that good might result”. The presence of the evil act (the killing of the one) takes an act that, under different circumstance, might be morally good, and makes it morally evil.Gorgias:
You justify here the claim that the death is a moral object. But you omit mention of the saving nature of the act. The act is EQUALLY inherently ordered to saving 4 lives. Note this goes beyond mere Intention. Turning the tram away from the 4 is inherently ordered to saving them. Why does this rate no mention from you?
No. The circumstances do not determine the morality of the act; they can only ‘nudge’ it as “more” or “less” what it already is. Circumstances cannot make a good act evil or an evil act good.
The act is directed toward the killing of an innocent. Literally, that act kills him. (To claim it doesn’t is like saying, “I didn’t kill the person who got shot! I just pulled the trigger – that’s a morally neutral act! – but the bullet killed the person!”).
True. I was trying to avoid a discussion of circumstances.
Does not the mother’s operation kill her child? If her operation can be legitimate then it must be because the inevitable consequences of an act, even if deadly, do not always mean the act was wrong.
I’ve never made that argument. My position is that you don’t properly distinguish between the act and the consequences of the act. It seems you believe that if an innocent person dies as a direct result of an act then the act is immoral, but this is simply not true. The case of an operation on an expectant mother that leads directly to the death of her child proves this.
While it is always a tragedy when an innocent person is killed it is not always a sin to commit an act that will inevitably lead to such a death.
No. In fact, this is a new context: ‘double effect’, in which the act itself cannot be what kills the child. For example, an abortion (which directly kills the child) is not permissible, even if one perceives some “good” effect.
Under ‘double effect’ theory, this type of logic can be workable under certain specific, narrow, precisely-defined conditions. Outside of double effect theory, not so much.
Again, the distinction is that the act cannot be both what saves and kills. It must be the case that there is an ‘act’ and a ‘side effect’. The operation doesn’t kill the child. That’s what makes that case and the trolley case distinct.
Yet, the act that ‘saves’ also ‘kills’. It is this fact that determines the morality of the situation.
I’m not claiming that you have. Yet, it’s the same case, isn’t it?
I understand. Yet, I disagree. By your analysis, if ‘killing’ is a consequence, then so is ‘saving’. You cannot claim that ‘saving’ as result but ‘killing’ only consequence. If so, I could equally validly claim that ‘killing’ is the result but ‘saving’ merely a consequence. And, of course, that leaves you with one alternative: claiming that both ‘killing’ and ‘saving’ are consequences. And guess what? That’s the (ludicrous) “pulling the trigger” example I gave…
More to the point, that is the teaching of the Catholic Church.
No – in the case in which such a scenario is in play, the only way that the operation is moral is if the death is not direct (either in intent or object).
Agreed. And, we’ve discussed the subtleties of scenarios that would qualify as such. The trolley dilemma is not one of those scenarios. (To get back to a claim I made upthread: if we claim that it’s ok in this case, we’re making a consequentialist / utilitarianist claim, and the Catholic Church rejects these moral approaches.)
Yes, this is the context in which I see the act of switching.
With the mother also, the act (operation) is the cause of both effects. That is what the principle of double effect means: one act has both a good and a bad result.
But of course throwing the switch is the cause of both effects - the salvation of the five and the death of the one - just as in the case of the mother’s operation which results in the salvation of her life and the death of her child. Both effects come from the same act, which is described by the principle of double effect.
The operation leads directly to the salvation of the mother and the death of the child. Throwing the switch leads directly to the salvation of the five and the death of the one. In both cases the actions are moral because they meet the four criteria laid out under the principle of double effect, one of which is that the act be morally neutral.
Of course, all acts have consequences. In the case of the trolley and the mother there are two: one life, the other death.
I don’t think this distinction stands, and this seems to be the central difference between us.
No. The operation is the direct cause of the good effect. The operation is not the direct cause of the bad effect, however: it’s a consequence of the operation.Gorgias:
Yes, this is the context in which I see the act of switching.
With the mother also, the act (operation) is the cause of both effects. That is what the principle of double effect means: one act has both a good and a bad result.
But of course throwing the switch is the cause of both effects - the salvation of the five and the death of the one - just as in the case of the mother’s operation which results in the salvation of her life and the death of her child. Both effects come from the same act, which is described by the principle of double effect.
Not true. I’m just not proof-texting it in the way you are.
No… the death of the child proceeds indirectly from the operation.
No. In the case of the trolley, it is the “one and the same act” that directly causes both the good effect and bad effect, and therefore, does not meet the standard of a moral act under double effect.
Clearly.
While that statement is right in itself, it does not deny that an act may have more than 1 moral object. In the case of the trolley, the act is ordered to saving no less directly than it is to killing by virtue of the structure of the problem.
Nor did I. I just observed that the act is also directed inherently to good, and hence there is a good moral object. The one bad one is sufficient to condemn the act as a whole, but does not prevent the presence of a good moral object.
More to the point, it does so “directly”. The act is ordered to both, not ordered to just the killing and consequently giving rise to the saving. This is why there are 2 moral objects.