Even if people can act wrongly by corrupting their own character, why is the distinction between intention and foresight relevant for judging actions? Proponents of the Principle of Double Effect do not need one answer to cover every case. Murderers who intend death and liars who intend to deceive may act wrongly for different reasons. Coaches who intend to embarrass an opponent may act wrongly for another reason, and children who intend to incite a sibling’s envy may act wrongly for yet another. I will not analyze every application of PDE or every case in which people act wrongly because they intend a bad effect. Instead, I will explain why people have a closer relation to intended effects than to foreseen side effects. Because of this closer relation, people sometimes act wrongly by intending an effect even though they would act rightly by knowingly causing the same effect in similar circumstances.
The agent performs the action, but the action also forms the agent. For example, I feared roller coasters as a child. When I finally chose to ride a roller coaster for the first time, my choice showed that my fear had faded (or at least that it had become weaker than my fear of looking like a coward). My first ride did not merely reveal a change in me. It also weakened my fear of roller coasters even more. The first ride was the hardest; the second ride was a bit easier; and so on. (Many years later, being tossed around on a roller coaster seems neither scary nor pleasant.)
This two-way relationship between agents and actions supports PDE because agents have a different relation to intended effects than to foreseen side effects. I define intended effects more precisely below. For now, I claim only that the agent seeks an intended effect, either as an end or as a means. I also could say that the agent wills, chooses, pursues, aims at, or tries for an intended effect. By contrast, the agent merely causes foreseen side effects. The agent’s relation to intended effects is internal, because the agent is related to the effect as a seeker and as a cause. The agent’s relation to foreseen side effects is external, because the agent is related to the effect merely as a cause. For example, consider the bombing cases that I presented above:
• A bomber pilot targets a hospital so that the deaths of the hospital’s patients will weaken the enemy’s morale.
• A bomber pilot targets a weapons factory, despite foreseeing that the explosions will kill some patients at a nearby hospital.
The first pilot has an internal relation to the deaths, because the pilot uses the deaths as a means of demoralizing the enemy. The second pilot has an external relation to the deaths, because the pilot sets in motion a chain of events that causes death. If both pilots say, “I may be causing the deaths of innocent people, but I am not seeking or trying to kill them,” only the second pilot would be telling the truth. This difference in their intentions does not give the second pilot a license to kill innocent people with impunity. The second pilot could act wrongly by treating people unjustly without intending their deaths, and the second pilot also could develop bad character traits, such as recklessness and callousness. Still, intending to kill innocent people changes the first pilot more directly, because the first pilot has a closer, or more internal, relation to the deaths. The second pilot might be unjustly callous towards other people’s deaths, but the second pilot does not seek or try to kill innocent people, in the sense that the deaths are neither the pilot’s end nor a means to the pilot’s end. By contrast, the first pilot does not merely pay too little attention to the deaths of innocent people. The first pilot seeks the deaths as part of a plan for weakening the enemy’s morale.
Some critics of PDE claim that intending death as an end corrupts the agent but that intending death as a means does not. According to this objection, the relevant difference in the bombing cases is between pilots who intend death as an end and pilots who do not intend death as an end but who might intend death as a means. One problem with this objection is that the line between ends and means is blurry. If a bomber pilot seeks vengeance from a hated enemy, is killing innocent people an end or a means to satisfying the pilot’s desire for vengeance? This question has no clear answer. Another problem with this objection is that a mercenary killer seems no better than a malevolent killer. If asked, “Why did you murder those people?” saying “Because I wanted money” seems to be no better an answer than saying “Because I hate them.” The end of making money turns the murderer from a malevolent killer into a mercenary killer, but this change does nothing to justify the murderer’s action. For less violent examples that do not involve death, I would not permit my children to denigrate a friend’s race on a dare but forbid them from denigrating a friend’s race for its own sake. I also would not permit them to incite a sibling’s envy to win a bet but forbid them from inciting a sibling’s envy for its own sake. If intending these effects as ends would corrupt my children’s character, so would intending these effects as means. Thus, my justification of PDE applies equally well to people who intend death as a means and to people who intend death as an end.
My justification of PDE does not depend on the premise that people who intend death always intend something bad. (I agree, but I will not defend this premise here.) For example, proponents of euthanasia could claim that intending a patient’s death benefits the patient by ending pain. I claim only that intending death and knowingly causing death as a side effect form the agent’s character differently.
Someone might say, “Your analysis of the bombing cases explains why the pilots have different relations to the deaths, but you have not proven that these different relations form a pilot’s character differently.” This objection is not completely wrong. At some point, a justification of PDE bumps up against the limits of rational analysis. My best response to the critic begins with the premises that friendships and peaceful relationships with other people are good and that being malevolent blocks a person from these goods. The bomber pilot who targets a hospital to demoralize the enemy necessarily acts malevolently towards the victims. The pilot cannot will that the victims survive, at least not without hoping for something that would make the bombing pointless. By contrast, the pilot who targets the factory does not necessarily act malevolently, because the victims’ survival would not make the bombing pointless. As explained above, the pilot who knowingly causes deaths might develop character traits such as recklessness and callousness, and these character traits also impede friendships and peaceful relations with others. I claim only that intending death is one way that agents can impede friendships and peaceful relations with others, not that it is the only way. Even if the pilot acts recklessly or carelessly, the pilot would not act malevolently as does the pilot who intends death.
(excerpted from chapter 1)
