An Examination of the Defense for The Doctrine of Double Effect

In trying to determine moral permissibility, the relevance of means to specific ends provide the groundwork in evaluating the intentions of an agent. This methodology holds especially true for the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). This doctrine aims to provide criteria for determining when it is morally permissible to perform an action in pursuit of a good in which the agent has full knowledge that the actions will bring about some harmful effect. I will begin this paper by laying out the framework of the DDE and supplementing the definition with examples. I will then use these examples that are supposed to illustrate the applicability of the DDE and explain how they can be viewed in a way that would raise objections to the plausibility of the doctrine. Following, I will introduce Warren Quinn’s reformulation and defense of the DDE, where the violation of moral rights by direct agency than by indirect agency warrants a stronger moral barrier. In closing, I will present my conception of the Military Trainee example to demonstrate that while Quinn’s guidelines for what constitutes indirect agency is met, his reformulation of the DDE falls short of effectively distinguishing why this sort of agency is more easily justified than harmful direct agency.

The doctrine of double effect, first introduced by Thomas Aquinas, is invoked to explain the permissibility of an action with foreseen harmful side effects. According to the doctrine of double effect (DDE), it is sometimes permissible to cause a harm as a side effect of bringing about a good result. The set of necessary conditions on morally permissible agency in which a harmful upshot is foreseen are: “(a) the intended final end must be good, (b) the intended means to it must be morally acceptable, (c) the foreseen [side effect] must not itself be willed, and (d) the good end must be proportionate and important enough to justify the [side effect].” (Quinn 334) The DDE suggests that in these cases where a good is secured at the expense of harm being suffered, there are stronger reasons not to pursue the good when the harm is intended as a means than when it is merely foreseen.

The doctrine of double effect is best illustrated in real-world examples. One example that is often employed to demonstrate the DDE is a pair of contrasting cases drawn from warfare, the strategic bomber (SB) and tactical bomber (TB) cases. The strategic bomber and the terror bomber have the same end goal, namely to stop the war. The strategic bomber chooses to bomb a weaponry factory in hopes that the destruction of the factory will end the enemy’s war supply and the war will come to an end. In doing this, he foresees that he will kill innocent civilians that live nearby. The terror bomber chooses to kill innocent civilians in order to demoralize the enemy and hopefully end the war. The number of casualties and the effect in ending the war in both cases will be roughly equivalent. The actions of both the SB and TB also seem equivalent, but what differentiates the two, according to the DDE, is whether the deaths are intended or just foreseen side effects. In differentiating them by the DDE, it seems that it is harder to justify the actions of the terror bomber than it would be to justify the actions of the strategic bomber.

This pair of cases can also be used to point out a possible objection to the doctrine of double effect. The objection is that the cases are not so clearly differentiated like the DDE assumes that would be because harm is not intended in neither case. The terror bomber does not actually need the civilians to be dead. Instead, “he only needs them to be as good as dead and to seem dead until the war ends.” (Quinn 337) If by some chance the civilians come back to life after the war ends, the terror bomber would be content with that idea. If this is really the case, it suggests that the terror bomber does not intend harm, and the deaths of the civilians are also a foreseen side effect. If the terror bomber does not need the civilians to be permanently dead to achieve his ends, then he does not intend that as a means. Rendering the civilians lifeless instead of killing the civilians would make their death a side effect to giving off the appearance that they are dead. Therefore, both the SB and TB have the common goal of ending the war and wish to bring this end about by choosing means that have the death of the civilians as a foreseen side effect. Thus, the DDE would not be applicable in differentiating the two cases.

In trying to defend the doctrine of double effect, Warren Quinn attempts to reformulate the principle to stand up to this and other possible objections. He uses the original case of the terror bomber and strategic bomber to redefine their differences in the way he thinks that the doctrine of double effect should be applied. In the terror bomber case, but not in the strategic bomber case, the bomber undeniably intends that the civilians be involved in an explosion, which he produces, because the civilian’s involvement serves his goal. Quinn adds further that, “the effect serves the agent’s end precisely because it is an effect on civilians.” (Quinn 342) The case of the strategic bomber is different because although he is aware that the bomb he drops will kill many people, the civilian’s involvement in the explosion is not necessary for his purpose. Even if the civilians were not there, his purpose would still be met because he could still successfully bomb the factory. However, this cannot be said about the terror bomber, who needs the civilians to fulfill his end goal. In clarifying the intentional structures of the cases, Quinn takes the DDE to “distinguish between agency in which harm comes to some victims, at least in part, from the agent’s deliberately involving them in something in order to further his purpose precisely by way of their being so involved and harmful agency in which either nothing is in that way intended for the victims or what is intended does not contribute to their harm.” (Quinn 343) Quinn wants to define the first kind of agency as producing direct harm and the second kind as producing indirect harm. In interpreting the doctrine in this way, it would require a stronger case to justify harmful direct agency than to justify equally harmful indirect agency. Thus, when Quinn’s account of indirect and direct agency is incorporated into the traditional interpretation of DDE, the main point becomes: pursuit of a good because more difficult to justify where, in the course of pursuing it, a foreseen harm is brought about by direct agency in violation of a right than in the case where it is brought about by indirection agency in violation of a right.

My critique in Quinn’s reformulation is towards the claim that “a stronger case is needed to justify equally harmful indirect agency.” (Quinn 344) There can be cases where the harm produced by indirect agency might be just as difficult to justify as the harm produced by direct agency, and so a principle other than DDE might be needed to interpret the cases. The following example highlights this problem. You are the senior advisor of the military. A missile is accidentally launched from your military base and is heading towards an aircraft equipped with brand new expensive training equipment that is vital for an upcoming battle. If nothing gets in the way of the missile, it will destroy the aircraft and all the equipment in it. Your end goal is to save the aircraft. You come up with a plan to save the aircraft, one that involves the highly likely death of a trainee. In case #1, the senior advisor gives you instructions on your next training mission. In hopes of impressing the advisor, you will do what is asked of you. The instructions are to attach yourself to the missile and aim it downward towards the ocean, however, you do not know that five seconds after the missile comes into contact with anything, it blows up. You attach yourself to the missile and quickly successfully redirect it downwards away from the aircraft. The missile blows up and kills you, but the aircraft is safe. In contrast, for case #2, The instructions are to attach yourself to the missile and aim it downward. However, once in the air, you forget the instructions and instead, you fire shots at the missile. 5 seconds after coming into contact with the bullet, the missile explodes and kills you with it. The airway is cleared for the aircraft to travel through since the missile had not yet traveled far enough to be in the vicinity of the aircraft, and the aircraft is safe.

In both cases, the right violated is the same--namely the right not to be deceived (that the missile will explode and kill the victim) and the right not to be the object of murderous intentions. According to Quinn’s definition then, the first case is one of direct agency because the senior advisor foresees a harm to the trainee and the harm comes about as a result of involving him in the instructions to redirect the missile in order to further the purpose of saving the aircraft. The second case, however, is more controversial. On Quinn’s approach, the second case seems to count as harmful indirect agency. The senior advisor foresees a harm to the trainee, and the harm comes about. The senior advisor intends to involve him in something “in order to further [his] purpose precisely by way of [him] being involved,” (Quinn 334) but what is so intended does not contribute to his harm, for what is intended is that the trainee attach himself to the missile and aim it downward, which doesn’t happen. Instead, the case is one in which the advisor involved the trainee in his plan in a way that he expected would lead to the trainee’s death, but the trainee being killed did not come as a result of doing exactly what the senior advisor planned for him to do. Since it did not happen in the way the senior advisor planned, it cannot play a casual role in contributing to the harm and is therefore indirect.

While Quinn would deem the first case as direct harmful agency and the second indirect, it seems inappropriate to think that direct agency is more easily justified than indirect agency in this case. This is because what made the second case indirect was a mistake on the part of the victim. If the trainee had done what was asked of him, it would count as direct agency. According to Quinn, the trainee’s mistake makes the senior advisor’s action more easily justifiable, which is a principle that seems implausible to apply. For Quinn, the victim’s mistake can affect the moral quality of the agent’s action, even if the mistake does not alter the nature of the harm that he suffers. Quinn would need to provide further justification on how a victim’s mistake should affect the moral quality of the senior advisor’s actions- i.e. it should make a difference to the strength of the right violated. Without this justification, ambiguity clouds Quinn’s reformulation of the DDE in clearly distinguishing between direct and indirect agency and its effect on moral justification.

Works Cited

Quinn, Warren S. “Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 18, no. 4, 1989, pp. 334–351. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2265475.