Second thoughts about double effect.

In this dissertation I explore objections to the ethical doctrine known as the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) and its applications to issues in war and medicine. DDE maintains that it is harder to justify causing harm intentionally than it is to justify causing it foreseeably. Some of the strongest support for DDE comes from cases where an agent appears to act impermissibly, and the best explanation seems to be that he has caused harm intentionally rather than merely foreseeably. Closeness objections maintain that the allegedly impermissible actions in these cases are not guided by an intention to cause harm but something "close" to it. I raise objections to a possible solution to this problem. I also critique an extreme version of the closeness objection and argue that moderate versions of the objection remain viable in spite of the failure of the extreme version. Then I provide counterexamples to DDE which draw inspiration from Judith Jarvis Thomson's looping trolley counterexample. In my counterexamples, I argue that DDE implausibly implies that we are obligated either to maximize harm to specific individuals or to maximize the number of harmed individuals. In the process, I provide objections to Frances Kamm's doctrines of Triple Effect and Secondary Permissibility, both of which are meant to rescue DDE from related problems. By way of an error theory for DDE, I maintain that intention is relevant to ethics in a different way than the one proposed by DDE. I conclude with two chapters in applied ethics. In the first of these I argue that DDE fails to explain why terrorism is impermissible. In the second I argue that DDE-related and DDE-based critiques of a novel method of organ procurement after death by cardiac criteria known as Thoraco-Abdominal Normothermic Regional Perfusion are unsuccessful.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Grantor

Baylor University.

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Joseph Harrison, 1989-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Pruss, Alexander R.

• Doctrine of double effect.
• Doctrine of triple effect.
• Means principle.
• Non-consequentialism.
• Trolley problem.
• Harm.

Statement dc:rights

• Baylor University works are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. Contact libraryquestions@baylor.edu for inquiries about permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2104/13137

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:baylor-ir.tdl.org:2104/13137