Indirect Voluntary Actions

Indirect Voluntary Actions

• There is a difference between voluntary acts and their voluntary consequences
• An act is directly voluntary when it is willed, either as an end or as a means
• An act is indirectly voluntary when it is the unintended, foreseen consequence of a directly voluntary action
  • The agent does not will the consequence as an end or a means, but understands they cannot achieve something else without it
• Example: A person throwing a bomb at a king to assassinate him:
  • Directly wills throwing the bomb (as means)
  • Directly wills the death of the king (as end)
  • Indirectly wills the death of the king's attendants (as a consequence), even though their death gives the bomber no profit
• An involuntary consequence is neither intended nor foreseen, like someone rushing up to the king after the bomb has been thrown and dying

Moral Evil and Physical Actions

• Focus is on physical actions that are directly willed and have physical consequences not directly willed but foreseen, accepted, or permitted
• There is a distinction between directly intending something and foreseeing/accepting something that happens with a directly willed effect
• In the assassin example, the killer is more willing for the king to die, than the attendants, and even less for innocent bystanders
• Moral evil lies in the assassin's will because:
  • The assassin intends (directly wills) to kill the king
  • Foresees and accepts the deaths of attendants (indirectly wills)
  • Accepts, but doesn't necessarily foresee, the deaths of possible innocent bystanders (indirectly wills)
• Voluntariness of an action determines the degree of responsibility for that action
• An assassin intends the king's death and accepts the foreseen deaths of attendants/bystanders
• Deaths apart from the king's are indirectly willed/voluntary and accepted, because the king's death is important enough to justify this acceptance

Physical Evil and Moral Judgement

• Good or indifferent actions can have foreseen evil physical consequences
• Actions are commonly judged as good, bad, or indifferent by humans
• The focus is determining how responsible one is for the physical consequences of their actions, despite their moral quality
• It is impossible to avoid every action that will result in physical evil; human beings and life in this world are both limited
• Physical evil sometimes happens naturally (hurricanes, earthquakes, floods), and sometimes is caused by humans
• The human condition can cause value conflicts and require actions that achieve some important good but also bring about some sort of evil
• The human state is permeated with limitations, not strictly physical, but psychological, sociological, pedagogical, and aesthetic
• Situations are complex but doing the right thing must be attempted
• Taking a job may cut someone else out of livelihood; a doctor tending the sick may catch the plague; a lawyer may put an innocent person under suspicion; a teacher may fail students
• The world is a mixture of good and evil which affects living an upright moral life

Principle of Double Effect

• The principle of double effect helps resolve moral complexity
• No evil must ever be willed simply for its own sake, either as an end (goal) or as means, otherwise the action is evil
• Evil must never be directly willed, for such an act is directly voluntary
• Evil may be willed indirectly as a foreseen but unwanted consequence; an act is indirectly voluntary and may be willed only if it is reduced to an incidental, unavoidable by-product or side effect in achieving some good

Tolerating Evil

• While evil cannot be willed directly, the existence of evil does not always have to be prevented
• Just as the existence of evils may be tolerated in the world, because one may not be able to cure them without bringing other evils on oneself or a neighbor, sometimes evil consequences from one's own actions may be tolerated if abstaining from such actions would bring a proportionate evil on oneself or others
• Sometimes willing a good results in an inseparable evil
• This must not happen indiscriminately or when one is bound to prevent evil

Conditions for Performing Acts with Evil Effects

• It must be morally allowable to perform an act that has an evil effect under the following conditions:
  • The act itself must be good or at least indifferent
    • If the act is evil, then evil is chosen directly, regardless of intentions
  • The good intended must not be obtained by means of the evil effect
    • The evil must be an incidental by-product, not an actual factor in accomplishing the good
    • The good must follow at least as immediately and directly from the original act as the evil effect
    • The good must not come through or by means of the evil
  • The evil effect must not be intended for itself but only permitted
    • The bad effect may be a by-product of the act performed, but if the agent wills this effect, it is made directly voluntary by willing it
  • There must be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect
    • One is obliged to prevent a serious evil by a small sacrifice of one's own good
    • Some proportion between the good and evil is required

Estimating Proportion

• Required proportion between good/evil should be at least nearly equivalent, but estimating proportion may be difficult in practice
• If the good is slight and the evil great, the evil is incidental only in a technical sense, and the obligation to avoid it is overwhelming
• If there is a way of getting the good effect without the bad effect, that other way must be taken, otherwise there is a proportionate reason for permitting the evil

Responsibility and the Double Effect

• The principle of the double effect does not do away with responsibility for the evil effect that is merely permitted but not directly intended, since Responsibility is measured by voluntariness
• The evil effect is indirectly voluntary since it is not directly willed but foreseen as a consequence of something else that is directly willed
• One gets the evil effect and cannot avoid getting it because the good that one rightly intends
• Being fully responsible for the good as well as for the evil means the double effect principle neither does away with responsibility nor was it intended to do so
• Double effect principle is used in conflict situations, to do away with moral blame for permitting the existence of an evil that cannot be avoided if the good is to be obtained

Fulfilling Conditions

• The act is not morally allowable unless all conditions are fulfilled, and if even one is not satisfied, the act is morally wrong
• Rather, the double-effect principle is a way of showing the action in question is not wrong
• An example of applying the principle of double effect is someone saving a child from a burning building:
  • The act itself apart from its consequences is merely an act of entering a building and is an indifferent act and morally allowable
  • The act has two effects: one good (saving the child) and the other bad (being burned or even death for the rescuer)
    • The rescuer does not save the child by means of dying or being burned but by means of reaching the child and carrying it or throwing it to safety, and doing so without harm is better
  • The good effect is accomplished in spite of the bad
    • Incidental accompaniment in the rescue of the child
  • If the rescuer were using this chance as an excuse for suicide, he would intend the evil for itself rather than merely permit it
  • There is a sufficient proportion of a life for a life
  • Entering a burning building merely to rescue some trifling possession could not be morally justified

Violating Conditions

• An employee of a bank embezzled money to pay for the care of his sick child, hoping to pay it back later, violating the first condition
  • The act itself of embezzlement cannot be justified by any good intentions or good effects
  • The employee must try to raise the money in some other way
• A man living with an alcoholic uncle stocks the house with liquor, knowing he will inherit a fortune when the uncle drinks himself to death, violating the second condition
  • The money cannot be inherited except through the uncle's death
  • The good effect is accomplished by means of the bad
• A political boss distributes money to poor people to get them to vote for an unworthy candidate, violating the third condition
  • The evil effect is intended as the end
• The owner of a private plane has his pilot fly him through exceedingly dangerous weather to complete a business deal that will net him a small profit, violating the fourth condition
  • There does not seem to be a sufficient proportion between the risk to people's lives and the rather slight financial advantage to be gained

Applying the Principle

• Though the principle of double effect can be violated, ordinary actions of life find their justified action in a correct application of the principle
• People may take dangerous occupations to earn a livelihood
• Firemen and policemen can risk their lives to save others
• A surgeon can operate even though he may cause pain
• A man can vindicate his honor or rectify past wrongs even though other people's reputations suffer from his disclosures
• One may be subjected to great sacrifices to defend a country

Responsibility for Acts of Others

• Only the person who knowingly and willingly performs an act can be responsible for it, therefor no one can be directly responsible for the acts of another person
• One is responsible for their own acts if they knowingly and willingly intend to permit them to affect another person as in incentives to good or evil

Occasion of Evil

• The word scandal once meant a stumbling block, something one trips on and falls over in their moral career, now means only shocking conduct and juicy gossip
• Occasion of evil refers to any word or deed tending to lead, entice, or allure another person into wrongdoing
  • May be only given, only taken, or both given and taken.

Giving/Taking Occasion of Evil

• Giving occasion of evil to another directly means intending their evil act either as an end or as a means
  • To intend it as an end signifies a diabolical hatred of the person that evil is directed towards
  • The motive for inducing others to evil is using the other's evil doing as a means to one's own profit
  • Direct voluntariness of this giving of occasion of evil makes for complete responsibility for the evil on the part of the giver
  • The taker's responsibility is also complete if the evil is done knowingly and willingly
    • Responsibility may be diminished by modifiers of responsibility
• Giving occasion of evil to another indirectly: not intending the other person's evil act either as an end or as means but forseeing it as a consequence of something else
  • Care for one's neighbor's moral welfare obliges us to avoid even this as far as possible
  • The principle of double effect applies here:
    • The act should not be wrong in itself, even though it is forseen to be a temptation
    • The good effect should not be accomplished by means of the other's evil act
    • One must not want but only permit the other's temptation
    • There must be a proportionate reason for permitting it
• Occasion of evil is taken, not given, when someone with peculiar subjective dispositions is led to evil by another person's innocent words or deeds
  • Due to the taker's malice (the taker is wholly responsible)
  • Due to the taker's weakness (ignorance, youth, inexperience, prejudices, violent emotions)

Cooperation in Evil

• Cooperation in another's evil deed may happen by joining the person in the actual performance of the act or by supplying them with the mean's for performing it
• Formal cooperation involves the aider knowingly and willingly joining the other's evil intention
  • All the cooperators share completely in the responsibility for the act
• Material cooperation is helping someone perform evil without approving or wronging them, done through an action that is not of its nature evil
  • Example: being forced to open safe or drive to a murder scene
  • Nothing is wrong with doing it or what one intends to d
  • If there is a proportionately grave reason for permitting this evil circumstance, material cooperation can be justified by the principle of double effect
• Proportion must be estimated by:
  • The amount of evil one's cooperation helps others to do
  • The amount of evil that will happen to one if they refuse to cooperate
  • The closeness of the act of cooperation to the others evil act
• Cooperation may be proximate or remote depending on how close it is to the actual evil deed