Quinn s DDE 1. Quinn s DDE: Warren Quinn begins by running through the familiar pairs of cases: Strategic Bomber vs. Terror Bomber Direction of Resources vs. Guinea Pigs Hysterectomy vs. Craniotomy What is the crucial difference? Deliberate involvement of the victims: e.g., in Terror Bomber, the bomber deliberately INVOLVES the civilians in the event. The Strategic Bomber does not. (And the same goes for the other pairs of cases.) No Problem of Closeness: Recall that the slippery claim of the Sophisticated Terror Bomber was that he does not intend to kill the civilians, but only make them APPEAR dead (similarly, the doctor in Craniotomy doesn t intend the death of the fetus, but only the alteration of the shape of its skull; and so on). This was the problem of closeness. On Quinn s proposal, none of that matters. It doesn t matter how the Terror Bomber describes it. EITHER WAY even if he doesn t intend to kill them the Terror Bomber DOES intend to INVOLVE them in an event which ultimately harms them by dropping bombs on them and making them appear dead. (So too in Craniotomy, Organ Harvest, Guinea Pigs, etc.) By contrast, the strategic bomber does NOT deliberately involve the civilians. (Nor is there deliberate involvement in Trolley or Hysterectomy.) Quinn writes: In Terror Bomber, the bomber undeniably intends in the strictest sense that the civilians be involved in a certain explosion, which he produces, precisely because their involvement in it serves his goal. He may not, if Bennett is right, intend their deaths [e.g., as in Sophisticated Terror Bomber]. But his purpose requires at least this that they be violently impacted by the explosion of his bombs. That this undeniably intended effect can be specified in a way that does not strictly entail their deaths is, on the view I am proposing, beside the point. Meanwhile, in Strategic Bomber, The bomber in that case intends an explosion, but not in order that any civilians be affected by it. Of course he is well aware that his bombs will kill many of them But he can honestly deny that their involvement in the explosion is anything to his purpose. A New DDE: Strictly speaking, this is NOT the DDE. The Sophisticated Terror Bomber can claim, I didn t intend any harm! I only intended to make some people appear dead. That harm/death came to them was only an unfortunate, foreseen side-effect of making
them appear dead. But, Quinn is not interested in whether or not the bomber intended harm. Rather, he is interested in whether or not the bomber deliberately involved the civilians in an event which he knew would result in them being harmed. So, Quinn doesn t call this intended harm, but rather harmful direct agency. He says: Harmful direct agency: 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 (agency in which they figure as intentional objects) Fitzpatrick s wording: intending someone s involvement in some event, as a means or end, where it is known to the agent that such involvement will be harmful to the person. Meanwhile, foreseen harm gets recast as harmful indirect agency, as follows: Harmful indirect agency: harmful agency in which either nothing is in that way [above] intended for the victims or what is so intended does not contribute to their harm. [Note: A test for this is that we act exactly as we would if they were not there. ] 1 Finally, the Doctrine of Double Effect gets recast as follows: Quinn s DDE All else being equal, it is (at least sometimes) much worse, morally, to cause harm via harmful direct agency than it is to cause the same amount of harm via harmful indirect agency. [Eliminative vs. Opportunistic Involvement: Quinn also notes that Craniotomy seems way less wrong than Terror Bomber or Guinea Pig. Why? Answer: In Craniotomy, notice that, while the agent does deliberately involve the fetus in some harmful activity, the fetus is seen as a problem or obstacle; i.e., its presence is regrettable. Meanwhile, in the other cases the victims are seen as an opportunity or resource to be exploited. He calls the former eliminative, and the latter opportunistic involvement, and claims that the latter is much worse, morally.] [Do you agree?] 1 Quinn adds, An indirect agent may be certain that his pursuit of a goal will leave victims in its wake. But this is not because their involvement in what he does or does not do will be useful to his end. The agent of direct harm, on the other hand, has something in mind for his victims he proposes to involve them in some circumstance that will be useful to him precisely because it involves them. He sees them as material to be strategically shaped or framed by his agency.
2. Objections: First, a bad objection from Jonathan Bennett: Quarantine You quarantine some ebola patients. They eventually die. This SHOULD count as foreseen harm. Your intent is to stop the spread of the disease, but you foresee that a side-effect will be confining some patients to a place where they will die. But, on Quinn s view, you ve intentionally involved the patients in a scenario which you know will result in them being worse off. Right? False. They are NOT harmed. They end up worse off, but not worse off than they otherwise would have been. As Fitzpatrick points out: Yes, you involve them in the quarantine, but it is not the quarantine that harms them (rather, the disease does). VSTB: Now, a good objection, from David Lewis (Quinn mentions it in a footnote): Very Sophisticated Terror Bomber The Terror Bomber intends to make it appear from a distance that 10,000 civilians have died, in order to demoralize the enemy into surrender but not by blowing up civilians. Rather, he can achieve his goal merely by exploding bombs 500 feet over a populated area. From afar, it will look to the enemy as if the bombs were detonated at ground level. Of course, the Terror Bomber foresees that a side-effect of exploding bombs over the civilians will be that, a few seconds later, fire and shrapnel from the explosions in the sky will rain down on the village and kill all of the civilians anyway. On Quinn s account, it seems like the pilot has NOT deliberately involved the people in an event which he knew would harm them (no more than the bystander at the switch in Trolley does). He d even be quite happy if the city were evacuated before the bombing. Reply: Quinn TRIES to disagree, writing, the bomber strictly intends to involve them in something (to make his bombs explode over them) in order to further his purpose precisely by way of their being involved. Rebuttal: But, if Quinn wants the VSTB s action to be intentional (and he does), then it seems like he ll have to appeal to something like closeness the very thing Quinn was trying to avoid. Recall that: The Defender of the standard DDE claims: In STB, the pilot claims that he does not intend any harm, but the thing he DOES intend (making the civilians APPEAR dead) seemed too close to the harm (their actual deaths) for him to plausibly claim that he did not intend the harm.
But, then we re left with the task of explaining what too close means. Meanwhile: Quinn s claim seems to be this: In VSTB, the pilot claims that he doesn t intend to involve the civilians, but the thing he DOES intend (exploding bombs right over them) seems too close to their involvement (their presence beneath the bombs) for him to plausibly claim that he doesn t intend to involve them. So, isn t Quinn STILL stuck with the task of giving an account of closeness? [What do you think?] [Alternatively, if Quinn just bites the bullet and admits that VSTB is merely foreseen and not intended harm, then it may not even matter that the bombs are detonated ABOVE the civilians. Even if he detonated them right in the center of town, couldn t he just say, Look, I just wanted to make the civilians APPEAR dead from a distance by exploding a bomb in the center of their town. True, a split second after it detonated, it also burned up all of the civilians. But, I didn t need them to be involved. It would still have looked from afar as if civilians had died, even if they had been evacuated immediately before the bombing. ] Some other Worries: Area Bombing: Fitzpatrick notes that Quinn must classify the variant of Strategic Bomber that he calls Area Bombing as foreseen harm (or indirect harmful agency) rather than intended harm, since the pilot does not deliberately involve the civilians in the bombing of the area. Fitzpatrick sees this as a negative feature of Quinn s view. [But, is it?] Self-Defense: We ll discuss this in more detail later, because it s actually a problem for BOTH versions of the DDE, but consider: When you kill in self-defense, you deliberately involve someone in an event which you know will be harmful to them Right? So, on Quinn s account, killing in self-defense is harmful direct agency (though of the eliminative variety rather than the opportunistic variety). But, per Aquinas, self-defense was supposed to be a paradigm case of foreseen harm! Aiming At Evil: It is also worth noting that Quinn has jettisoned one of the two justifications of the DDE: Namely, that intending harm is wrong because it aims at evil. Quinn doesn t care whether one is aiming at evil. (For instance, he admits that a Sophisticated Terror Bomber is not aiming at harm/death.) (In contrast, defenders of the standard DDE attempt to answer the problem of closeness by arguing that the agent DOES aim at evil. The STB may TRY to claim that he didn t intend the civilians deaths, but the defender responds that he aimed at the APPEARANCE of death, and this was too close to ACTUAL death. Therefore, he DID aim at actual death as well.) For this reason, some may find Quinn s DDE to be too impoverished.
Trolley Counter-Example: In his 2015 book, War and Individual Rights, Kai Draper points out that Quinn s view would entail that pushing the fat man onto the tracks in Footbridge would be much worse morally than pushing a CAR with the fat man INSIDE onto the tracks and yet, that seems mistaken. Draper thinks both actions are equally wrong. (Side note: The standard DDE also seems damaged by this objection; for, on the standard DDE, the man s death is merely foreseen, rather than intended.) 3. Rights and Consent: A Minor Modification: A grenade has just fallen toward 5 of your friends. You heroically throw yourself onto it, sacrificing yourself to save them all. Quinn s DDE seems to entail that you act wrongly. After all, you deliberately involved someone (namely, yourself) in an event which harmed them, and in an opportunistic way (i.e., involving yourself was the means by which you achieved your ends of saving the 5). Yet, this action seems permissible! To see why this is not a problem for Quinn, let s consider how he grounds the DDE. Grounded in Rights: Recall that Kant said TWO things: (a) Always treat others as ends in themselves. (basically, do not involve others in something they wouldn t want / haven t agreed to) (b) Never treat others as mere means. (basically, do not involve others in something that they wouldn t want / haven t agreed to in such a way that their involvement is strategically important to achieving your own ends). As Quinn points out, NEITHER TB or SB treat the civilians as ends yet we think SB is permissible. But TB treats them as mere means (and SB doesn t). Violating ONLY (a) is wrong; i.e., the upshot has to be sufficiently great in order to justify the bombing of the civilians in SB. But, violating BOTH (a) AND (b) is SUPER wrong: the intuition that it is more disrespectful, all other things being equal, to treat someone as if he existed for purposes he does not share than simply not to be constrained by his purposes, seems to me plausible enough to be worth incorporating in a proper idea of what it means for persons to be ends in themselves. On this conception, one aspect of being an end in itself would be to have, ceteris paribus, a stronger right against directly harmful agency than against indirectly harmful agency.
So, for Quinn, the DDE is grounded in rights. We have rights to life, liberty, property, etc., and it is wrong for others to deprive us of those things by ignoring our interests. But it is even MORE wrong for them to deprive us of those things by treating us as if we are a resource to be used or harvested for their own personal gain. But, rights can be voluntarily forfeited, or suspended. He writes, The DDE rests on the strong moral presumption that those who can be usefully involved in the promotion of a goal only at the cost of something protected by their independent moral rights (such as their life, their bodily integrity, or their freedom) ought, prima facie, to serve the goal only voluntarily. Here is the answer to our objection. The hero who throws himself onto the grenade does not violate anyone s rights because he involves himself in the harmful event VOLUNTARILY. So, Quinn s DDE really ought to say: Quinn s DDE All else being equal, it is (at least sometimes) much worse, morally, to cause harm to someone without their consent via harmful direct agency than it is to cause the same amount of harm via harmful indirect agency.