Double Effect and the End‐Not‐Means Principle: A Response to Bennett

Abstract

Proponents of double-effect reasoning Ð relying in part on a distinction between intention and foresight Ð assert that it is worse intentionally to cause harm than to cause harm with foresight but without intention. They hold, for example, that terror bombing is worse than tactical bombing in so far as terror bombing is the intentional harming of non-combatants while tactical bombing is not. In articulating the ethical relevance of the intended/foreseen distinction, advocates of double effect employ the Kantian end-not-means principle.Jonathan Bennett has recently argued that this principle cannot ground the ethical relevance of the intended/foreseen distinction. He holds that the principle demands that one benefit others while double effect deals with acts that do not benefit others. Thus, he maintains, the intended/foreseen distinction does not have ethical import and double effect is not tenable.I argue for a reading of the end-not-means principle that grounds the ethical relevance of both the intended/foreseen distinction and double effect.Deontologists, absolutists, and proponents of common morality often rely on doubleeffect reasoning Ð also referred to as the`principle',`rule', or`doctrine' of double effect Ð to contrast, amongst other actions, terror and tactical bombing [1]. Advocates of double effect think that, other things being equal Ð such as the number and probability of non-combatant deaths Ð tactical bombing is more easily justi®ed than terror bombing [2]. For, these thinkers argue, in terror bombing an agent intends non-combatant deaths as a means while in tactical bombing an agent foresees but does not intend non-combatant deaths Ð neither as a means nor as an end. Thus, double-effect reasoning partially reposes on a distinction between consequentially similar states of affairs being intended as a means or foreseen as a concomitant but not intended [3]. This is the intended/foreseen distinction. In what follows, I defend the ethical relevance of this distinction against a charge recently levelled by Jonathan Bennett [4]. I. Bennett's ObjectionIn articulating the ethical relevance of the intended/foreseen distinction proponents of double effect often rely on the Kantian intuition that it is wrong to treat another human being, an end-in-itself, merely as a means to furthering some other end Ð the end-notmeans principle [5]. According to many who rely on double effect, tactical bombing is more easily justi®ed than terror bombing because tactical bombing does not treat noncombatants as mere means to the realisation of an end while terror bombing does.