Suppose my wife tells me to ensure that my son brushes his teeth. I go to his bathroom and see him brushing his teeth. I did not bring it about that he brushed his teeth. Did I ensure it?
I may or may not have. I might have ignored my wife's request and just happened to go to my son's bathroom to fill a bottle of water. Or her request might have simply triggered a curiosity about my son's brushing habits. In those cases, I did not ensure it.
What needs to be the case for me to count as having ensured that he brushed his teeth? Maybe it's some kind of a disposition to make him brush his teeth if he does not do so on his own. But even such a disposition is not quite enough. Suppose, for instance, I am a domestic tyrant and I enjoy making people do things. I go to my son's bathroom quickly with a hope that I will get there before he brushes his teeth, so I will have an opportunity to make him brush his teeth. But alas he has foiled me: he already started and by the time I open my mouth in command, he has finished. In this case, too, it seems incorrect to say that I ensured that he brushed his teeth. For if I ensured that he brushed his teeth, then I succeeded at ensuring that he brushed his teeth. But in this case there is no plan of action that I succeeded at—in fact, I failed. (Note: I am talking of here of intentional ensuring. We also sometimes speak of some action unintentionally ensuring a result. In that case, "ensuring" just means something like "causally necessitating".)
For me to count as having ensured that he brushed his teeth, his brushing has to be according to my plan. Thus, I need to form a plan that he brush his teeth, and a part of that plan is the forming of a disposition to make him brush his teeth if he doesn't do so on his own, but the plan's goal needs to be that he brush his teeth rather than that I make him brush his teeth. Embarking on this plan is a genuine action on my part, an action whose end is that he brush his teeth. When I embark on the plan, I form a disposition to make him brush his teeth if he doesn't do so on his own, but that is not all that happens.
Why does this matter?
Well, consider this famous case of Rachels:
Jones also stands to gain if anything should happen to his six-year-old cousin. Like Smith [who drowns his cousin], Jones sneaks in planning to drown the child in Ills bath. However, just as he enters the bathroom Jones sees the child slip and hit his head, and fall face down in the water. Jones is delighted; he stands by, ready to push the child's head back under if it is necessary, but it is not necessary. With only a little thrashing about, the child drowns all by himself, "accidentally," as Jones watches and does nothing.Rachels thinks that this case shows that the distinction between killing and letting die is bogus. Jones is morally on par with Smith.
Rachels is probably right. But the reason for this isn't that there is no morally salient distinction between killing and letting die. It is, rather, that there is no morally salient distinction between killing and ensuring death. What Jones does is ensure death. This is a genuine action on his part. He forms a series of dispositions in himself aimed at ensuring death. This is just as much an action of his as it would be an action to program a robot to watch the child and drown him if the child didn't drown on his own. And Jones succeeds at ensuring death: he doesn't just attempt to ensure death, but he succeeds.
The death of Jones' cousin is according to his plan, albeit not his original plan, but the revised one he forms when he enters the bathroom. Compare this case. Jones comes into the bathroom. He sees his cousin drowning. He has a failure of nerve and gives up on his plan. (It doesn't matter if the failure of nerve comes after or before the observation of the drowning.) But he still doesn't go to the trouble of rescuing his cousin, which he easily could do, nor does he turn on the music to drown out the noise of the drowing lest someone else come to the rescue, though he does hope the cousin will drown. He is a wicked man, but he hasn't ensured his cousin's death.
The moral difference between watching the cousin die and ensuring death is slight in the above case, but it could be greater if Jones' reasons were different. Suppose, for instance, that upon entering the room Jones has a change of mind due to fear of getting caught. But he also notices that his cousin is a carrier of a disease that will kill Jones if Jones touches the cousin, and it is this that now is the primary reason why Jones does not pull out his cousin. Jones had a change of mind but no great change of heart. He still hopes his cousin drowns and is glad he does. But at this point, Jones' actions and inactions in the bathroom are morally defensible (though his action of going to that bathroom in order to ensure his cousin's death is not defensible). (Cf. Ian Smith's paper.)
If I am right, then when thinking about killing and letting die, we need to distinguish letting die proper from ensuring death.
4 comments:
This is one of those places where a technical distinction can help. Many people think of intentions as of the form
I intend to V
but the right analysis, I believe, is
I intend that p,
where "I intend to V" is a short way of saying
I intend that I V.
If you are ensuring that your son brushes his teeth, you are intending like this:
I intend that my son brush his teeth.
If Jones is ensuring Smith's death, then Jones has an intention like this:
Jones intends that Smith die
where this intention can be fulfilled by anything or anyone causing Smith's death.
So I would say that I have ensured that p whenever I have a fulfilled intention that p, and I am ensuring that p whenever I am in the process of executing such an intention.
Perhaps the fact that Jones clearly intends an evil brings out the moral equivalence of killing and ensuring death in his case.
Heath:
It seems plausible that one can intend a state of affairs and not just an action, though I am not completely sure it's true.
But in any case, I am dubious of the proposed reduction of my intending to V to my intending that I V. Or, perhaps, there are two senses of intending to V, a weaker sense equivalent to intending that I V and a stronger sense not equivalent to it, but entailing it.
Intending that I V has the same logical form as my intending that you V. For instance, I might send a reminder email to myself or to you intending that you make a phone call. I am inclined to say that both of these cases should be distinguished from the stronger sense of intending to make a phone call.
But in any case, I think this can't be the right description of the intention in ensuring: "Jones intends that Smith die where this intention can be fulfilled by anything or anyone causing Smith's death."
Suppose Jones forms this intention, and immediately, coincidentally and unbeknownst to Jones, Smith dies. Seconds later, Jones repudiates his intention with disgust, praying to God for forgiveness. What Jones intended did in fact happen. But it is false that Jones ensured its happening.
Compare this case. Suppose I intend to lift my arm, but I "lack the willpower" (whatever that means). However, Dr Black shows up, and with a neuro-manipulator causes me to lift my arm. Then I intended to lift my arm, and I lifted my arm, but the action plan of which intending to lift my arm was a part was not fulfilled. My intention was more mooted than fulfilled. (Cf. the case where you promise something will happen, and it happens despite your trying to make sure it doesn't happen. The promise is mooted rather than fulfilled.)
On the distinction between ways of intending that I V:
there is something to this. I have thought of using Castaneda's reflexive operator to capture this but I'm not sure that's right. That is, MAYBE it's a distinction between
I intend that I V, and
I intend that I* [I myself] V
but I'm not sure.
2. On the mooting/fulfilling distinction:
You are right that the content of intentions sometimes come about without the agent doing or ensuring them. I was leaning on "fulfilled", which we could also call "accomplished" or something else, so as to capture the difference you are pointing to. My point was just that the semantics for "ensuring that p" is the same as for "accomplished the intention that p", where we are ruling out in both cases the idea that it comes about by accident or without the agent's involvement.
Heath:
I think this is more than the Castaneda stuff. I can have an intention that I* do something (just as I can have an intention that something be done to me*) without that being an intention to do it, in the strong sense.
There is something "special" about an intention to do something, and it is not the same as the intention that I* do it. When I intend a proposition--even a de se proposition--I am intending for something to happen. But an intention to do something isn't just an intention for something to happen.
Maybe we can get at the difference in this way: If I act with an intention to V, in the strong sense of "intention to", then I am trying to V. However, I can act with the intention that I* V without trying to V. If I send myself a reminder to wash the dishes, my sending of the reminder is not a trying to wash the dishes, but a trying to bring it about that I* bring it about that I wash the dishes. But if I turn the knob on the dishwasher with the intention to wash the dishes, then I am thereby trying to wash the dishes.
The words "intention to" can cover both kinds of cases in English, which is why I am talking of a strong and a weak sense. For I can say that when I send myself a reminder to wash the dishes that I do so with the intention to wash the dishes (at a later time). But that's the weaker sense.
"... where we are ruling out in both cases the idea that it comes about by accident or without the agent's involvement"
The tricky thing is that we rule out different sorts of cases for bringing it about that and for ensuring that here. If I observe my son brush his teeth with the disposition to make him do it if he doesn't do it on his own, then what I intended happens. Moreover, the case has sufficient involvement of me for me to count as having ensured that he brushes his teeth, but not sufficient involvement of me for me to count as having brought it about that he brushes his teeth.
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