Preventing someone from murdering Hitler

You are a secret opponent of the Nazi regime, and you happen to see Schmidt sneaking up on Hitler with an axe and murderous intent. You know what’s happening: Schmidt believes that Hitler has been committing adultery with Mrs. Schmidt, and is going to murder Hitler. Should you warn Hitler’s guards?

1. Intuition: No! If Hitler stays alive, millions will die.

2. Objection: You would be intending Schmidt to kill Hitler, a killing that you know would be a murder, and you are morally speaking an accomplice. And it is wrong to intend an evil to prevent more evil.

There is a subtlety here. Perhaps you think: “It is permissible to kill an evil tyrant like Hitler, and so Schmidt is doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. So by not warning the guards, I am not intending Schmidt to commit a murder, but only a killing that is objectively morally right, albeit I foresee that Schmidt will commit it for the wrong reasons.” I think this reasoning is flawed—I don’t think one can say that Schmidt is doing anything morally permissible, even if the same physical actions would be morally permissible if they had other motive. But if you’re impressed by the reasoning, tweak the case a little. All this is happening before Hitler has done any of the evil tyrannical deeds that would justify killing him. However, you foresee with certainty that if Hitler is not stopped, he will do them. So Schmidt’s killing would be wrong, even if Schmidt were doing it to prevent millions of deaths.

What’s behind (2) is the thought that Double Effect forbids you to intend an evil, even if it’s for the purpose of preventing a greater evil.

But here is the fascinating thing. Double Effect forbids you from warning the guards. The action of warning the guards is an action that has two effects: (i) prevention of a murder, and (ii) the foreseen deaths of millions. Double Effect has a proportionality condition: it is only permissible to do an action with a good and a bad effect when the bad effect is proportionate to the good effect. But millions of deaths are not proportionate to the prevention of one murder. So Double Effect forbids you from warning the guards.

Now it seems that we have a conflict between Double Effect and Double Effect. On the one hand, Double Effect seems to say that you may not warn the guards, because doing so will cause millions of deaths. On the other hand, it seems to say that you may not refrain from warning the guards in order to save millions because in so doing you are intending Schmidt to kill Hitler.

I know of three ways out of this conflict.

Resolution 1: Double Effect applies only to commissions and not omissions. It is permissible to omit warning the guarads in order that Schmidt may have a free hand to kill Hitler, even though it would not be permissible to help Schmidt by any positive act. One may intend the killing of Hitler in the context of one’s omission but not in the context of one’s commission.

Resolution 2: This is a case of Triple Effect or, equivalent, of a defeater-defeater. You have some reason not to warn the guards. Maybe it’s just the general moral reason that you have not to invoke the stern apparatus of Nazi law, or the very minor reason not to bother straining one’s voice. There is a defeater for that reason, namely that warning the guards will prevent a murder. And there is a defeater-defeater: preventing that murder will lead to the deaths of millions. Thus, the defeater to your initial relatively minor moral reason not to warn guards—viz., that if you don’t, a murder will be committed—is defeater, and so you can just go with the initial moral reason. On this story, the initial Objection to the Intuition is wrong-headed, because it is not your intention to save millions—that is just a defeater to a defeater.

Resolution 3: Your intention is simply to refrain from acting in ways that have a disproportionately bad effect. We should simply not perform such actions. You aren’t refraining as a means to the prevention of the disproportionately bead effect, as the initial Objection claimed. Rather, you are refraining as a means to prevent oneself from contributing to a disproportionately bad effect, namely to prevent oneself from defending the life of the man who will kill millions.

Evaluation:

While Resolution 1 is in some ways attractive, it requires an explanation why intentions for evils are permissible in the context of omissions but not of commissions.

I used to really like something like Resolution 2. But now it seems forced to me, because it claims that your primary intention in the omission can be something so very minor—perhaps as minor as not straining one’s voice in some versions of the story. That just doesn’t seem psychologically realistic, and it seems to trivialize the goods and evils involved if one is focused on something minor. I still think the Triple Effect reasoning like has much to be said for it, but only in those cases where there is a significant good at stake in the initial intention.

I find myself now pulled to Resolution 3. The worry is that Resolution 3 pulls one towards the consequentialist justification of the initial intuition. But I think Resolution 3 is distinguishable from consequentialism, both logically and psychologically. Logically: the intention is not to contribute to an overwhelmingly bad outcome. Psychologically: one can refrain from warning the guards even if one wouldn’t raise a finger to help Schmidt. Resolution 3 suggests that there is an asymmetry between commission and omission, but it locates that asymmetry more plausibly than Resolution 1 did. Resolution 1 claimed that it was permissible to intend evils in the context of omissions. That is implausible for the same reason why it is impermissible to intend evils in the context of comissions: the will of someone who intends evil is a corrupt will. But Resolution 3 is an intuitively plausible non-consequentialist principle about avoiding being a contributor to evil.

In fact, if one so wishes, one can use Resolution 3 to fix the problem with Resolution 2. The initial intention becomes: Don’t be a contributor to evil. Defeater: If you don’t warn, a murder will happen. Defeater-defeater: But millions will die. Now the initial intention is very much non-trivial.