Molinism makes possible a curious kind of moral dilemma. God could reveal to Alice that if Alice doesn’t kill Bob today, she will kill Carl and David tomorrow (all these being innocents), and if she does kill Bob today, she won’t kill anyone tomorrow. Should she, thus, kill Bob today in order to prevent herself from murdering Carl and David tomorrow?
One might think that the possibility that Molinism allows for such a moral dilemma is a count against Molinism. But even without Molinism, one could have a probabilistic version of the dilemma where God reveals to Alice that if she doesn’t kill Bob today, she is very likely to kill both Carl and David tomorrow, and if she does kill Bob today, she is very unlikely to kill anyone tomorrow.
One way to make consequentialism fit with deontological intuitions is to set a high, perhaps infinite, disvalue on wrong action. That would imply that in the dilemma Alice should kill Bob in order to prevent the two murders tomorrow.
I think this is a mistake. Just as on deontological grounds it would be wrong for Alice to murder Bob to keep Eva from murdering Carl and David, so too it’s wrong for her to murder Bob to keep herself from murdering them. A eudaimonist may disagree here, holding that we should be promoting our own flourishing, so that when the choice is between committing two murders tomorrow and one today, we should go for the one today, but when the choice is between oneself committing one murder and another party committing two, we should let the other party commit the two. So much the worse, I say, for that kind of eudaimonist.
What makes it wrong for Alice to murder Bob is that the we shouldn’t perform bad acts. It’s not that we should minimize the number of bad acts performed, by others or oneself, but that we shouldn’t perform them. Of course, all other things being equal we should minimize the number of bad acts performed, by others and oneself, but a bad act is an act not to be done. And the lesson of deontology is that certain acts, such as intentionally killing without proper authority, are bad acts in virtue of their nature.
But isn’t killing Bob today the lesser evil?
Yet imagine Alice is debating whether she should eat ice cream, with its having been revealed to her that if she eats ice cream today, tomorrow she will kill Bob, and if she does not, then tomorrow she will kill Carl and David. In that case, it is clear: she should eat the ice cream. For the eating of ice cream isn’t the sort of act that is bad in virtue of its nature (unless a very strong form of moral veganism is true). Note, however, that if she eats the ice cream today, then her killing of Bob tomorrow is still wrong. (If you disagree, it may be simply because you disagree with Molinism, and you hold that the inevitability of her killing Bob takes away her freedom; if you think that, then go for a probabilistic version of the story.) This is true even though it is a lesser evil than her killing Carl and David.
In the original case, we can look at Alice doing two things when killing Bob:
Killing Bob
Bringing it about that she doesn’t kill Carl and David.
Her action is bad qua (1) and good qua (2). But we learn from Aquinas that for an action to be right, it must be right in every respect. So her action is wrong simpliciter.
On the other hand, in the ice cream version, in consuming the ice cream, Alice is doing two things:
Eating ice cream
Bringing it about that she doesn’t kill Carl and David.
Now her action is good or neutral qua (3) and good qua (4). In fact, it’s right in every respect. But her later killing of Bob is still wrong.
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