Doing and refraining, and proportionality

In my previous post, I suggested that proportionality considerations in Double Effect work differently for positive actions (doings) than for negative ones (refrainings). One thing that is now striking me is that there is an interesting asymmetry with respect to relational features that is brought out by thinking about pairs of trolley cases with different groups of people on the two tracks, but where we vary which track the trolley is initially heading for.

For an initial pair of cases, suppose on one track is someone one has a close relationship with (one’s child, spouse, parent, sibling, close friend, etc.)—“friend” is the term I will use for convenience—and on the other track a stranger. Then:

• It’s completely clear that if the trolley is heading for the stranger, it is permissible not to redirect the trolley

• It’s significantly less clear but plausible that if the trolley is heading for the friend, it is permissible to redirect the trolley.

In this case, I already feel a moral difference between doing, i.e., redirecting the trolley, and refraining, i.e., leaving the trolley be, even though my permissibility judgment is the same in the two cases: redirecting the trolley towards the stranger and allowing the trolley to hit the stranger are both permissible. And yet regardless of where the trolley is initially heading, there are the same two outcomes: either a stranger dies or a friend dies. The difference between the cases seems to be solely grounded in which outcome is produced by doing (redirecting) and which by refraining (not redirecting).

Suppose we vary the ratio of strangers to friends in this case. At a 2:1 ratio of strangers to friends, my intuitions say:

• It’s very plausible that if the trolley is heading for the strangers, it is permissible not to redirect the trolley

• I can’t tell whether if the trolley is heading for the friends, it is permissible to redirect the trolley.

As the ratio of strangers to friends increases, my intuition shifts in favor of saving the greater number of strangers. But, nonetheless, my intuition consistently favors saving the strangers more strongly when this is done by refraining-from-redirecting than when this is done by redirecting. Thus, even at a 10:1 ratio of strangers to friends:

• It’s almost completely clear that if the trolley is heading for the strangers, it is morally required to redirect

• It’s completely clear that if the trolley is heading for the friends, it is morally forbidden to redirect.

In fact, I think there are points where the ratio of strangers to friends is both sufficiently high that:

• If the trolley is heading for the friends, it is forbidden to redirect

and yet still sufficiently low that:

• If the trolley is heading for the strangers, it is not required to redirect.

I feel that 3:2 may be such a ratio, though the details will depend on the exact nature of one’s relationship with the friends.

These cases suggest to me that the proportionality requirements governing refrainings and doings are different. It is consistently easier to justify refraining from redirect than to justify redirecting even when the consequences are the same. Nonetheless, even though the proportionality requirements are different, in the cases above they do not look qualitatively different, but only quantitatively so.

Doing, refraining and Double Effect

The Principle of Double Effect seems to imply that either there are real dilemmas—cases where an action is both forbidden and required—even for agents who have always been virtuous and well-informed, or else there is a morally significant distinction between doing and refraining.

Here is the argument. Consider two cases. In both cases, you know that teenage and now innocent Adolf will kill tens of millions of innocents unless he dies now.

1. Adolf is drowning. You can throw him a life-preserver.

2. Adolf is on top of a cliff. You can give him a push.

Double Effect prohibits throwing Adolf a life-preserver. For Double Effect says that an action that has good and bad foreseen consequences is only permissible when the bad effects are proportionate to the good effects. But the deaths of tens of millions of innocents are disproportionate to the life of one innocent teenager.

Now, I take it that in case 2, it is wrong to push Adolf over the precipice. Double Effect certainly agrees: pushing him over the precipice is intentionally doing an evil as a means to a good.

If there is no morally significant distinction between doing and refraining, then it seems that refusal to throw a life-preserver in the drowning case is just like pushing in the cliff case: both are done in order that Adolf might die before he kills tens of millions. If in the cliff case we are forbidden from pushing, then in the drowning case we are forbidden from not throwing the life-preserver. But at the same time, Double Effect forbids throwing the life-preserver. So we must throw and not throw. Thus, the drowning case becomes a real dilemma—and it remains one even if the agent has always been virtuous and well-informed.

I find it very plausible that there are no moral dilemmas for agents who have always been virtuous and well-informed. (Vicious agents might face dilemmas due to accepting incompatible commitments. And agents with mistaken conscience might be in dilemmas unawares, because their duties to conscience might conflict with “objective” duties.) I also think the Principle of Double Effect is basically correct.

This seems to push me to accept a morally significant distinction between action and abstention: it is not permissible to push teenage Adolf off the cliff, but it is permissible—and required—not to throw a life-preserver to him when he is drowning.

But perhaps there is a distinction to be drawn between the two cases that is other than a simple doing/refraining distinction. In the cliff case, presumably one’s purpose in pushing Adolf is that he should die. If he survives, one has failed. But in the drowning case, it is not so clear that one’s purpose in not throwing the life-preserver is that Adolf should drown. Rather, the purpose in not throwing the life-preserver is to refrain from violating Double Effect. Suppose that Adolf survives despite the lack of a life-preserver. Then one has still been successful: one has refrained from violating Double Effect.

Nonetheless, this is still basically a doing/refraining distinction, just a more subtle one. Double Effect requires one to refrain from disproportionate actions—ones whose foreseen evil effects are disproportionate to their foreseen good effects. But Double Effect does not require one to refrain from disproportionate refrainings. For if Double Effect were to require one to refrain from disproportionate refrainings, then in the cliff case, it would require one to refrain from refraining from pushing—i.e., it would require one to push. And it would require one not to push, thereby implying a real dilemma. But in the cliff case, classical Double Effect straightforwardly says not to push. (Things are a little different in threshold deontology, but given threshold deontology we can modify the case to reduce the number of deaths of innocents resulting from Adolf’s survival and the point should still go through.)

In fact, this last point shows that embracing real dilemmas probably will not help a friend of Double Effect avoid a doing/refraining distinction. For even if there are real dilemmas, the cliff case is not one of them: pushing is straightforwardly impermissible.

It is tempting to conclude from this that Double Effect only applies to doings and not refrainings. But that might miss something of importance, too. Double Effect gives necessary conditions for the permissibility of a doing that has foreseen evil effects and an intended good effect:

3. the evil is not a means to the intended good

4. the action is intrinsically neutral or good

5. the evil is not disproportionate to the intended good.

The argument above shows that (5) is not a necessary condition for the permissibility of a refraining. It seems that all refrainings are intrinsically neutral. So, (4) may be vacuous for refrainings. But it is still possible that (3) is true both for doings and refrainings. Thus, while it is permissible to refrain from throwing the life-preserver, perhaps one’s aim in refraining should not be the death of Adolf, but rather the avoidance of doing something disproportionate. And even if (5) is not a necessary condition for the permissibility of a refraining, there may be some weaker proportionately condition on refrainings. Indeed, that has to be right, since it’s wrong to refrain to pull out a drowning child simply to save one’s clothes, as Singer has pointed out. I don’t know how to formulate the proportionateness constraint correctly in the refraining case.

We thus have two Double Effect positions available on doing and refraining. One position says that Double Effect puts constraints on doings but not on refrainings. The subtler position says that Double Effect puts more constraints on doings.

Trolleys, breathing, killing and letting die

Start with the standard trolley scenario: trolley is heading towards five innocent people but you can redirect it towards one. Suppose you think that it is wrong to redirect. Now add to the case the following: You're restrained in the control booth, and the button that redirects the trolley is very sensitive, so if you breathe a single breath over the next 20 seconds, the trolley will be redirected towards the one person.

To breathe or not to breathe, that is the question. If you breathe, you redirect. Suppose you hold your breath, thinking that redirecting is wrong. Why are you holding your breath, then? To keep the trolley away from the one person. But by holding your breath, you're also keeping the trolley on course towards the five. If in the original case it was wrong to redirect the trolley towards the one, why isn't it wrong to hold your breath so as to keep the trolley on course towards the five? So perhaps you need to breathe. But if you breathe, your breathing redirects the trolley, and you thought that was wrong.

I suppose the intuition behind not redirecting in the original case is a killing vs. letting die intuition: By redirecting, you kill the one. By not redirecting, you let the five die, but you don't kill them. However, when the redirection is controlled by the wonky button, things perhaps change. For perhaps holding one's breath is a positive action, and not just a refraining. So in the wonky button version, holding one's breath is killing, while breathing is letting die. So perhaps the person who thinks it's wrong to redirect in the original case can consistently say that in the breath case, it's obligatory to breathe and redirect.

But things aren't so simple. It's true that normally breathing is automatic, and that it is the holding of one's breath rather than the breathing that is a positive action. But if lives hung on it, you'd no doubt become extremely conscious of your breathing. So conscious, I suspect, that every breath would be a positive decision. So to breathe would then be a positive action. And so if redirecting in the original case is wrong, it's wrong to breathe in this case. Yet holding one's breath is generally a decision, too, a positive action. So now it's looking like in the breath-activated case, whatever happens, you do a positive action, and so you kill in both cases. It's better to kill one rather than killing five, so you should breathe.

But this approach makes what is right and wrong depend too much on your habits. Suppose that you have been trained for rescue operations by a utilitarian organization, so that it became second nature to you to redirect trolleys towards the smaller number of people. But now you've come to realize that utilitarianism is false, and you haven't been convinced by the Double Effect arguments for redirecting trolleys. Still, your instincts remain. You see the trolley, and you have an instinct to redirect. You would have to stop yourself from it. But stopping yourself is a positive action, just as holding your breath is. So by stopping yourself, you'd be killing the five. And by letting yourself go, you'd be killing the one. So by the above reasoning, you should let yourself go. Yet, surely, whether you should redirect or not doesn't depend on which action is more ingrained in you.

Where is this heading? Well, I think it's a roundabout reductio ad absurdum of the idea that you shouldn't redirect. The view that you should redirect is much more stable until such tweaks. If, on the other hand, you say in the original case that you should redirect, then you can say the same thing about all the other cases.

I think the above line of thought should make one suspicious of other cases where people want to employ the distinction between killing and letting-die. (Perhaps instead one should employ Double Effect or the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means of sustenance.)

Killing, letting die and ensuring death

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.

Principle of Double Effect as an action-requiring principle

Normally the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) is taken to be a permissive principle: it gives permissibility conditions for actions that are foreseen to have an evil effect. Roughly, the conditions are: the action is not in itself wrong; the evil is not intended as an end or as a means; and the evil is proportionate to an intended good.

Suppose that we adopt the thesis that refraining from an action is itself a kind of action, and that refraining can have effects just as any other action can. Call this the Refraining Parity Thesis (RPT).

Given RPT, it turns out that many of the actions that the PDE is used to justify are actually actions that the PDE actually requires. Suppose, for instance, that dropping a bomb on the enemy headquarters will cause a handful of civilian deaths but the deaths of the military leadership will lead to an early end to the war, saving thousands of civilian lives. Given RPT, consider the action of refraining from bombing. Refraining from bombing (considered maybe as an action of a military commander) has an intended good effect, the saving of the lives of the civilians near the headquarters, and an unintended evil effect, the deaths of thousands of civilians later. It is very plausible that the evil is disproportionate to the good, and hence PDE does not allow one to refrain from bombing.

There will, however, be cases where PDE allows but does not require an action. Suppose that I could save your life by jumping on a grenade. The PDE allows me to jump. The intended effect is saving your life by the absorption of kinetic energy, the foreseen evil is my death, and my death is not disproportionate to saving your life. But refraining from jumping is also permissible. The intended effect is saving my life, the foreseen evil is your death, and your death is not disproportionate to saving my life.

I don't know if RPT is true. I am inclined to think that refraining is not on par with positive action.