I think it’s wrong for us to kill innocent people. Some fellow deontologists, however, think this prohibition should be restricted to say that it’s wrong for us to kill nonconsenting innocent people. These thinkers hold that it is both permissible to consent to being killed and to kill those who have given such consent (except in special cases, such as when the victim has overriding unfulfilled duties to others).
I want to argue for a curious consequence of this restriction of the prohibition of murder while maintaining deontology.
By “sacrificing one’s life to save lives”, I will mean actions which save lives but have one’s own death as an unintended but foreseen side-effect. For instance, jumping in front of a train to push a child out of the way. Everyone agrees it’s typically praiseworthy, and hence permissible, to sacrifice your life to save an innocent life. Most people, however, will say that it is supererogatory to do so. It is brave to do it, but not cowardly to omit it.
But now consider cases where by sacrificing your life you can save a larger number of innocent lives, say a dozen. It is pretty plausible that it would be cowardly to refrain from the sacrifice, and I suspect it would be wrong to do it except in special cases (such as when you have just figured out how to cure cancer). But I agree that the point is not completely clear to me. However, it is quite clear to me that it would be wrong to refuse to sacrifice your life to save a dozen people when that dozen includes one’s spouse and one’s children (again, with some very rare exceptions).
Now let’s assume the view that it is permissible to consent to being killed and permissible to kill the consenting. Consider a classic deontology case: a terrorist says that if you don’t kill Bob, a dozen other innocent people will be killed. Add that the dozen people include Bob’s spouse and children. If it’s permissible to kill the consenting, then if Bob were to consent, it would be permissible to kill him. But Bob expressly and clearly refuses consent, despite his believing that it would be permissible to consent.
Assuming that it is morally required to sacrifice your life to save a dozen innocent lives when these lives include your spouse and children, it is very difficult to deny that if it is permissible to consent to being killed, in a case like the above, Bob would be morally required to consent to being killed. Granted, the sacrifice case does not include consenting to one’s death, while the terrorist case does. But as long as we have granted that it is permissible to consent to one’s death, the difference does not seem significant. Thus Bob is morally required to consent to being killed, given our assumptions about consensual killing. Bob’s refusal of consent is thus morally wrong. And very badly so: it causes eleven more lives to be lost, including his very own spouse and children. His refusal is about as bad as mass murder!
It seems that Bob is far from innocent. On the contrary, he is guilty of refusing to save the lives of eleven people, including his spouse and children. But now it seems that the prohibition against killing the innocent does not apply to Bob, and hence it is permissible—and maybe even obligatory—to kill Bob. If so, then the deontological prohibition on killing the innocent, if restricted to the nonconsenting, has a giant loophole: when enough is at stake, a nonconsenting victim is no longer innocent! Now, maybe, it is only permissible to kill the guilty when one acts on behalf of a state (and when enough is stake, which it is in this case). But it would still be very strange for a deontologist to think it permissible to kill Bob even should the state authorize it.
This is not a knockdown argument against the restriction of the prohibition of murder to nonconsenting victims. But it is some evidence against the restriction.
8 comments:
This is interesting, Alex. A parallel argument could be made for a restriction to the proportionality constraint of double effect. If we are obligated to maximize utility consistently with deontological side constraints, the fat man is obligated to jump in front of the trolley. So, if you push him, you are just forcing him to do his duty. Unconstrained PROP seems to be a consequentialist trojan horse of sorts.
Is it always wrong to kill innocent people? What about cases of tragic accidents that leave people severely disabled? If that were me, I would hope that my family and doctors would have the common sense to truncate my tragedy and pull the plug, so to speak. Isn't quality of life an essential consideration? Life is worth living because of XYZ features. (Meaningfulness, participation in a good story, happiness, personal growth, helping others, relationships, music, hobbies, work, etc.) If XYZ features do not apply then my life would not be worth living.
Indeed, I would hope that my family and doctors would have the common sense to not worry about consent. Dooming someone to a fate worse than death is far more evil than failing to respect their consent.
Ben
Maybe your life would not be worth living, but somebody else may fond his life worth living. That's why consent is essential.
Walter:
Though, strictly speaking, consent need not go hand in hand with finding one's life not worth living. Someone might think their life IS worth living, but akratically consent to being killed, or consent to it for some other reason than thinking life is not worth living (e.g., to sell their vital organs to support their family, or due to weird theological views). Conversely, someone might think their life is NOT worth living, but refuse consent to being killed (e.g., because they think it's morally wrong to give such consent).
Sure, but I was simply saying that the only person who can judge whether my life is worth living is me.
That's up to me to deccide, not up to anybody else, not up to you or a doctor or the Pope for that matter. The only one who can consent is me.
If I don't consent, it's murder.
But notice that if it is the *judgment* that is relevant, then consent isn't technically needed. Suppose Alice judges that her life is not worth living, and loudly and clearly expresses this judgment, but nonetheless refuses to consent to being killed (e.g., because she has a moral opposition to euthanasia). I agree it's wrong to kill Alice. But one can't say that the reason it's wrong to kill Alice is because she is "the only person who can judge whether [her] life is worth living". For she has made the judgment, and the judgment was "no".
In other words, if consent is what makes the difference between permissible and impermissible euthanasia, then we cannot ground the difference in the autonomy of *judgment*. Rather, we have to ground the difference in something more like autonomy of *action*.
This is just a minor technical point (after all, I think consent doesn't make a difference: killing the innocent is wrong with or without consent).
If there is consent, there is no innocent party.
So, innocence has nothing to do with it. If I consent to euthanasia, I 'deserve' to die.
Alex - it's true that in some cases where death is not intended, if someone has a duty to choose to be helpful you can make them helpful against their will. If the large person won't do the decent thing and jump off the raft, you and the other small people can push.
But pushing is not a punishment for their dereliction - just a way of getting what you want. And in cases involving actual harmful surgery (but no death or permanent serious harm) we don't think a duty to help means no need for consent.
Let's say you have a duty to donate a kidney to your child (with no excuses like poor health or duties elsewhere). That doesn't mean the state can just take your kidney to help your child, let alone to punish you for not donating. After all, this is not basic care, like feeding your child - and in even in those cases, the state can compel you to care or punish you for not caring, but making you care is not the punishment.
So for those who think consenting to be killed could be a duty, it doesn't follow either that the state can override you or execute you justly for not consenting (fun but even weirder than the first thought!)
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