Moralists do not agree on whether
1 good or useful consequences alone matter - the end justifies the means
or the rival
2 good and useful consequences matter but you cannot do an evil deed for good to come of it
The question arises for we live in a cruel world and there is much injustice and illness and death.
To help, philosophers have brought us the principle of double effect for our consideration. This idea came about very late in time. Jesus never preached it. The Church will say it was in his mind as you can see from his teaching though he never developed the argument for it. Not true. He said that whoever divorces their wife or husband makes them commit adultery as in remarrying and contracting a marriage that is a lie. That contradicts the Catholic teaching that unless you specifically divorce somebody so that they can marry somebody else and the new marriage is planned you are not to blame for whatever decision the spouse makes. Double effect hangs on worrying about immediate problems and not ones down the road. It hangs on worrying about what your action would be expected to do directly rather than indirect problems and seeming consequences down the line.
The Church would not accept this, "Double effect is about intending to do good even though your action involves foreseen direct evils. Jesus's version expands the foreseen evils to indirect and far off ones." It would say that going that far is not double effect but moral tyranny.
So, we had to wait to St Thomas Aquinas came along. It is a powerful argument against God that if this principle is vital and central that a man had to figure it out so late.
Paul when he opposed the notion that "we may do evil that good may come of it" in Romans supposedly referred to the notion. But double effect is about evil as in harm. For Paul, things that do no real harm to anybody such as blasphemy or missing weekly worship are evils. And much much more.
What if you are doing something that is equally evil and equally good to bring about a new good? It would be effectively doing something that is morally neutral. If you cannot do evil that good may come that would include this for it is still half good and half evil. It is never really that clear exactly what is half and half. We just have to make an assumption. If we can do that it hardly matters if we do something that is more bad than good, say 55% per cent bad and 45% good.
From a humanitarian perspective, double effect is dangerous and difficult at best and to add in harmless sins muddies the waters and makes it impossible. Those who claim there is clarity are lying.
And the Church does say that sins against God are the worst. If there is a choice between you insulting God to save your family you are told to sacrifice your family. That shows how extremist double-effect is when God is brought in.
The real reason why a Christian struggling to decide if they should abort a baby to save the mother or refuse to kill the baby is that God supposedly commands protection for the baby's life and also for the mother. It is still religious. It is taking faith too far.
The introduction of specifically religious "immorality", such as neglecting prayer, brings up an interesting thought though.
"Do I give John a drug to stop him committing suicide though it will leave him living but suffering horribly for life?" That is a question for standard double effect ethicists. Now add religion in. St Pau or Jesusl might ask this. "If I know I can stop John from committing a sin from which he will never repent by lobotomising him, should I do so?" That would be a valid question if evil is evil and people need saving from their own sin as Jesus said. He said it enslaves.
It is obvious that if such a question arises that there is something amiss with the religious understanding of evil. It's only something a passive-aggressive individual would consider or present.
Anyway back to the standard.
It says that if I have to decide between two complete bans, that is to say two absolute moral rules, I do good even if something bad will happen alongside that good. I am aiming for the good and the bad just comes with it. The bad is not my fault.
[We are asked to believe this while we know from lived experience and psychology that we are not directly good or evil. Rather we want power over both so that we can pick whatever suits us. We want the good that we like and the evil that we like. The point is that the good intention is not gone after because it is good but because we like it.]
One example is that if I am attacked by a murderous drugged person with a cleaver who does not know what they are doing. I have to save my life and I cause the death of the – virtually innocent - attacker. As long as I had to kill him, as long as it was unavoidable, double effect. The good was saving my life and somebody happened to die.
Another is if somebody is suffering a terrible disease in unspeakable agony. I have to give them a painkiller that will radically shorten their life. My intention is to control a pain emergency. I do not intend to cause their death. That is a side effect of the drugs.
Few accept double effect as anything but nonsense. Most people reason that say if life comes first then you do not give the drugs. And if quality of life comes first it is okay to end the life of a person who is suffering if they ask. Rather than worry about how to deal with two incompatible moral rules, they measure the consequences and go for what they think does the best.
It is the dispute between fixed moral rules and the notion that the end can justify the means or consequentialism.
But if double effect is just a smokescreen then it itself is a form of the end justifying the means.
It is based on theological incoherence.
One assumption of double effect is that the person has dignity and must never be treated as a thing to be used. But the Bible and Christian theology do exploit. It is exploitation to impose a religious identity on a baby in baptism. Or to tell a person that they should risk their life to save a communion wafer in a fire. Even if Jesus did turn bread into his body, you still don't know if the wafer was validly confected into Jesus. And the Bible says the Christian is a part of Jesus in a very literal way. The Bible uses literal sounding language at times for what we are expected to use commonsense for and not take literally. So communion is likely just bread even if Jesus was the real deal.
Sin is breaking of a commandment from God. We are told that Adam and Eve committed the first, the original, sin and it damages us even now and wrecked our world. They ate from a tree whose fruit God banned them from eating. The story is a serpent got Eve to doubt the ban and to eat from the tree and she got Adam to eat from it.
Adam is focused on with regard to original sin as if Eve’s part does not matter. The New Testament says Adam killed us all with that sin. We are told that the reason is that God ordered him not to eat the fruit and Eve had to be told the command by Adam. The assumption that a sin is worse or matters properly only if you got a direct command from God is a strange one. It would overthrow the Christian claim that it can regulate morality. We are worse off than Eve. She got the commandment from a man who communed with God. We depend on complete hearsay. Nobody gets direct or clear information from God today.
[Also Christians when they see one angel mentioned in a gospel and two in another say that one and one are two so an angel being not mentioned is insignificant. The gospels often do that. A blind man in one story is two blind men in another. So you could say the account may blame Adam but that does not mean it exonerates or ignores Eve. Nobody likes that suggestion. Sometimes a story really is about one person and is wrecked if you wonder if it is just focusing on one person for speed and simplicity when there were others in it too. It was a very difficult serious topic for the New Testament so when it says Adam it means only Adam.]
Double effect can be upheld on the basis that if it seems to make poor sense or none the alternative is definitely worse. In this view, you not see any sense in the notion but are driven to it for pragmatic reasons. Why just not call for pragmatism and be done with it! It would be more honest. Pragmatism is slammed by ethicists for it would mean you can kill an innocent person who is in the way of you releasing a drug that will save the world.
Consequentialism may hold that you are equally responsible for all the foreseen results of an action or non-action. If so then the following happens.
I am told by a gang they will kill John unless I beat up my wife.
I won’t.
John is killed.
I murdered John along with the gang. My refusal was a weapon as much as the gun that shot him dead was.
But is this really worse? You need statistics for that. Double effect if it is a lie an a form of the end justifies the means itself does not solve anything.
Zero sum throws up a challenge. The concept of the zero sum says that to give is to take and to take is to give. The idea all resources, material, emotional and moral, have a limit and will not exist one day so everything does its opposite eventually. That can be very clear. At other times it is a butterfly effect.
Zero sum may be a fallacy – ie it does not necessarily have to be. But the fact remains that despite it not having to happen, it happens. It is a reality.
Also, at the back of our minds, we have this motivation, “I am saving Jake’s life even though it means perhaps keeping him alive to take life from somebody else. Even if I could foresee that I would still save him.”
Double effect says that is too far off to matter enough. What is within reach is what we have to handle.
You would expect a genuine well-meaning law to say, "The far off harms matter as much as the nearer ones. We regret that we concentrate on the latter but we have to." Maybe but double effect rambles on as if the distant consequences should not even be thought about. That is not a caring or ethical stance.
Double effect claims to be for the personal dignity of each and every one. Somebody said that evil begins when you begin to treat people as things. You may treat them as people but
1 if you think they have to get over it and toughen up
2 if you think that if they are hurt they are hurt for that’s life
Then you may as well just make them out to be objects.
You dismiss their suffering.
Dismissing can be instant.
Or it can be dragged out. If you help a person for a short time while planning to stop helping for they bring it on themselves in your view you are still dismissing.
Dismissing happens on the human secular level.
But if you think God offers healing and unconditional love you have a new reason, an additional one for dismissing.
The fact is that most, say Christians, are not impressively helpful. It is nothing special and atheists can be even better.
Sam Harris says morality is wellbeing but critics say morality is more than that. They also say that you cannot be precise on what wellbeing actually is or outline what exactly it is supposed to do. Plus there is the problem that what is considered healthy by one is rejected by another.
If you accept that then double effect collapses for it claims to tell what a person needs in terms of wellbeing and the sacrifice you have to make for that wellbeing. Double effect does not say that morality is simply wellbeing but it does say that wellbeing is a guide to help you work out what moral is. And Harris's critics cannot prove him wrong for they teach, "Morality does not ask for the impossible. If we are made to put wellbeing first then that is morality for us. We wish it could be more than that but it is what we have."
We find that double effect is based on bad moral theory and does not agree with itself. It is bad enough but religion coming in makes it deadlier.
FINALLY
The principle of double effect is far from loved and cherished. Intuition seems to attack it as much as its inherent lies and contradictions do.
SUMMARY OF OBJECTIONS TO DOUBLE EFFECT
It is difficult and impossible in pressing situations to be clear that you are separating intending harm and merely seeing that it can or will happen. Also we have all thought we didn't intend a harm we caused when we seen it coming. In fact we did intend it but fooled ourselves.
Double effect urges people to pretend and be treated as if their decision making or motivation is clear. It never is. Situations make murky. Nobody knows all about a situation but the person in it. Nobody ever communicates anything fully. People make murky too. You also make murky for your memory is not a video recorder but creates narratives that are only roughly useful but riddled with errors.
Double-effect bans judging where you cannot prove or show the person meant to do bad. Anybody can say they meant to do only good though they caused disaster. And the fact is some of these people are telling the truth. You are forced to excuse.
Intentions do not guarantee that the harms may vastly outnumber the goods. The focus on intention produces a placebo effect. How caring are you if what matters is to you is self-approval, approval from others and approval from God?
The good result is attached to the bad. If you murder a person on the battlefield for they are blown in half and will die in agony the bad is the good. The line blurs between good and evil and harm and helping.
The whole ends and means discussion depends on moral luck. It is odd to say that say your performing an abortion to save the woman's life is right if luck should have it she will live and wrong if it turns out she was going to live anybody and the abortion didn't contribute. If morality is about the factors you can control, moral luck makes it about what you cannot control. It is not fair that one person does action x and luck makes it work out that she is praised and the other maligned and judged for doing the same thing with a different result.
Double effect even if it did some good fails terribly in matters of extreme importance. It is wartime. You target a weapons depot. You fire the bomb knowing that the children's hospital beside it will be blown up as well. The rule, "Do not slay civilians in wartime" goes against, "Get rid of the enemy weapons". The reality is that as the enemy will have its secrets that it will use and will not let you see the true picture, that liquidating the weapons is the only real consideration for you. You will lie that you do care for the children. Your "God", your religion, your comrades and your country will praise you for that lie knowing it is not true.
Overall double effect is a psychopath-birthing evil, a malignance.