Doctrine of Double Effect

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most legacy airlines filed for bankruptcy protection as a way to cut costs drastically, with the exception of American Airlines. This article applies the Principle of Double-Effect to the act of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for reasons of management strategy, in particular, cost-cutting. It argues that the Principle can be a useful tool for discerning the ethicality of the action, and demonstrates the usefulness by proposing three double-effect criteria that, when fulfilled, argues for the ethical justifiability the action in question.

Experimental research suggests that people draw a moral distinction between bad outcomes brought about as a means versus a side effect (or byproduct). Such findings have informed multiple psychological and philosophical debates about moral cognition, including its computational structure, its sensitivity to the famous Doctrine of Double Effect, its reliability, and its status as a universal and innate mental module akin to universal grammar. But some studies have failed to replicate the means/byproduct effect especially in the absence of other factors, such as personal contact. So we aimed to determine how robust the means/byproduct effect is by conducting a meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies (k = 101; 24,058 participants). We found that while there is an overall small difference between moral judgments of means and byproducts (standardized mean difference = 0.87, 95% CI 0.67 – 1.06; standardized mean change = 0.57, 95% CI 0.44 – 0.69; log odds ratio = 1.59, 95% CI 1.15 – 2.02), the mean effect size is primarily moderated by whether the outcome is brought about by personal contact, which typically involves the use of personal force.

Dans ce qui suit, je vais exposer cette analyse du double effet développée par Anscombe en rappelant quelques éléments de sa conception de l’action intentionnelle dans Intention et la distinction conceptuelle entre conséquence prévue et conséquence visée (intentionnelle), ainsi que l’extension de la responsabilité morale au-delà des seuls états de choses provoqués intentionnellement (1). J’isolerai deux ambiguïtés, liées au « problème de la proximité », de cette analyse qui paraît ne pas s’accorder avec celle de l’action intentionnelle (2) et je les discuterai tour à tour. La première tient à son refus de tenir pour non intentionnelles les conséquences prévues de l’action intentionnelle quand elles sont trop proches de son résultat visé, et cela même si elles ne jouent pas de rôle dans le raisonnement pratique de l’agent (3). La seconde tient à la distance qui doit séparer le résultat visé de la conséquence prévue, pour que le verdict moral diffère. Se trouve alors posée la question du critère de la distance suffisante, et celle de la pertinence morale de cette distinction métaphysique (4).

Absolutist systems of ethics have come in for harsh criticism by moral philosophers on a number of fronts. The Principle of Double Effect was formulated by Catholic ethicists to overcome such objections. Its key lever is making a critical distinction between those bad effects of a voluntary action that are intended and those that are unintended. In this essay, Leslie Allan addresses four of the most prominent problems faced by an absolutist ethic and evaluates the extent to which the Principle of Double Effect is successful in avoiding or mitigating these criticisms.

The role that the Principle of Double Effect plays is brought into full relief in hard cases. Consider just such a difficult situation. In 2000, thoracopagus (joined chest-to-chest) twins Gracie and Rosie Attard were the subject of a legal case heard by the British Court of Appeals. Although both twins had hearts, they shared a common aorta and Rosie’s heart was far less developed than her sister’s. She depended upon Gracie’s heart to help circulate her blood. Doctors predicted that Gracie’s heart would last no more than a few months with this workload, and wanted to separate the twins to save Gracie. The surgery would result in Rosie’s death when her aorta was clamped off. Their parents did not consent to the procedure, but the court ruled that the separation could proceed anyway for the purpose of saving Gracie’s life.  If the principle of double effect had been brought to bear explicitly, based as it is on intent and proportionality, how would the judge have evaluated such a scenario? Doubtless each party to the separation would claim that the intended effect was to save Gracie, and Rosie’s death was an unintended bad effect. But how could a doctor who clamps off a patient’s aorta with no plan or intent for resuscitation  realistically claim that he does not intend to kill her?
Philosophers advocating double effect have advanced ways to draw a distinction between the clamping and the killing, with the goal that a doctor may intend one but not the other. This assumes that agents have very fine-grained control over their intentions, but consideration of real people in real medical situations casts doubt on this. We will argue that this conceptual distinction is of no practical use – agents in general cannot credibly claim that they do not intend effects which they directly bring about and have no idea what the technical means would look like for avoiding (or intentionally do not pursue such means).
Our argument focuses on the application of double effect to the case of conjoined twins, but has wider implications for action theory, medical ethics and the use of double effect in general, although we will only note some of those implications in passing.

Un desafío clásico de la doctrina del doble efecto es el problema de la cercanía, i. e. la identificación de un criterio para distinguir entre un estado de cosas intentado y uno previsto. En este trabajo analizo las propuestas de mayor influencia en la discusión contemporánea en el problema de la cercanía (e. g. los trabajos de Hart, Anscombe, Glover, Duff, Quinn, McIntyre, etc.), sin embargo muestro que este problema necesita ser disuelto antes que resuelto. En especial, intento mostrar dos cosas estrechamente conectadas: por una parte, que los filósofos no acuerdan acerca de qué significa resolver el problema de la cercanía y, por otra parte, es necesario distinguir diferentes tipos de cuestiones, e. g. conceptual, semántica y empírica para lograr un progreso genuino en el análisis de la cercanía. Finalmente, argumento que la intención es un "estado mental" conectado conceptualmente con la acción humana y que la explicación de la acción depende de la identificación de una intención específica que guía el comportamiento de un determinado agente.

In this paper, I seek to show that one of the primary counterarguments to Robert Nozick’s theory undermines or displaces a necessary conception of individual responsibility, and therefore fails to convince. First, I define and describe the conventional theory of personal responsibility, elaborating particularly in neo-Kantian terms, and give an account of action. Second, I continue to develop a theory of personal responsibility, especially in the legal categories of ​mens rea ​ and actus reus, ​ and explain how it relates to justice, continuing to do so in a neo-Kantian line of thought and give a detailed account of intention. Finally, I elaborate on Robert Nozick’s political theory, and the objections to it, concluding that they fail to successfully refute the concept of personal responsibility entailed by his theory that justice requires. I conclude this is due to the uniquely human nature of moral accountability, and therefore, the uniquely human nature of justice.

Dilema Tramvaiului ("The Trolley Problem") a fost enuntata pentru prima data de catre Philippa Foot in 1967, ca o forma de testare a intuitiei umane in ceea ce priveste doctrina dublului efect (ideea ca eticitatea unei actiuni cu multiple consecinte depinde de efectul urmarit inainte de efectuarea actiunii) si a utilitarismului (doctrina etica potrivit careia orice actiune este corecta in masura in care aceasta tinde sa asigure fericirea unui numar cat mai mare de indivizi). Pe baza problematicii respective, multi filozofi si psihologi au elaborat noi scenarii in scopul analizei mai profunde a doctrinelor morale conventionale. Avand in vedere faptul ca medicii sunt zilnic pusi in fata unor decizii dificile ce tin de viata si de moarte, “Dilema tramvaiului” poarta o importanta deosebita in domeniul eticii medicale.

Publicado en libro: Los avatares de la modernidad, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Tucumán, 2001) David Hume no sólo fue uno de los filósofos más destacados de los tiempos modernos debido a la importancia de sus doctrinas, sino que además elaboró una serie de refinadísimos argumentos críticos que echaron por tierra a algunas de las pretensiones de la tradición filosófica y que aún hoy tienen plena vigencia.

In this chapter I will use sex by deception as a case study for highlighting some of the trickiest concepts associated with sexuality and moral psychology, including rape, consen sual sex, sexual rights, sexual autonomy, sexual individuality, and disrespectful sex. I be gin with a discussion of morally wrong sex as rooted in the breach of five sexual liberty rights that are derived from our fundamental human liberty rights: sexual self-possession, sexual autonomy, sexual individuality, sexual dignity, and sexual privacy. In light of this discussion, I then examine a puzzle about sex by deception-a puzzle which at first may seem to compel us to define 'rape' strictly in terms of 'physical force or threat' rather than 'sexual autonomy'. I proceed by presenting an argument against the view that, as a rule, sex by deception undermines consent. Even when sex by deception does not compro mise consent, I argue that it nonetheless is inimical to the respect we owe all persons, not because it vitiates sexual autonomy and thereby obstructs the possibility of consent, but because it fails to respect other sexual rights that we have, such as our rights to sexual dignity, individuality, or privacy.

A white woman’s murder by a black man, as depicted in Doris Lessing’s The Grass IS Singing, incorporates the revengeful act of an abandonment-neurotic black servant against a white female master with tactile delirium in the course of a paradoxical relationship of love and hate. The final homicide and the consequent act of surrender
by Moses, the murderer, convey his paradoxical attitude toward his white master-beloved. This attitude begins with hatred, intensifies with mutual affection, and ends in murder. Focusing on the interracial revenge that takes place in the novel under study, the authors of this paper argue that Moses’ motivation in killing Mary originates from the ambivalence of his state of living under colonization and his learning in Christianity, struggling with the Double-Effect Reasoning inaugurated by and in defense of black honor or negritude. As such, Moses’ sense of guilt
and his subsequent surrender are the consequences of traditional and colonial internalization of sin, already present in him as a native of his revenge or honor-based society, influenced by Lobengula’s rule in which the criminal submits to punishment willingly, as well as missionary teachings. Through an interdisciplinary link between the Double-Effect Reasoning and the psychoanalytical perspective to the black problem promoted by Frantz Fanon, The Grass Is Singing thus seems to exempt Moses in his crime against the white race, represented by Mary, as
well as to justify Moses self-surrender in defense of negritude and black honor.

La più importante allieva di Wittgenstein e l’autrice, con Intention, di una svolta che ha dato vita alla psicologia morale e alla teoria dell’azione, è stata a lungo sottovalutata come filosofa morale anche nel mondo anglosassone ed è oggetto da alcuni anni di una importante riscoperta. In Italia è stata quasi del tutto ignorata.
Il risultato è che hanno avuto circolazione allievi minori di Anscombe stessa come MacIntyre, una sua stravagante allieva come Iris Murdoch, e si è avuta la lodevole presentazione al pubblico italiano di due raccolte della sua principale collaboratrice e seguace Philippa Foot (per merito del Mulino), mentre proprio alla più importante collega Elizabeth Anscombe questa attenzione è stata negata.
Il primo saggio (in ordine cronologico) compreso in questa raccolta è “Mr. Truman’s Degree” del 1956, il pamphlet in cui la giovane Anscombe pronunciava una magistrale invettiva contro i colleghi incapaci di ‘percepire’ la rilevanza morale di una decisione come quella di sganciare una bomba atomica su vecchi, donne e neonati e dava la colpa di questa loro insensibilità alla filosofia morale contemporanea che avrebbe avuto l’effetto di allevare dei “daltonici morali”, anticipando gli sviluppi del suo lavoro sia nella direzione della rinascita della filosofia dell’azione sia in quella del salvataggio dell’etica normativa. Si noti che la raccolta in due volumi curata dalla figlia e dal genero (Human Life, Action and Ethics, ed. M. Geach - L. Gormally, Imprint Academic 2005; “Human Life, Action and Ethics”, ed. M. Geach - L. Gormally, 2008) non comprende questo saggio – forse semplicemente perché Cambridge University Press non ha concesso l’autorizzazione – ma comunque con l’effetto di nascondere un’immagine di Anscombe scomoda per i cattolici ultratradizionalisti, che non è quella da loro prediletta dei contributi su sessualità e contraccezione.
La raccolta, oltre a rendere disponibile il nocciolo dei contributi principali di etica teorica, offre due “pacchetti” di materiale di un certo interesse per la discussione pubblica: il tema della guerra giusta, tornato anche da noi al centro della discussione dalla prima guerra in Irak in poi, e il tema della contraccezione, il prossimo tema su cui riprenderà la discussione nella Chiesa Cattolica.

In Intention and her subsequent essays that addressed human action, Elizabeth Anscombe made signal contributions to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. The new natural law theory of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and their collaborators mistakenly claims to be consonant with Anscombe’s work. A central reason for this misappropriation lies in the failure to understand the ways in which Anscombe does and does not deploy a “first-person perspective” in analyzing intentional action. Far from supporting the new natural law, Anscombe’s work, rightly understood, provides arguments for rejecting it.

A white woman’s murder by a black man, as depicted in Doris Lessing’s The Grass IS Singing, incorporates the revengeful act of an abandonment-neurotic black servant against a white female master with tactile delirium in the course of a paradoxical relationship of love and hate. The final homicide and the consequent act of surrender by Moses convey his paradoxical attitude toward his white master-beloved. This attitude begins with hatred, intensifies with mutual affection, and ends in murder. Focusing on the interracial revenge that takes place in the novel under study, the authors of this paper argue that Moses’ motivation in killing Mary originates from the ambivalence of his state of living under colonization and his learnings in Christianity, struggling with the Double-Effect Reasoning inaugurated by and in defense of black honor or negritude. As such, Moses’ sense of guilt and subsequent surrender are the consequences of traditional and colonial internalization of sin, already present in him as a native of his revenge or honor-based society, influenced by Lobengula’s rule in which the criminal submits to punishment willingly, as well as missionary teachings. Through an interdisciplinary link between the Double-Effect Reasoning and the psychoanalytical perspective to the black problem promoted by Frantz Fanon, The Grass Is Singing thus seems to exempt Moses in his crime against the white race, represented by Mary, as well as to justify Moses self-surrender in defense of negritude and black honor

The Münster dissertation was accepted by Bruno Schüller (1925-2007) in 1984. The author, Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, was appointed Archbishop of Owerri in 2022. He is the president of the Nigerian Bishops' Conference. He published several works on moral theology since receiving his doctorate. Ugorji's doctoral thesis has received extraordinarily positive reviews from international experts. Nevertheless, a close reading reveals several problems concerning scientific ethics. This essay uses seven tables to document Ugorji's unacknowledged use of texts by other authors. Several passages are identical to popular reference works. Ugorji's book also contains numerous unacknowledged passages that can be found verbatim in an American dissertation published in 1935.
In view of these facts, the research value of the Münster dissertation is open to discussion, as are the academic qualifications of its author.

One of the motivating factors for adopting a vegan diet is the belief that it is wrong to intentionally kill animals. Yet field animals are often intentionally killed by farmers with traps and poisons in order to protect the plant crops that vegans consume. This article argues that there are, nevertheless, moral distinctions between these types of intentional killings-as well as the practices they support-that make it, all else equal, morally easier to support the production, purchase and consumption of plant products over the production, purchase and consumption of animal products. Three morally salient distinctions between these types of intentional killing practices are identified and discussed: the first relates to different levels of consumer knowledge, the second draws a distinction between necessary and contingent wrongful features of a practice and the third differentiates between two modes of harmful intentional agency – eliminative and opportunistic.

The puzzle both Thomson and Foot frame is about the dilemma in which there seem two similar cases – trolley and transplant or the fat man cases- but when they are exhaustively considered for each case, more problems come up within. The problem, as both Foot and Thomson describe, is that while the case in which permitting to turn the trolley onto one in order to save the five is regarded an action which is plausible, another case in which transplanting one’s organs to save the five is not permissible at the first glance. (Killing is worse than letting die?) These two cases are called as double effect, where there appears an intended and foreseen situation in which one exposure as the result of the action. In the following paragraphs, I will analyse how Foot and Thomson look at the cases through considering them within different contents and contexts. I will initially start explaining ‘The Trolley Problem’ from the side of the argument of Foot, where she underlines the significance of the notions ‘intended’ and ‘foreseen’, ‘doing’ and ‘allowing’ and ‘negative duties’ and ‘positive duties’. Afterwards, I will continue with the argument Thomson puts forward for the doctrine of double effect. Throughout following their examples and notions, I will argue that mother has more claim to live compared to unborn child in the case of abortion.

Two hard cases have generated controversy regarding the application of the principle of double effect in recent years. As regards the first, the case of the conjoined twins of Malta, there has been considerable convergence: most natural law ethicists seem to agree that separation of the twins was morally permissible. By contrast, the so-called “Phoenix case,” involving an abortion at a Catholic hospital for a woman with pulmonary arterial hypertension, has become a touchstone of disagreement between defenders of the so-called “new” natural law theory, and more “traditional” Thomists. I argue in this essay that, contrary to widespread opinion, the two cases were alike in the following respect: in neither need the principal agents have intended the death of anyone.

This chapter looks at the connection between rape and consent as well as that between respect for persons and wrongful sex. It has been argued that current rape law is inconsistent in its approach to sex by deception, because it treats some cases of sex by deception as rape but not others, even though a principled distinction cannot be drawn between different sex-by-deception cases. I respond to this argument by showing that there are judicial and philosophical grounds for regarding some but not all sex-by-deception cases as rape. I then argue that the tendency to define " consent " partially in terms of the general notion of respect for persons is flawed, because it fails to distinguish between sexual autonomy and sexual integrity. Consensual sex can, and often does, reveal a lack of recognition of the equal value of the other person as a separate person. Disrespectful sex, I conclude, can be as morally repugnant as rape. Keywords: doctrine of double effect; informed consent; moral psychology; principle of respect for persons; rape by fraud; sex by deception; sexual assault; trolley cases

Several critiques of the New Natural Law theory of action are to be found in a special issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly dedicated to criticizing the NNL theory as a whole.  This essay addresses three of the articles in that issue. Those essays, by Steven A. Long, Matthew O’Brien, and Fr. Kevin Flannery, SJ, as well as a more recent essay by Edward Furton (in Ethics and Medics), eventually converge on a variation of the “closeness” criticism that I will address in the second part of the paper.  In the first part, I address three further issues, raised, respectively, by Flannery, Long, and O’Brien.

One's conception of the conditions and applicability of the principle of double effect derive from one's broader convictions about moral methodology. Developed in a Catholic context which presumed the existence of moral absolutes, the principle of double effect was originally a conceptual tool to aid priests in being skilled confessors. In recent decades, as the practice of moral theology has become less connected with its earlier ecclesial and sacramental context, the principle of double effect has fallen into an epistemological crisis. Contemporary moral theological discussion of the principle of double effect usually operates in one of the following four contexts: interpretation of Aquinas; in defended within the new natural law methodology. The essay argues that juridically oriented methodologies do not adequately sustain the principle of double effect. To be sustained, it must be viewed as a theological achievement based upon the meaning of our redemption in Christ and the concomitant possibilities regarding our actions in pursuit of our true good and true end.

Contemporary proponents of double effect reasoning claim that whether producing a bad effect, such as inflicting some harm, is intended or merely foreseen sometimes makes a moral difference. Minimally, given certain enabling conditions and other things being equal, an action is morally better if the bad effect of that action is merely foreseen than if the bad effect is intended. When Aquinas' passage on self-defense is approached with the contemporary discussion about double effect reasoning in mind, it is easy to mistake the distinction he draws for this contemporary distinction. Despite his reputation as the father of double effect reasoning, however, there is no textual evidence that Aquinas thought that the distinction between intended and merely foreseen effects matters morally. Rather, Aquinas distinguishes between acts of self-defense where the bad effect is intended, and acts of self-defense with a bad effect that is unintended, unforeseen and uncharacteristic. It is only the latter category of self-defensive acts which he deems morally permissible, in case the harm inflicted in self-defense is necessary to save one's life. Thus, Aquinas' criteria for permissible killing in self-defense are much more restrictive than contemporary versions of double effect reasoning.

This paper analyses the concept of empirical ethics as well as three meta-ethical fallacies that empirical ethics is said to face: the is-ought problem, the naturalistic fallacy and violation of the fact-value distinction. Moreover, it answers the question of whether empirical ethics (necessarily) commits these three basic meta-ethical fallacies.

The goal of this chapter is to examine the account of 'mixed' or 'necessitated' actions in NE 3.1, to see whether Aristotle's discussion there provides an analogue or anticipation of the so-called 'doctrine of double effect' (DE). This project will, I hope, prove illuminating as regards both mixed actions and DE.

Die Münsteraner Dissertation aus dem Jahr 1984 wurde von Bruno Schüller (1925–2007) angenommen; Verfasser Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji wurde 2022 Erzbischof von Owerri und zum Vorsitzenden der Nigerianischen Bischofskonferenz ernannt. Er veröffentlichte seit seiner Promotion mehrere Werke zur Moraltheologie. Ugorjis Doktorarbeit wurde von der internationalen Fachwelt außerordentlich positiv rezipiert, zum Beispiel von James Keenan (Boston College). Dennoch ergibt eine genaue Lektüre mehrere Problemstellen in wissenschaftsethischer Hinsicht. Vorliegender Aufsatz verwendet sieben Texttabellen, um bei Ugorji nicht gekennzeichnete Textübernahme von anderen Autoren zu dokumentieren. Zahlreiche Passagen, die teilweise mehr als 50 aufeinanderfolgende Wörter betreffen, werden als Ugorjis Gedankengut präsentiert, obwohl sie Jahre zuvor von anderen Theologen veröffentlicht wurden. Auch Textstellen, die mit leicht zugänglichen Nachschlagewerken identisch sind, lassen sich belegen. Darüber hinaus enthält Ugorjis Buch zahlreiche nicht gekennzeichnete Passagen, die sich wörtlich in einer 1935 veröffentlichten amerikanischen Dissertation finden lassen.
Angesichts dieser Tatsachen stehen sowohl der Forschungswert der Münsteraner Dissertation als auch die wissenschaftliche Redlichkeit des Dissertanten zur Diskussion.
Eine englische Version dieses Aufsatzes erschien zuerst, siehe: Concerns about Archbishop Ugorji’s Dissertation on Double Effect. Forum Katholische Theologie 38 (2022) 135–148.

"The “New Natural Law” Theory (NNL) of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and their collaborators offers a distinctive account of intentional action, which underlies a moral theory that aims to justify many aspects of traditional morality and Catholic doctrine.

In fact, we show that the NNL is committed to premises that entail the permissibility of many actions that are irreconcilable with traditional morality and Catholic doctrine, such as elective abortions. These consequences follow principally from two aspects of the NNL. The first aspect is its distinctive version of the planning theory of intention, in which adopting the 'first-person perspective' of an agent is a sufficient, and not merely necessary, condition for determining the nature of his intentional action; this planning theory rests upon an implicitly Cartesian conception of human behavior, in which behavior chosen by an agent has no intrinsic “intentionalness” apart from what he confers upon it as part of his plan. The second aspect is the NNL's distinctive account of basic human goods' incommensurability, according to which there is no common factor shared by basic human goods that allows them to be comparatively ranked in any way that directs practical deliberation.

The entailments of these two aspects of the NNL, we argue, amount to a reductio ad absurdum. Pace the proponents of the NNL account, we sketch an alternative hylomorphic conception of intentional action that avoids untoward moral implications by grounding human agency in the exercise of basic powers that are either (a) essential constituents of human nature or (b) acquired through participation in social practices. This conception of intentional action provides a stronger foundation for natural law theory."

Perhaps one of the most pressing challenges for today’s military practitioners are the immense numbers of veterans suffering from moral injury, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other non-physical maladies as a result of their involvement in war. There is growing evidence in philosophical and psychological literature that associates the moral and psychological trauma suffered by veterans with their involvement in acts of "perpetration," most notably, acts of intentional killing against other human beings. For many, it does not matter whether or not the killings they performed were administered permissibly or not. From a psychological perspective, moral justification is only one morally salient factors to consider. Also relevant to the psychological and moral experiences of veterans will be, I contend, the soldier’s intentions: the act of intentionally killing another person contains inherent psychological risks, even when it is justified. Those who believe themselves to have killed another person will be more liable to moral and mental post-war trauma then those who do not. I will turn to the doctrine of double-effect as a framework that, if taught well, can provide moral and psychological defences for military personnel who are required to take another person’s life in the performance of their duties.

Double-Effect Reasoning (DER) implies the coexistence of good and evil in certain affairs; for a good outcome to appear, the possible evil side effects in its company or deviating from it are foreseen-but-not-intended. In Paradise Lost, God's creation serves His eternal plan, which is in essence good. The evil that follows, through Satan's rebellion, Adam and Eve's disobedience, ecological deterioration , and the Son of God's sacrifice, also happen under God's plan. These evil happenings, as paradoxes within good ends, follow the ethical principle of DER. Hence Milton's paradoxes in justifying God's ways in creation and His prelapsarian plan for the perfection of humankind through the Fall. The ambiguities of God's plan, in bringing good out of evil, can thus be explained through DER as an inevitable theological issue, which tries to explain the archetypal symbiosis between contradictions.

This paper has two aims. First, I explore the scope and limitations of the doctrine of double effect (DDE) by focusing specifically on the notion of "effect classification." Turning my attention to some hard cases, I argue that the DDE has to be supplemented by additional principles that specify how effects are to be discriminated from one another and how the various aspects of the relevant actions are to be classified as intended or simply foreseen. Secondly, I draw some general lessons from this specific investigation of the DDE bearing on the way in which moral principles of this sort can be seen to function helpfully in moral reflection.

Jensen’s spectrum from Abelardian to physicalist positions regarding intention’s role in the specification of moral objects turns out to be a triangle, with the other axis the spectrum between composite and per se accounts of action. This supports Jensen’s claim that moderate physicalism is a stable position, but raises the prospect of dissenting divergence from that mean along each of the axes. Long and Rhonheimer are right to cast killing in lethal self-defense as praeter intentionem, but wrong to think that it thereby requires no explicit color of law. This account in terms of circumstance, far from being gerrymandered, accords better with the text of II-IIq64a7 itself, its framing within the Prima Secundae, and the constraints imposed later in the Secunda Secundae. Jensen’s account of intention thus best survives the proving ground of lethal private self-defense, but only with the benefit of Long and Rhonheimer’s improved survey of that ground.

RESUMEN: En este trabajo el autor intenta mostrar la relevancia que le corresponde al principio del doble efecto en el razonamiento práctico general y especialmente en el razonamiento jurídico. Para ello procede del siguiente modo. Primero, estudia la naturaleza del principio como regla para la deliberación moral. Segundo, y con el propósito de ilustrar acerca de las principales situaciones a las que el principio se ha aplicado, ofrece una exposición de su desarrollo histórico. Tercero, presenta los argumentos para justificar la necesidad de acoger el principio del doble efecto, probando que este constituye la única forma no consecuencialista de atribuir responsabilidad por lo efectos de los actos humanos. En cuarto lugar, examina el significado de los requisitos del principio e indica la forma en que ellos deben ser comprendidos. Finalmente, señala algunos ejemplos de diversos ámbitos del Derecho en los que el principio puede ser una útil herramienta para el razonamiento judicial y legislativo.

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I defend a new agent-centered rationale for the criminal law’s view that intentional harm amounts to a more serious offense than the analogous merely foreseen harm—i.e. the familiar doctrine of double effect (“DDE”). Specifically, I argue for a version of DDE that is of particular relevance to the criminal law: one that is non-absolute, and that concerns the relative culpability of intending a bad or wrongful state of affairs as opposed to bringing it about merely knowingly. My aim is to identify a particular feature of the former in virtue of which it is pro tanto more culpable than the latter. Providing an agent-centered argument of this kind for a culpability version of DDE, I argue, is an especially attractive route to take for those who are interested in vindicating the way the criminal law actually encodes DDE.