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Doing Something Intentionally and Moral Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

George Graham
George Graham*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama, Birmingham
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Extract

The basic idea motivating this paper is that something can be done intentionally even when it is not done with the intention of doing it. An implication of this idea is that the distinction between doing what one intends and doing something as a foreseen avoidable consequence of doing what one intends cannot be used to exonerate agents for misdeeds.

My immediate purpose here is to illustrate these points and show how they pertain to the morally relevant difference between active and passive euthanasia, and to the exoneration of God for the production of evil. In particular, I shall try to show, first, that the American Medical Association's recent attempt to distinguish between active and passive euthanasia is seriously defective. Second, I shall try to show that a popular version of the so-called Free Will Defense of God for Evil is also seriously defective.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 667 - 677
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1981

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References

1 Shaffer, Jerome Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1968) 79–80.Google Scholar

2 The line of argument expressed in this paragraph raises a question about my theory. If the fact that Goliath has no real choice in the matter makes the consequence (missing the appointment) nonintentional, why doesn't it also make the original deed (taking the drug) nonintentional? There is a short and a long answer to this question.

The short answer is that although Goliath has no real choice in both cases, in the case of taking the drug there is a preempting consideration: which is that he intends to take and thereby takes the drug. So taking the drug should count as intentional. But I see no reason to count missing the appointment as intentional.

The long answer is complicated, in part because it raises a troublesome issue in action theory. As said, under the force of his addiction Goliath must intend to take and thereby cannot help but take the drug. This means that people can be causally necessitated to perform intentional doings. Some philosophers reject this idea. Obviously I do not. But the point is beyond the scope of the present paper. (For a philosopher who also does not reject the idea, see Goldman, Alvin I. A Theory of Human Action (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U.P. 1970)).Google Scholar

3 A note of clarification. As I understand things, deciding to do A is doing A in considered alternative to doing some other action or to inaction. If no even minimal consideration of alternative actions (or inaction) occurs at all, however, no decision (either explicit or implicit) has been made: at best, an intention has been formed (as in the case in which Goliath's intention to take the heroin results not from a decision to take the drug, but from his addiction to the drug).

4 Quoted in Rachels, James ‘Active and Passive Euthanasia,’ in New England Journal of Medicine, 292Google Scholar (January 9, 1976) 78.

5 A perhaps more vivid statement of the same point may be found in Gould, Jonathan (et.al.) Your Death Warrant? The Implications of Euthanasia (London 1971).Google Scholar ‘The use of medicaments with the intention of relieving pain is good, and if by repeated pain relief the patient's resistance is lowered and he dies earlier than he otherwise would have done, this is a side-effect which may well be acceptable. On the other hand, to give an overdose with the intention that the patient should never wake up is morally wrong. It is killing.’ (Quoted in Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Penguin 1977) 86)

6 I do not mean to suggest by any of this that there is no morally relevant difference between active and passive euthanasia. There may or may not be. I am only saying that the difference reflected in the A.M.A. policy statement (in cases in which patient death is a foreseen avoidable consequence of withholding treatment) is no morally relevant difference. In fact, it is not even essential to my argument that in such cases passive euthanasia is a form of killing (though I think it is). What is essential is that passive euthanasia can be the intentional termination of a life, and that doctors are morally responsible for intentionally terminating a life.

7 Some writers apply the Defense only to some evil, to so-called ‘moral’ as opposed to ‘physical’ evil. Whereas others apply the Defense to all evil. For them all evil is (as it were) moral evil.

8 St. Augustine, City of God, Book XI, Sees. XX-XXIII and Book XII, Sees. Ill-VII; Enchiridion, Chaps. 3-8 and 26. See also, Temple, William Nature, Man and God (London: Macmillan 1934) 369.Google Scholar

9 Hick, John Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1963) 38f.Google Scholar

10 It may be worth noting that even a less than all-knowing agent could have foreseen it. Considering the trillions upon trillions of choices men would make, anyone could have foreseen that at least some would be evil. By the same token, anyone could have known that by not producing such creatures, their evil choices could not have been made, and such evil would be avoided.

11 For more on these issues see, e.g., Mackie, J.L. ‘Evil and Omnipotence,’ reprinted in Feinberg, J. ed., Reason and Responsibility, 4th. edn. (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth 1978) 61–8.Google Scholar

12 Malcolm Acock, Hugh LaFollette, James Rachels, and a referee for this Journal made helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper.