TY - JOUR
T1 - The doctrine of triple effect and why a rational agent need not intend the means to his end. The moral difference between throwing a trolley at a person and throwing a person at a trolley
T2 - II - John Harris
AU - Kamm, Frances M.
AU - Harris, John
PY - 2000/7
Y1 - 2000/7
N2 - Frances Kamm sets out to draw and make plausible distinctions that would show how and why it is, in some circumstances, permissible to kill some to save many more, but is not so in others. To do so she draws on a famous, and famously artificial, example of Judith Thomson, which illustrates the fact that people intutitively reject some instances of such killings but not others. The irrationality, implausibility and in many cases the self-defeating nature of such distinctions I had attempted to expose in my 'The Survival Lottery' over 25 years ago. I still think these distinctions irrational and implausible and I will try, in this response, to show why this remains the case and why doctrines of additional effects, to however many powers they are taken, remain unhelpful in ethics.
AB - Frances Kamm sets out to draw and make plausible distinctions that would show how and why it is, in some circumstances, permissible to kill some to save many more, but is not so in others. To do so she draws on a famous, and famously artificial, example of Judith Thomson, which illustrates the fact that people intutitively reject some instances of such killings but not others. The irrationality, implausibility and in many cases the self-defeating nature of such distinctions I had attempted to expose in my 'The Survival Lottery' over 25 years ago. I still think these distinctions irrational and implausible and I will try, in this response, to show why this remains the case and why doctrines of additional effects, to however many powers they are taken, remain unhelpful in ethics.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=60949135147&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=60949135147&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1467-8349.00062
DO - 10.1111/1467-8349.00062
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:60949135147
SN - 0309-7013
VL - 74
SP - 41
EP - 57
JO - Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society, Supplementary Volumes
JF - Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society, Supplementary Volumes
IS - 1
ER -