In carrying out a particular action or series of actions, a person may also be aware that such actions have side-effects, which, though they may be foreseen, may not be directly intended.
If that person is aware of such side-effects, does he/she, in virtue of that knowledge, actually intend to cause these side-effects?
If so, may he/she therefore be said to be responsible for their occurrence even though he/she may not want them to happen and may even abhor and detest their occurrence?
To take a typical example, a Second World War bomber pilot, in dropping bombs on a munitions factory, may be aware that some of the bombs will go astray and cause casualties among civilians not involved in munitions manufacture. He may not want these casualties to occur, but since he foresees them as the side-effect of the bombing, is he not also responsible for the deaths of the civilians?
Or a drug may be given to a patient, with the intention of reducing pain but in the knowledge that administering it will shorten the patient’s life.
Is the physician responsible for killing the patient?
Many moralists would answer this question in the negative and would cite ‘the principle of double effect’ as the reason.
For them, the morally significant factor is the intention of the agent, the precise effect that he intends by his action, and not the ‘side effect’ which, though he may be aware of it, he does not intend.
Those who uphold the principle of double effect do not endorse its use in every circumstance.
If, for example, the action to be performed is an intrinsically wrong or immoral act, then the principle does not apply, since the action is forbidden in the first place.
Further, the principle is not intended to allow an agent to ‘get away with’ what is otherwise to be regarded as immoral.
Nor is it to be trivially applied; the good intended in the action must be of sufficient weight or strength to outweigh the evil of the side-effect which is foreseen and (allegedly) not intended.
Finally, the principle is not to be confused with the view that it is permissible to do evil in order that good may come.
The principle therefore does not maintain that the foreseen but not intended side effect causally contributes to the intended good.
The issue raised by this principle is of considerable importance in the debate between utilitarians (Consequentialism) and others about the ethical rightness of actions.
For the principle of double effect attributes a moral significance to intention (or to the absence of intention) irrespective of the consequences of the action.
The principle maintains that the way in which an action is performed contributes to its moral character.
So, if the principle is upheld, it undermines the utilitarian claim that the morality of an action is a function solely of the consequences of that action.
For this reason, those who are in any case opposed to utilitarianism may be less disposed to question the principle.
Critics of the principle tend to focus on two of its features.
The first of these is the distinction between intended acts and acts that are merely foreseen (the ‘side effect’), i.e. the difference between direct and oblique intention.
It is argued, for example, that it is impossible to foresee a consequence of an intended act and not at the same time to intend that consequence, for it is an inseparable effect of the central act, and the agent knows this.
The second feature to which critics pay attention is the view that a person is not necessarily responsible for an effect of his action which he foresees but does not intend.
While there are clear cases of such responsibility, these cases may depend upon a particular causal relationship between the action and its unintended effect.
The principle has been frequently invoked by Christians, including the Roman Catholic Church and other moralists in the context of the philosophical debate about abortion.
It is argued that a surgeon whose only recourse, in order to save the life of an expectant mother, is to perform an operation which he knows will result in the death of the foetus, is not performing an abortion if, in doing so, he does not intend the death.
There appears to be no clear teaching or example in Scripture which would settle the moral status of the principle of double effect decisively.
But in so far as Scripture does not adopt a utilitarian ethic, its teaching may be said not to rule out an application of the principle in certain cases.
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