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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The principle of double effect must provide principled grounds for distinguishing between grave harms intended as means and grave harms foreseen as side effects

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Double effect implies that grave harms foreseen as side effects may be permissible even when grave harms intended as means are not
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    • 2.The distinction between harms intended as means and harms foreseen as side effects is difficult to draw in practice
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aquinas's act-description framework shows that the intentional structure of an act is constitutive of its moral species, not merely an epistemic label applied afterward.
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    • 2.Warren Quinn's 1989 analysis demonstrates that harmful use of persons as means involves a distinctive form of agency that treats victims as complicit tools, which side-effect harms do not.
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    • 3.This agential difference grounds a morally relevant asymmetry: the perpetrator of intended harm makes the victim's suffering serve his purposes in a way that side-effect harm does not require.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Philippa Foot's trolley problem cases establish through reflective equilibrium that virtually all competent moral reasoners track the means/side-effect distinction even before articulating a principle.
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    • 2.The practical difficulty of drawing a distinction does not dissolve the metaphysical reality of that distinction, as cases like the Craniotomy versus Hysterectomy illustrate structural differences in causal chains.
      ?

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    • 3.Joseph Mangan's causal-proximity criterion provides a procedural test: if removing the harmful effect from the causal chain would prevent achievement of the intended good, the harm is a means, not a side effect.
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