What’s Wrong with the World

This analogy of the plane to an ectopic fallopian tube occurred to me during The Right Call dialogue, but I didn't bring it up to avoid sidetracking from the scenario under discussion, and to keep Lydia on my side and off my case. I will have to say, though, that in my essay (Who Are the Innocent) to which Paul links in his original post, I raised the ectopic pregnancy as an analogy to legitimate self-defense, and I would now have to seriously modify that analogy after watching you and she discuss it. There were simply things I know now that I didn't then. I leave it in the original essay (even though it reveals flawed thinking) because I want to remember my state of mind at the time I wrote it. Perhaps I could add a parenthetical update.

..doesn't excuse simply adverting to the idea that abortion is sometimes morally acceptable as long as someone argues that the stakes are high enough...No matter what one may claim to be at stake, one can..never claim that it is licit to violate an absolute moral imperative and at the same time claim to be other than a moral relativist.

This is the area into which you and I both were trying to lead Mr. Auster re his claim to be a moral absolutist, but he refused to engage. Disappointing, but no longer surprising.

I hope Lydia will engage on this ectopic thing, for in her you will find a genuine absolutist.

Actually, I've tried to avoid this issue, too, because after all, no one _likes_ being considered a kook. I would for the moment here add only a couple of medical/empirical points: As I understand it, the best option to preserve the woman's fertility is actually a chemical abortion. I forget the name of the drug, but basically it causes the child to separate from the wall of the tube. The second best option for preserving fertility wouldn't (again, as I understand it) be to "crush" the tube but rather to open it and directly remove the child. This, I gather, Zippy also rejects (as of course do I).

The other thing I just want to point out is that my very strong impression is that if you had a metabolizing, heart-beating embryo at all prior to removing the ectopic pregnancy (and in some cases you may not), by the time you have operated to remove the entire tube, you have a dead child. Period. It isn't just that the child _will_ die (e.g., at some later time) but rather that the physical act of the removal of the tube causes the child's instant, immediate death. I think it's just important to face that up front, because I think it does make it more difficult to treat the embryo's death as a separate "consequence" or "result" of the action. This is one reason why nobody talks about "saving the child." Because the child's dead by the time you're done with the surgery. That's also the reason why nobody blanches at sending the remains off to the lab and ultimately to the bio-incinerator rather than doing anything else with them. (That plus the fact that we in our culture probably aren't concerned enough about respectful disposal of human remains anyway.)

If I'm wrong about this as a medical fact, I'll accept correction. But as far as I know, it's a direct result of the earliness of the pregnancies we are talking about.

If I'm wrong about this as a medical fact, I'll accept correction.

As will I. Any chosen behavior which directly, knowingly and as a chosen behavior itself, kills the child would be morally unacceptable in my view.

A more fundamental issue is that if someone is engaging in these kinds of acts without understanding them at this level, as chosen behaviors and means to ends, and asking beforehand whether a chosen means is or is not evil in itself; anyone who is not doing this while engaging in modern technological life-and-death behaviors is clearly doing wrong simpliciter. If a guy shoots down the plane without having genuinely understood the matter and "split the hairs" if you will, that leaves no doubt that he has done evil.

You mean, if you were convinced that the embryo is alive at the beginning and dead at the end of the tube-removing surgery, because its oxygen is cut off, you would condemn it?

Re. shooting out the engines of the plane, I wanted to add that if we stipulate that there is no way to save the ectopic embryo, I suppose the parallel in the case of the plane wd. be stipulating that all the passengers will either die instantly when the plane hits the ground or else be so badly injured that they cannot be saved by any available medical technology. If you _stipulate_ that as part of the scenario, then I hardly see how you can justify shooting out the engines.

We might attempt to disable the plane without directly killing the child. There are numerous ways to do so. It is arguable that shooting out the engines, even though it carries a risk of explosion, is one of them. The airplane will likely crash.

I am trying to understand what is going on here. It is never licit to intentionally kill an innocent person, so directly targeting the plane to blow it up would be no different than directly targeting the innocent person on the plane. It is therefore not acceptable to argue that the chosen behavior was to blow up the plane and the death of the innocent person was simply a foreseen, but unintended consequence. The chosen behavior of blowing up the plane is thus identical to the chosen behavior of killing the passenger. Do I have this right thus far? However, if the chosen behavior is altered not to blow the plane up entirely, but to simply shoot the wing of the plane, this act is permissible because the act of shooting the wing does not directly kill the innocent person, even though it is forseen that the plane will crash and the passanger will die?

You mean, if you were convinced that the embryo is alive at the beginning and dead at the end of the tube-removing surgery, because its oxygen is cut off, you would condemn it?

That is still a tough call, to me. Though for reasons already expressed I think it is probably moot: that is, I rather suspect that the way these things are done is almost always immoral for other reasons. There is too much conviction that if it can be done, and one's intentions are good, that doing it is necessarily licit. That after all is what drives the whole Hiroshima debate. But I don't claim to be able to clear up for all time where behavior stops and effects start in every conceivable case, and this one is an archetype precisely because (unlike nuking cities) it is a difficult one.

You probably know more about the details of ectopics than I do though.

I suppose the parallel in the case of the plane wd. be stipulating that all the passengers will either die instantly when the plane hits the ground or else be so badly injured that they cannot be saved by any available medical technology.

Well, that isn't actually true though. It is possible, and not merely in principle, for the plane to reach the ground with survivors. That won't happen if you just indiscriminately blow them up though. But in this particular case you actually make that more likely if you can disable the plane without destroying it. The odds go from zero to something, and as they say in the Lottery you can't win if you don't play. Just about any act which increases the chances of survival for the innocents on the plane would (other things equal) surely be licit.

...but to simply shoot the wing of the plane...

I didn't propose shooting the wing off as a probably licit act though. I proposed disabling the engines, a risky procedure which might accidentally result in the explosive destruction of the plane, not because of explosive ordinance fired into the plane in the act but because of the jet fuel on board. Turbine engines are sensitive things. A bird flying through one will destroy it, most often leaving the plane in flying condition but with reduced climb capability and range from the remaining engines. Knocking out all of the engines turns it into a glider, not a rock. (Of course someone, or some autopilot or trim system, still has to make it glide. Which it might).

Edge-case morality in a technological world requires precise technical knowledge about specific proposed acts and a deep understanding of moral principles, it seems to me. Indeed, that dual requirement is what leads me to suspect that most people aren't practicing it. For every technical practice involving life and death decisions there is a correspondingly technical morality of the specific acts in that practice. This is the case because it is the specific nature of human acts, in addition to intentions and consequences, which determine the morality of those acts.

I didn't propose shooting the wing off as a probably licit act though. I proposed disabling the engines

No you did not. I brought it up because I did not see the difference in the act of shooting the wing and disabling the engines. You assure me there is one, which is what I trying to understand. Does the difference in the acts have to do with the probability of survival?

Does the difference in the acts have to do with the probability of survival?

No, it isn't a probability issue as I understand it. Just about anything admits of possibility in a quantum world, and people appeal to "but if a miracle happened" all the time in discussions of double-effect (I've done so myself in the past. I don't think that appeal validly comprehends the issue though, unless the appeal-to-miracle is somewhere outside of the chosen behavior itself). It is a question of whether the chosen behavior itself falls under a species of acts which are intrinsically evil (which is itself determined by the interior moral quality of the behavior being chosen itself: it is per se impossible for an intrinsically evil act to cohere internally in the person with the truth about man and God). If the chosen behavior isn't intrinsically evil, then and only then can we start analyzing the act under double-effect.

Any behavior which inherently, in the behavior itself, attacks the bodily integrity of an innocent person in a way that will knowingly kill him falls under the species "killing the innocent". Lydia's question is trickier if and only if the procedure to treat the ectopic does not directly attack the child. If it does directly attack the child then it is a slam dunk in her favor, and I get to be even more of a kook than my old friend Larry Auster now thinks I am (which I suppose would be something of an accomplishment). Thus the devil is (literally) in the technical details.

If the chosen behavior isn't intrinsically evil, then and only then can we start analyzing the act under double-effect.

Shooting an inanimate object (the wing) is not intrinsically evil, so there must be something intrinsic to the act of shooting the wing that equates it to an act of attacking the "bodily integrity of an innocent person." I assume that an innocent person being on the plane is enough. If a husband wanted to murder his wife by blowing up the plane she was one, nobody would believe that he only attacked an inanimate object. My confusion is that I do not understand how shooting the wing and shooting the engines are not the same type of act. Both acts tamper with the proper functioning of the plane, which will result in the death of anyone on the plane. What difference is there other than that turning off the engines allows the possibility that the plane may 'eventually run out of fuel and glide safely into a field of its own accord.'? The only difference I see is that shooting the wing will result in the death of the innocent passanger and shooting the engine will most likely result in the death of the innocent passanger.

The the devil is certainly in the technical details and I really appreciate your time going through them with me.

X: A commenter on the cross-post on my blog brought up the same point about the comparison between shooting off the wings and treating an ectopic pregnancy. My only answer to both of my astute questioners on this point at the moment is "I haven't worked that out".

"It is possible, and not merely in principle, for the plane to reach the ground with survivors."

Right. That's why it's so difficult to make up an analogy between treating an ectopic pregnancy and trying to bring the plane down carefully.

Of course, I agree that the physical facts make all the difference. If it were medically possible to remove the embryo from the tube and reimplant it, if there were any such technology or any way of even plausibly trying to do this, any point in making any such attempt, then I'd be 100% for it.

And here's an interesting point: If it were possible to remove the embryo from the tube and reimplant it elsewhere, then a salpingotomy would be _preferable_ morally to a salpingectomy. That is, if you're going to remove the embryo from the tube to move it elsewhere anyway, you might as well do so at the outset and leave the woman with that fallopian tube, rather than removing the whole tube. The difference between salpingotomy (removing the embryo from the tube) and salpingectomy never had anything to do with the idea that in the latter case there is some hope of saving the embryo. Rather, the idea was that analytically the salpingectomy could be thought of as "surgery on the woman's body" because the surgeon doesn't make contact with the child directly. But there never has been any greater chance of the child's survival in the one procedure than in the other.

I've just dreamed up a project in animal research for some enterprising scientist: See if you can transplant a significant section of an animal's fallopian tube to its own uterus (no rejection issues with the same animal), attach it fully all along the length of the section of tube to the endometrium (uterine lining), and have the tubal tissue live. If this works, induce a tubal pregnancy in the same type of animal and see if you can transplant the tube section with embryo to the uterus, attaching the section of tube to the uterine wall in the same way. See what happens. It would at least be worth finding out. My guess is the tube lives, the embryo dies.

If the tube in question happens to be a Boeing 757 hurtling toward a building with an innocent person in it, our moral obligations are the same. We cannot licitly directly attack and kill the child by crushing or destroying her in our immediately chosen behavior. It is always immoral to directly kill the innocent in one's specific chosen behavior, independent of any other considerations.

Sorry, I don't buy your basic premise. It simply is not always immoral to kill the innocent directly, independent of any other considerations. The other considerations make all the difference. Most notably, one innocent may certainly be sacrificed in order to save many other innocents.

Zippy: One thing that has to be taken into account is the limited range of possible choices that may actually exist for preventing a plane from going in its chosen direction: I would guess that currently, shooting off a wing (or similar structural damage) may be the only practical way of doing this. But if it were somehow possible to simply disable the engines, that would be preferable, since it enhances the passengers' (slim) hopes.

Lydia: Good point about the salping-whatever operations. There should always be the constraint that any operation should give the foetus the maximum chance of survival, however slim. It's important to keep looking for the greatest possible good. (So, salping-whatever is just like the plane, isn't it?)

Lugo: you say "Most notably, one innocent may certainly be sacrificed in order to save many other innocents." But I suspect Christians may think of John 11:47-50 and not be so convinced. And besides, how to decide on which innocents should be sacrificed for which other innocents is an intractable problem. For example, one might argue that anyone believing and publicizing incorrect ethical principles about life and death should be killed in order to protect the others. And that would lead us who knows where.

I really don't get it. Maybe I'm just obtuse, but I don't see why we shouldn't shoot the plane down.

I don't think it's just proportionalism at work, either: I don't think it's right to deliberately kill one innocent person to save twenty.

But if I'm the President, and a hijacked plane is going to smash into a building somewhere, I have the obligation to stop the terrorists. I can't send a SEAL team on board to capture them, and as far as I know the techniques for forcing a plane down all involve the pilot worrying about whether he's going to die.

The hairsplitting between shooting off a wing, disabling the engines, and shooting a sidewinder all appear to be distinctions without differences.

If it were my family on board, I would blame the terrorists for their deaths, not the President. And I know somebody will say, "it doesn't matter whom you blame", and I get that, so let me say it more strongly: the culpability for their deaths would be on the terrorists, and not at all on the President. I think I would need a worldview shift (and I have accommodated worldview shifts before, so I acknowledge that I could be wrong) to accept otherwise.

I said: The hairsplitting between shooting off a wing, disabling the engines, and shooting a sidewinder all appear to be distinctions without differences.

Sorry, that's not quite true. Unlike the other actions, disabling the engines still might allow the terrorist to accomplish his goal: a glider full of fuel smashing into a building can still do a lot of damage. So I think the best and most prudent course is to knock it down cleanly.

So I think the best and most prudent course is to knock it down cleanly.

Then you must think, like Lugo and against two millennia of the tradition of Western Christendom and the full authority of the Catholic Church, that it is sometimes morally licit to directly kill the innocent. You must think that "kill the innocent" is not a species of intrinsically immoral acts.

Do you think adultery is a species of intrinsically immoral act? Would it be wrong for a woman to commit adultery with a terrorist in order to steal the trigger for a doomsday weapon he intends to activate and destroy the world?

Is directly killing an innocent child on the plane somehow not as bad as Doomsday Woman's act of adultery?

Do you think abortion is an intrinsically evil act? N.B., the only reason abortion is intrinsically evil is because it entails directly killing the innocent. Abortion is morally wrong in all cases; yes, even in cases of rape and when the life of the mother is at stake. Give ground on the intrinsic immorality of killing the innocent and you can pretty much say goodbye to moral absolutism tout court. The physical facts of what acts are possible are quite different between the fleshy tube and the metal one; but the moral constraints are the same.

"I don't get it" isn't an argument. Lugo argues (or at least asserts) that sometimes it is morally licit to directly kill the innocent. It seems to me that though he is wrong about that as a matter of fact, he is right that in order to justify ignoring the kind of act-centered casuisty ethicists make in hard cases like ectopic pregnancy you have to be a moral relativist: you have to adopt situational ethics when it comes to the matter of killing the innocent.

And by the way, once you say goodbye to moral absolutism you say goodbye to everything in Western Christendom that matters. So Auster is wrong that principled moral casuistry is abstract, unimportant, and suicidal. Auster's own situational ethics approach to the exercise of war power is itself a suicide bullet in the brain of Western Christendom.

Paul asks, "So, salping-whatever is just like the plane, isn't it?"

I say, yes and no. Yes, because the same overall moral constraints apply to both. Also, yes, because on my view you can't morally do either--either shooting down the plane with a sidewinder or any of the surgeries to treat the ectopic pregnancy.

No, because as a matter of empirical fact there are now, as Zippy describes, ways of trying to get the plane down with some survivors, which is actually trying to _help_ the passengers. But there are not as a matter of empirical fact now any ways available of trying to treat the ectopic pregnancy with the child's surviving. My own rather gloomy prediction is that no such ways will ever be found, as a result of a) the exceedingly early stage of development which is all the embryo reaches before the tube bursts, b) the great difficulty of getting out intact an embryo that is attached to the walls of a narrow passage like the fallopian tube, and c) the fact that no way that I know of has been found to remove early mammalian embryos from one place where they are implanted and to re-implant them elsewhere. Note that the treatment of premature babies is of an entirely different kind. The preemie is not reimplanted elsewhere; rather, the cord is cut at birth as in any other birth and the child is then attached to various life support systems. But these require the existence of some operational lungs or other (even a ventilator has to have some lungs to ventilate), differentiated organ systems, and so forth. Even if an artificial womb ever is developed, a new zygote would be implanted there in the first place. This still would not in itself make unimplantation and reimplantation possible.

Nevertheless, I could wish that we would hear of more animal research on this problem, perhaps along the lines I've described. Of course, it might have been tried and I just never heard of it. But I get the impression no one is motivated to do it because the moral issues don't bother most people that much and there is no money in it.

But I get the impression no one is motivated to do it because the moral issues don't bother most people that much and there is no money in it.

I think that is exactly right, and I think your research idea is intringuing. Perhaps the embryo simply cannot be "un-implanted"; on the other hand, perhaps opening the section of tube into a flat sheet and adhering it to the uterine wall would take the survival odds from zero to something greater than zero. It is a very interesting question.

how to decide on which innocents should be sacrificed for which other innocents is an intractable problem.

This is only an intractable problem if one has an intractable lack of basic reasoning skills. Any situation where the deliberate killing of a small number of innocents results in saving the lives of a large number of innocents is a moral and intellectual no-brainer.

In the specific case of the airliner scenario, this is much more of a no-brainer because the innocents on the aircraft will die anyway if you take no action. If the terrorists cannot reach their target, they will crash the plane into the ground and kill everyone on board. It is morally obligatory to take action to save the lives of the innocents on the ground at the terrorist target - because they will NOT die if you take action - even if that means killing the innocents on the plane - because they are going to die no matter what you do.

I am profoundly unimpressed with this idea that somehow shooting the wing or an engine off is not the same as shooting the plane down and killing the passengers. Aside from the fact that the plane will most likely crash immediately and kill all on board if you do this, if the plane is damaged and unable to reach its target, the terrorists will crash it into the ground. The end result is that all the passengers will be dead as a direct result of something YOU did, and you cannot escape moral responsibility for the outcome.

Lugo argues (or at least asserts) that sometimes it is morally licit to directly kill the innocent. It seems to me that though he is wrong about that as a matter of fact,

Absolutely not! I am only wrong about that as a matter of your opinion.

Any situation where the deliberate killing of a small number of innocents results in saving the lives of a large number of innocents is a moral and intellectual no-brainer.

An excellent statement of the doctrine of situational ethics and its concomitant rejection of moral absolutes.

Just war theory is a situational ethic which makes homicide licit. It is hardly modernist. A conditional pacifism is also situational ethics.

Just war theory is a situational ethic which makes homicide licit.

There you go again, KW, conflating killing enemy soldiers in battle with killing the innocent.

I can't help it if you must think so.

Did you ruminate about suicide? Does the self as "deontological object" render the intention of sacrifice illicit?

Did you ruminate about suicide?

Yeah. It's wrong.

Does the self as "deontological object" render the intention of sacrifice illicit?

The deontological object in my discussion in the other thread is an act, not the self. But no, self-sacrifice isn't illicit as far as I know.

Were you under the impression that this validates the proposition that "[a]ny situation where the deliberate killing of a small number of innocents results in saving the lives of a large number of innocents is a moral and intellectual no-brainer."? If so, see either of my posts on how not to construct a sequitur.

No need to be defensive or impute ideas to me. You're practice has been duly noted.

You clearly gave the impression that you were going to do some further ruminations and I haven't read anything except your radio voice.

...or impute ideas to me.

I didn't impute anything to you, I asked you a question about whether you were drawing a particular conclusion from your own premeses (since if you weren't, it made little sense in my mind for you to present them at all).

I've pointed this out to you before, though perhaps not in precisely these words: the JWD is not a situational ethic. No absolute moral norms properly understood are suspended - ever - under the JWD.

Are you evading the question, Zippy?

I didn't impute anything to you.

This is a lie. You shouldn't justify the truth with such means.

Are you evading the question, Zippy?

No. As far as I can tell, I haven't eveded any question in any of these discussions, quite unlike many of my key interlocutors and, in fact, you.

I have expressed my ignorance when asked a question to which I do not have an answer: I do not propose a specific deontological account of self-sacrifice, for example. Leaving that "ignorance hole" in the discussion has no bearing whatsoever on my other claims. None. I am not a positivist. In order to be able to answer some questions, I do not require myself to be able to answer all conceivable questions.

This is a lie.

If you falsely accuse me of lying again, I will delete all of your comments. See the posting guidelines.

See for yourself. You said, "There you go again, KW, conflating killing enemy soldiers in battle with killing the innocent." I did no such thing. My claim was that just war theory is situational. If you dispute it, fine.

See for yourself.

Disagreeing with you, and disagreeing with you about the implications of the things you have said, is not lying.

I've changed my mind. If you do not apologize to me for accusing me of lying, I will delete all of your posts.

I have expressed my ignorance when asked a question to which I do not have an answer: I do not propose a specific deontological account of self-sacrifice, for example. Leaving that "ignorance hole" in the discussion has no bearing whatsoever on my other claims. None. I am not a positivist. In order to be able to answer some questions, I do not require myself to be able to answer all conceivable questions.

There, now you're finally thinking. I understand you didn't propose such an account. I think such an account should be forthcoming.

I'm waiting.

Perhaps you have a different understanding of lying than I do. I had no idea where you came up with that conflation which you imputed to me. If that isn't imputing ideas to me, I don't know what is. You have acknowledged that I didn't conflate ideas as you said, so there is no matter. Shake hands?

"There, now you're finally thinking. I understand you didn't propose such an account. I think such an account should be forthcoming."

KW, what's the point? That you can't know one thing in ethics if you don't know everything? Heck, I supposedly _am_ a positivist (though I'm never sure quite why people think so), and _I_ don't believe that. In fact, it's usually the other guys who are implying that we have things radically wrong because we have only partial knowledge.

Zippy,

"Perhaps opening the section of tube into a flat sheet and adhering it to the uterine wall would take the survival odds from zero to something greater than zero."

I wouldn't suggest that as a line of research at first (though in animal research many things can be tried), if only because it could easily be destructive in itself. Those tubes are small, and there could be (I'm pretty sure) adhesion on both sides at once. This is one of the problems with the whole idea of moving a section of tube to the uterus and one of the zillions of reasons it seems not very promising and worth research only because of the importance of the issue.

Perhaps you have a different understanding of lying than I do.

My understanding of lying is that it involves deliberately telling a falsehood to further one's agenda.

"I am sorry I accused you of lying" would be more acceptable.

KW, what's the point?

Sigh. New knowledge? I'm actually interested to understand more about this than before. So yes, the deontological description of intent, direct object, and so on seems to bog down when applied to sacrifice. That is of some concern, I reckon. Partial knowledge, yes, but belligerence over partial knowledge, no.

Heck, I supposedly _am_ a positivist ...

I'd be happier saying that you may have positivist tendencies around the "edges" of things, particularly when it comes to human institutions like government. You are probably as much a positivist as Steve Burton is a Christian.

...once you say goodbye to moral absolutism you say goodbye to everything in Western Christendom that matters.

Saying goodbye to moral absolutism? Have we ever said "hello"?

Auster's own situational ethics approach to the exercise of war power is itself a suicide bullet in the brain of Western Christendom.

Considering that the Western Christendom in its long history of war virtually has always followed the limited “situational ethics” (when it, at all, followed ethics) rather then the angelic “absolute morality” of Zippy, that “bullet in the brain” seems to have quite a delayed effect.

KW said: Just war theory is a situational ethic which makes homicide licit.

Zippy replied: There you go again, KW, conflating killing enemy soldiers in battle with killing the innocent.

This statement isn't the conflation that you describe. Just war theory states that homicide is licit in certain situations. As far as I can see, KW's statement is accurate and doesn't do what you say it does.

I know you're looking for an apology, but you might consider that KW also has reason to take offense.

Lugo said: Any situation where the deliberate killing of a small number of innocents results in saving the lives of a large number of innocents is a moral and intellectual no-brainer.

Zippy replied: An excellent statement of the doctrine of situational ethics and its concomitant rejection of moral absolutes.

I don't mean to seem like I'm picking on you, Zippy, but Lugo's statement doesn't look "situational" (as I understand it) at all. It seems pretty absolute: If killing people A saves people B, and A [is less than] B, kill A. I think he's wrong, but I don't think it's situational ethics. No?

[Note: reformatted by editor to remove less-than sign]

Reposting because I had a greater-than sign in the original post that apparently through the HTML rendering off.

Lugo said: Any situation where the deliberate killing of a small number of innocents results in saving the lives of a large number of innocents is a moral and intellectual no-brainer.

Zippy replied: An excellent statement of the doctrine of situational ethics and its concomitant rejection of moral absolutes.

I don't mean to seem like I'm picking on you, Zippy, but Lugo's statement doesn't look "situational" (as I understand it) at all. It seems pretty absolute: If killing people A saves people B, and A is smaller in quantity than B, then kill A. It's wrong, but I don't think it's situational ethics. No?

Then you must think, like Lugo and against two millennia of the tradition of Western Christendom and the full authority of the Catholic Church, that it is sometimes morally licit to directly kill the innocent. You must think that "kill the innocent" is not a species of intrinsically immoral acts.

How do square that up with the fact that the Catholic Church has allowed salpingectomy?

Btw; until quite recently, this was bread and butter stuff for Protestants as well.

I do not propose a specific deontological account of self-sacrifice, for example. Leaving that "ignorance hole" in the discussion has no bearing whatsoever on my other claims.

I disagree; a filling of that "ignorance hole" would go a great way towards a mutual understanding and a better grasp of double effect. All men of goodwill on this forum agree that deliberate killing of the innocent is evil no matter what the reason; however not all foreseen bought upon deaths are killing.

"You are probably as much a positivist as Steve Burton is a Christian."

I feel like Bilbo Baggins's audience at the birthday party, trying to work that one out and see if it comes to a compliment. :-)

Zippy said: "I don't get it" isn't an argument.

Correct. That's why I didn't say, "I don't get it: therefore, Zippy is wrong." :)

I'm saying that I don't get it. And you can beat me up with the against two millennia of the tradition of Western Christendom and the full authority of the Catholic Church bit, but that's unhelpful; this is a question of Natural Law, which is supposedly written on our hearts. I'm no Fideist, and I'm no Muslim: the moral commands of God aren't inscrutable, and it's my duty to scrutinize them. So if you're telling me that He commands one thing, and I can't see how the contrary isn't so, then I think the issue needs some exploration.

You must think that "kill the innocent" is not a species of intrinsically immoral acts.

Yes. More precisely, I think that knowingly committing an act that will result in the deaths of innocent people may, in some circumstances, be warranted. Salpingectomy is an example. Your description of shooting down the airliner as "killing the innocent" seems to be much like calling a salpingectomy "killing the innocent". If you disagree, I'd be interested in knowing why.

Do you think adultery is a species of intrinsically immoral act?

Yes.

Would it be wrong for a woman to commit adultery with a terrorist in order to steal the trigger for a doomsday weapon he intends to activate and destroy the world?

Yes.

Is directly killing an innocent child on the plane somehow not as bad as Doomsday Woman's act of adultery?

Yes. It is also not as bad as killing the child through a salpingotomy. It is about the same as killing the child through a salpingectomy.

Do you think abortion is an intrinsically evil act?

Yes.

N.B.,

You calling me a newbie!? :)

the only reason abortion is intrinsically evil is because it entails directly killing the innocent. Abortion is morally wrong in all cases; yes, even in cases of rape and when the life of the mother is at stake.

Yes.

Give ground on the intrinsic immorality of killing the innocent and you can pretty much say goodbye to moral absolutism tout court.

That seems doubtful to me. The principle "all people who have eaten penguin flesh are immoral" can be absolute without being true. Tell me that I'm wrong, of course, since you think I am; but don't call me a relativist. That would be like Auster telling you that you're a pacifist.

I maintain that soldiers are innocent -- I use this in the ordinary sense of "non-criminal", since I don't know how St. Thomas used the term and am not arguing with him -- and a just war shows that "killing the innocent" in that sense may be necessary.

If this is a sticking point, perhaps we should define what we mean by "innocent".

The physical facts of what acts are possible are quite different between the fleshy tube and the metal one; but the moral constraints are the same.

Not really. In the fleshy tube, there is no actor trying to blow up the entire city around the woman in question. If there were -- I'm having flashbacks of Alien -- it might be reasonable to shoot the woman in the area where the creature was known to be, even though it would almost certainly kill her and her child. That it might be reasonable doesn't mean that it is, but once we see (if we do) that it isn't automatically illicit, it becomes one thing to consider, along with all other options and all of the known consequences.

[Lugo] is right that in order to justify ignoring the kind of act-centered casuisty ethicists make in hard cases like ectopic pregnancy you have to be a moral relativist: you have to adopt situational ethics when it comes to the matter of killing the innocent.

I think you're fighting a straw man here. Nobody is arguing relativism. When Lugo said it was a "no-brainer", I would be willing to bet that he meant that anyone holding another position is wrong. That's not relativism. I can also hold that "killing the innocent is sometimes licit", define when it's okay (possibly enumerating the specific situations, or providing criteria for licitness), and hold that these are moral absolutes. Unless I'm misunderstanding the way you're using the terms?

Regards,
Jake

On self sacrifice, I speak only for myself here: I'm not immediately feeling this overwhelming necessity to defend throwing yourself on a grenade. I mean, maybe it is suicide. Seems plausible to me on the face of it.

"Self sacrifice" comes in many different sorts. When a fireman runs into a building to save a baby, sure, he's risking death. But if he expected to die in the building, his act would be pointless, because he wouldn't be able to get the baby out, either. Lots of acts of self-sacrifice have this quality that while they involve significant risk they also involve the real possibility that one will survive, though perhaps maimed or injured seriously. Throwing oneself in front of another person when shots ring out is this sort of act.

Another variety is of a kind that I believe Zippy has discussed before at his blog, where he said that if someone else's choices come _after_ your choices and determine what happens, then we are definitely talking about indirect results and not about the object of an act. Many of the most important fictional and real acts of self-sacrifice fit here. If a missionary to some wretched spot stays with his flock when the bad guys are coming, he may know that the bad guys will kill him, but what he is doing is no act of violence against anyone, including himself. He's praying, preaching, helping the sick, etc. The bad guys choose to kill him afterwards, but that's entirely separate from his acts of continuing his missionary work. I think that even the ending of _A Tale of Two Cities_ can be fitted in here. Sidney Carton changes clothes with Charles Darnay, knowing that this will _lead to_ his death, but that is clearly the indirect result of his act, not its object. The revolutionaries themselves have to come in after the change of clothes, take Carton off in the tumbril, put him on the guillotine, and chop his head off. The whole set of violent acts against him is carried out by other people, subsequent to his act of changing clothes, and they could choose not to carry them out.

When you take out those two licit categories--acts that involve risking your life with a real chance of survival and acts that involve doing entirely good things that are followed by acts of (foreseen) violence against you by other people--I have no immediate and great stake in defending the throw-yourself-on-the-grenade set that is left.

Jake:
This statement isn't the conflation that you describe. Just war theory states that homicide is licit in certain situations. As far as I can see, KW's statement is accurate and doesn't do what you say it does.

"Homicide" as a descriptor doesn't even describe an act. It describes something that is true about any number of acts, some of which are licit and some aren't.

JWD is not a situational ethic, period. A situational ethic attempts to take an absolute moral prohibition and make it relative to the situation; to remove the prohibition based on the situation. JWD properly understood doesn't do that.

[...]
It's wrong, but I don't think it's situational ethics. No?

Of course it is. It makes the morality of directly killing innocent people dependent upon the situation, rather than taking it as absolutely prohibited. (Another description of it is as proportionalism; I use the more colloquial term "situational ethics" because more people understand it).

Not really. In the fleshy tube, there is no actor trying to blow up the entire city around the woman in question.

If you carefully read my scenario above, you wil note that there are no terrorists in it. I did that on purpose. Adding a terrorist doesn't change anything though. Suppose the terrorist armed the autopilot and parachuted out, leaving a single innocent child on board and a single innocent on the ground who will be killed when the plane crashes. It makes no difference. Adding to the numbers on the plane and the numbers on the ground makes no difference either.

I maintain that soldiers are innocent -- I use this in the ordinary sense of "non-criminal", ..

Then you might as well speak Jabberwocky, because that isn't what it means. What it means is "not choosing/having chosen an attacking behavior against which any licit defensive violence is directed".

SP:
How do square that up with the fact that the Catholic Church has allowed salpingectomy?

First of all, it is simply false to say that the Church has allowed salpingectomy. No magisterial document states this to be the case. However, moral theologians tend to see salpingectomy as licit and salpingotomy as illicit precisely because as acts, the former at least plausibly does not directly attack the physical integrity of the child while the latter clearly does. Quite similarly, in fact, to how blowing up the plane attacks the physical integrity of the passengers while shooting out the engines doesn't.

Jake:
I think that knowingly committing an act that will result in the deaths of innocent people may, in some circumstances, be warranted.

The answer indicates a misunderstanding of the question. The key words indicating as much are "will result in". Intrinsically evil acts of killing the innocent are not understood as acts which result in some outcome. They are understood as chosen behaviors to which killing the innocent is intrinsic.

Your description of shooting down the airliner as "killing the innocent" seems to be much like calling a salpingectomy "killing the innocent". If you disagree, I'd be interested in knowing why.

Think the opposite. Salpingectomy is more like my description of shooting out the engines as not directly killing the innocent (unlike salpingotomy/blowing up the plane). The whole point to the post was to set up this correspondence as an analogy. (Partly to provoke Lydia. Everyone always learns a lot when I provoke her).

I think you're fighting a straw man here. Nobody is arguing relativism.

Maybe they don't think they are, but in fact they are. JPII describes in detail how jettisoning a proper understanding of the object of the act as what morally defines it results in moral relativism (that is, a moral understanding in which no acts are absolutely prohibited under all circumstances).

If my position in fact led to absolute pacifism then Auster wouldn't be wrong to say that it does, even if I didn't agree with him. But it doesn't, in fact. And in fact Auster's approach to the moral prosecution of war is proportionalist (that is, it is situational ethics).

I know you're looking for an apology, but you might consider that KW also has reason to take offense.

As far as I know, I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever intentionally or unintentionally accused KW of doing moral wrong. If I have, I apologize abjectly and without reservation or qualification.

("Conflating" isn't a moral wrong, it is an intellectual error).

He in fact did accuse me of lying. I am still waiting for him to retract that unequivocally with an appropriate apology.

Zippy and I debated the ectopic pregnancy thing on his own blog a couple of months ago. That's one reason I haven't reproduced that debate here. My own position is that the bodily integrity issue just isn't sufficient to remove the tube-removal surgery (salpingectomy) from the realm of illicit acts. Analogies I have used have been to throwing a person in a bag out of an airplane at a mile up (or whatever)--you touch only the bag and don't dismember the person, but you kill him nonetheless--hermetically sealing a room containing an innocent person, who then suffocates to death, and cutting the life-line of a space-walking astronaut.

I mention this here only to bring on-lookers up to speed on why Zippy thought this would provoke me. Actually, I get _much_ more provoked when people say anything remotely nice about post-modernism. :-)

First of all, it is simply false to say that the Church has allowed salpingectomy. No magisterial document states this to be the case.

Positivism?

Positivism?

Nope. Just a complete lack of any Magisterial evidence whatsoever on your part. Rejecting positivism doesn't imply postmodernism: it doesn't mean that the Church allows whatever you say it allows.

I mention this here only to bring on-lookers up to speed on why Zippy thought this would provoke me.

I should say though that Lydia's position is at least tenable (and perhaps even convincing), whereas the idea that any act to bring down the plane is licit simply because of the urgency of the matter is utterly unfounded intellectually, implacably hostile to the moral tradition of Western Christendom, and an instance of proportionalism/situational ethics. In order to take such a position one has to either adopt moral relativism w.r.t. killing the innocent or simply refuse to really think about the matter. I expect - perhaps I should say I hope - that the latter obtains most commonly.

Nope. Just a complete lack of any Magisterial evidence whatsoever on your part. Rejecting positivism doesn't imply postmodernism: it doesn't mean that the Church allows whatever you say it allows.

Let me get this straight; Salpingectomy is performed in Catholic hospitals in full knowledge of the overseeing bishops, salpingectomy is listed as an example of an action justified under double effect in all of the manuals and as I understand it, there has been no formal Magisterial objection to the practice despite it going on for close to a century. I think the burden of proof rests on you Zippy and not me. I don't think that the Magisterium has issued a formal document on computer piracty--I could be wrong--but I know it's wrong. I'm not waiting for a formal declaration.

By the way, I got an interesting email from an anonymous reader, approximately two weeks ago on my blog. It concerned "The Right Call" discussion, it's here:

http://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2007/08/verdict.html

it may help matters.

Me: This statement isn't the conflation that you describe. Just war theory states that homicide is licit in certain situations. As far as I can see, KW's statement is accurate and doesn't do what you say it does.

Zippy: "Homicide" as a descriptor doesn't even describe an act. It describes something that is true about any number of acts, some of which are licit and some aren't.

That was the point, right? That saying "Just War doctrine says that in some situations homicide is licit" is (a) true, and (b) is not talking about innocents and therefore does not conflate killing innocents with killing soldiers?

JWD is not a situational ethic, period. A situational ethic attempts to take an absolute moral prohibition and make it relative to the situation; to remove the prohibition based on the situation. JWD properly understood doesn't do that.

...and...

Me: It's wrong, but I don't think it's situational ethics. No?

Zippy: Of course it is....Another description of it is as proportionalism; I use the more colloquial term "situational ethics" because more people understand it

Except me, apparently.

If I understand correctly, "proportionalism" is the same as "consequentialism". If you're using "situational ethics" as a synonym for "consequentialism" -- and a little research shows that that's probably okay to do -- then I accept the correction.

Almost. As I see it, the problems with those systems is that they end up being relativistic, and that's what I want to avoid. (I've thought before that Utilitarianism and Natural Law theory cohere if you calculate utilities to include closeness to God, stability of society, etc.) Even a supposedly relativistic system like consequentialism isn't relativistic if you rest it on absolutes. Lugo's statement of a moral principle is a "situational ethic" (in the technical sense) but isn't relativistic.

So the question is, is anyone who says that killing an innocent person might be licit in certain circumstances, depending on the consequences, instantly a consequentialist? I think not. When we say that liberalism is wrong because it puts "equality" above all other values, we don't also say that equality isn't something to consider. Thus it would be wrong to cry "Liberal!" when someone argues that you aren't treating people equally when they should be. Similarly, when we say that consequentialism is wrong because it puts consequences above all other determinants, that doesn't mean that consequences (and situations) should never be considered.

Pulling a trigger is sometimes licit, sometimes not.

Pulling a trigger when the weapon is pointed at a person is sometimes licit, sometimes not.

Pulling a trigger when the weapon is pointed at an attacker is sometimes licit, sometimes not.

Pulling a trigger when the weapon is pointed at an attacker who is advancing toward you is sometimes licit, sometimes not.

Pulling a trigger when the weapon is pointed at an attacker who is advancing toward you while holding a small child is sometimes licit, sometimes not.

Pulling a trigger when the weapon is pointed at an attacker who is advancing toward you while holding a small child, and when you are a sniper who could easily choose which eye to put the bullet through, is sometimes licit, sometimes not.

The potential choices of action that are licit depend on the situation. That does not mean that they depend on who you are, it doesn't mean that everyone chooses their own morality, and it doesn't mean that, as Wikipedia puts it, "absolute standards are considered less important than the requirements of a particular situation."

More later.

P.S. I think Lydia's position is the most clear and consistent I've heard so far on the -ectomy / -otomy scenarios. I'm not sure she's right, but it seems to be much less "have my cake and eat it" oriented. She points out, rightly, as Zippy has done before, that sometimes the answer to "what can I do to fix it?" is "nothing."

I don't think that the Magisterium has issued a formal document on computer piracty--I could be wrong--but I know it's wrong. I'm not waiting for a formal declaration.

I agree. But I would's say "the Church teaches that computer piracy is wrong" without some actual evidence that the Church asserts that specific teaching as a teaching. Praxis, by the way, isn't teaching. People make the same mistake w.r.t. torture.

So the question is, is anyone who says that killing an innocent person might be licit in certain circumstances, depending on the consequences, instantly a consequentialist?

With respect to acts which fall under the species "killing the innocent", yes. He may not be consequentialist w.r.t. other acts: he may still believe (e.g.) that adultery is always wrong, for example. But when it comes to the absolute moral norm prohibiting killing the innocent, including the absolute prohibition of abortion, he is asserting moral consequentialism. Period.

"Pulling a trigger" suffers from the same problem that "homicide" suffers from. You can always come up with discrete facts about acts which are morally neutral that can be expressed in a verbal manner. But those things are not the act. You have to start with the act as a deontological object first and determine what species it falls under.

We can give all sorts of verbal examples of factual car-neutral attributes which apply to car objects and other objects; but who cares? The whole approach is backward when you are attempting to class objects as cars or not. You must start first with an actual object (act), and then see if its intrinsic properties make it fall under the species.

This is why it is so critical to understand an act as a deontological object. Moral evaluation involves taking a specific object: the actual act that Captian or Doctor Fred engaged in as a chosen behavior, and evaluating its moral species.

You can play the game of "my act was to move my finger, and the pulling of the trigger was an effect of my act, so therefore I get to invoke double-effect" all day. It is completely specious. As consciously acting corporate beings we choose behaviors in discrete acts, and attempting to squeeze the "behavior" part into a small enough descriptive box that we can call it morally neutral doesn't describe the reality. When I run a red light it is ludicrous to say that my chosen behavior was to refrain from putting my foot on the brake.

Understanding the object in discursive terms is very difficult going. Understanding it in human terms, as actual acting subjects ourselves who perform acts, is not all that difficult. If you chose a behavior to which killing the passengers is intrinsic, you killed them. If you did something that was neutral, accidental, or of a rescuing nature w.r.t. their impending deaths, then you didn't kill them. A big part of the problem is the obsessively linguistic nature of modern discourse.

But in the end, we all know what we've done.

Can I talk about deontological objects as I would other objects? They exist, and I can describe them, and their descriptions may correspond to reality, but they aren't the reality? Same basic idea?

Can a deontological object belong to more than one species?

Same basic idea. Though there are differences, just as there are differences between mathematical objects and physical objects. (Acts as objects are unique inasmuch as they involve interior knowledge and will in addition to a physical carrying out of he will).

Can a deontological object belong to more than one species?

Sure. We can arbitrarily define species- probably an infininte number - into which to fit cars in order to suit our purposes, but any actual car remain a car independent of that activity. The species "yellow convertible" doesn't change the object into not-a-car. The thing about absolute moral norms is that once you recognize that an act falls into an intrinsically evil species it is prohibited, period, independent of intentions or circumstances. (We may not have a complete enumeration of all conceivable intrinsically evil species, but there are some - e.g. killing the innocent, rape, adultery - which we do have at the disposal of our reason and affirmed by our tradition).