What’s Wrong with the World

Mr. Auster wrote:
I am making an analogy to Exodus, where there is a kind of collective retribution on an entire people.

That seems to raise the question of whether karmic collective retribution is the sort of thing that we may morally choose to carry out, or if it is the sort of thing that must be left to God. Because clearly Truman is not God, and we are not God. Our friends at VFR do acknowledge this.

I'd prefer to stick to defending ourselves without performing evil acts while defending ourselves. But I suppose that is because I am lost in abstraction divorced from the real world.

Mr. Cella, in answer to some of your points:

1. The problem is that your view fails to take into account competing absolutes. Divorce is prohibited by the New Testament except in cases of adultery. Yet, Paul told believers they could divorce their non-believing spouses if they could not live in peace. So, was Paul telling people to sin?
2. The intent of the atomic bomb was to force Japan to surrender by use of a weapon which they could not defend against, and to destroy the military installations of those cities. Wiping out civilian populations does not appear to be the reason. By those terms and your logic, the U.S. knowingly killed the innocent but did not deliberately kill the innocent. Therefore, the bombings were legitimate. If you want to argue that the weapon was too powerful, then you have to admit that a massive firefight in a crowded city is deliberately immoral because the weapons will knowingly kill the innocent. Otherwise you are only questioning the matter of scale. Likewise,
the intent of shooting down a passenger plane with hostages and an atomic bomb is to prevent the bomb from killing others, not to kill the hostages.

3. The pacifism charge is based on the reality of the stance. Once an opponent knew your moral position, he could always put himself in a position in which you would not be able to act. So while not pacifism in theory, in reality it is.

Once an opponent knew your moral position, he could always put himself in a position in which you would not be able to act.

Evil men are under only physical constraints in terms of how they can (in the physical sense) act. Good men are under both physical constraints and moral ones. The equation of "acting under moral constraints" to pacifism is just nonsense. Is refusing to make Internet snuff films of the beheading of innocent hostages "pacifism"? Hell no. Good men don't do that sort of thing.

And yes, evil men can and will always take advantage of the additional moral constraints that good men are under. That leaves you with a choice: to accept that state of affairs, or to become an evil man.

That leaves you with a choice: to accept that state of affairs, or to become an evil man.

Right. Is this not a "they do it, so we can do it" argument?

Chris, do you really want to compare the bombing of Hiroshima to the airplane scenario? I don't. I think the later is self-defensive and involves a kind of necessity that cannot be said of the former.

competing absolutes

I reckon that would be classed under deontological pits.

Several critics over at the VFR threads have wondered why the subject of God has not directly come up here at WWwtW. Well, here we go:

Once an opponent knew your moral position, he could always put himself in a position in which you would not be able to act.

Zippy answers this succinctly:

evil men can and will always take advantage of the additional moral constraints that good men are under. That leaves you with a choice: to accept that state of affairs, or to become an evil man.

To me the claim that we must abandon our moral constraints evidences a lack of faith in the providence of God. What sort of world do we think He has made for us, that good men must -- must -- do evil in order for good to endure? Elsewhere Bill quoted Anscombe on this point: "We had to break your commandments, because we did not believe your promises."

In this context, I recommend David Mills' (not that Mills) marvelous Touchstone essay on the unfolding of Providence in Tolkein's great story.

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-01-022-f

You write:

"Several critics have repeatedly elided the difference between the word 'deliberate' and the word 'knowing,' thereby obscuring what seems the most crucial aspect of the question: the element of intent. As I said in a comment, by engaging in a massive firefight in an urban center (say, Mogadishu, Somalia, or the West Bank, or Baghdad), one knowingly slaughters civilians; but there is no element of intent here. This distinction does not seem overly abstract or abstruse to me."

But if people such as myself haven't properly understood the difference between "knowing" and "deliberate," and I admit that I haven't understood it, then why don't you-all explain it to us, instead of complaining that we are, uh, deliberately ignoring the distinction?

Now, if you guys are saying that deliberate killing of innocents is not allowed, but "knowing but not deliberate" killing of innocents is allowed, then you are not keeping up the distinction, since Zippy (without any of you-all's disagreeing with him as I remember) would not even allow the shooting down of a nuclear-armed airliner in which obviously the intent is not to kill the innocent passengers, but to stop a nuclear attack, i.e., the killing of the innocents is knowing but not deliberate.

This profoundly weakens you-all's case against Hiroshima. If you had the position that shooting down the airliner was justified, because in that case the killing of innocents was an effect and not the intention, but that Hiroshima was unjustified, because in that case the intent was to kill a civilian population and by killing the civilian population terrorize the Japanese into surrender, then there might be a sustainable distinction between knowing and deliberate. (I would still disagree with the argument as a whole, I'm just dealing with this one aspect of the argument at the moment.) But you-all, by refusing to shoot down a nuclear-armed airliner because that would mean "slaughtering innocents," have destroyed any useful and moral distinction between the knowing killing and the deliberate killing of innocents.

In other words, as suggested by your example above, for you, "knowing but not deliberate" would only apply to a Mogadishu-type situation, in which civilians are not targeted at all, but are simply the inadvertent casualties of a military battle. But if a nuclear-armed airliner with 40 imminently doomed passengers is shot down to save an entire city from being destroyed, that, for you, is a "deliberate slaughter of innocents," which, for you, is prohibited as "a foundational principle of all morality."

You have thus revealed the unreasoning, off-the-planet extremity of your position, which, as I said, is tantamount to absolute pacifism, because an enemy invading your country would only need to include visible civilian hostages among his military units to make you refuse to fight the enemy and so allow the enemy to conquer your country and kill and enslave your people.

Wow. You guys are getting a lot of garbage thrown at you. I have eschewed labels like conservative and traditionalist simply because they give the air of authority that is too often not rooted in conservatism or tradition.

BTW, are we to throw out all the pacifist martyrs in the Church? I would never claim that one has to be a pacifist, but there is no doubt that pacifism has a longer pedigree than JWD for example. That may invite a tangent, but let if suffice to say that pacifism to my knowledge has never been held as opposing the Church. For these folks to call themselves traditionalist and to simultaneously dismiss pacifism as some liberal offshoot is simply rich.

Larry: KW is right to point out that the case against Hiroshima doesn't depend on the kind of deontological distinctions I am making, and you still haven't so much as attempted to understand because to reject the implications a priori, in the airliner case. You are taking a very controversial and difficult to understand case (you still have yet to express my position about what I would and would not do in the airliner case accurately) and attempting to use it to discredit a much more straightforward one. This is very much like Planned Parenthood taking ectopic pregnancy as a case and casuistry and attempting (without making any effort to understand the casuistry) to use it to undermine the moral prohibition of abortion in general. You of all people should see the fallacy in that argumentative approach. Stick to arguing what you think to be the case with the atom bomb.

Mr Auster:

I was not much involved in our long thread on the airline hypothetical. I have not formulated a strong opinion on it, but I do think it presents a much more difficult case than the atomic strikes; that is to say, it is not clear to me that the prohibition on the deliberate taking of innocent life is obviously violated in that case.

To know (with reasonable certainly) that something will result from a certain action is not the same as to intend for it to happen. Knowledge does not imply that movement of the will which we call intent.

(That's not a very good explanation. Maybe Zippy can do better.)

I do not understand Zippy's last post, except for this:

"Stick to arguing what you think to be the case with the atom bomb."

Nope. This debate is no longer just about the atom bomb. The debate has gone to a deeper level, which is that you fellows, the What's Wrong with the World contingent, have a position that is tantamount to absolute pacifism. Since your position is tantamount to absolute pacifism, naturally you're also going to be against the atom bomb. The atom bomb has become a secondary issue here.

If you shared a common moral framework with the general society on the moral use of violence, then, on that basis, we could discuss the rights and wrongs of the Bomb. But you don't share such a framework. Pacifists simply have no place at the table in a discussion of national defense, any more than a witch doctor has a place in a meeting of heart surgeons. If you personally want to practice your philosophy of never killing an innocent person (such as a hostage on a nuclear-armed airplane) even if it's necessary to save a hundred thousand people, then you are free to do so. But you have no standing to tell the rest of the society that it must commit suicide in order to conform to your extremist notions of morality.

An absolute pacifist would eschew legitimate forms of self-defense. Failing to launch a nuclear strike upon a civilian center certainly isn't necessary to establish one's bonafides as a pacifist, let alone an absolute one. If I were to exercise equal demogaugery, I would allege that anyone who supports nuclear attacks upon civilian centers is a proponent of absolute barbarism. I'm afraid I would have much less work to do to prove my case than you would.

KW says, of the Flight 93 scenario, "I think the later is self-defensive and involves a kind of necessity that cannot be said of [Hiroshima]."

To my fellow bloggers from the other thread: Oh-my-gosh, do you guys realize what this means? KW finally said more or less outright what he thinks of the airplane scenario! We nearly put him to the inquisitorial question on the previous thread to try to elicit this. :-)

I am reliably informed that Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn also expressed decisive opposition to the atomic strikes. He writes, "Black Banners is the clearest source for this, but his opposition to the use of nuclear weapons comes across in Moscow 1979 as well."

The fact that Mr. Cella et al oppose the use of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet seemingly have no objection to the firebombing of Tokyo which killed more civilians than either of the nuclear bombings rather lets the cat out of the bag. It is not the killing of innocents they object to, it is the killing of innocents with nuclear bombs that bothers them.

Furthermore, this tempest in a sake cup ignores the greater reality: Japan was going to be occupied by Us forces in 1945 or 1946, period. The only open question was "how would his happen"; would it happen after the amphibious invasion of the islands of Kyushu and Honshu, or would it happen after the surrender of the Empire of Japan? The invasion of the home islands would involve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers AND Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians, who were being trained by their own government in suicide tactics. Bamboo spears were being given to old men and young boys, women were trained to carry explosive charges on their backs as close to vehicles, especially tanks, as they could get. The war party of the Japanese Empire was determined to fight to the last soldier, man, woman and child, and they had the means to give it a good try.

The firebombings of Tokyo, Kobe and other cities had not persuaded the war party that all was lost. They had extensive preparations to resist the invasion to the last old man and toddler.

What Paul Cella wants is this: the invasion of Kyushu, with hundreds of thousands of dead, followed by the invasion of Honshu with more dead totaling up far beyond the toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Finally there were over 100,000 Allied prisoners of war held in Japan and Manchuria. The Empire had issued orders that all, repeat, all were to be executed once the invasion of the home islands commenced. Paul Cella wants all those POW's, some of them survivors of the Bataan Death March, the Burma Railway of Death and other horrors, to have been machinegunned.

That is what Paul Cella wants, a million dead Americans, Australians, English, Dutch and Japanese, and he justifies this bloodlust in the name of peace. Truly he has become a liberal...

It think that the disagreement rests on the difference between foreseeing and intent. Lawrence seems to believe that whatever you foresee, you intend. If this is true, I fail to see how we are any less morality responsible for the innocent people terrorist kill in Iraq then the terrorist are. It is to say that we are both equally evil, even though it is terrorist doing the acts and not us, simply because we foresee that terrorist will kill civilians. I think Anscombe had it right “that a man is responsible for the bad consequences of his bad actions, but gets no credit for the good ones; and contrariwise is not responsible for the bad consequences of good actions.”

The comment by One Who Knows Too Much is a bunch of hooey. He sets up a mass of counterfactuals, pretends as if we have certain knowledge of these, and then conflates that pretended knowledge with intent on my part. I oppose the atomic strikes; therefore I desire the deaths of American GIs and Japanese civilians. Such nonsense hardly merits comment.

pacifism to my knowledge has never been held as opposing the Church

That's correct, unless such pacifism is recommended outside of the enclave of pacifist priests and holy men.

In moral theology there is something called the principle of double effect (elucidated by St. Thomas Aquinas). If a person does x in order to achieve y, and the probable result will be y and z, then the action is morally licit if x is not itself evil, and the goodness of y is greater than the evil of x. For example, if in destroying an enemy’s military capabilities or will to fight in order to shorten the war and save millions of lives, a country foresees the incidental destruction of thousands of civilians, this is allowed if the predicted results are reasonable predictions.
In short, according to the principle of double effect, while good ends do not justify evil means, good ends may very well justify evil incidental results, even if those evil results are quite hideous and completely foreseen.

This principle clearly applies to the hostages-on-the-airplane scenario. The decision to bomb Hiroshima may be murkier, but I believe it is morally defensible.

Let me get this straight - dropping a bomb (nuclear or otherwise) on a bunch of civilians is not "intending" to kill them? So if I blow a hole through a two year-old child with a bazooka because I want to hit the terrorist behind him, I did not "intend" to blow a hole through a two year old child? I think there is a bit of confusion between the ultimate end to be achieved (kill the terrorist, end the war) and the means used to achieve that end (blow a hole through an innocent, blow up a bunch of innocents). Does Mr. Auster agree with the proposition that good ends cannot justify evil means? If he does not, there really is no point to further discussion.

The fact that Mr. Cella et al oppose the use of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet seemingly have no objection to the firebombing of Tokyo which killed more civilians than either of the nuclear bombings rather lets the cat out of the bag. It is not the killing of innocents they object to, it is the killing of innocents with nuclear bombs that bothers them.I'm certain this isn't the case. "Hiroshima" always tends to bring people out of the woodwork, though.

If one simply takes it as given that, regardless of means or cost, Japan's government simply had to surrender unconditionally, then yes, the atomic bombings, which though no more destructive, had greater psychological effect than the firebombings of other cities, were the least awful way of obtaining that end. However, I believe that most of us are arguing that ends that require such means to achieve can not rightly be pursued. It's not as if, considering the military circumstances of the summer of 1945, it is even reasonable for defenders of the bombings to claim "necessity" as one might in some ticking bomb scenario. The Japanese Empire had almost no force projection capability left, and had been ejected from most or all of its post-December 1941 conquests. Which is to say, the US needn't have invaded at all.

I'm unsure whether it is peculiarly American, or peculiarly Protestant, or particularly modern, but it seems as if, having decided implicitly that all violence is immoral, we are unable to make any distinctions when violence is required, and so make war especially mercilessly. Every war is Armageddon, a showdown between absolute good and absolute evil, and we are all like General Sherman. It's another example of American dualism/gnosticism, I suppose.

George,

There was nothing incidental about the civilian death and injury in Hiroshima. It was expected, intended, indeed hoped-for: How else to impress upon the Japanese the possibility that their race would shortly be extinct?

Mr. Auster: you continue to do yourself a disservice by evading the actual question. I am sorry to see it happen.

N.B. to whomever brought it up, I do think the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden were immoral. I'm sure I've already said so somwhere in this discussion.

I've posted some more on the airliner question here.

most of us are arguing that ends that require such means to achieve can not rightly be pursued. It's not as if, considering the military circumstances of the summer of 1945, it is even reasonable for defenders of the bombings to claim "necessity" as one might in some ticking bomb scenario. The Japanese Empire had almost no force projection capability left, and had been ejected from most or all of its post-December 1941 conquests. Which is to say, the US needn't have invaded at all.

In that case, most of you are arguing for EVEN MORE civilian deaths than are the people who think dropping the bomb was necessary. An invasion might not have been necessary, but in the absence of the atomic bombings, prolonged blockade would certainly have been necessary. Such a blockade would have resulted in the starvation of many more Japanese civilians than died in the atomic bombings.

Incidentally, Japan still occupied a large area of China in September 1945, and was killing thousands of Chinese (including non-combatants) every day, but apparently the anti-atomic purists are OK with that.

To argue against use of the two atomic bombs requires one to believe that sparing Japanese lives was more important than saving the lives of the Allied POWs and the tens or hundreds of thousands (or millions?) of Chinese and other Asians who would have died had the war not ended as quickly as it did after the two atomic bombs were dropped -- not to mention additional US and British casualties from the invasion and other military operations. And as I wrote the other day, more Japanese civilians would have died had the war continued.

That is the kind of absurd position one finds oneself in when one argues abstractly with little or no regard to the historical facts. It is a trait of leftist/liberal thought, and of dogmatic "thought" generally, regardless of the conservative authors cited above who may have questioned the atomic bombings. If they did question it, did they do so from abstract, fact-less reasoning like what we read here, or from a factual analysis? Typically, the proponent above doesn't bother to get into such detail, because then he would have to do some research, rather than just write on without end on a blog.

The comment by One Who Knows Too Much is a bunch of hooey. He sets up a mass of counterfactuals, pretends as if we have certain knowledge of these, and then conflates that pretended knowledge with intent on my part. I oppose the atomic strikes; therefore I desire the deaths of American GIs and Japanese civilians. Such nonsense hardly merits comment.

I thought he was right on the money. We have absolutely do have certain knowledge that the US planned to invade Japan; that the Japanese were planning to use civilians as suicide shock troops in the defense of the home islands; and that the Japanese planned to execute every POW under their control. If you oppose the use of the atomic bombings, then these outcomes must necessarily be acceptable to you.

So that God won't be burdened with the deaths of those from starvation, we will kill tens of thousands with atomic weapons. At least the blatant consequentialism isn't being denied.

It seems to me that we are discussing what acts are licit and what acts are not for all people. Just because Japanese soldiers broke these rules does not warrant that we break them as well. An individual can only control his own actions, not the actions of everyone else. Therefore, it has nothing to do with “finding outcomes to be acceptable”. I am not responsible for the evil that others commit, but only the evil that I commit.

For example, it appears that if someone were to kidnap my family and demand that I assassinate the president or he will kill my family, that if I choose not to murder the president, that I am equally as morally responsible for the murder of my family as the one who actually killed them. This seems ridiculous. Just because the kidnapper is going to murder someone does not grant me permission to murder someone.

MZ Forrest writes:

"For these folks to call themselves traditionalist and to simultaneously dismiss pacifism as some liberal offshoot is simply rich."

Mr. Forrest shows a basic misunderstanding of the issue. Pacifism is allowed as an individual position, that is, the position of an individual who has no say on what his country is actually doing in war. The topic in this discussion is not whether society should allow individuals to be pacifists, but whether pacifists and pacifist principles should govern society.

To make that clearer: the topic in this discussion is not whether an individual pacifist should be allowed to let a bad man kill him, the pacifist, because he, the pacifist, doesn't want to shoot inadvertently an innocent hostage who is with the bad man. The topic is whether this suicidal pacifist has the right to force others to commit suicide, to force an entire society to commit suicide, through government policy that embodies pacifist principles.

And that indeed is a common liberal error. Liberal Christians—most spectacularly the late pope—commonly take some self-sacrificial mandate from the Gospels, and demand that this ethos of self-sacrifice be imposed by law on an entire society, regardless of the wishes of the people whose well-being, wealth, freedom, culture, national sovereignty, and very lives are being sacrificed.

So, Mr. Forrest, if you want to follow strictly the self-sacrificial ethos of the Sermon on the Mount, then do it. But don't try to make it the law of society, to be imposed by the secular authorities on other men. And many many Christians today seek to do precisely that.

The topic is whether this suicidal pacifist has the right to force others to commit suicide, to force an entire society to commit suicide

How is being murdered suicide?

To argue against use of the two atomic bombs requires one to believe that sparing Japanese lives was more important than saving the lives of the Allied POWs and ...

It is only to believe that if one has presumed ahead of time that the means one intends to use to prevent it is morally acceptable in itself. One has to accept at the outset that some means are not morally acceptable, unless one's moral theory entails that sufficiently important ends can justify any means whatsoever.

N.B. I agree with Mr. Auster that a political leader, and in particular the leader of any military effort, simply cannot be a pacifist. The nature of the role rules it out: one would have to accept responsibility for doing something - using violence in defense of the Republic - which one has no intention of doing.

To boil down what I said in my previous comment: the views of this website concerning the morality of violence are only properly relevant in the context of individual morality, the morality of individual Christians who believe in that morality; they have no place in politics. Society exists for the purpose of protecting the lives and property of its citizens. It is absurd even to discuss a moral code which would command a society not to use force to stop enemies who are about to kill thousands of members of that society. People can choose self-sacrifice for themselves; they cannot choose it for others.

...the views of this website concerning the morality of violence are only properly relevant in the context of individual morality, the morality of individual Christians who believe in that morality; they have no place in politics.

So would it be fair to summarize your position as moral absolutism for the individual, and the end justifies the means for governments?

IOW, Mr. Auster, is there any moral imperative which absolutely forbids governments to perform abortions?

This is a particularly vacuous and futile debate, inasmuch as literally no course of action open to the US government in August 1945 would not have resulted in the "deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians."

1. Blockade Japan without air bombardment: this would result in mass starvation of Japanese civilians (note here that the civilians will starve first before the Japanese military), not to mention Allied POWs and civilian internees.

2. Bombard Japan from the air: many civilians must necessarily die from air attack on urban areas, though to be sure only those who do not choose to evacuate will die.

3. Invade Japan: many civilians must necessarily die if the US invaded, both from pre-invasion blockade and bombardment, and because they will be used as suicide troops.

4. End the war on terms acceptable to Japan: in this case, Japan is free to keep its empire and continue killing numerous Chinese, Korean and other Asian civilians. Note: over 100,000 Chinese civilians per month died during Japan's aggression in China 1937-1945. Why do Japanese noncombatants have a stronger right not to be slaughtered than these Chinese noncombatants?

All this leaves aside the issue of whether "innocent civilians" actually existed in Germany and Japan during WW2. The whole population imbibed the vile beliefs of Nazism and Japanese militarism, and acted as willing acolytes of these regimes. They rejoiced and benefited when their regimes were victorious, and it was both just and necessary that they should suffer as their regimes were defeated.

This is a particularly vacuous and futile debate, inasmuch as literally no course of action open to the US government in August 1945 would not have resulted in the "deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians."

Again, if "resulted in" were the sole moral criteria then this objection to the debate as vacuous would make sense. As it is, it is begging the question.

Few people actually act as though they believe that the only thing which ever matters in morality is results though. This cognitive dissonance and refusal to answer questions occurs precisely because in fact, moral questions do not hinge solely on whatever happens to result from human acts.

They rejoiced and benefited when their regimes were victorious, and it was both just and necessary that they should suffer as their regimes were defeated.

Yeah. Those Hitler Toddlers were something with their swastika pacifiers, weren't they?

Lugo writes:

"This is a particularly vacuous and futile debate..."

I think that Lugo actually meant to attack one side of the debate, not the debate as a whole. The debate as a whole has been illuminating and valuable. I don't think many people had realized that there are intelligent conservative Christians in this country who take a position tantamount to absolute pacifism. I think that casting light on that position is worthwhile.

I don't think many people had realized that there are intelligent conservative Christians in this country who take a position tantamount to absolute pacifism.

I expect that there are, but you won't find any of them here. Shouting "tantamount to absolute pacifist" repeatedly and refusing to answer direct questions isn't a particularly good argument, as I am sure you realize.

I'm not sure how interesting of a debate it would be if one could truly be a pacifist leader. I do not see the impossibility of it as you and Zippy appear to see, but I digress.

As for the liberal tradition, Kurt is correct in arguing that you are engaging in post-modern deconstruction. While allowing the plane to continue course may be like suicide, it certainly isn't suicide.

Of greater to concern to me are your views on the purpose of society, "protecting the lives and property of its citizens." It is a purely materialistic understanding of existence. I do not know your politics, but there are quite frankly traces of liberterianism in such a sentiment.

In the end I just don't find the argument over shooting down the aircraft compelling. If we accept that there are limits upon what the government can do in seeking the prevention of evil, I don't see why the argument is so difficult. You claim we have a moral duty to kill the 50 people on the plane to save the people on the ground. If we fail to do kill these people, civilization will unalterably be changed.

I just don't buy it. 9/11 didn't unalterably change the world. Sure, we now have armed marshals on planes. We have an air riding public that is prepared to sacrifice their own lives in order to save those who may be harmed on the ground as was evidenced in Pennsylvania. To tolerate the government targeting and killing innocent men and women is to walk with totalitarianism as it is embrace communism. If society corporately commiting evil is the price we have to pay for civilization, then I say to hell with society, for it does not offer civilization.

So if I blow a hole through a two year-old child with a bazooka because I want to hit the terrorist behind him, I did not "intend" to blow a hole through a two year old child?

That's exactly right, because if by some miracle your bazooka shot was deflected in such a way that it missed the child but bounced back and killed the terrorist, your intention would not have been thwarted. In other words, you were not seeking the death of the child as a means to stopping the terrorist.

Of course, you don't expect that to happen. The death of the child, rather, is an expected but undesired effect of your shooting the terrorist. Catholic moral teaching has for centuries examined this case under the principle of "double effect." The analysis of whether it's morally licit for you to shoot the bazooka at the terrorist, even knowing you will take out the child, depends on weighing the good to be achieved by taking out the terrorist against the harm that you foresee happening to the child.

The moral analysis is complicated, but only slightly, if you believe there's only a risk, but not a near certainty, of killing the child. That is to say, when you are weighing the harm to the child, you have to discount that harm by the likelihood of its actually occurring.

Shouting "tantamount to absolute pacifist" repeatedly...

This repetition of Mr. Auster's is very cheap rhetoric, and extreme hyperbole. (It is also a very good illustration of how grossly warped Mr. Auster's understanding of what it means to be "absolute" is.)

If you say it enough times, Mr. Auster, do you think you can make it stick to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?

Isn't "absolute pacifism" a little redundant?

For example, it appears that if someone were to kidnap my family and demand that I assassinate the president or he will kill my family, that if I choose not to murder the president, that I am equally as morally responsible for the murder of my family as the one who actually killed them. This seems ridiculous. Just because the kidnapper is going to murder someone does not grant me permission to murder someone.

It doesn't have to be the president. It can be your slob of a next door neighbor. In fact, you aren't allowed to kill him, even if the kidnappers make a credible threat that if you didn't kill the next door neighbor, they'll murder your family, you, *and* the next door neighbor.

(A consequentialist would of course consider this a no-brainer and would kill his next door neighbor in a trice. After all, refusing to do so won't save the neighbor, while killing him will (or at least might) save him and his family.)

It doesn't have to be the president. It can be your slob of a next door neighbor. In fact, you aren't allowed to kill him, even if the kidnappers make a credible threat that if you didn't kill the next door neighbor, they'll murder your family, you, *and* the next door neighbor.

True and I would still hold that if someone is threatening to kill me, my family, and my neighbor, that does not grant me permission to murder someone.

Would the consequentialist also hold that my refusal to murder my neighbor makes me morally responsible for the murders of my family, my neighbor, and myself (which would be akin to suicide)? According to the consequentialist, would I not be just as evil as the guy who actually did the killing?

That's exactly right, because if by some miracle your bazooka shot was deflected in such a way that it missed the child but bounced back and killed the terrorist, your intention would not have been thwarted. In other words, you were not seeking the death of the child as a means to stopping the terrorist.

That is a good description of how a double-effect analysis would go, if the chosen behavior (object of the act) in question - shooting a child through the chest with a bazooka - does not fall under the intrinsically evil species "killing the innocent". It isn't obvious that it doesn't fall under that species though.

That is a good description of how a double-effect analysis would go, if the chosen behavior (object of the act) in question - shooting a child through the chest with a bazooka - does not fall under the intrinsically evil species "killing the innocent".

But the chosen behavior *isn't* "shooting a child through the chest with a bazooka." The chosen behavior, rather, is shooting a bazooka at a terrorist who happens to have a child in front of him.

But the chosen behavior *isn't* "shooting a child through the chest with a bazooka." The chosen behavior, rather, is shooting a bazooka at a terrorist who happens to have a child in front of him.

Those are merely different verbal descriptions of the same act as a deontological object. The description doesn't determine the morality: the deontological object does.

From Wikipedia: In moral philosophy, deontology is the view that morality either forbids or permits actions, which is done through moral norms. Simply put, the correctness of an action lies within itself, not in the consequences of the action.

Zippy, I recognize that the tragedy of the situation is increased by the fact that shooting the terrorist also entails shooting the girl, but isn't the deontological object the shooting of the terrorist?

For example, it appears that if someone were to kidnap my family and demand that I assassinate the president or he will kill my family, that if I choose not to murder the president, that I am equally as morally responsible for the murder of my family as the one who actually killed them. This seems ridiculous. Just because the kidnapper is going to murder someone does not grant me permission to murder someone.

The case of Hiroshima doesn't appear to look like that. It's more like someone is trying to kill your family, and you believe that if you blow up his mother's house, he will be so stunned and demoralized that he will give up and allow the police to arrest him.

Bringing in the unrelated President doesn't work for me. Your family is related to you by concrete obligations, and likewise his to him.

Whether this sheds light on the Hiroshima discussion is questionable, but hopefully it at least clarifies the analogy.

The case of Hiroshima doesn't appear to look like that. It's more like someone is trying to kill your family, and you believe that if you blow up his mother's house, he will be so stunned and demoralized that he will give up and allow the police to arrest him.

Which is to say because someone is trying to murder my family I can murder this someone's mother by blowing up the house she is in. Again, just because this someone is going to murder my family does not grant me permission to murder this someone's mother.

Bringing in the unrelated President doesn't work for me. Your family is related to you by concrete obligations, and likewise his to him.

Meaning what? That all acts are permissible as long it protects my immediate family?

Which is to say because someone is trying to murder my family I can murder this someone's mother by blowing up the house she is in.

I wasn't saying that (although I'm not discounting it). I'm not taking a position, but trying to work one out. I was pointing out that the original analogy was flawed.

With respect, your rhetoric is flawed, too: "murder" implies illegality, which begs the question.

I wonder, are there situations in which it's reasonable to threaten to blow up the mother's house, probably killing its inhabitants, and then to follow through if the attacker doesn't relent? Perhaps if the mother is supporting the attacker as he tries to enter my house, or if if she is providing him with knives and guns and bullets to attack me?

Meaning what? That all acts are permissible as long it protects my immediate family?

No, of course not. But many more acts are permissible if they protect your immediate family than if they don't.

Jake: as I understand it, no description captures the deontological object, though any object can admit of an infinite number of verbal descriptions. If I say "Jake is seeing the color green" that description of reality is not the reality: the description is not Jake's seeing-of-greenness, the qualia or conscious experience in Jake's mind. The deontological object is not a verbal thing, but rather is the actual behavior that the acting subject is choosing as an incarnate phsyical being. Like consciously experiencing the color green, the deontological object is the acting subject's own "experience" (though it is an object of the will rather than passive perception) of the behavior he is choosing. Playing with the verbal descriptions doesn't change the reality, any more than playing with descriptions of Jake's car changes the reality of Jake's car.

(I swiped all of this from Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendour, in the process of reading it to see if it could resolve the many open questions I had after reading Kaczor, Finnis, Anscombe, and others. I think it does resolve them, or at least tremendously clarify them, by understanding the object of the act as the acting subject's choice of behavior.)

Zippy,

Sure. But as I understand that, then my intent to blow up the airliner or to kill the terrorist can't be transformed into an attempt to kill the civilian or the little girl just because you can describe it that way. No?

Those are merely different verbal descriptions of the same act as a deontological object. The description doesn't determine the morality: the deontological object does.

This is a deep cul de sac of terms in which giving oneself in heroic sacrifice may require extricating oneself from being a deontological object.

...my intent to blow up the airliner or to kill the terrorist can't be transformed into an attempt to kill the civilian or the little girl just because you can describe it that way.

The language you are using here - "intent to", "attempt to" - signals that you are referring to things you are trying to accomplish by choosing a particular behavior, as opposed to your choice of behavior itself. The object of the act is independent of intentions and circumstances (though sometimes people confuse things as a verbal matter by referring to the choice in "choice of behavior" as intent).

"Object" does not refer to goals, objectives, wishes, hopes, intentions, expected outcomes, etc. It refers to the moral qualia, as a conscious and material being, of choosing a particular behavior and carrying that behavior out with your body.

And once we identify the fact that that choice of behavior (behavior, not intentions or desired outcomes or any of that) falls under a species of intrinsically evil acts - a determination which is necessarily independent of any intentions or the circumstances - the game is up. No appeal to intentions or circumstances - to what you are trying to accomplish - can make it into a good act. An act of adultery is wrong even if the intention is to convince a madman not to destroy the world.

As with any discussion involving the very place where free will meets reality, there are linguistic confusions which arise. But not being a positivist I don't conflate linguistic issues with reality, and I don't think others should either. I can't make a good or morally neutral act evil by playing with language, and Seamus can't make a morally evil act into a good act by playing with language. But what we are evaluating as to its species is the act, the deontological object, not the intentions.

And yet the distance between language and reality may show up between knowledge and reality. The status of our knowledge of an act may be no purer than the intentions. Or perhaps you don't believe that?

I wrote:
But what we are evaluating as to its species is the act, the deontological object, not the intentions.

That is to say, that is what we evaluate first. Once we've determined that the act itself is at worst morally neutral we can go on to evaluate intended and unintended effects, etc and see if the act is licit under double-effect.

Of course this is all rather moot in the case of Hiroshima, since massive killing of civilians in fact was a cause of Japan's surrender. Under double-effect the bad effect - even if one argues that it is unintended - cannot be a cause of the good effect. So unlike with the airliner case, Hiroshima fails on multiple levels and in multiple places. The former requires a fairly subtle understanding and analysis in order to come to a conclusion about any particular chosen act; the latter doesn't.

[mutters] Hopefully others besides me are gaining something from me playing the fool here...

So how do we square that with the idea that intent matters?

Thanks in advance for your patience, Zippy.

And yet the distance between language and reality may show up between knowledge and reality.

True. The moral object is the chosen behavior as it is known by the acting subject. If (e.g.) the acting subject does not know that civilians are on the airliner then if he kills them, he is killing them on accident.

"The death of the child, rather, is an expected but undesired effect of your shooting the terrorist. Catholic moral teaching has for centuries examined this case under the principle of "double effect." The analysis of whether it's morally licit for you to shoot the bazooka at the terrorist, even knowing you will take out the child, depends on weighing the good to be achieved by taking out the terrorist against the harm that you foresee happening to the child."

I'm not Catholic, but I find this comment unintentionally funny. Catholic moral teaching has for centuries examined _this case_--shooting a child with a bazooka--under double effect?

I have nothing else intelligent to add here, except, "Go, Zippy."

So how do we square that with the idea that intent matters?

Intent always matters in terms of moral gravity, but not always in terms of moral category. Intent cannot make an act which is evil in its object into a good act: such an act remains inter alia an act that one ought not do, no matter what the consequences. If the act is not evil in its object then the morality of the act is determined - under double-effect and prudential evaluation - by intentions and circumstances.

You may find this helpful or at least mildly amusing.

Under double-effect the bad effect - even if one argues that it is unintended - cannot be a cause of the good effect.

No doubt there are different kinds of double effect arguments, but in your kind, this language means that putting oneself in harm's way can only be accidental, otherwise illicit.

Now it is only through verbal descriptions whereby we can focus attention on the passive aspect of any interaction and overlook the active. This is helpful for analysis--even to draw ethical conclusions--but the act remains complex.

...means that putting oneself in harm's way can only be accidental,...

There isn't anything intrinsically immoral about risky behaviors which put one in harms way -qua- risk. I don't know of anyone ever seriously claiming that there is.

If (e.g.) the acting subject does not know that civilians are on the airliner then if he kills them, he is killing them on accident.

I know what you are claiming. I would prefer you claimed that they were killed ignorantly and inculpably. It doesn't make their deaths right. Ignorance is a privation of the will whereas an accident is a circumstance.

Seriously, I think, there is something to that effect with your language about the deontological object. So we must separate suicide from self-sacrifice. Does killing-the-innocent-object exclude the self?

So we must separate suicide from self-sacrifice.

But we do. A kamikaze attack is immoral.

There is particular special case of taking a bullet or throwing onesself on a grenade to save one's fellows. Clearly that is not wrong in the way a kamikaze attack is wrong, or in the way that pushing someone else onto the grenade is wrong. I may have some things to say about that kind of case at some point, but I'm still ruminating at present.

A kamikaze attack is immoral.

Careful; is that from the point of view of the Kamikaze or from the point of view of the all knowing deontologist?

In the end I just don't find the argument over shooting down the aircraft compelling. If we accept that there are limits upon what the government can do in seeking the prevention of evil, I don't see why the argument is so difficult. You claim we have a moral duty to kill the 50 people on the plane to save the people on the ground. If we fail to do kill these people, civilization will unalterably be changed.

I just don't buy it. 9/11 didn't unalterably change the world. Sure, we now have armed marshals on planes. We have an air riding public that is prepared to sacrifice their own lives in order to save those who may be harmed on the ground as was evidenced in Pennsylvania. To tolerate the government targeting and killing innocent men and women is to walk with totalitarianism as it is embrace communism. If society corporately commiting evil is the price we have to pay for civilization, then I say to hell with society, for it does not offer civilization.

This is absolutely fatuous. If the government had had F-16s over New York before the passenger jets hit the World Trade Center, they would have had an absolute moral and practical duty to shoot down the jets before they hit, regardless of the fact that innocent civilians were on the planes. To kill 200 or so people on the planes to save 2,000+ people on the grounds is totally justifiable in every sense, and in no way inconsistent with "civilization."

Lydia, re this: "Catholic moral teaching has for centuries examined this case under the principle of 'double effect.'"

It should strike you as funny, as far as any lie can be humorous. I don't mean that whoever posted it was intentionally lying, but that it won't be found in any emanation of the Holy See. It's a distressingly common misapprehension of Catholic teaching on double-effect, and is exactly the kind of double-think that Anscombe was decrying.

Despite Mr. Auster's attempts to blame everything on Vatican II and the subsequent conquest of the Church by liberalism, in fact much, perhaps even most, of the opposition to the attacks in the early years (before Vatican II) came from people on the right - not just the various philosophers like Kirk and Weaver mentioned above, but more practical-minded men like Bishop Fulton Sheen and Herbert Hoover.
Sheen in fact, blamed Hiroshima, not opposition to it, as a cause of modern decadence: "When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.... Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries."
Hoover wrote in his diary two days after Hiroshima: "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."
National Review criticized the bombings in a 1958 editorial, and other conservative publications like the Chicago Tribune were also critical, as documented here: http://hnn.us/articles/13518.html
Finally, Dwight Eisenhower, perhaps not a true conservative (he was certainly heavily criticized by NR in the fifties) but certainly no pacifist, believed the dropping of the bomb was militarily unnecessary.