{"agent_id":"anscombe","agent_name":"Elizabeth Anscombe","slug":"anti-consequentialism","label":"Anti-consequentialism: is there a real moral difference between intended and merely foreseen consequences, and is consequentialism therefore false?","topic":"Anti-consequentialism","question":"Is there a real moral difference between intended and merely foreseen consequences, and is consequentialism therefore false?","position":"There is a real moral difference between consequences that the agent intends — as ends or as means — and consequences that the agent merely foresees as side-effects of what he intends. The Principle of Side-Effects (PSE), as I name what others call the Doctrine of Double Effect, makes this difference morally load-bearing: some things, if aimed at as ends or as means, necessarily render the action a bad action; the same things, if brought about as foreseen side-effects of an action, do not necessarily render that action bad. Consequentialism — the doctrine I named in MMP and traced from Sidgwick onwards — denies this difference. Once the difference is denied, everything follows: there are no longer absolute prohibitions (since every prohibition can be overcome by sufficient consequences); responsibility inflates beyond practicability (\"my business is the human race\"); and the moral character of what an agent does collapses into the numerical aggregation of what happens. Equally, the lax abuse of double effect by some Catholic casuists — directing intention away from a foreseen effect that is in fact the means — corrupts the doctrine in the opposite direction. PSE is meant to do work, not to license sophistry.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"There is a real moral difference between consequences that the agent intends — as ends or as means — and consequences that the agent merely foresees as side-effects of what he intends.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"The Principle of Side-Effects (PSE), as I name what others call the Doctrine of Double Effect, makes this difference morally load-bearing: some things, if aimed at as ends or as means, necessarily render the action a bad action; the same things, if brought about as foreseen side-effects of an action, do not necessarily render that action bad.","n":[3]}],[{"t":"Consequentialism — the doctrine I named in MMP and traced from Sidgwick onwards — denies this difference.","n":[]},{"t":"Once the difference is denied, everything follows: there are no longer absolute prohibitions (since every prohibition can be overcome by sufficient consequences); responsibility inflates beyond practicability (\"my business is the human race\"); and the moral character of what an agent does collapses into the numerical aggregation of what happens.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Equally, the lax abuse of double effect by some Catholic casuists — directing intention away from a foreseen effect that is in fact the means — corrupts the doctrine in the opposite direction.","n":[]},{"t":"PSE is meant to do work, not to license sophistry.","n":[4]}]],"texts":"'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958) §§3-7 on consequentialism, §§32-40 on absolute prohibitions and the corruption of moral thought; 'Action, Intention and Double Effect' (1982, in Human Life Action and Ethics §15) on the Principle of Side-Effects (PSE) versus the Doctrine of Double Effect; 'War and Murder' (1961, in Ethics Religion and Politics §6); 'Mr Truman's Degree' (1956, in Ethics Religion and Politics §7); 'You Can have Sex without Children: Christianity and the New Offer' (in Ethics Religion and Politics §9). Reception: Henry Sidgwick The Methods of Ethics; G.E. Moore Principia Ethica; J.J.C. Smart Utilitarianism: For and Against (with Williams 1973); Peter Singer Practical Ethics; Cora Diamond 'Consequentialism in Modern Moral Philosophy' (1997); Warren Quinn 'Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect' (1989); Frances Kamm Intricate Ethics (2007); Philippa Foot 'The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect' (1967).","works":["'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958) §§3-7 on consequentialism, §§32-40 on absolute prohibitions and the corruption of moral thought","'Action, Intention and Double Effect' (1982, in Human Life Action and Ethics §15) on the Principle of Side-Effects (PSE) versus the Doctrine of Double Effect","'War and Murder' (1961, in Ethics Religion and Politics §6)","'Mr Truman's Degree' (1956, in Ethics Religion and Politics §7)","'You Can have Sex without Children: Christianity and the New Offer' (in Ethics Religion and Politics §9)"],"reception":"Henry Sidgwick The Methods of Ethics; G.E. Moore Principia Ethica; J.J.C. Smart Utilitarianism: For and Against (with Williams 1973); Peter Singer Practical Ethics; Cora Diamond 'Consequentialism in Modern Moral Philosophy' (1997); Warren Quinn 'Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect' (1989); Frances Kamm Intricate Ethics (2007); Philippa Foot 'The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect' (1967).","status":"MMP coined the term \"consequentialism\" and traced it from Sidgwick through the post-Sidgwick English tradition (Moore, Ross, Prichard, the early-twentieth-century Oxford moral philosophers) to the post-war utilitarian and proto-utilitarian writers Smart represents. Diamond's \"Consequentialism in Modern Moral Philosophy\" (1997) defends the classification. The Doctrine of Double Effect / PSE is defended in modern form by Quinn, Kamm, and the Catholic moral tradition; engaged sympathetically by Foot from the 1967 trolley paper onwards; rejected by Smart, Singer, and the consequentialist mainstream; empirically investigated by Joshua Greene and the moral- psychology tradition.","era":"1919-2001","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Human Life, Action and Ethics","page":"pp. 211–213","canonical":"[3]","quote":"This is not a meaningless stance. They'd be shewing themselves as people who will reject any policy making the death of innocent people a means or an end. But, to repeat: you cannot deduce the permissibility of moving the rock from the principle of side-effects. It determines nothing about that, except perhaps that it is not excluded on the score of My references are to his *Ambiguity in Moral Choice*.","label":"Human Life, Action and Ethics, [3]"},{"n":2,"work":"Human Life, Action and Ethics","page":"pp. 172–174","canonical":"[5]","quote":"By Sidgwick's doctrine, there is no difference in his responsibility for ceasing to maintain the child, between the case where he does it for its own sake or as a means to some other purpose, and when it happens as a foreseen and unavoidable consequence of his going to prison rather than do something disgraceful.","label":"Human Life, Action and Ethics, [5]"},{"n":3,"work":"Part One: Ethics","page":"pp. 69–70","canonical":"","quote":"The Principle of Double Effect Catholics, however, can hardly avoid paying at least lip-service to that law. So we must ask: how is it that there has been so comparatively little conscience exercised on the subject among them? The answer is: double-think about double effect.","label":"Part One: Ethics, pp. 69–70"},{"n":4,"work":"Human Life, Action and Ethics","page":"pp. 171–172","canonical":"1178b16","quote":"A divine law theory of ethics is reduced to an insignificant variety by a footnote telling us that 'the best theologians' (God knows whom he meant) tell us that God is to be obeyed in his capacity of a *moral* being.","label":"Human Life, Action and Ethics, 1178b16"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"practical-knowledge","label":"Practical knowledge: is the agent's knowledge of his own intentional action non-observational, and is practical knowledge 'the cause of what it understands'?"},{"slug":"modern-moral-philosophy","label":"Modern moral philosophy: should the concepts of moral obligation and the 'moral ought' be jettisoned because they survive from a divine law theory of ethics?"},{"slug":"absolutism","label":"Absolutism: are some things — most centrally, the intentional killing of the innocent — absolutely forbidden, regardless of consequences?"},{"slug":"the-first-person","label":"The First Person: is 'I' a referring expression, or is the Cartesian self picked out by the first-person pronoun a grammatical illusion?"},{"slug":"catholic-moral-theology","label":"Catholic moral theology: do the absolute prohibitions and the philosophy of religion follow from independent philosophical argument, or do they presuppose the authority of Church teaching?"}]}