First Assignment for the Bioethics Special Topic: On the Train Running People Over and DDE
DDE（Doctrine of Double Effect, the doctrine of double effect）：
When some actions inevitably bring about double consequences, namely one intended good result and another foreseeable bad result, the doctrine of double effect holds that such actions are good (that is, necessary under natural law) if and only if all of the following conditions are met at the same time:
1） The action must not be immoral
2） The bad consequence must not be the means to the good consequence
3） The intention of the action must be directed only toward the good consequence, although the accompanying bad consequence is foreseeable
4） The good consequence must be proportionate to the bad consequence
Case:
A speeding train is about to run over 5 people:
Situation 1: As a switchman at the scene, the only way to save those 5 people is to throw the switch and send the train onto another track, but then it will run over 1 person on that other track.
Situation 2: As the train driver, the only action that can be taken is to steer sharply (assuming the driver can steer, and it is already too late to brake), turning the train onto another track and running over another 1 person.
Situation 3: Suppose there is a fat man on the platform beside the tracks; the only way to save those 5 people is to push that fat man onto the tracks, using the fat man’s sacrifice to save the lives of those 5 people.
Analysis based on DDE:
First, the first condition seems to be satisfied in all three situations, because the actions in these three situations are all actions of saving lives. However, as Teacher Cheng said, this is actually the most dubious point here — here we are implicitly assuming that there is only one way to describe an action in language, or thinking that different ways of describing it are irrelevant to the moral characterization of that event. But in fact, different descriptions of the same action can very likely completely change people’s understanding of the nature of the action. For example, the two statements “Zhang San threw a brick at Li Si in order to protect his own life and stop Li Si’s murderous act” and “Zhang San, sensing a threat to his own life from Li Si, preemptively smashed Li Si to death with a brick” give people extremely different impressions, though in fact they are talking about the same thing. Specifically in this case, the two statements “Zhang San, in order to save lives, remained calm and collected in the face of danger, and took timely and decisive measures, reducing the number of deaths in the accident from the original 5 to just 1 casualty” and “Zhang San stripped an innocent person of his life in order to reduce the number of deaths” also give people utterly different impressions.
Since neither the motive nor the consequence of an action is simple and clear-cut, whether the action is moral or immoral often will not be self-evident either; therefore the first condition is very ambiguous. However, the first condition in the DDE doctrine seems to be dispensable; for example, one could simply stipulate that the “good consequence” in the later conditions must be “good” in the ethical sense. But this problem would not be resolved, because in each of the latter three conditions there must be concern with the impact of linguistic description, especially how to determine the “good” and “bad” of consequences and how to compare the difference in degree between good consequences and bad consequences; all of this is very much related to how they are described.
The second condition seems to differ in the three situations. According to the more generally accepted understanding, in the third situation the fat man is being treated as a “means.” But in fact, in whichever situation it may be, whether this condition is satisfied seems uncertain. The key is that the distinction between the means used to achieve a certain result and the incidental consequence that must accompany the achievement of that result does not always seem very clear — in some situations, this distinction is clear: for example, in order to get a criminal to stop committing crimes and surrender himself, kidnapping and torturing his young children to force him to comply is obviously using a bad consequence as a means. But if we have already exhausted all strategies for stopping someone’s ongoing enormous crime, and discover that only kidnapping and torturing the one person he cares about — his beloved child — is the most effective, or the only effective, way to force him to stop killing and save countless other lives, can we say “this is something that had to be done in order to stop the killings from continuing”? Simply put, if the bad consequence is indeed a “means,” yet is the “only means” within all conceivable limits, does it then cease to be a “means”? Perhaps this is still a question related to linguistic description.
In this case, in the third situation, pushing the fat man onto the tracks seems easier to regard as a “means,” but since we have set it as the only way to save the lives of 5 people, what is the difference between this situation and the second situation? In the second and third situations, we are both taking the only way to save 5 people, and both equally foresee the death of that one innocent person; that person originally had nothing to do with this matter, and that person’s death was equally caused by the measures I took — of course, we can say that in the second situation the switchman’s action is only “throwing the switch,” and the innocent person’s death is an incidental result of throwing the switch; but in the third situation the fat man is not “pushed to death” either, he is likewise killed by the train! So long as we do not describe the act of pushing the fat man as “pushing him to his death,” but rather say “the innocent person was placed on the track along which the train was about to travel,” then there is no difference whatsoever between the second and third situations.
If one insists on finding some difference between the second and third situations, perhaps it is only an emotional difference. After all, the former merely requires touching a switch, whereas the latter requires touching a living body (but in both cases, “the innocent person was placed on the track along which the train was about to travel”). Or perhaps it lies in the temporal delay of the bad consequence. In the third situation the fat man dies immediately, whereas in the second situation the innocent person’s death is separated from the actor by a certain distance in both space and time. In fact, the spatiotemporal distance at which consequences occur does indeed have an extremely important influence on people’s actual actions. Even if the degree of certainty or foresight regarding distant events may not be weak, people are always more concerned with what happens around them. But this factor is not considered in the DDE doctrine.
The third condition may differ somewhat between the first and second situations. Of course, the difference between these two situations is first of all emotional — as the driver, whichever choice he makes, the feeling at the moment the consequence occurs will be very direct, whereas the identity of the switchman is more like that of a bystander, and he can make a judgment more calmly. Thus, for the train driver, if he is a person with normal emotions, it is hard to imagine that when making the decision he could completely set aside thoughts such as: “I do not want to watch so many people die miserably under my wheels.” Then, if when he makes the decision to turn, his “intention” is not “only” directed toward “saving the lives of 5 people,” but may also uncontrollably incorporate such an intention as “reducing as much as possible the catastrophe happening around me” — if he turns, on the one hand the number of casualties is reduced, and on the other hand, because he has taken “active” measures, the driver will often feel somewhat relieved in conscience. In short, when the train driver makes the decision to turn, it is hard to avoid the possibility that his motives will contain some intentions other than the mere “saving of 5 lives.” In this way, the train driver’s intention when acting certainly does not point toward the bad consequence, but neither does it “only” point toward the good consequence. Of course, we can evade this problem by distinguishing between intentions arising from reason and intentions arising from emotion, but this distinction is not always very easy.
The fourth condition is actually the most dubious and ambiguous of all: there are three main problems here: first, how do we assess the relative magnitude of good consequences and bad consequences? Second, can ethical value be quantified? Third, can good and bad, good and evil, be compared and offset against each other? As for rewriting the situation as 5 criminals and 1 Einstein, 5 strangers and 1 switchman’s son, and so on, that only makes the problem even more complicated; and when the good and bad consequences involve events that cannot be measured simply by counting heads (such as environmental protection and poverty alleviation), quantification and comparison become even less feasible. But here, the lives of 5 ordinary people are obviously more valuable than the life of 1 person; the question is, can the value of infinitely precious life really be weighed by the number of heads? (Such weighing is necessary for law’s “conviction and sentencing,” but in the ethical and moral sphere it is another matter entirely.)
In addition, according to the logic of DDE, if the good consequence is greater in degree than the bad consequence, then this action is morally correct: I have done what I ought to do, and this is precisely the correct action in accordance with “natural law.” Then I need not feel the slightest apology for that tragically killed innocent person. In other words, he “got what he deserved,” and his sacrifice was completely in line with “the way of Heaven”! This is hard to accept. We generally believe that even if, in such a situation where bad consequences are brought about as a last resort, one should not morally condemn the actor, the actor still ought to bear some moral responsibility for the consequences caused. One absolutely cannot put on an attitude of “this has nothing to do with me.” But if we say that such an action is required by “natural law (the way of Heaven),” then it becomes hard to find any reason to think that there is still any moral entanglement between the actor and the innocent person.
In short, the four criteria of DDE are questionable both in theory and in practice.
Because my own ethical position strongly leans toward “virtue ethics,” I am personally repelled by the very kind of discussion that sets down “normative” behavior for concrete situations (normative questions cannot be avoided, but more of them may belong to jurisprudence, while ethics should care about the question of “how to be a person”; as for so-called applied ethics issues such as euthanasia and abortion, virtue ethics has its own distinctive way of discussing them.), so I cannot issue a normative conclusion about such a case; space is limited, so I will not expand further.
In fact, the logic of DDE (and most other ethical theories) contains a strong wish: that a morally impeccable life is possible — that a person can live a life of complete perfection, and in any dilemma can avoid committing a single evil deed.
DDE was first developed by Thomas Aquinas and Catholic theologians. However, the “atonement” advocated by Christianity probably does not mean that good deeds can “offset” evil deeds — rather, Christianity holds that to be human is to be unable to be without sin, and teaches people how to recognize their own sins and how to live burdened by them. Doing good can be a repayment and redemption for sin, but sin can never be “offset” away. If “atonement” is understood as offsetting and leveling out sins with good deeds, then Christianity will probably be led down the wrong path — a mistake that ultimately reached its climax in “indulgences.” Buddhism also has the saying “once done, it is not lost” (已作不失), which emphasizes the same principle: once good deeds have been done, they will not be erased by doing a few more bad deeds, and vice versa. Even if, in a situation of dilemma, bad consequences are inevitably caused,
Latest Comments
- Chier 2007-03-31 23:47:34
I saw a similar example a long time ago, though slightly different. The example said that 5 little children were playing on the still-in-use track, and 1 was playing on the abandoned track. Should the switchman throw the switch and sacrifice one child to save the other 5? I discussed it with a friend at the time. She said save the 5. I said I wouldn’t. Because that one child was at fault. And the other five had no choice but to be responsible for their own mistakes. Although that makes sense, this kind of example is still… hehe. If you have seen Hunter, there is also a related scene in it. I remember it very vividly.
- Gu Dua2007-04-01 01:25:37
The question should assume that the people on the tracks did nothing wrong (someone raised this issue, and Teacher Cheng said just assume they are 5 infants!)
This question is not without practical significance — Teacher Cheng later gave an example: for instance, another country has launched an atomic bomb toward Beijing, and the only way now is to intercept it in midair. But if it is intercepted in midair, the atomic bomb will explode on the spot, and the villages or small towns below are bound to suffer (the bomb’s route is never over uninhabited wilderness; this situation is very realistic). That village is of course innocent, but if it is not intercepted, Beijing is finished. Should it be intercepted? - Chier 2007-04-02 08:48:11
I think for the vast majority of people, interception is a given, because it obviously conforms to “if the good consequence is greater in degree than the bad consequence, then this action is morally correct.” But… still, discussing it further seems a bit…
The human heart is far more complex than this. So we need God. Hehe
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply