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The Loop Case and Kamm’s Doctrine of Triple Effect

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Abstract

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Loop Case is particularly significant in normative ethics because it questions the validity of the intuitively plausible Doctrine of Double Effect, according to which there is a significant difference between harm that is intended and harm that is merely foreseen and not intended. Recently, Frances Kamm has argued that what she calls the Doctrine of Triple Effect (DTE), which draws a distinction between acting because-of and acting in-order-to, can account for our judgment about the Loop Case. In this paper, I first argue that even if the distinction drawn by DTE can be sustained, it does not seem to apply to the Loop Case. Moreover, I question whether this distinction has any normative significance. The upshot is that I am skeptical that DTE can explain our judgment about the Loop Case.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., Thompson (1985). It might be worthwhile stipulating that if the five were not present, the trolley would not go around and hit the one, but would carry on harmless down the track.

  2. Thompson p. 1403.

  3. Ibid.

  4. See, e.g., Kamm (2007).

  5. Unless otherwise specified, all references to Kamm refer to Intricate Ethics.

  6. For some other recent discussions of Loop and Kamm’s ethics generally, see, e.g., (Norcross 2008; Otsuka 2008; Richardson 2008).

  7. Kamm says that the primary/secondary reason distinction is “another way of understanding the cases I discussed” (p. 102).

  8. It might be worth mentioning that it is hardly a conceptual truth that one could not throw a party in order to make someone else feel indebted. For example, consider the

    Election Party Case: Suppose you are running to be elected to the board of your local country club. You could throw a party in order that your friends feel indebted and would thereby vote for you in the upcoming election.

  9. Kamm addresses the question of why the problems should be differentiated this way by treating it as a question of whether different threats must have different objects doing the threatening. She responds that Loop “is the same, for moral purposes,” as

    Wagon: The trolley is headed toward killing the five. We divert it and, as it goes on the side track, it stops. But we know that it will stop on a button whose depression will cause a wagon on the side track to be set in motion. The wagon will head around the loop toward killing the five, but it will be stopped by hitting one person on the side track (pp. 94–95).

    But the similarity of Loop and Wagon for moral purposes, which let us assume for the sake of argument, may cut either way: it may be taken to show, as Kamm intends, that a second threatening object isn’t required for there to be a second threat, since Loop is morally like Wagon. But it may also be taken to show that a second threatening object need not create a second threat, since Wagon is morally like Loop.

  10. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the following point.

  11. Quinn (1989a), p. 343.

  12. Quinn (1989b), p. 288.

References

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Wasserman, Mike Otsuka, Wibke Gruetjen, and an anonymous reviewer at Philosophical Studies for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks are also due to participants of the Kamm Reading Group at http://www.ethics-etc.com for very fruitful discussions regarding this topic.

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  1. Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, Suite 8, Littlegate House, 16/17 St. Ebbes St., Oxford, OX1 1PT, UK

    S. Matthew Liao

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Liao, S.M. The Loop Case and Kamm’s Doctrine of Triple Effect. Philos Stud 146, 223–231 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9252-y

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