Abstract

Double effect reasoning is a nonconsequentialist analysis of the ethical status of an agent's acting to realize an end which is ethically in the clear when the realization of such an end inextricably causes some effect the causing of which is, prima facie, not ethically in the clear. In this work, I remove certain misunderstandings which attend discussions of DER: the relation between contemporary accounts and Aquinas's originating account , the relation between the intended/foreseen distinction operative in DER and the doing/allowing distinction, and the various and misleading names given to the i/f distinction , I criticize the accounts of contemporary theorists of DER, e.g., Warren Quinn and Joseph Boyle. In my positive account, I solve the 'problem of closeness' presented by Philippa Foot. I argue that the i/f distinction is tenable, ethically significant, and applicable to the cases usually dealt with in contemporary accounts of DER . I argue that the i/f distinction belongs to a larger account of intention which attends to the relations between intention and deliberation . Noting that DER is not simply the i/f distinction , I argue that DER in part depends upon the relations between an agent's various responsibilities vis-a-vis the good and bad which he will conjointly effect in the cases to which DER applies. I argue that DER does not result in a conclusion which tells the agent what he must do, but, rather, in one indicating that a course of action is ethically in the clear.