Abstract
Jonathan Quong Ethics, 119(3), 507–537 (2009) has recently argued that the permissibility of killing innocent threats turns on a distinction between eliminative and opportunistic agency. When we kill bystanders we view them under the guise of opportunism by using them as mere survival tools, but when we kill threats we simply eliminate them. According to Quong, the distinction between opportunistic and eliminative agency reveals that there are two different ways of killing someone as a means to save your own life. Call this the Means Distinction. In this note, I argue that although the Means Distinction seems prima facie plausible it is not a sufficient explanation for the permissibility of killing threats. My argument against the Means Distinction is two-fold. Most non-consequentialists accept that the Means Distinction carries some moral significance, but I argue that this is a mistake: we do not have any reason to believe that opportunistic killings are, in general, worse than eliminative killings. Following this, I argue that even if we accept the Means Distinction, there are threat-type scenarios in which there is no intuitive difference between killing a threat opportunistically and killing a threat eliminatively.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Frowe (2008) gives an argument that is roughly similar to Quong’s argument. To avoid muddying the waters I am concentrating on Quong’s particular argument.
Quong’s argument for self-defense also rests on the claim that the right to self-defense is grounded in the agent-relative value that one’s life has for one’s self; i.e., it is because my life is especially important to me that I am allowed to shoot an innocent threat. For present purposes, I am concentrating on the Means Distinction because it forms the crux of Quong’s argument: even if we accept that the agent-relative value of my life gives me a permission to ignore people in need, it is not obvious that it gives me a liberty right to kill innocent people. As Quong himself notes, “Even if our life has special agent-relative value, the permission to kill innocent people in self-defense seems stronger and more controversial than the permission to let innocent people die if rescuing them would be too risky”(p. 523).
The Means Distinction has been criticized as being too permissive. It is not obvious, for instance, that eliminative agency is always permissible. As McMahan points out, if we are running away from a maniac and we need to cross a bridge that is obstructed by a bystander, it is obviously impermissible to eliminate the bystander by pushing him off of the bridge (p. 171). This is a case of eliminative agency, but it is obviously impermissible. Quong argues that, contrary to first appearances, killing obstructers is actually an instance of opportunistic killing. Obstructers, according to Quong, have a claim to the physical space they are in and, by moving them you are taking advantage of their property claim. In Quong’s words: “Since your survival depends on things over which X has a rightful claim, to take them and thereby kill X would be to shift the harm of death from yourself onto X by using X’s entitlements against them. This, I believe, would be to use X as a mere means to your own survival, and as such it should be deemed impermissible” (p. 530). Furthermore, “We treat someone as a mere means to our own survival if we kill them when we could not survive without them or something else to which they have a rightful claim” (pp. 532–533). I doubt that rights of self-ownership extend to property rights, but for present purposes I will set this problem aside. For a separate critique of this aspect of Quong’s argument, see Jason Hanna (2012).
Derek Parfit makes a similar point about the badness of treating people as a means (2011, p. 228).
To be clear, it is possible to treat someone eliminatively without actually killing them or destroying their body. Tony Soprano, for example, does not need to kill his neighbors in order to treat them eliminatively; he might simply intimidate them into moving or buy their property out from under them. However, for present purposes, I would note that since Finn has limited options, he can only treat Jake-the-threat eliminatively by destroying his body. Finn might claim that his primary concern is to eliminate the threat that Jake presents and that destroying Jake’s body is simply incidental to his aims. But, this seems disingenuous: destroying Jake’s body is a necessary component of his intending to act. There is a question of closeness here similar to the problem of closeness attached to the Doctrine of Double Effect. See, for example, Warren Quinn (1993, pp. 175–193). For present purposes I shall set this problem aside.
Kamm argues that Secondary Permissibility explains why we might be allowed to intentionally kill prisoners of war if we were relatively certain that these people would die anyway and if doing so would save more lives overall (p. 170). Neither of these features obtains in Double-Threat.
References
Frowe, H. (2008). Equating innocent threats and bystanders. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 25(4), 277–289.
Hanna, J. (2012). The moral status of nonresponsible threats. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 29(1), 19–32.
Kamm, F. (2007). Intricate ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McMahan, J. (2009). Killing in war. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Otsuka, M. (1994). Killing the innocent in self-defense. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23, 74–94.
Parfit, D. (2011). On what matters: volume one. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quinn, W. (1993). Morality and action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quong, J. (2009). Killing in self-defense. Ethics, 119(3), 507–537.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Rahul Kumar for reading several drafts of this paper and Kerah Gordon-Solmon for helping me fine-tune the case of Double-Threat.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ross, A.P. On Killing Threats as a Means. Philosophia 43, 869–876 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9599-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9599-1