Intending harm, foreseeing harm, and failures of the will

Noûs 36 (4):622–642 (2002)
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Abstract

Theoretical defenses of the principle of double effect (pde) due to Quinn, Nagel and Foot are claimed to face severe difficulties. But this leaves those of us who see something in the case-based support for the pde without a way of accounting for our judgments. This article proposes a novel principle it calls the mismatch principle, and argues that the mismatch principle does better than the pde at accounting for our judgments about cases and is also theoretically defensible. However, where the pde makes claims about the permissibility of actions, the mismatch principle makes claims only about the evaluation of agents; and where the pde explains the cases in terms of intending harm, the mismatch principle explains them in terms of a quite different feature of the agent's will.

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David McCarthy
University of Hong Kong

Citations of this work

Doctrine of double effect.Alison McIntyre - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Three Cheers for Double Effect.Dana Kay Nelkin & Samuel C. Rickless - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (1):125-158.
Defending double effect.Alison Hills - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 116 (2):133-152.

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