Reality resisting unreality
(Note: Below, Zippy Catholic of 4W says I am deliberately misrepresenting his position, and I reply. Also, be sure to read Ortelio’s comment and my reply, which clarify the meaning of the 4W position and explain what a better alternative to it would be.)
Remember our big debate a while back with the writers at What’s Wrong with the World, who said that it would be the height of immorality to shoot down a doomed hijacked airliner that was aimed at destroying the U.S. Capitol or even at blowing up an entire city with a nuclear bomb? It looks as if the 4W folks, who are conservative Christians, have spiritual kin among the secular leftists in the German judiciary.
In 2006, Germany’s highest court scrapped a controversial law allowing the military to shoot down civilian planes suspected of being hijacked for terrorist attacks. It ruled that the law was an infringement on the right to life and the right to human dignity.
But now German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung has set off a controversy by
saying that he would disregard the court’s ruling: “If there were no other way, I would give the order to shoot it down to protect our people.” Of course, I say. But critics view it differently. Says one: “This was the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany that a minister openly declares he would disregard the ruling of the constitutional court and order that a crime be committed, if he deems it right.” But the defense minister is right. Whatever the law may be, human nature, the desire to live and to save life, would in the pinch ignore the abstract unreal morality of the German court—and of the folks at 4W.
By the way, this story comes on the heals of the news that the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has said a truthful thing I never expected to hear from a European leader, that war against Iran, though a last resort, may ultimately be necessary to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. What’s happening to the European elite? Is someone giving them anti-Eloi pills?
- end of initial entry -
Zippy Catholic, the writer at What’s Wrong with the World who was most strongly associated with the view I discussed above, writes:
You keep repeating a falsehood even though I’ve told you repeatedly that it is a falsehood.
This:
” … who said that it would be the height of immorality to shoot down a doomed hijacked airliner that was aimed at destroying the U.S. Capitol or even at blowing up an entire city with a nuclear bomb?”
is false, and continuing to state it as if it were the truth will become a lie if you continue to do so willfully.
It is similar to someone saying “Zippy would not allow anyone to operate on an ectopic pregnacy to save the life of the mother.” Someone who says that is telling a falshood about my position. Someone who says it after I’ve explained that it is a falshood is lying.
Shooting out the engines is probably, in my understanding, morally permissable. Blowing up the passengers isn’t. Get it straight, or don’t talk about it as if you know what you are talking about. Because you don’t know what you are talking about.
Also, though this is a minor point, saying that a particular concrete act is morally impermissable isn’t the same thing as saying it is “the height of immorality.” It is morally impermissable to steal a pack of gum from a convenience store. That doesn’t make it morally equivalent to (e.g.) sawing of the head of an infidel. A nominalist disregards the fact that categories and degrees are different things. I didn’t think you were a nominalist.
LA replies:
I simply don’t understand. You repeatedly and forthrightly affirmed exactly the position I attributed to you. How is my attributing it to you a falsehood?
You write:
“Shooting out the engines is probably, in my understanding, morally permissable. Blowing up the passengers isn’t. Get it straight, or don’t talk about it as if you know what you are talking about. Because you don’t know what you are talking about.”
In other words, what you want me to say is something like this:
“While the 4W folks oppose shooting down the plane to save the Capitol because that would be morally impermissible, they argue that the Capitol could still be saved without committing a morally impermissible act by shooting at the plane’s engine instead of the fusillage. Knocking an engine out of commission without causing any damage to the wing or the rest of the plane would deflect the plane from its intended target and allow the hijackers to glide to a safe landing. This for the 4W writers is the morally permissible way of saving the Capitol.”
But shooting the engines as distinct from shooting the plane is a qualification without a difference. If I wrote the above, then I really would feel like a liar. The argument is absurd to me, because (1) the option to shoot the engine rather than the fusillage probably wouldn’t be available; (2) even if it was, either way the plane goes down and everyone is killed; and (3) the attempt just to hit the engines rather than the fusillage could result in missing the plane altogether, so it’s not something that people would attempt whose concern is to bring the plane down to prevent it from destroying the Capitol building or destroying a city with a nuclear bomb. But you expect me to buy into an argument that you want me to buy into, just because you say it. And because I don’t characterize your argument the way that you would like me to, doesn’t make my characterization of your argument a lie. We happen to see it differently. You think this business about shooting the engine changes everything. To me and most other people followng that discussion, it was an unconvincing attempt by you to evade the actual substance of what you were saying. But I didn’t say that you were lying or committing a falsehood when you did that, just as I don’t say you’re lying or committing a falsehood now. I say that you’re using an argument that doesn’t hold up.
As for the phrase, “the height of immorality,” I think you did convey the idea that shooting down the plane would be the height of immorality: why else must one allow a city to be destroyed rather than shoot down the plane, unless shooting down the plane was the height of immorality?
However, since you object to the phrase, and since nothing would be lost by changing it, I will look at changing it to “morally impermissible” or something like that
But since you’ve now apparently decided I’m a liar or at least a deliberate speaker of falsehoods who is in the process of becoming a liar and thus a really serious sinner (because I am committing the sin of declining to characterize your argument the way you would like me to), I don’t know how much good that will do.
P.S. Also, on another point, you should try to rely less on complicated analogies, like this ectopic pregnancy business which you’ve continually returned to and frankly I’ve never understood. Such analogies don’t help clarify your argument, they make it harder to follow.
Zippy replies:
“But shooting the engines as distinct from shooting the plane is a qualification without a difference.”
I understand that you think so. I’ve told you many times that in my understanding (and in the understanding of the Christian tradition) the morality of an act depends not just on the ends but on the specific means chosen.
I couldn’t care less if you think that I, and by implication the Christian tradition, are nuts. What I care about is you representing the position accurately.
“But you expect me to buy into an argument that you want me to buy into, just because you say it.”
Oh no, Larry. I am under no delusion that you will buy into the argument. I merely state (once again) for the record with you—between you and I—that you are factually wrong in how you characterize it.
LA continues:
Also, I have no idea where a missle is aimed at a plane. I think the missles are often heat-seeking missiles, which means that the engine would be the target in any case. So that eliminates your morally permissible alternative. Hitting the engine is the way they bring the plane down.
Zippy replies:
At least now you are thinking about specific means. That is progress.
LA replies:
If hitting the engine is the way to bring down the plane, then that’s the way to bring down the plane. If hitting the nose or the tail or the fusillage is the way to bring down the plane, than that’s the way to bring down the plane. What governs is the necessity of bringing down the plane.
LA writes:
May I post the exchange?
That way your protest of my position as deliberately false is out there, as is my defense of my position.
Zippy replies:
Sure, you can post it. Please include my last couple of replies.
* * *
Chris L. writes:
Zippy wrote: “I couldn’t care less if you think that I, and by implication the Christian tradition, are nuts.”
This has been one of my problems with this debate with the folks over at 4W on this issue. There is an air of “Whatever we say is Christian tradition and any arguments against our position are non-Christian.”
Zippy wrote: “I understand that you think so. I’ve told you many times that in my understanding (and in the understanding of the Christian tradition) the morality of an act depends not just on the ends but on the specific means chosen.”
Zippy wants to split fine legal hairs. Assume that by some miracle a pilot is able to destroy only the engines and render the plane incapable of flight. It is going to take another miracle for the passengers to survive the crash landing in the ocean. (I’m assuming the ocean because if it is over land then you have to destroy the plane or the hijackers will just detonate over any nearby city.) Now Zippy is going to say that a miracle could happen and the passengers survive. Of course if you are basing your calculations on miracles then we might as well do nothing, never risking our immortal souls by an immoral act, and assume a miracle will prevent the plane from reaching its destination. Simply put, Zippy wants to believe that shooting only the engines is different from shooting any part of the plane even though the reasonable expectation is the destruction of the plane and all aboard it. It is the same as shooting through a hostage to get at the hostage taker and stating because you purposefully tried to avoid the vital organs it is justified.
LA writes:
Unless someone has something really urgent or new to say, I am not encouraging further comments in response to my exchange with Zippy, since the debate already went on at exceeding length at 4W several weeks ago. The only issue here was Zippy’s contention that I misrepresented him, and did so deliberately, and I think that’s been gone over enough for people to draw their own conclusions.
Ortelio writes:
Here’s a point that is not urgent, but is new to the debate at VFR and 4W. There are plenty of theologically conservative Catholics who reject Zippy’s basic theses, which are that you can’t hold onto any moral absolutes unless you rule out shooting down planes full of people, and that this is because the morality of means depends on the directness of the physical causality with which you “deliberately” cause a bad effect such as the death of (innocent) human beings. Plenty of conservative Catholics instead follow the line set out in the late Pope’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (you think he’s a dangerous liberal but this encyclical’s tough moral teaching about moral absolutes is rejected by all theologically liberal Catholics). In that line of thought, what counts in defining the means (as distinct from the intended end or the side-effects) is what you are trying to bring about as something that will help you achieve your end.
So these other seriously conservative Catholics hold that you can certainly shoot down the airliner to save the city, because you are not trying to kill the passengers—their injury and death doesn’t contribute at all to your purpose of preventing the plane crashing (or delivering its bomb or whatever). However certain it is, it’s a bad side-effect, not part of the means. Similarly they hold that you can jump out of the window of the WTC to avoid being horribly burned or choked to death, and can do so without committing suicide either as an end or a means—even though you know that your death on the ground below is unfortunately a certainty. All you need to achieve your purpose is to get out of the blazing room. They deal with the ectopic pregnancy cases differently from Zippy too. Yet they really do hold that you should resolve never to try to kill an innocent, even to save the city—never, for example, to shoot innocent “hostages” in order to bribe or deter the enemy.
LA replies:
Ortelio’s argument is a new and useful addition to the debate. If I may attempt to put what he has said about his and Zippy’s position in my own words (sorry in advance for the repetiveness):
Zippy’s position is that any act which we know for a certainty will take the life of an innocent is morally impermissible. And this is true, even if the innocent is imminently doomed, and even if taking his life is an unavoidable adjunct to the act of killing bad men who are about to kill thousands of people.
Ortelio’s position, adopted from Veritatis Splendor, is that if the life of the innocent is taken, not in order to take it, but only as a side effect of an otherwise moral and necessary act to save thousands of lives, then it’s permissible.
It’s the “side-effect” factor which is the key. Zippy says it is impermissible to perform an otherwise necessary and moral act to save lives, (a) if a side-effect of that act will be the death of an innocent, and (b) if this side effect is certain. That’s why Zippy’s only moral way to stop the plane is to shoot at the engine, which, he believes, theoretically allows for the possibillty that the plane could land safely, meaning that the side effect, the death of the innocent passengers, is not absolutely certain (though of course for all practical purposes it is certain).
Ortelio, by contrast, says it is permissible to perform an otherwise necessary and moral act to save lives, even if a certain side-effect of that act will be the death of an innocent.
For Ortelio, the key to a morally permissible act is that the innocent’s death must be a side effect.
For Zippy, the key to a morally permissible act is that the innocent’s death must not be certain.
Both Zippy and Ortelio would exclude such acts as shooting an innocent hostage in the head as a “payment” to stop terrorists from destroying a city, because, in that case, the killing of the hostage would not be a side effect of an otherwise moral act.
To conclude: It’s ok to perform an otherwise moral act to save lives that you know will cause the death of an innocent, such as shooting down a hijacked terrorist plane, if the death of the innocent is a side effect of that otherwise moral act. This, in my view, is vastly superior to the position of Zippy and the 4Ws, which is that, even if the death of the innocent is a side effect of shooting down the plane, if this side effect is a certainty, then the act is morally impermissible.
Ortelio, by supplying an alternative to Zippy’s view, helps me understand Zippy’s view for the first time. I thank him.
Zippy Catholic replies:
On the specific question of the WTC victim, I think it would probably be morally permissable to jump out of the window but (much as one empathizes with the victim) clearly morally impermissable to put a gun to one’s head and blow one’s brains out. In general you can’t avoid moral evaluation of the act itself—the specific chosen behavior—independent of the expected outcome.
Reasonable people can (and no doubt do) disagree about my evaluations of particular chosen behaviors, but one can’t disregard the particular means chosen as a moral matter and claim to remain within the Christian tradition. Ortelio is quite right that these issues are contentious among moral theologians, Catholic and Protestant. But not all positions are coherent, and I think the one Ortelio articulates incorrectly interprets Veritatis Splendour, Aquinas, and the tradition.
In particular it seems to me that Ortelio is invoking what is called the principle of double effect before first establishing that it applies at all. Under double effect it can be morally licit to do something that has a bad effect as long as that bad effect is not intended as a means or an end. But before the principle of double effect can be invoked it must first be established that the act itself, the chosen behavior, is not evil in itself. (This is what makes traditional Christian morality “deontological” as opposed to “teleological”: the fact that the act itself has a moral character apart from or in addition to the desired effects of the act and the circumstances).
As Veritatis Splendor says:
“One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic of teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species—its “object”—the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned.”
LA replies:
To the extent that I understand Zippy’s not-easy-to-understand comment, he seems to be saying that an act that has a bad effect must have a moral character in order to be morally permissible. But that of course is Ortelio’s and my point as well. Shooting down the plane to prevent its killing thousands of people on the ground is an act that has a moral character. The death of the innocents on the plane is a side effect of that moral act. The bad effect is not intended. The bad effect is not a means of attaining the good effect. The bad effect is a side effect. So what is left of Zippy’s original position as distinct from Ortelio’s and my position?
Zippy writes:
That the chosen behavior itself—blowing one’s brains out with a gun versus jumping out the window, directly blowing up the passengers with ordinance versus shooting out the engines, salpingotomy versus salpingectomy—can sometimes render the act morally impermissable.
(That is what has all along distinguished my position.)
LA replies:
So Zippy’s position comes down to saying that if the missile used to shoot down the plane directly kills the passengers, i.e., the missile’s impact into the plane and/or the explosion of its warhead kills the passengers, then the act is impermissible. But if the missile’s impact/explosion only destroys the tail or the engine of the plane, not directly killing the passengers, but sending the plane crashing to the earth, which does kill the passengers, then the act is permissible.
Speaking from my commonsensical, uninformed, not-having-read-20-volumes-of-Catholic-moral-theology perspective, I find this hard to take seriously. It returns us to Zippy’s comments at 4W, where he expected U.S. defense forces, facing a hijacked terror plane heading into Washington D.C., to be able, not just to shoot down the plane on a couple of minutes notice, but to do it in the precise manner required by Zippy, or not do it at all and so let the plane destroy Washington.
True moral reasoning takes into account the circumstances in which the actor is acting. I don’t think that Zippy’s approach does that.
Again, I didn’t want to keep extending this discussion, but Tom S. has sent a clear explanation of the doctrine of double effect which adds to our understanding.
Tom S. writes:
According to Father John Hardon, S.J. an advisor to Pope John Paul II and candidate for beatification, double effect is the “principle that says it is morally allowable to perform an act that has at least two effects, one good and one bad.”
Fr. Hardon goes on to detail the exact conditions necessary for “double effect” to apply:
- The act to be done must be good in itself or at least morally indifferent; by the act to be done is meant the deed itself TAKEN INDEPENDENTLY OF ITS CONSEQUENCES (my emphasis).
- The good effect must not be obtained by means of the evil effect; the evil must be only an incidental by-product and not an actual factor in the accomplishment of the good.
- The evil effect must not be intended for itself but only permitted; all bad will must be excluded from the act.
- There must be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. At least the good and the evil effects should be nearly equivalent.
All four conditions must be fulfilled. If any one of them is not satisfied, the act is morally wrong.
Father Hardon gives this example:
“[T]he commander of a submarine in wartime who torpedoes an armed merchant vessel of the enemy, although he foresees that several innocent children on board will be killed. All four conditions are fulfilled: he intends to merely lessen the power of the enemy by destroying an armed merchant ship. He does not wish to kill the innocent children; his action of torpedoing the ship is not evil in itself; the evil effect (the death of the children) is not the cause of the good effect (the lessening of the enemy’s strength); there is sufficient reason for permitting the evil effect to follow, and this reason is administering a damaging blow to those who are unjustly attacking his country.”
Zippy may say that somehow Veritatis Splendor changed all this, but it would seem that Father Hardon, who helped write the Catholic Catechism, didn’t think so.
Also, note that the passage Zippy quotes from Veritatis Splendor refers to:
“… the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned…”
TOTALITY … for ALL persons concerned.
That includes, in this case, the people who would be killed on the ground by the atom bomb, if the terrorist is allowed to succeed. This reinforces Father Hardon’s position on double effect.
Zippy’s quote from Veritatis Splendor also reinforces Ortelio’s position. Ortelio’s position is, as near as I can tell, the traditional Christian position, and official Catholic Doctrine.
Here is Fr. Hardon’s biography.
LA replies:
Yes, while I find the passage from Veritatis Splendor quoted by Zippy, with its four negatives, virtually impenetrable (I have difficulty understanding double negatives, let alone quadruple negatives), the emphasis placed on the consequences of the act would seem to dispel the notion that it is only the moral quality of the actor’s intentions, and not the consequences of his act, that determine the moral nature of the act.
Ortelio writes:
Many thanks for posting my comment, and for your reflections on it.
Zippy wants to refute my reference to Veritatis Splendor by quoting its central teaching (sec. 79) that certain kinds of act are always wrong by reason of the “object,” apart from “intention” and consequences. What he doesn’t realise is that sec. 78 has carefully prepared for that by explaining what is meant here by the technical term “object”: “In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person [Pope’s italics]…. By the object of a given moral act, then, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order [my italics], to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world. Rather than object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person [my italics].” As is clear enough from that passage, and from commentaries by people involved in the drafting or earlier preparation for the encyclical, “object” means the proximate purpose, the chosen means—say, to shoot down the plane—as distinct from the further, intended end for which the means are means—say the intention/end/purpose of saving the city from being destroyed by the plane or bombs from the plane.
It is equally clear that Zippy’s way of analysing the situation makes the mistake warned against by the same sentence, of trying to identify the “object of the act” by looking at “processes or events of the merely physical order, assessed [as able] to bring about a given state of affairs.” So Zippy thinks the object of the fighter pilot’s act includes all the processes, events and states of affairs that are certain—especially the destruction of the passengers along with the plane. But from the perspective of the acting person [the pilot] the destruction of the passengers is not part of his object at all. So the pilot does not fall foul of the moral norm which excludes intentionally killing the innocent (= taking the killing of an innocent as one’s object either as end or means).
By the way: my earlier comment did not say, but it’s obvious, that morality applies to side-effects as well as to objects and intentions. But the moral standards applicable to side-effects are different, having to do with fair proportionality, and the discussion here quite reasonably assumes that, in the dire circumstances we are all imagining (and that the German law no doubt envisaged too), the passengers could not reasonably complain that they were unfairly or disproportionately treated by the pilot and his commanders.
Zippy writes:
To Tom S:
“Zippy may say that somehow Veritatis Splendor changed all this, … “
VS didn’t change anything. (It could, in principle, but it didn’t in fact.) People have interpreted the doctrine of double effect with wildly different understandings, though, and VS is the first Magisterial document to clarify in detail which sense is correct. It says so itself:
“115. This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial.”
Tom S again: “TOTALITY … for ALL persons concerned.”
Right. VS rejects the proposition that an act cannot be classed as evil without taking this into account. (Sorry for all the negatives, Mr. Auster). IOW, we can determine that an act is evil (in some cases) without taking into consideration all of the consequences for all persons (e.g. the people on the ground). VS explicitly rejects moral theories which claim that we cannot do this.
To Ortelio:
“What he doesn’t realise is that sec. 78 has carefully prepared for that by explaining what is meant here by the technical term “object”: … “
No, I do understand the object from the perspective of the acting subject. The object is the chosen behavior. You cannot know what the chosen behavior is without placing yourself into the perspective of the acting subject. If the pilot of the jet is suffering from delusions and thinks he is playing a video game then blowing up the passengers in that instance would be an accident, not his chosen behavior. Strictly speaking an outside observer cannot tell what the object of the act is: only the acting subject can tell, because the act is the behavior he is choosing, not something strictly of the physical order. Nobody else can see the acting subject’s free will itself in operation and know just what he sees, knows, etc.
I’ve written quite a few posts at my blog and I’ve been involved in a great many discussions specifically about understanding the object of the act over a period of several years. (Search for “object” at my blog” if you are interested). At least one professor at Steubenville who teaches moral theology says that I’ve got this right and that the usual Internet-discussion level objections (like this standard objection based on VS 78) don’t fly. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’ve made some standard random Internet commenter error here.
I could of course be wrong, but if so it isn’t because I haven’t taken into account that the object—chosen behavior—must be understood from the perspective of the acting subject.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 17, 2007 03:39 PM | Send