Monday, June 24, 2013
Acting without moving one’s body
My last blog was about
the moral relevance of the distinction between doing and allowing. My analysis
suggested that the difference between both is not very clear-cut. Nevertheless,
there seems to be a basic distinction between the concepts: Doing is making things happen and allowing is letting things happen. The former is
usually interpreted that way that the making implies an intention in what we do plus a relevant movement of our body. As a
rule we call such a doing an action. Allowing is usually interpreted that way
that the letting implies that the things that take place will happen anyway without
our intervention. However, as the two cases in my last blog show, the
distinction is not as marked as it might look to us on the face of it. In Case
1 the doctor turns off the life-support machine in order to let John die. In Case 2 Bill turns off
the life-support machine in order to make
John die. The difference is here a matter of interpretation, but just this might
cast doubt on the idea that there is a fundamental
difference between doing and allowing. This may be even more so, if one
realizes that allowing is not merely a matter of letting things happen and
that’s it. Many things in the world around us occur and we take hardly any
notice of them if we do it at all. Then we don’t say that we allow them.
Especially we do not say that if we cannot have any influence on what is going
on. Just the fact that we notice what is happening; that we have the
possibility to intervene; and that we have a reason to intervene makes that we
speak of “allowing”. In other words: Allowing is intentionally not intervening. Seen that way, the difference
between doing and allowing tends to fade away, for then allowing is nothing
else than a passive doing. It’s a kind of action without moving one’s body, so
to speak. If we add to this that allowing is a matter of degree (see my last
blog), then it’s only one step to see doing, or better acting, and allowing as
extremes on a sliding scale.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Doing and allowing (2): Two cases
Case 1. By a car accident John has got a serious brain
damage. He is in coma and there is no chance that he’ll recover. After several
years the family and the medical staff see it as the best solution for John to
turn off the life-support machine and let him die. So the doctor who is
responsible for John’s treatment turns off the machine and John dies. Many
people will say that this is a case of allowing (that John dies): The doctor
lets John die. If there hadn’t existed a life-supporting machine, John would
have died anyway.
Case 2. By a car accident John has got a serious brain
damage. He is in coma and there is no chance that he’ll recover. In his active
life John was a criminal who has killed a member of another gang. The remaining
members want to take revenge. After a few years, Bill, a member of this gang,
discovers that John lies in coma in a hospital. He wants to turn off the
life-support machine and so kill John. In the meantime, John’s family and the
medical staff have decided that it is best for John is to turn off the
life-support machine that is keeping John alive and let him die. However, just before
the doctor responsible for John’s treatment can carry out the decision, Bills sneaks
in the room where John is lying and turns off the machine. When the doctor has
entered the room he can only certify John’s death. Many people will say that
this is a case of doing, namely murder: Bill made John die, although John would
have died a few moments later anyway, if Bill hadn’t turn off the machine.
What’s the difference? Can we say that the difference
between Case 1 and Case 2 is basically a matter of intention? Or maybe it is a
matter of action and inaction, as some philosophers suggest in other examples?
The problem of the difference between doing and
allowing is not new. It has been discussed already by many philosopher. One
question is: Is the distinction between doing and allowing morally significant
in relevant cases (like mine)? Is this also the case, if, as in Case 2, John
would have died also if Bill hadn’t turned off the life-support machine?
In this blog I can pass only a few comments, but the
answer seems to depend on many factors and cannot be clear-cut in the sense
that allowing is either (morally) different from positive acting (doing) or it
isn’t. Some relevant points are:
- What do we mean with “morally”? If you think that
lives must be saved anyway under any condition, you might conclude that there
is no difference between doing and allowing, at least not in my cases (but what
do you mean then with “life”?).
- There are different types of relevance. Maybe the
difference between Case 1 and Case 2 is juridically relevant (for instance,
because euthanasia is legal if certain procedures have been fulfilled), but at
the same time it can also be morally relevant (see the former point; maybe you
accept the legality of euthanasia because, as a democrat, you accept that the
law on euthanasia has been passed in the right way, but nevertheless you don’t
agree with it). This shows that allowing is a multidimensional concept. Maybe
there are more dimensions than the two I just mentioned. For instance, allowing
can be intentional (Case 1) or unintentional (not knowing what to do) or in
between (having to make a choice: see the next point for an example), a matter
of unconcern (see also the next point), and so on.
- Allowing can also be a matter of degree. It is a big
difference when you see a car accident but you do nothing and the victim dies,
because you didn’t care or because you were on the way to the hospital with
another person who was in peril of death. Or the person that you brought to the
hospital was not in peril of death, but it was your father, so you were very
worried, while you didn’t realize that the victim of the car accident needed
immediate help. It will not be difficult to find other intermediate cases that
exemplify that allowing may be a matter of degree.
There are certainly other points that can be put
forward that make it impossible to say in general that the difference between
doing and allowing is fundamentally relevant or just that it isn’t, although I
personally think that it is not not relevant.
Monday, June 10, 2013
“Equality is the soul of equity”
A reader of this website kindly commented on the
passage in my last blog that said that the quotation from Richardson (“killing
one man is seen as wicked while killing ten thousand is seen as glorious”)
points to a double morality. I thought that it would be a good idea to say
something more on the idea of “double morality” and, of course, there is a lot to
say about it but I didn’t find anything that was good enough to use for my blog
or – from another point of view – I wasn’t inspired enough to use what I found
on the Internet and in my books and what popped up in my mind. So, I did what I
often do then: I took Montaigne’s Essays
from my bookcase and I glanced through it. It was no surprise that I ended up
in the essay titled “That to study philosophy is to learn to die”, since it is
full of underlines in my paper edition, made when I read this essay (which I
did several times). The essay is really a place where the reader can find many
interesting and stimulating thoughts, and if you want to read at least one
essay by Montaigne in your life before you die, this one is a good choice
(another good choice is Montaigne’s essay on friendship). It’s almost sure that
I’ll use this essay later again here in my blogs, but now my eye was
immediately caught by a statement by Montaigne that seemed to apply exactly to
the theme of double moral standards: “Equality is the soul of equity”. For
isn’t equality the soul of a moral standard that is the same for all? So I
thought that this quotation would be a good starting point for a blog on double
morality and I still think it is, but then I realized that Montaigne’s
statement is even more important in its historical context. For nowadays, more
than two hundred years after the French Revolution and 65 years after the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights the idea that rights are the same for
everybody, which is what this statement implies, is something that goes without
saying, albeit it so that often the practice is still different. But in the age
of Montaigne justice wasn’t the same for all but it was based on the estate a
person belonged to, although in his time the idea of justice based on estate begun
to change, after it had reached its summit in the Middle Ages, namely the idea
that there is a different kind of justice depending on whether you are a noble,
a clergyman or a commoner. However, in this little remark by Montaigne it can
be seen that then not everybody agreed with this idea and it shows that the
medieval view already became discredited, although it would still last ages,
before the idea had faded away, or at least almost…
Monday, June 03, 2013
The downward trend of violence
Monument for Roland,
commander of the rear guard of
Charlemagne’s army in 778 in the Battle of Roncevaux
Charlemagne’s army in 778 in the Battle of Roncevaux
In my last blog I mentioned Steven Pinker’s thesis that the
world is becoming increasingly peaceful. In fact, this remark was only
indirectly connected with what I wanted to say there, but at the moment I am
reading his The Better Angels of Our
Nature. I have almost finished it and I am impressed, so I couldn’t help referring
to it. Pinker’s thesis that the world has become safer and less violent through
the years is convincing, although this doesn’t imply (and Pinker doesn’t say so)
that this tendency is irreversible. The trend of violence goes down even if one
takes into account the effects of two world wars and other carnages in the
twentieth century, for violence is more than war and revolution. In the past, violence
in daily life was by far more important than it is today. For instance, more
people were killed by murder, but also on legal grounds. In 1822 an Englishman
could be sentenced to death for 222 reasons, including, so Pinker, poaching,
counterfeiting, robbing a rabbit warren or cutting down a tree. By 1861 only
four capital offenses remained. The downward trend can be seen in other
countries as well and gradually many countries have abolished death sentence.
Also if violence does not lead to death there has been a downward trend. Moreover,
the way people are punished has been humanized. Punishment in the ages before
the French Revolution was heart breaking and cruel in due form. Although
torture still exists in this world (but has become illegal in most countries)
even here you find a “humanizing” trend, how terrible and intolerable it still
is. Even if one doesn’t belief that violence is diminishing worldwide, the book
is full of facts and insights on the history of its practice and by that on the
social history of man and only that is already a good reason for reading it.
An insight that doesn’t come directly from Pinker
himself but that he quotes from L.F. Richardson’s Statistics of deadly quarrels (Pittsburgh: Boxwood Press, 1960)
runs: “Does it never strikes you as puzzling that it is wicked to kill one
person, but glorious to kill ten thousand?” (p. 243). This quotation refers to
one of the myths of history: the idea that maybe it is not good to kill but killing
on order of a higher authority is to be honoured. In this case it says that war
is allowed for carrying out state policy if other means fail. Isn’t this a
double moral standard? But also here we see a downward trend. Killing on order
of a higher authority has become less and less acceptable (see for instance the
abolishment of capital punishment, a movement that is still going on). But also
war has become an increasingly less palatable solution for political quarrels. International
institutions have been established for ending international conflicts, like the
United Nations and its institutions or the European Union. It’s one of the
merits of the latter that it has made war between its members unthinkable
(remember how many bloody wars their member states have fought out against each
other till 1945). Gradually war is being held in disrespect. In fact it already
is, and maybe once we’ll see the day that a country with an army will be
treated as an outcast. As Montaigne said: “N’y avoir qu’une justice”, there is only one
justice.
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