Harming the innocent to save lives: a critique of the Doctrine of Productive Purity

Abstract

© 2015 Laurence Francis Hogan Waugh

My thesis is concerned with the question ‘In what ways, if any, should an agent be restricted in her pursuit of the greater good?’ This question arises in cases in which an agent’s duty to aid and her duty not to harm appear to come into conflict. In some of these cases, like the Trolley Case, it seems permissible for the agent to bring about the greater good; in others, like the Transplant Case, it clearly seems impermissible; and about further cases, like the Loop Case, we might have uncertain intuitions. Non-consequentialists are interested in resolving the apparent inconsistency between our intuitions about these cases. Traditionally, they have attempted to do this by appealing to the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). Recently, however, T. M. Scanlon, furthering the work of Judith Jarvis Thomson, has argued that the Doctrine rests on a fundamental mistake. In chapter 1 I argue that non-consequentialists have a good reason to investigate other approaches to restricting an agent’s pursuit of the greater good. F. M. Kamm has done precisely that. She argues that the permissibility of bringing about the greater good turns on the causal relationship it will have with the evil in the case (or, more precisely, could have, given the agent’s action). Her proposal is encapsulated in her Doctrine of Productive Purity (DPP). The bulk of my thesis is concerned with critiquing this Doctrine. Over the course of three chapters I answer two questions. Firstly, does the DPP deliver intuitively plausible verdicts? I argue that although the final formulation of the Doctrine does not have determinate content, the central tenet of the DPP returns intuitively plausible results when applied to a host of cases. I then turn to the question ‘What morally significant ideas, if any, are captured by the DPP?’ I argue that Kamm’s own account of the DPP’s ‘deeper meaning’ is circular, but that the central tenet of the Doctrine can be plausibly interpreted as a moral heuristic for risk management.

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