[Update for those who didn’t find this from Siris: Brandon Watson adds more and explains things better over there. ]
I’ve wanted to hit this one for a week or so now, what with the excitement of late. Honest inquirers have proposed that in the lying-in-serious-situations question, perhaps double effect applies? It is a reasonable suggestion, what with there being situations where, for example, the principle of double effect permits killing. And killing people is a really big deal.
But I don’t think we can invoke double effect in the case of lying, and my reasoning is simple: Double effect requires two effects.
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Some background to get us started. We mostly only hear about “double effect” in such thorny and famous situations as just warfare or legitimate self-defense, so we might get the idea that it’s just this handy trump card moral theologians keep up their sleeve for when they really, really wanna kill somebody. Nope. Not that.
Double effect (also called “parallel effect”) is actually one of the two principles that work together to keep our moral system sane. The other is ‘ends don’t justify the means’, but that isn’t our topic today until way down below where I go out on a limb and guess things. Back to Double Effect:
#1 Reason to love Double Effect: It lets you take a shower.
Because here’s what: Showers and bathtubs are super dangerous. You could slip and crack your head open. And if the bathroom weren’t bad enough, you probably keep a stove and a water heater around the house, and perhaps even some kind of Vehicle of Death in your garage. (Or, if you are a Luddite, a Pack Animal of Death for your transportation needs.)
Double effect says that you are allowed to have all this and more! Because you aren’t actually trying to drown, scald or maim anybody. Those are unintended consequences of your perfectly reasonable efforts to stay clean, fed, mobile, and so forth. You’ll try to avoid those bad effects if you possibly can.
[What you can’t do: If your enemy fails to drown in his bath, you can’t hold him under. In fact you can’t even lay out the bath things and light a scented candle in an effort to lure him to his death. You may only lead him to the tub for a legitimately good reason, such as to reduce the general stinkiness and discourage the spread of impetigo. Or perhaps so that he might unwind after a long day driving. you. crazy. But not to kill him. Barring circumstances we’ll get to down the page.]
So that’s the use of double effect. It lets us do something good, even if there is a some risk of something bad happening in the process.
Now unless you suffer from deep scruples, you probable don’t lay awake nights wondering if your really did the right thing, caving in and buying a water heater. So where double effect gets famous is because it permits seriously dangerous action if there’s a genuine need for it.
You may not, for example, throw yourself in front of a bus in order to get that drat fly at last. (Even though the fly is germy and annoying, and you only want to give your beloved a peaceful picnic. Good cause, good action, but the risks are disproportionate. It’s a no-go. Hope the bus gets the fly, and live to swat another day.) But if it is to push your hapless child out of harm’s way, yes you may take the risk of your likely death in order to save the child. You aren’t trying to die. You hope to avoid dying. Everyone will be much happier if a guardian angel steps up and takes care of things.
And that’s the clincher of double effect — there are two effects: There is one thing good you are trying to achieve, and one bad bad you hope to avoid. Even if the bad effect is 100% likely barring supernatural intervention, you can’t be trying to achieve the bad effect.
In our bathtub-as-weapon scenario, it looks like this: You are peacefully getting ready to hop in the tub, when your enemy bursts in and thrusts his knife at your chest. So you avail yourself of the only way to save your own life, pushing him into the tub and holding him under until he quits struggling. The clincher is in the ending. Suppose you get yourself to safety, and the guy somehow lives. Maybe the plug was dislodged in the struggle, and in fact he’d only fainted from lack of air but not yet drowned, and when you go back to the bathroom with the police officer to show him the corpse, the man is gasping and confused, but not dead. And you are no longer in danger. You don’t get to refill the tub and see if you can do him in. The whole “killing” thing was not the desired effect at all, remember? You just wanted to save your own life. If you could have done it some other way that didn’t risk killing the guy, you would have. That mission accomplished, the tub goes back to its peacetime use.
So that’s double effect.
[To clarify here: You don’t have to defend yourself with household appliances only. If you had a .45 in your bathrobe, you could have used that. But you’d have to stop shooting as soon as you knew you were safe. And if the guy lived, you’d have to let him live. You weren’t trying to kill him, remember? Only trying to save your own life. Only. That’s the clincher.]
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So why can’t lying be just another weapon under the principle of double effect? I think it can’t, because I don’t see that the “double” applies. There aren’t two separate effects going on.
If I lie, I have a single purpose: To hope you will be deceived. I’m not saying something false, but hoping that you will somehow figure out the truth anyway. I’m saying something false, and hoping you’ll fall for it. If the lie doesn’t deceive, it doesn’t do the very thing I wanted it to do.
In contrast: I hop in the car hoping to get to the store. I hope I don’t die in a fiery crash on the way, even though I take that risk. I use lethal force to defend my own life; if the force turns out not to be lethal, so long as my life is saved, my mission is accomplished. The goal was not to kill another, it was to save myself.
But in the case of lying, my very mission is to lie. I may be using it to try to achieve a good end, but there’s no way for me to separate out my end from my means. Because the end I’m trying to achieve is to deceive somebody. If the lie doesn’t work, the deception won’t occur.
I just don’t see how we can say there is a ‘double’ or ‘parallel’ effect going on. There aren’t two effects. There’s just one.
So if there were a principle that permitted lying in some serious situation, I think double effect would not be that principle.
And that’s all I really wanted to say.
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Now I start some additional related ideas:
But remember it is acceptable — desirable even — to withhold the truth from those who have no right to have it. And I think this is where things get confusing. Because it is perfectly okay for me to not let you know how much I weigh, what I had for breakfast, or whether I am sheltering a woman fleeing from her crazed and murderous ex-husband. These things aren’t your business. You have no right to know. So I don’t have to tell you.
Now we’ve been through a whole list of non-lying ways to withhold the truth back on my other post. But here’s where the confusing thing comes in: In my resorting to any of those tactics, you might end up deceived.
You might, for example, ask me if I ate all the Krispy Kreme donuts. And when I say nothing, or say some true thing that does not answer that question, you might infer that either a) I did in fact eat all the donuts, or b) I gave them to the woman you are now quite sure I am hiding in my closet. [And depending on which you assume, you might make a further speculation on whether I weigh too much or too little.]
So an unquestionably innocent action might have the result of causing you to believe something that is not true. It is a double effect. What I wanted was for you not to know. What happened is that you were deceived by my answer — you took me to be asserting something I was not.
THIS ENDS THE PART WHERE I’M FAIRLY SURE OF WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.
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THIS STARTS THE PART WHERE I REALLY NEED SOMEONE TO CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG.
Complicating things further, I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to intentionally cause you to be deceived. That is, say you are stalking me at Krispy Kreme because you think I’m sheltering the fleeing woman, and you want to find out. And I know this, and there are serious reasons you should not be given this information.
–> So as I buy all three dozen Hot Donuts Now, I say something to the clerk like, “Boy Scouts sure love donuts!” Entirely true, yes, but I said it just to throw you off the trail. To cause you to believe, erroneously, that the Boy Scouts were going to get these particular donuts (which I never said). I intended to deceive you with my truthful statement. I could even walk with donuts in hand into the building where scouts meet, and then secretly send the donuts back to my vehicle in some concealed way, before going home to give them to the woman in my closet. (Probably giving the Scouts two dozen, so they can honestly say that yes, I gave them donuts.) An elaborate deception designed to protect an innocent person in hiding.
So assuming this deception is morally acceptable, how could lying be wrong?
It comes back to the bathtub and bus. I can use the bathtub, or a gun, to save my own life, even if it means using mortal force to do so. I can jump in front of the bus to save my child’s life, even if it means certain death for myself. But there are limits: What if, say, my enemy required me to drown his other enemy (who was no threat to me) in that tub, and if I did so, I could go free? What if throwing some innocent bystander in front of the bus would knock my child out of harm’s way?
Those things would be murder. So I can’t do them. Even though some kinds of deadly actions are morally acceptable for proportionately serious reasons, not every kind is therefore allowed.
In the same way, it seems that even if some kinds of intentional deception are morally acceptable for proportionally serious reasons, it does not follow that every kind of deception is therefore allowed.
———– I’d be most grateful if some person who is knowledgeable on these matters could tell me if this last bit makes any sense, or if I’m wrong wrong wrong. Thanks.—————-
Jennifer Fitz: “I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to intentionally cause you to be deceived.”
Umm… I don’t see how. The Catholic Catechism says: “A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.” So, “intentionally cause you to be deceived” is exactly the same thing as “lie”. And lies (as defined) are intrinsically disordered, and always wrong.
Jennifer Fitz: “So why can’t lying be just another weapon under the principle of double effect? I think it can’t, because I don’t see that the ‘double’ applies. There aren’t two separate effects going on.”
In the case of the Nazis asking whether Jews are hidden in your house, your intention is to hide the fact that Jews are hidden there (a perfectly good intention). If (given appropriate circumstances) you are forced to say, “There are no Jews here”, then uttering those words fits with that intention (i.e. that’s effect 1). It’s also true that the Nazis will be told a falsehood (that’s effect 2). Therefore, it’s a case of double effect.
(I should point out that ‘intention’ is a word that can have a range of meanings. Its use in Catholic doctrine is more limited than common everyday usage. I have seen this cause innumerable misunderstandings.)
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Well, this was my uncertainty, and why I asked for help. Am I okay to set up a deception composed entirely of statements (and actions) that are true?
And to clarify: As a way of keeping a person who has no right to know from knowing?
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Now what you are saying about there being a double effect, I don’t get. Is my understanding of double effect just totally wrong?
I’m thinking:
intention -> action -> effects
keep secret -> tell lie -> deception
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You’re saying that sure there’s double effects (secret kept, but also deception), but that it because the means are unacceptable, doesn’t matter that the ends include a good end?
Give that a never mind. Brandon answered me over at Siris. I think I’m good.
On the intention to deceive thing, I think there are different views on how much emphasis to place on it relative to the part about stating a falsehood. The definition in the Catechism is Augustinian; people have given subtly different interpretations of it. Aquinas puts the emphasis on speaking a falsehood: what makes a lie a lie is primarily that you are saying something false. ‘Intention to deceive’ is a necessary part of the definition (there are other ways you could say something false, e.g., if you’re just giving an example of a false statement) but it is not what constitutes it as a lie (you succeed in lying once you’ve said the false thing, even if the other person isn’t deceived). As I understand it (I might be off) the major alternative view, that of Bonaventure and Scotus, is usually seen as putting the emphasis more evenly on both the speaking falsely and the intending to deceive. But it does seem to be the general view that there are ways of intentionally causing someone to be deceived that are not lies, because they don’t involve speaking falsely. A good example is the age-old practice, going back to the Desert Fathers, of doing things to hide the fact that you are fasting from the world: someone who didn’t know them very closely would think they weren’t fasting, and so were deceived, and that was the goal of the Desert Fathers; but it’s hard to see how this qualifies as a lie just in itself, unless we are speaking very, very loosely.
Perhaps there’s some subtle point I’m missing, but I can’t make heads or tails of Paul’s explanation of the Nazi case: Since you know there are Jews here, uttering “There are no Jews here,” is uttering something you know to be false, and therefore the uttering of something false is intended. It’s true that it’s part of a larger intention as a means to an end, to save the Jews, but how does it connect to that? The only way uttering something false can be a means to saving the Jews is if the Nazis are deceived because of it. So you are clearly saying something false with the intention to deceive, as a means to the intended end of saving the Jews. And since it’s pretty standard to say that we intend the chosen means with the end (for instance, Aquinas, in ST 2-2.12.4), there seems to be only one effect here. You can only have double effect if the one is not your chosen means to the other: it’s all the difference between deliberately murdering someone to save yourself from them and saving yourself from someone but unfortunately killing them. In both cases saving yourself is a good intended effect, but only in the latter case is it a different intended effect from killing them.
I agree, though, that people are regularly tripped up by the word ‘intention’.
Thank you so much. Very helpful.
I’d love to see you discuss on your blog how people get tripped up the word ‘intention’, and how to stay out of trouble.
Thought it was interesting when you mentioned Aquinas & archery, since lately our dinner is often something bow shot. So not a foreign notion here.
(Or, roadkill, but that would be unintended.)
Brandon: “Perhaps there’s some subtle point I’m missing, but I can’t make heads or tails of Paul’s explanation of the Nazi case”
Take the case of self-defense. As (e.g.) Aquinas pointed out, it is permissible for someone to defend themselves against an attacker intent on murdering them, even if that defense actually kills the attacker. Of course, the self-defender can’t use any more force than just the amount necessary to save their own life.
It might be the case (depending on the circumstances, and the methods of defense available to the defender) that the defender knows perfectly well that the only possible means of defense will surely kill the attacker. Such a defense is still permissible.
The defender must not intend the death of the attacker. (And here I’m using “intend” in the sense that Catholic doctrine uses it.) So (e.g.), the defender can’t decide to do anything whatsover that makes it more likely that the attacker dies, while doing nothing to improve the defender’s chances of living. Nor can the defender do something to provoke the attack, as an excure for killing the attacker.
But, in appropriate circumstances, the defender can fully anticipate that the defense will kill the attacker, fully realize that it is the death of the attacker that stops the attack, and still act in an entirely permissible way.
The case of house-owner saying to the Nazis, “There are no Jews here”, parallels the case of the self-defender as outlined above. Look at the parallels:
The self-defender wants to keep themselves alive. The house-owner wants to hide the Jews. The self-defender wants to apply the amount of force necessary to save themselves. The house-owner wants to say those words that make the Nazis go away. The self-defender may fully anticipate the death of the attacker. The house-owner may fully anticipate that the Nazis believe the falsehood. The self-defender may not intend the death of the attacker. The house-owner may not intend to deceive the Nazis. The self-defender’s goal is to the good one of saving their own life. The house-owner’s goal is the good one of concealing the Jews.
I notice again that you say you are “using “intend” in the sense that Catholic doctrine uses it” but you don’t say what you mean by this. This is not helpful, because we pretty clearly disagree about how Catholic doctrine uses it.
On the traditional understanding of double effect, you cannot defend yourself deliberately choosing means you know for sure will kill the attacker because that means you are attempting to murder your attacker. Only if (1) there is a real possibility, at least as far as you are aware, that the attacker will survive, or (2) you are unable, under the circumstances, to differentiate between certainly lethal and nonlethal means (for instance, because you have no time, or because you sincerely have false beliefs). For double effect to apply even in the self-defense case the two effects must be related per accidens, i.e., they must be incidental to each other as far as your intention and choice goes. This can only happen under the following circumstances:
(1) they are not necessarily connected to each other;
(2) they are seriously thought not to be necessarily connected to each other even though they are;
(3) they are necessarily connected to each other but under the circumstances you don’t have the opportunity to recognize this.
These are actually pretty common in most actual cases of self-defense; outside of movie plots, there aren’t that many people trying to defend themselves from attackers by means absolutely certain to kill them, e.g., dynamite or shoving them in front of trains, and when they do, it’s very rarely under circumstances favorable to full assessment and deliberation. By saying that double effect would apply even if you absolutely knew for certain that the means you are using will kill you are taking a very controversial interpretation of double effect, one that is not consistent with more traditional interpretations.
Sure, there are lots of parallels between the two cases. But obviously the house-owner does intend to deceive the Nazis; it’s only if the Nazis are deceived that they will go away. And you are overlooking the key parallel: just as the self-defender cannot have the subordinate goal of killing their attacker as part of their project of saving their lives, so the house-owner cannot have the subordinate goal of saying something false in order to deceive as part of their project of saving the Jews. And that’s an inconsistency.
Brandon: “On the traditional understanding of double effect, you cannot defend yourself deliberately choosing means you know for sure will kill the attacker because that means you are attempting to murder your attacker. “
There is some ambiguity in the words “deliberately choosing”, so I am not sure exactly what you mean. If someone knows that it is possible to save their own life and avoid killing the attacker, but instead chooses some means that will surely kill him, that is not permissible. But if there is no choice available — consistent with saving your own life — that avoids killing the attacker, then the defense used can be lethal.
If it happens that the only available means of saving your life will mean the death of your attacker, you can permissibly choose those means — because in fact a genuine choice is not actually available to you.
Here’s what Aquinas says about such a possibility: “Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible.”
And also, Aquinas says: “Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.”
And the Catechism says: “Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow”
I’ve presented Aquinas and the Catechism to back up my claims. From where are you getting this “traditional understanding” that you refer to? Could you provide some quotes? Could you explain how Aquinas and the Catechism can be interpreted in the way you would seem to claim? I do not see it.
It’s unfortunate that Brandon left off the dialogue. Just for the record, I should point out two places where I have further difficulties with what Brandon claimed:
“For double effect to apply even in the self-defense case the two effects must be related per accidens”
I agree with that, but…
“they are not necessarily connected to each other”
…is ambiguous. What kind of “necessity”? If it were logical necessity, I would agree. (E.g. “If I am in Texas, then I am necessarily in the USA.” Or, “If I choose to pick up an apple and throw it, then I am necessarily choosing to throw any apple seeds it contains as well.”) If it were ordinary physical necessity, then I wouldn’t agree. (E.g. “If I hold this weight over the edge of a cliff and drop it, it will surely fall.”)
“But obviously the house-owner does intend to deceive the Nazis; it’s only if the Nazis are deceived that they will go away.”
That’s false for two reasons: one is that (for example, amongst others) the Nazis may go away simply because it is more efficient for them to search houses where the house-owner admits that there are Jews present. More importantly, it simply alleges, without evidence, what the house-owner was intending. (I.e. ‘It happened, therefore it was intended’).
I just read a Father Brown story with a double effect. In fact, I think there are several. If I won’t ruin anything, I’ll tell you about them.
I think I’ve read them all. Maybe put a spoiler alert at the top for others? Or just give us the titles and let us go look? They are in the public domain now as far as I know (I’ve read them online), so that would let anyone go look them up.
Jen.