why are killing and letting die wrong

8/3/2019 Why Are Killing and Letting Die Wrong

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Why are Killing and Letting Die Wrong?

Author(s): Matthew Hanser

Source: Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 3, (Summer, 1995), pp. 175-201

Published by: Formerly published by Princeton University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2961899

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MATTHEWHANSER Why Are KillingandLetting Die Wrong?

Ordinary hought accords moral significance to the distinction betweenkilling and letting die: There seem clearly to be circumstances in whichit would be wrong to kill a person but permissible to let someone die.'Yet non-morally, killing and letting die can appear quite similar. Thereare differences,to be sure, but the two seem to share important "struc-tural" eatures:In both cases the agent has control over someone's fate,and in both cases the agent acts in such a way that the person dies. Thissimilarity n turn invites skepticism about the distinction'smoralsignif-icance. Surely,thinks the skeptic, killing is prima facie objectionableowing to its possession of precisely those features that it shares withletting die. These shared features insure that whether an agent kills orlets die, his behavior helps cause or explain someone's dying.The causalor explanatory relations involved are not identical, but they do belongto a single genus; and according to the skeptic, the generic identityofthese relations is what matters morally, not their specific diversity2I am grateful o JeffMcMahan or commenting on the penultimate draftof this article,and Philippa Foot, RobertAdams, and ChristopherBelshaw for commenting on the doc-toral dissertation from which it partially descends. While writing the dissertation I wassupported by a fellowship from the CharlotteW Newcombe Foundation, for which I amalso grateful.Finally, had many valuable conversations with WarrenQuinnon the topicof this paper;Iamsaddened that he did not live to readwhatIeventuallywrote.Thispaperwould have been better if he had.i. It does not follow that, other things being equal, killing is always worse than lettingdie. On the contrary, ometimes, when both are objectionable, the two are equally objec-

tionable. Differentwritershave made this point in differentways. See Philippa Foot, "Eu-thanasia,"Philosophy & PublicAffairs , no. 2 (Winter1977): ol; FrancesKamm, "Killingand LettingDie: Methodological and SubstantiveIssues," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly64 (1983): 300-303; Shelly Kagan, "TheAdditive Fallacy," Ethics 99 (1988): 12-14; and WarrenQuinn, "Actions,Intentions,and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing,"The Philosophical Review 98 (1989): 288-go.

2. Skepticssometimes also arguethat the distinctionbetweendoing harm and allowing


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176 Philosophy & PublicAffairs

Defenders of the moral significance of the distinction between killingand letting die generallyagree that killingand letting die have much incommon, and that this common core is enough to make them bothprima facie objectionable. In both cases, the causal or explanatory rela-tion linking the agent to the victim's death serves as a conduit for re-sponsibility. Defenders of the distinction's significance generally differfrom skeptics only in wishing to add that the differencesbetween killingand letting die also matter.3While there is serious disagreement between skeptics and defenders,then, this disagreement takes place against a backdrop of significantagreement. I wish to reject this shared backgroundpicture. It has oftenbeen remarked that killing is objectionable because it involves doingharm, while letting die is objectionable because it involves failing toprovide a benefit. But the significance of this point has not been prop-erly appreciated. For it follows that the prima facie objection to lettingdie differs from the primafacie objection to killingin not arisingdue toa causal or explanatory relation'sholding between the agent and thevictim's death. Orso I shall argue.This article has two main sections. In Section I, I argue against theskeptic's position. I examine an attempt to see both prima facie objec-tions as arisingfrom featuresthatkillingandlettingdie havein common,and then arguethat all such attempts are doomed to failure.In SectionII, I explain how even defenders of the distinction's significance havemisconstrued the difference between the two objections. In so doing Iattempt to develop a better account of why killing and letting die areprimafacie objectionable.I also briefly explore some related matters.harm to occur is incoherent, and hence incapable of bearing moral weight. I shall notdiscuss this additional skeptical argument. Prominent skeptics include Shelly KaganandJonathan Bennett. See Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress,1989), especially pp. 27-32 and 113-21; and two works by Bennett: "Whatever he Conse-quences," Analysis 26 (1966): 83-102, and "Moralityand Consequences," in SterlingMcMurrin, d., The TannerLectureson Human Values,Vol. 2 (Salt Lake City: Universityof Utah Press, 1981), pp. 47-72.3. Defenders of the distinction'smoral significance include Philippa Foot and WarrenQuinn.For Foot's views see "The Problemof Abortionand the Doctrine of the DoubleEffect," riginally n The OxfordReview,no. 5 (1967),reprinted n PhilippaFoot, Virtues ndVices (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 19-32 in the re-printedversion; and "Morality, ction and Outcome,"n Ted Honderich,ed., MoralityandObjectivity London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 23-38. For Quinn'sviews see"Actions, ntentions,and Consequences:The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing," p. 287-312.


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177 Why Are Killing andLetting Die Wrong?

I. AGAINST THE SKEPTICA. A UnitaryAccountof the PrimaFacie Objections oKilling and LettingDie, and an ImportantAmbiguitySkeptics think that from the moral point of view, killingand letting dieare the same. What, then, are the morally significant, non-moral fea-tures4shared by killing and letting die, in virtue of which both are primafacie morally objectionable?5According to Jonathan Bennett, killingsare (generally) nstances of "positiveinstrumentality,"while lettings dieare (generally) instances of "negative instrumentality."An agent's in-strumentality is positive in respect of someone's death, on Bennett'saccount, if relatively many of the ways in which the agent could havemoved his body at the moment of action were such that if he had movedin one of those ways, the victim would not have died. An agent'sinstru-mentality is negative in respect of someone's death if relatively few ofthe ways in which the agent could have moved satisfy this condition.6What these two sorts of instrumentalityhave in common is that in eachcase the agent could have moved in such a way that the victim wouldnot have died. This would seem to be the morallysignificantfeature thatkilling and letting die share. Indeed, even if we rejectBennett's accountof how killing and letting die differ,this is still the most plausible ac-count of how they are alike. Whetheran agent kills or lets die, his op-tions are separable into two groups:those on which the victim will dieand those on which the victim will not die; and in both cases, the agentchooses an action of the first sort ratherthan the second.7We can reduce this view to two claims. The first identifies a featurethat killingand letting die supposedly have in common:

KLD: f X either killsYor lets Ydie, therewas some other wayXcouldhave acted such that, if Xhad acted in that way instead of doing whathe actuallydid, Ywould not have died.84. Bynon-moral featuresI mean ones describablewithout the use of moral terms.5. To say that an action is prima facie objectionable is, roughly speaking, to say thatthere is something to be said against it-that it possesses some genuine "bad-making"

feature.The action thus stands in need of justification or defense.6. Bennett, "Morality nd Consequences,"pp. 55-65.7. Kagandoes not saywhat killingand letting die have in common. Butagain, Bennett'ssuggestionis the most naturalone.8. Iwriteof there being some other wayXcould have acted, rather han of there beingsome other actionX could have performed,because I regardactions as individual token


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The second states that both killingand lettingdie areprimafacie objec-tionable becausethey possess this feature.9Thatis, both run afoul of thefollowingmoral principle:P: If you face a choice between two courses of conduct, and if, wereyou to follow one of those courses of conduct, someone would diewho would not die if you wereto followthe other,then it is primafacieobjectionable to choose the formercourse of conduct-assuming, ofcourse, that death would come to the person as a harm.In saying that killing and letting die are prima facie objectionable

owing to their possession of the featurementioned in KLD, he skepticneed not be saying that possession of this featureis sufficientto gener-ate a prima facie objection. Perhapssome sort of knowledge conditionmust also be met. But even so, the knowledge which the agent musthave, or which it must have been possible for him to have, in orderforhis conduct to be primafacie objectionable, is surelythat the fact men-tioned in KLD s true of his conduct. It is thus upon KLD hat we shoulddirect our attention. Let me just stipulate that the appropriateknowl-edge condition is met in all of the examples I shall discuss.Unfortunately,the skeptic'sposition is not yet fully clear. KLDsaysthatwhetherX killsY or lets Ydie, therewas some alternateaction avail-able to Xsuch that if he had performedthat action instead of doing whathe actuallydid, Ywould not have died. Butdoes this mean that if Xhadevents.An unperformedaction is no action at all, and hence cannot properlybe referredto or quantifiedover. Thus KLDsays not that there was some particulartoken actionwhich X could have performed,such that if he had performedthat action, Y would nothave died;but rather, hatX could have made it the case that he performedan action ofsuch and such a type,and that if he had done so, Ywould not have died. In what follows,however, I will often write "therewas an action which X could have performed."Thisphraseshould be understoodas shorthandfora morecomplicatedexpressionnot presup-posing the existence of unperformedacts.Thisdifficultycould be avoidedaltogetherby admittingthe existenceof "negative" cts.The skeptic could then reformulateKLDto say that whether X kills Y or lets Y die, Xperformssome actionsuch that:Ywouldnot have died if Xhadnot performed hataction.(Thisformulationis equivalentto the one in the main text only on the assumptionthatagentscan performand refrain rom performingnegativeactions.SupposeX fails to throwY a lifepreserver,hereby etting him drown.If we permitX'snot throwingYa lifepreserverto count as an action [albeita negativeone] performedby X, we can say that if X had notperformedthat action,Y would not have died. The same could not be said about any ofX's "positive"actions.)9. A particularkillingor lettingdie mightbe objectionablefor otherreasonsas well, butthe additionalobjectionswould not stem from the act'sstatus as a killingor a letting die.


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performed the alternate action, Ywould not have died at all, at least notfor some time yet-that Y would have lived on for some considerableperiod?Or does it mean that if Xhad performed the alternate action, theparticular oken event of Y'sactual deathwould not have occurred?KLDcan be given two meanings:KLD-type:f X either killsY or lets Y die, there was some other way Xcould have acted such that, if Xhad acted in that way instead of doingwhat he actually did, no event of the type death of Ywould have oc-curred, at least not for some considerable period of time;

and:KLD-token: f X either kills Y or lets Y die, there was some other wayX could have acted such that, if X had acted in that way instead ofdoing what he actually did, Y would not have died the numericallysame token death that he actuallydied.Corresponding o these two interpretationsof KLDaretwo interpreta-tions of P,the above stated moral principle:P-type:If you face a choice between two courses of conduct, and if,were you to follow one of those courses of conduct, an event of thetype death of Ywould occur (whereYis some particularperson), andif, were you to choose the other course of conduct, no event of thattype would occur, at least not for some considerable period of time,then it is prima facie objectionable to choose the former course ofconduct-assuming, of course, that in this instance an early deathwould come to the victim as a harm.

andP-token:Ifyou face a choice between two courses of conduct, and if,were you to follow one of those courses of conduct, a token event ofthe type death of a personwould occur that would not occur if youwere to choose the other course of conduct, then it is prima facieobjectionable to choose the former course of conduct-assuming, ofcourse, that that token death would come to the victim as a harm.

Toattributeacceptance of KLD-type nd P-typeto the skepticis to adoptthe "event type" interpretationof his view; to attribute acceptance ofKLD-tokenand P-token is to adopt the "eventtoken" interpretation.


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i8o Philosophy & Public Affairs

B. The Event Token InterpretationDoes either interpretation of the skeptic'sview provide an acceptableunitaryaccount of the prima facie objections to killingand letting die?In this section I consider the event token interpretation.I turn to theevent type interpretationin Section I.C.Let me begin by asking whether the event token interpretationof theskeptic'sview provides a plausible account of the prima facie objectionto letting die. This question can be split in two. First,is it true that if Xlets Ydie, there was something else X could have done such that had hedone that instead of doing what he actually did, Y would have died adeath numericallydistinct from his actual death?(Inother words, doesKLD-token tate a truth about letting die?)And second, is this what ac-counts for the prima facie moral objection to letting die? (Isletting dieprima facie objectionable because it runs afoul of P-token?)I think that the answer to the firstquestion is yes. An agent does notallow a victim to die if he is powerless to preventthe occurrence of thattoken death.'0 Our focus must thus turn to the second question, andhere I think the answer is no. Consider the following example:

The Shark.Y is swimming in the ocean, surrounded by a group ofhungry,human-eating sharks.Xis watchingYfrom the safetyof a raft,some distance away.X sees that the shark closest to Y (callit "thefirstshark")is about to strike. X could prevent this from happening byshooting the first shark with his shark gun. But he knows that thiswould not help Y out of his predicament-he has just the one bullet,and if he were to shoot the first shark,a second shark would kill Y asplit second later."Xconsiders the situation and decides against wast-ing his precious last bullet. He reasons that shooting the first sharkwould buy Yat most a few extramoments of life, and the bullet mightcome in handy later.

Ithinkit would be inappropriate o saythat Xlets Ydie in this example-Xcould not, in the relevant sense, have saved Y.Butthat is not the point.io. Whether killing alwaysaffects the numerical identity of the victim'sdeath will de-pend upon one'stheory of eventidentity.Forpurposes of argument,however,I am willingto grant that KLD-tokens correct both in what it says about killingand in what it saysabout letting die.ii. This point is crucial:I stipulate that Xknows with certainty,or with as close to cer-taintyas one can everhave about such things, that the second sharkwill killY if the firstsharkdoes not. Do not imagine that shooting the first sharkwould somehow distracttheothersharks,therebyenabling Yto escape.


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According to the event token interpretation of the skeptic's position,letting die is prima facie objectionablebecause it satisfies a certain con-dition, and X's choice in the shark case satisfies that condition too:There was an action available to X (shooting the first shark) such that,had X performed that action, Y would have died a death numericallydistinct from his actual death-for in that case Ywould have been eatenby the second sharkrather than by the first.'2The question under con-sideration is whether the fact that the agent of a letting die could haveprevented the occurrence of a token death generates a prima facie ob-jection to his failure to do so. If it does, then the fact that X could haveprevented the token event of Y's actual death in the shark exampleshould generate a prima facie objection to his failureto shoot the firstshark;butX'sfailureto shoot the first shark s not primafacie objection-able; so this cannot be the correct account of the primafacie objectionto letting die. P-token is not a valid moral principle.'3I say that X'sfailure to shoot the first shark is not prima facie objec-tionable because it seems clear to me that there would have been nopoint in X'sshooting the firstshark-doing so would not have helped Yout of his predicament. Some might object that X should have shot thefirst sharkbecause in doing so he would at least have been trying o helpY.Who knows? He might even have succeeded. I respond that even ifthis is right,it merelyreinforcesmy objection to P-token. The proposedreason why X should have shot the firstshark is not that by doing so hecould have prevented the occurrence of a particulartoken death event,but that by doing so he just might have preventedY from being eatenby sharks at all. I said in my description of the example that Xwas cer-tain Y would be eaten moments later anyway. Perhaps in practice wecan neverbe certainabout such things. No matter.This does not under-mine my objection to the skeptic'saccount of the primafacie objectionto letting die, on its event token interpretation.My objection is that if P-token were true, then X's failure to shoot thefirst sharkwould be primafacie objectionableeven if it werecertain thathis shooting the sharkwould not save Y's life. But why not accept thisimplication? What really matters, the skeptic might argue, is not

12. Some might think that Y'sdeath from being eaten by the second sharkwould be thesame event as his death frombeing eaten by the firstshark,on the grounds that the twosharks are part of a single threat. Such readers should imagine a version of the examplein which Y is threatened by two entirely independent fatal sequences.13. If P-token is false, it obviously follows that it cannot be used to explain the primafacie objection to killing either.I will return to the case of killing ater in this subsection.


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182 Philosophy & Public Affairs

whether his theory entails that X's failure to shoot is primafacie objec-tionable, but whether it entails that X's failure to shoot is objectionableall things considered.And P-token does not entail the latter:Accordingto P-token, shooting the first shark would have been everybit as primafacie objectionable as not doing so. IfXhad shot the firstshark,a tokendeath would have occurred (as a result of Y'sbeing eaten by the secondshark)which would not have occurred if Xhad refrainedfrom shootingthe first shark-for in that case the first shark would have eaten Y. Thetwo primafacie objections clearlycancel out, leavingXfree to act eitherway. And isn't that the correct result?I have two replies to this objection. First, we should want our moraltheory not just to yield the right all-out judgments, but also to yieldthem for the right reasons, and it simply is not true that both of X'soptions in the sharkexample were prima facie objectionable. Nothingcounted against shooting the first shark (unless it was concern for theshark's welfare); and given the stipulated circumstances, nothingcounted in favor of shooting the first shark.And second, if P-tokengen-eratescanceling primafacie objections in the sharkexample,it also gen-erates canceling prima facie objections in genuine cases of letting die.Suppose an agent fails to save a drowning swimmer whom he couldeasily have tossed a life preserver.Accordingto P-token,the agent'sfail-ure is prima facie objectionable because the resulting token deathwould not have occurred if the agent had thrownthe life preserver.Butaccording to P-token, throwing the life preserver would have beenequally prima facie objectionable. Had the agent thrown the life pre-server,the swimmer would have gone on to die a token death that hewould not have died if the agent had done something else instead ofthrowing the life preserver-for in the latter case the swimmer wouldhave drowned immediately. Since the prima facie objections evidentlycancel out, P-token cannot explain why failing to throw the life pre-serveris objectionable all things considered.The same problem arises in connection with killing.SupposeXshootsand kills Y,his mortal enemy. Had X played a round of golf instead, Ywould have gone on to die a numerically distinct death at some laterdate. According to P-token, then, X's act is prima facie objectionable.But now suppose X had playedthat round of golf.Ywould have gone onto die a death which he would not have died had X shot him instead ofplaying golf. Accordingto P-token, then, not killingYwould have been


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prima facie objectionable too. Once again, the prima facie objectionscancel out.This problem is evidently quite general. Among those of us for whomdeath is inevitable, "life or death" choices are really"this death or thatdeath"choices. Whicheverchoice the agent makes, he helps determinethe numerical identity of the victim's inevitable death. But this is theonly factor to which P-token is sensitive. P-token is incapable of dis-criminating between killing and not killing, between letting die and sav-ing. It cannot distinguish choices that hasten the inevitable from thosethat delay it.'4C. The Event Type InterpretationDoes the event type interpretation of the skeptic'sview provide a betterunitaryaccount of the prima facie objections to killingand letting die?I think it comes close to accounting for the prima facie objection tolettingdie; I shall say more about this in Section II. Butit does not prop-erly account for the prima facie objection to killing.In the case of the event token interpretation,I argued that althoughKLD-token dentifies a featurearguablypossessed by allkillingsand let-tings die, P-token does not state a valid moral principle. My argumentregardingthe event type interpretation (with respect to killing) has thereverse form. P-type may well state a valid moral principle, but KLD-type does not identifya featurepossessed by all primafacie objectiona-ble killings.Thus even if P-typeis true, it does not account forthe primafacie objection to killing.Considerthe following example:TheHit Man.Xhates Yand wantsverymuch to killhim. As it happens,Yis in the Mafia, and a contracthas been put out on his life.Xknowsthis. He also knows that there are hit men just aroundthe corner whoplan to kill Y almost immediately.X can do nothing to stop them.Nothing,that is, except beat them to it. Because it mattersa greatdealto X that he should be the one who killsY,he shoots and killsYmo-ments before the hit men were going to do the same thing.The firstthing to see about this example is that in it, X undeniably killsY.This is enough to show that what KLD-type ays about killingsis false.

14. The skeptic could respond that dying at a younger age is worse than dying at anolder age, and that consequently the prima facie objection to killing is stronger than theprima facie objection to not killing. The former prima facie objection thus overridesthe


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And the second thing to see is that X'sact is morallyobjectionable. In-deed, it seems to me that X's act is objectionable for the very same rea-son it would have been objectionable if the hit men had not been in thepicture at all. The presence of others on the scene willing to act as X actsdoes not make X'sact any less objectionable. Butif this is right,then theprima facie objection to killingdoes not presuppose its being the casethat if the killer had acted differently,the victim would have lived anappreciably longer life. It follows that P-type does not provide an ac-ceptable account of the prima facie objection to killing.'5I do not mean to suggest that the question whether the victim wouldhave died soon anyway is morallyirrelevant.On the contrary, here maybe cases in which this would help justify an act of killing.Consider, forexample, BernardWilliams's amous case of Jimand the Indians.'6Thecaptain of the local police in a small South Americantown is about tokill twenty innocent Indians when Jim stumbles onto the scene. Thecaptaingives Jima choice: IfJimdoes nothing, the captainwill go aheadand kill the twenty Indians;if Jim agrees to kill one of the Indianshim-self, the captain will let the other nineteen go. Williams sees this as atough case, but in the end he seems inclined to say that Jimshould killthe Indian-at least assuming that the captain can be taken at his word,and that there is no realisticway of savingall twenty.'7Part of his reasonfor sayingthis is presumablythat killingthe Indianwould not make theIndianworse off than he would otherwise be. Perhaps this is right, butit does not follow that killing is prima facie objectionable only if thelatter; they do not cancel out. Similarly, he prima facie objection to failing to save over-rides the prima facie objection to saving.I have serious doubts, however,both about theidea that younger murdervictims suffer greater harms than older murdervictims andabout the idea that the prima facie objection to killingyoungerpeople is stronger han theprima facie objectionto killing olderpeople. In any case, the argumentI shall use againstthe event type interpretation of the skeptic's view in the following subsection worksagainst the presentsuggestionas well. (According o the event type interpretation,killingand letting die are primafacie objectionablebecause they appreciablyshorten people'slives; accordingto the version of the event token interpretationdescribed in this note,killingand lettingdie areobjectionable all things consideredonly when they appreciablyshortenpeople'slives.)

15. IfX's actwere not primafacie objectionable, he merefalsehood of KLD-typewouldnot be a seriousblow to the skeptic.For n that case the skeptic could stillclaim that P-typeaccounts for the primafacie objection to thosekillingswhich areprimafacieobjectionable.16. "ACritiqueof Utilitarianism,"n J.J.C.Smart and BernardWilliams,Utilitarianism:Forand Against(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1973),pp. 98-99.17. Ibid., p. 117.


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victim would be better off if the act were not performed. The fact thatthe one Indian would be killed anyway is relevant to the questionwhether killing him for a particular reason is morally justifiable,but itdoes not erase the fact that killinghim is prima facie objectionable, andthus something which needs to be justified. Suppose Jim had recentlybought some exploding bullets of a new and exciting kind, and the cap-tain had generously offered to let him try them out on one of thedoomed Indians (thecaptain would stillkill the other nineteen himself).Wouldthe fact that the Indian was going to be killed anyway turn thisinto a morally "free"killing?I do not think so.The skeptic could try to reject this intuition, along with the corre-sponding intuition about X'skillingYin the hit-man example. He couldargue that the token event of Y'sdeath does not come to him as a harmin the hit-man example, because it does not make him worse off thanhe was otherwise going to be. But if the event of Y'sdeath does not cometo him as a harm, then X does not harm him by causing that event tooccur. And if X does not harm Y,what is the objection to his action?The skeptic is here assuming that the following states a necessarycondition for a token event's coming to someone as a harm:

Something that happens to someone (an actual event) comes to thatperson as a harmonly if that person would havebeen betteroff if thatevent had not occurred.I think we should reject this condition. True, there is a sense in whichY's death in the hit-man example deprives him of no more than a fewmoments of life-moments that mightwell have been ratherunpleasantfor him, owing to the toothache he was sufferingfromat the time. Tak-ing a broaderview, however,Ysuffersthe same loss he would have suf-fered had the hit men not been in the picture:the loss of being cut downin the prime of his life. IfY's actual death (broughtabout by X)does notproduce this loss, what does? Not anythingthe hit men cause to happen,for they have no influence on how events actually unfold. Not the hitmens intentions, for their intentions areequally ineffectual. (Ifwe wereto attributethe bulk of Y's oss to the presence of the hit men, we wouldbe led to the surprising result that X, who actually shoots and kills Y,deprives Y of something of negligible value, whereas the hit men, whodo nothing, depriveY of many years of life. Surelythis is an unaccepta-ble analysis of what occurs.) Perhapswe should say that Y's loss results


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fromthe event of his death (broughtabout byX'saction) takentogetherwith the fact that the hit men would have killedY if X had not.'8Foritis presumablytrue that if Y's actual death had not occurred and the hitmen had not planned to killY,then Ywould have lived a longer life. Butthis is of little help to the skepticwho wants to deny thatX'sact is primafacie objectionable:ThisanalysisgrantsthatX'sact is at least partof thecause of a serious harm suffered by Y. Nor is this account satisfyingtothe person who thinks that X's act is objectionable, for it assigns toomuch of the responsibilityforY's oss to the hit men. Again,I do not seehow other people'smere willingness to do what Xdoes changes the factthat as events actuallyunfold, X, and X alone, deprivesY of somethingof greatvalue.And since whatXdoes is produceY's actualdeath, I thinkwe should say that Y's actual death comes to him as a harm.'9I conclude that on its event type interpretation,the skeptic'saccountof the prima facie objection to killingis inadequate.D. Why There Can Be No Unitary Account of the Prima Facie Objectionsto Killing and Letting DieThe account of the prima facie objections to killingand letting die pre-sented in Section L.A s unacceptable on both availableinterpretations.On the event type interpretationit cannot account for the prima facieobjection to killing (for the moment I have set aside the questionwhether it can account for the prima facie objection to letting die), andon the event token interpretationit can account for neither prima facieobjection. The skeptic has clearlysuffereda setback,but how serious isit?Couldn'tthe skeptic still be right that the prima facie objections tokilling and letting die arise from features that killing and letting dieshare?If the account presented in Section L.As inadequate, perhaps abetter account could be found.Such optimism would be unfounded:The considerations used to un-dermine the account presented in Section I.Acan also be used to showthat no unitaryaccount can possibly succeed. Whatmakeskillingprimafacie objectionable cannot be the same as what makes letting die primafacie objectionable.

18. This is roughlywhat JeffMcMahanproposes in "Deathand theValueof Life,"Ethics99 (1988): 50.19. I cannot offer a positive account of what it is for an event to come to someone asa harm.Forpresentpurposesit is enough thatthe necessaryconditionstatedat the begin-ning of this paragraph s mistaken.


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If the primafacie objection to a piece of behaviorarises due to a non-moral connection between the agent and a token death, let us say thatthe correctaccount of the objection to that piece of behavioris a "tokendeath"account. I believe the hit-man example shows thatwe must givea token death account of the prima facie objection to killing.It was notmorallyrelevant,in that example, that someone else would have killedY if X had not done so first;what mattered was that X's act, and notsomeone else's, brought about Y's actual death. We have examined anunsuccessful token death account of the primafacie objectionto killing:the skeptic'saccount, on its event token interpretation.KLD-tokendoesnot identify the connection between the agent and a token death thatgrounds the prima facie objection to killing;an act is not prima facieobjectionable just because an alternate action was availablesuch that,if the agent had performedthat action, a certaintoken death would nothave occurred.The connection we are aftermust be strongerthan this.Should we say, then, that killingis primafacie objectionable because itmakes the victim's actual death depend counterfactually upon theagent'sperformance of some "positive"act?20Perhaps all killings havethis feature,but this cannot be what makeskilling primafacieobjection-able either. Considerthe sharkexample once more, only this time sup-pose that in a vain attempt to save Y,X does shoot the first shark;asexpected, the second shark then eats Y.HereX performs a positive ac-tion (shooting the first shark),and if X had not performedthat action,a certain token death (the one resulting from Y's being eaten by thesecond shark)would not have occurred (forin that case Ywould havebeen eaten by the first shark).But shooting the first sharkis not primafacie objectionable-at least not owing to the connection therebyestab-lished between the agent and Y's death. It might be objected that this isnot really a counterexample to the suggested account, since X'sshoot-ing the firstshark s not a case of his killingY.But that is beside the point.Accordingto the account under discussion, what makes killing some-one prima facie objectionable is something it has in common with theact of shooting the first shark:In either case the agent performsa posi-tive action such that, if he had not performed that action, a certain

20. This suggestion would be immune to the problemof canceling prima facie objec-tions,which arose in connection with P-token.Whenan agent refrains fromkillingsome-one, he does not generallyperform any positive act the nonperformanceof which wouldhave prevented that person'sactualdeath. So therewould be no primafacie objection tohis refraining rom killing.


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human being would have died a death numerically distinct from hisactual death.What, then, is the morallysignificant connection between the agentand his victim'sactual token death that grounds the prima facie objec-tion to killing?When X shoots the first shark,two token deaths occurthat would not otherwise have occurred:The firstsharkdies as a resultof being shot by X;and Y dies as a result of being eaten by the secondshark.X killsthe firstshark;he does not killY.Callthe relationthat holdsbetween X and the shark'sdeath, but not between X and Y'sdeath, the"doing"relation.Whenthis relationholds between an agent and a tokenharmful human death (and when the requisite mental conditions aresatisfied), the agent's action is prima facie morally objectionable.Frankly, am not presentlypreparedto analyzethis relation.Forpresentpurposes it is enough that the relation exists and that it amounts tomore than the mere counterfactualdependence of a token event uponthe agent'sact.I have arguedthat the correctaccount of the primafacie objection tokillingmust be a token death account. The correctaccount of the primafacie objection to letting die, however,cannot be a token death account.Wehave alreadyexamined a non-moral connection that holds betweenthe agent and a token death when the agent lets someone die:The agentcould have acted so as to prevent the occurrence of that token death,but did not do so. But as we saw in Section I.B,this connection does notgenerate a prima facie objection to the agent's behavior.Afterall, thevery same connection is exemplified in the shark example: There theagent could have prevented the occurrence of a certain token death byshooting the first shark, but failed to do so. Although the connectionbetween the agent and the "resulting" oken death is the same in bothcases, only in the firstcase is the agent'sbehaviorprimafacie objection-able. Is there some other non-moral connection between agent andtoken death, present in primafacie objectionablecases of lettingdie butnot in the sharkcase, fromwhich the primafacie objection to lettingdiederives?I do not think so. In order to see why not, it will be useful tocompare two versions of the shark example: the familiar version, inwhich there are several sharks,and a modified version, in which thereis only one shark.When there are several sharks,the agent's failuretoshoot the first sharkis not even prima facie objectionable;when onlyone sharkthreatens the swimmer, the agent'sfailureto shoot is objec-


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tionable. But the causal or explanatory relation holding between theagent and the swimmer'sactual token death is exactlythe same in bothcases. When the agent refrainsfrom shooting the first sharkin the orig-inal version of the example, the extra sharks play no role in bringingabout the swimmer's death. The presence or absence of extra sharksthus has no effect on the structureof the causal or explanatoryconnec-tion holding between the agent and the swimmer'stoken death:In bothcases the agent simply fails to prevent that event's occurrence. The ad-ditional sharks are relevantonly because of what they wouldhave doneif the agent had not refrainedfrom shooting the firstshark.The relevantdifferencebetween the two cases lies in the effectswhich preventing heoccurrence of the victim's token death would have had. If only oneshark had been threatening the swimmer, preventing that shark fromeating the swimmerwould have appreciablylengthened the swimmer'slife; if several sharks had been on the scene, preventing one of themfrom eating the swimmer would not have had the same effect. Theproper account of the prima facie objection to letting die, then, is nota token death account. And since the prima facie objection to killingmust be a token death account, it follows that killingand letting die arenot objectionable for the same reason.

II.AGAINST THE DEFENDERA.A BetterAccountof the Prima Facie Objectionto LettingDieThe "doing"relationremainsunanalyzed,but otherwise I thinkwe havean acceptable picture of the source of the prima facie objection to kill-ing:Killing s primafacie objectionable because it establishes the doingrelation between the agent and the token event of someone's harmfuldeath. But what of the prima facie objection to letting die? Should weadopt the view that letting die is primafacie objectionable because it isa failure to appreciablyextend someone's life (that is, because it runsafoul of P-type)?The following examples should give us pause:

The Governor.Y has been convicted of a capital crime and is sched-uled to be executed at noon. Y also has a fatal disease, and througha miracle of medical science his doctors can predict that he will dieof this disease at exactlyfiveminutes past noon-unless, of course, he


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1go Philosophy & PublicAffairs

is executed first. The governor of the state has been given incontro-vertibleevidence of Y'sinnocence. The governor can stop the execu-tion with a timely telephone call, but fails to do so.TheDoctor.Yis in the hospital, sufferingfrom an illness thatwill cer-tainly kill him quite soon-he will not last out the day.One effect ofhis illness is that he is subject to cardiac arrests.Yhas gotten his doc-tor to promise to revive him if his heartshould stop. The doctor'stimeand the hospital's resources are not scarce, and Y has plenty ofmoney. Ysuffersa cardiacarrest,but his doctor decides not to revivehim afterall-there is no point, the doctor thinks, since Ywould dieso soon anyway.

In each case the agent chooses to let Ydie, and in each case the agent'schoice is prima facie objectionable. But in neither case could the agenthave appreciablylengthened Y's life.When considered in conjunction with the sharkexample, these casesraise two puzzles, one having to do with the analysis of the concept ofletting die and the other with the grounds of the prima facie objectionto letting die. Let me begin with the firstpuzzle.In each of these cases the agent can prevent the occurrence of a cer-tain token death, but he cannot prevent the event type death of Yfrombeing instantiated at some time in the immediate future.Whyis it, then,that in the doctor and governorcases the agent can be said to let Ydie,while in the shark case he cannot? One way to "solve" this puzzle is

simply to deny that the doctor and governorcases are cases of lettingdie. Instead of saying that the governorallows Y to die sans phrase,forexample, we could say that he (merely)allows Y to be executed.21 imi-larly,we could say that the doctor (merely)allows Y to die of thispartic-ular heart attack. This would be to describe the governor and doctorcases in much the way I am inclined to describe the shark case: In thesharkcase, X allows Y to be eaten by thefirst shark,but does not allow21. Onemight think that letting die is not even at issue here: What the governorreallydoes is kill Y.The person who actually carriesout the execution is acting for the state;

since the governor is the chief executive of the state, the executioner is acting for thegovernor; n an extended sense, then, the governor is the agent of every execution per-formed in his state. We could avoid this complicationby changing the example:A certainforeignercould proveY's nnocence, but cannot be botheredto do so. The executionerisnot actingfor this foreigner, o thereis no sense in which the foreignerkillsY.Forpresentpurposes I shall ignore this complication.


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191 WhyAreKilling andLetting Die Wrong?

Y to die sans phrase.But while this maneuver seems right in the sharkcase, it does not seem right in these other cases. This is especially strik-ing in the doctor case. Are we to say that it is conceptually impossibleto allow a terminallyill patient to die, since he is sure to die soon any-way? Surelysuch medical examples are paradigm cases of letting die.Besides, if we were to push this maneuver to its logical extreme wewould get the result that it is impossible to allow any mortalcreature todie sans phrase. Consider the governorcase. The clearest rationaleforsaying that the governor allows Y to be executed, but does not allow Yto die sans phrase, is that the governorcould have preventedthere fromever occurring an event of the type execution of Y,but could not havepreventedthere fromever occurringan event of the type death of Y.Buthow often are we in a position to preventsomeone from everdying?Thebest we can hope to do is prevent people from dying in this or thatparticularway.

I think our intuitions on this matter are something of a mess. I pro-pose, then, to sidestep the issue. In every case of letting die, an agentfails to prevent the occurrence of a token death whose occurrence hehad the power to prevent. I suggest, then, that we set aside the task ofanalyzingthe concept of letting die and focus instead upon the broader,clearer concept of failing to prevent the occurrenceof a token death.22Our question then becomes: Why are some failures to prevent occur-rences of token deaths prima facie objectionable and others not? Thegovernor and doctor cases show that failure to prevent a token deathcan be prima facie objectionable even when an event of the same ge-neric type was going to occur moments later anyway;the sharkexampleshows that the mere fact that an agent could have preventedthe occur-rence of a token death is not enough by itselfto make his failureto doso prima facie objectionable. How can we account for this? This is thesecond (and more important) puzzle raised by the governorand doctorexamples.I think this puzzle can be solved. First,notice that an agent'sfailureto prevent the occurrence of a token death is primafacie objectionablejust in case the agent was prima facie obligated to prevent the occur-rence of that event. The two moral judgments stand or fall together.But

22. For convenience, however,I will sometimes allow myself to write as if it had beenestablished thatevery primafacie objectionablefailure o prevent a token death is a lettingdie.


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I think one of these judgments is explanatorilyprior to the other. Whenan agent'sfailureto prevent a token death is prima facie objectionable,this is becausethe agent was under a prima facie obligation to preventthe occurrence of that event. We learned from the sharkexample, how-ever, that there is no general prima facie obligation to prevent occur-rences of token harmful deaths, considered merely as such. If, then, inan individual instance, an agent is under a prima facie obligation toprevent the occurrenceof a token death, this can only be because, in thecircumstances,his preventingthe occurrenceof that token death wouldbe the doing of somethingelse,which he doeshave a generalprimafacieobligation to do. More formally,an agent has a prima facie obligationto preventthe occurrence of a token death only if thereis some act-typeF such that (i) given the circumstances, the agent's preventing the oc-currence of that token death would be an F-ing, and (ii) the agent isunder a general prima facie obligation to F. In a typical case of lettingdie-failing to rescue a drowningswimmer,forexample-the obligationto act derives from the fact that preventingthe occurrence of the rele-vant token death would be an act of benefiting someone. The generalprimafacie obligation in this case is the obligationto benefit people, orperhaps more narrowly, he obligationto givepeople the benefit of hav-ing their lives saved. Shooting the first shark, by contrast, would notbenefit Y-it would not, in the relevantsense, save his life. Consider nextthe case of the governor.PreventingY's execution would not increaseY's life span, and arguablywould not increase Y's welfare level abovewhat it was otherwise going to be. The governorneverthelesshas a mor-ally compelling reason for stopping the execution: Because of his posi-tion, the governorhas a primafacie dutyto insure that no unjust execu-tions occur in his state,and in this case the preventionofY's oken deathwould be the prevention of an unjust execution. Finally, he reason whythe doctor should attemptto reviveYis that in the circumstances,reviv-ing Y would be the keeping of a promise, and like the rest of us thedoctor has a prima facie obligation to keep his promises.23

23. Some lettings die are objectionableforreasonsthatdo not fit the patterndescribedin this paragraph.These are cases in which the agent refrains rom preventinga particulartoken death because he wants the victim to die. (Rachels's xample of the wicked unclefalls into this category-see James Rachels, "Activeand Passive Euthanasia,"The NewEnglandJournal of Medicine292 [1975]:79.) I believe that such "intentional" ettings diebelong in the same moral category as intentional killings.This is borne out by considera-tion of "five-versus-one" ases. Suppose five patients in a hospital will die unless theyreceive organ transplants,and that a doctor decides to get the necessary organs by letting


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There are thus at least three different general prima facie obligationscapable of grounding a prima facie objection to someone's failing toprevent the occurrence of a token death. Broken promises and unjustexecutions are clearly special cases, however. In "standard"cases ofprima facie objectionableletting die, the objection is that the agent failsto give the victim the benefit of preventinghis life from being cut short.This is why I said earlierthat on its event type interpretation, the skep-tic's account "comes close" to correctly describing the prima objectionto letting die. On that account, letting die is prima facie objectionablebecause it is a failure to choose the course of action that would lead tothe victim'sliving a longer life. When it comes to "standard"cases ofletting die, this is more or less right.24B. The Defender'sMistakeThe skeptic's mistake is to think that killing and letting die are primafacie objectionable for the same reason. The lesson of Section I.D wasthat they are not objectionable for the same reason: While the properaccount of the primafacie objection to killingis a token death account,the proper account of the prima facie objection to letting die is not.Section II.Ahas now given us a better understandingof whythe properaccount of the prima facie objection to letting die cannot be a tokendeath account. There is no general obligation to prevent token deaths.If an agent has a prima facie obligation to prevent a particulartokendeath from occurring, this is only because of something special aboutthe wider circumstances of the case.Those who defend the moral significance of the distinction betweenkillingand letting die think the two primafacie objections have distinctsources, but like the skeptic, they generallyoffer token death accountsdie a patient who could have been saved with a simpleinjection.Gettingorgans n this wayis every bit as objectionable as getting them by activelykilling healthypatients. (FrancesKamm, however, argues that even in cases like this there is a moral differencebetweenkillingand letting die-see "Non-consequentialism,he Person as an End-in-Itself,and theSignificanceof Status,"Philosophy & PublicAffairs21, no. 4 [Fall1992]:366-67.)24. Even if restricted to "standard" ases, however,the skeptic's account is not quiteright. Giving someone the benefit of preventing his life from being cut short is not thesame as acting is such a way that that person lives longer than he would otherwise live.If I toss a drowningswimmer a life preserver, benefit him (I save his life), even if someoneelse would have benefittedhim if I had not. I thus benefithim even if I do not cause himto livelonger thanhe would have lived if Ihad not acted. (I earliermade the correspondingpoint about harming: f I killsomeone in the primeof his life,Iharmhim, evenif someoneelse would have killedhim if I had not.)


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of the prima facie objection to letting die. Consider,for example, theviews of WarrenQuinn. Quinn argues that killing and letting die violatedifferent sorts of rights:Killingviolates the victim's"negative" ightnotto be subjected to lethal interference,while letting die violates the vic-tim's"positive"rightto receive life-sustainingaid.25 He also arguesthatnegative rights are more stringent than the corresponding positiverights.)As long as we limit ourattention to what Ihave called "standard"cases of letting die, this view seems correct-it is in fact the view es-poused in Section II.A.It is not enough, however,to be told that killingand lettingdie violate differentkinds of rights.We stillneed to know whykilling violates one sort of right and letting die another.Theremust besome non-moral difference between killing and letting die in virtueofwhich the former violates a negativerightand the lattera positive right.Quinn'smistake comes when he tries to identify this non-moral differ-ence. He tells us that negative rights are rights against being subjectedto harmfulpositive agency,while positive rights arerightsagainstbeingsubjected to harmful negative agency, and he tells us that killing is aform of harmfulpositive agency, while letting die is a form of harmfulnegative agency. What, then, distinguishes these two sorts of agency?Harmfulpositive agency is "that n which the agent's most direct contri-bution to the harm is an action;" harmful negative agency is "thatinwhich the most direct contribution is an inaction, a failureto preventthe harm."And "anagent's mostdirectcontributionto a harmfulupshotof his agency is the contributionthat most directlyexplainsthe harm."26Quinncan be seen as constructinghis account of the moraldifferencebetween killingand letting die byworkingin fromboth ends toward themiddle. At the "moral" nd of his account he distinguishes two differentsorts of rights and explains why the differencebetween them is impor-tant.Atthe "non-moral"end he analyzes the forms of agency character-istic of killing and letting die and shows how they differfrom one an-other. (Thisanalysis belongs to the generaltheory of action ratherthan

25. Quinnacknowledgesthat in saying this he is merelyfollowingPhilippaFoot, whoclaimsthat an agent who killsfails in his negativeduty to refrain romdoing harm,whilean agentwho lets die failsin his positivedutyto aidpeople in need. ForQuinn's iews, see"Actions,ntentions,and Consequences:The Doctrineof DoingandAllowing,"pp. 305-12.ForFoot's,see "TheProblem of Abortionand the Doctrine of Double Effect,"pp. 27-28.26. "Actions, ntentions, and Consequences:TheDoctrine of Doing andAllowing,"pp.

301-302 (emphasis in the original).Quinn's inalaccountof the differencebetweenharm-fulpositiveand harmfulnegativeagency includes a furtherclausedealing withthe actionsof objects under our control, but this need not concern us.


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to ethics.) His hope is that the two halves of this account will fit snuglytogether-that his analysis of the two forms of agency will make it clearwhy they violate, respectively, the two sorts of rights he has identified.Unfortunately, he two halves of Quinn'saccount do not mesh.Let me begin with what Quinn says about killing. Here it will onceagainbe useful to consider the sharkexample. If X were to shoot the firstsharkin a vain attempt to save Y's ife, a certain token event of the typedeath of Ywould occur which would not otherwise occur, and X'smostdirect contribution to the occurrence of that event would be his actionof shooting the shark.X's agency in respect of Y's death would thus bepositive. Butwhile shooting the firstshark might constitute harmful in-terference with the shark, t clearly does not constitute harmful interfer-ence with Y.It does not violate Y's right not to be killed.27IfQuinn'saccount of positive harmfulagency is unacceptable, at leastit has the right form. It is a token death account, and that is what isneeded. Quinn's errorregardingharmful negative agency is more fun-damental. If X fails to shoot the first shark, the death Y subsequentlyundergoes comes to him as a harm, and X's most direct contribution tothe occurrence of that harm is an inaction. Failureto shoot the firstsharkthus counts as harmful negative agency. But shooting the sharkwould not have sustained Y's ife-it would not have aided him. Thus X'sfailure to shoot the first shark does not violate Y'sright to receive life-sustaining aid. This time Quinn's mistake lies not just in the details ofhis account, but in the very attempt to give a token death account of theprima facie objection to letting die. And this same mistake is made invirtually every attempted defense of the moral significance of the dis-tinction between killing and letting die with which I am familiar.Phil-ippa Foot, for example, says that an agent fails in his duty to give aid ifhe fails to prevent an already initiated fatal sequence from taking itscourse.28 But preventing a particular fatal sequence from taking itscourse merely prevents the occurrence of a token death; it does notnecessarily benefit the potential victim.

Why do philosophers who see that the (standard)primafacie objec-tion to letting die is that it is a failure to benefit the victim persist in27. This objection could be avoided by giving Quinn'saccount an event type interpreta-tion-by understandinghim as saying that someone'sagency in respect of another'sdeathis positive just in case his most direct contribution o that person'sdying now rather hansignificantly ater is an action. But then Quinn would be unable to deal with the hit-manexample. In any case, I think Quinn's ext clearlycalls for an event token interpretation.28. "Morality, ction and Outcome,"p. 24.


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regarding etting die as primafacie objectionableowing to the causal orexplanatoryconnection which therebyholds between the agent and thevictim'stoken death?Presumablybecause they suppose that preventingsomeone fromundergoinga tokenharm does automaticallybenefit thatperson. Afterall, if this were a correctanalysis of the benefit of prevent-ing someone from sufferinga harm, the two halves of Quinn'saccountof the prima facie objection to lettingdie would fit togetherquite neatly.Harmful negative agency consists in not performing an action thatwould have prevented the occurrence of a token harm; if it were truethat preventing someone from suffering a token harm automaticallybenefited that person, it would follow that harmfulnegative agency isautomaticallya failure to benefit, and hence that it violates the victim'spositive right to receive aid.The correct account of the standardprima facie objection to lettingdie may not be a token death account, but that objection neverthelessderives from the moral significance of a non-moral relation linkingagents to token events. Philosophershave simplylooked for this relationin the wrong place. Therelation is not one which actuallyholds betweenthe agent and the token harm which the agent fails to prevent. Rather,it is one which would have held between the agent and the token eventof someone's receiving a certain benefit, if the agent had done what hehad a primafacie obligationto do. The derivationof the standardprimafacie objection to letting die proceeds as follows: If preventing the oc-currence of a token death would establish a certainrelationbetween theagent and the potential victim'sreception of a token benefit, then theagent is under a primafacie obligationto preventthe occurrence of thattoken death; and if the agent is under a primafacie obligationto preventthe occurrence of that token death, then not preventingthe occurrenceof that token death is prima facie objectionable.What, then, is this "certainrelation"?It is evidently the very same"doing" elationthat holds between an agent and someone'stoken deathwhen the agentkills thatperson.Killing s an instance of harming (itis thedoing of a harm);savingis an instance of benefiting (it is the doing of abenefit).The standardprimafacie objectionto killingarisesbecause theact establishes the doing relationbetween the agent and the token eventof someone's sufferingthe harm of death; the prima facie objection tolettingdie arises (inmost cases) due to the agent's ailure o establishthatvery same relationbetween himself and the event of someone'sreceiving


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the benefit of having his life saved.Accordingto the sort of picture pre-sented by Quinn,and by other defenders of the distinction's ignificance,the moral principlescondemningkillingand letting die refer o two differ-ent morallysignificantrelations,both linking agents to deaths. One prin-ciple says "Do not link yourselfpositively to someone'sdeath,"the othersays "Do not link yourself negatively to someone's death." The com-mands are both negative: Theytell us what not to do.29On the picture Iam suggesting,however,the relevantprinciplesrefer to a single relation.One principle speaks against establishing that relationbetween oneselfand a harm,while the other speaks in favorof establishing that relationbetween oneself and a benefit. The relations are the same, but the relataare different(as are the "valences"of the commands).The very words used in drawingthe distinction between killing andletting die tend to mislead us on this issue: The phrase "letting die"directsour attention to the token harmthat actually occurs, ratherthanto the token benefit that would have occurred if the agent had donewhat he had a prima facie obligation to do.C. An Aside on ResponsibilityIfdeath comes to the victim as a harm, the agentwho objectionablykillsor lets die acquires at least partialresponsibilityfor the harm that thevictim suffers. In cases of prima facie objectionable killing,it is naturalto say that the reason the agent shares in the responsibilityfor the harmsufferedby the victim is that the harm is his doing-he is linked to it bythe doing relation. It also seems reasonable to say that the agent'sactis prima facie objectionable becauseit makes him responsible for thatharm. In cases of objectionable letting die, however,the agent shares inthe responsibilityfor the harm suffered by the victim only because hehad an obligation to prevent the occurrence of the relevant harmfulevent. Here the attribution of responsibility is posterior to the moralevaluation of the act. (Afterall,Xis not responsibleforthe harm sufferedby Y in the sharkexample;this can only be because Xhad no obligationto preventthe harmful event which Ysuffered.)It follows that the notionof responsibilityfor harm cannot play a fundamental explanatoryrolein our account of the prima facie objection to letting die.

29. These defenders thus convertthe positive right to receive life-savingaid into a neg-ative right not to be subjected to a certain sort of lethal agency.


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D. An Aside on Preventing Harms and Preventing BenefitsI have made much of the fact that preventing someone from sufferinga token harm does not necessarily benefit that person. Nonethelessthere is such a thing as benefiting someone by preventing him fromsufferinga harm. (Likewiseone can harm someone by preventinghimfrom receiving a benefit.) The notions of harm and benefit are clearlyinterrelated, just not in the simple way that most philosophers havetended to assume. So how are these two notions related to one another?A picturehas emerged in the course of this paper. First,we must distin-guish an agent's doing someone a harm (or a benefit) from an event'scoming to someone as a harm (ora benefit). An agent does someone aharm when the "doing"relation holds between the agent and sometoken event that comes to the person as a harm;an agent does someonea benefit when the "doing"relation holds between the agent and sometoken event that comes to the person as a benefit. Ourquestion is whatmakes a token event come to someone as a harm or a benefit.Call an event "directlyharmful" if an account of its harmfulnesswould employ neither the notion of a benefit nor that of a good. Anuncontroversialexample of a directlyharmfulevent would be one thatcauses pain, althoughI thinktherearenon-hedonistic examples as well.Call an event "directlybeneficial" if an account of its beneficialnesswould employ neither the notion of a harm nor that of an evil. Havingidentified these "primary" ases of harmand benefit,we can extend ouraccount by observing that some events are harmful because they de-priveus of benefits, and others beneficial because they preventus fromsufferingharms. We can call these "indirect"harms and benefits.Let us begin with indirect harms. Suppose Yis one of severalpeopleneeding medical attention, and that a number of paramedicsareon theway. One paramedic has just begun to help Y, but X directs that para-medic to help Z instead. Does the diversion of the paramedic come toY as a harm?Only if it results in Y'snot being benefited in the relevantway at all. If another paramedic comes to Y's aid moments later, thediversion of the firstparamedic does not come to Yas a harm. A tokenevent thatpreventsthe occurrenceof a token beneficial event is harmfulonly if it therebyinsures that no beneficial event of the relevanttype willoccur,at least not for some period of time.30Similarlywith indirect ben-

30. Forpresentpurposes, a beneficial event thatwould be less beneficial than the eventprevented would not count as an event of the same type.


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efits. When someone saves a drowning swimmer by throwing him a lifepreserver, he token event that comes to the swimmer as a benefit is hisreception of that particular life preserver.But reception of the life pre-server comes to the swimmer as a benefit only because it insures thatno harmful event of the relevant type will occur, at least not for someperiod of time.3'Justas Y'stoken death came to him as a harmin the hit man example,even though another event of the same type was going to occur mo-ments later anyway, so too the actual token event of the swimmer's re-ceiving a life preserver comes to the swimmer as a benefit, even if an-other event of the same type was going to occur moments later anyway.If I toss a drowning swimmer a life preserver, he swimmer is benefited,and the event that comes to him as a benefit is his receiving that lifepreserver,even if someone else would have tossed him a life preserverif I had not. But again, the swimmer's reception of that life preservercounts as a benefit only because it insures that no harmful event of therelevant type will occur, at least not for the foreseeable future. Had hisreceiving that life preservermerely prevented the occurrence of a partic-ular token harmfulevent, while allowinganother event of the same typeto occur in its stead, his receiving that life preserverwould not havecome to him as a benefit.It might be objected that if someone else would have thrown theswimmer a life preserver f I had not, then no event of the type death ofthat swimmer was going to occur, and so the swimmer'sreceiving thelife preserverI tossed did not "insure" hat no event of that type wouldoccur. I thinkthis objection is misplaced. Comparethe drowningswim-mer example with one in which I toss a life preserverto someone whois standing beside me on the dock. In neither case would the recipientof the life preserverhave drowned had he not received a life preserverfrom me. But there is an obvious difference. The swimmer was going todrown unless someone tossed him a life preserver; he same cannot besaid of the man standing on the dock. In order that no event of the type

31. When is an event of the "relevant"ype?Suppose X can preventY from being assas-sinated, but that he cannot preventY from dying of other causes immediately thereafter.If there is more to the badness of being assassinated than to the badness of dying sansphrase, hen the assassinationof Yis a relevanttype of event and Xbenefits Y by insuringthat no event of that type occurs.If, on the other hand, the badness of being assassinatedis completely accounted for by the fact that assassination brings about death, then deathof Yis the relevanttype of event and Xdoes not benefit Ymerelyby preventinghim frombeing assassinated.


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death of the swimmer should occur, at least for some time yet, it wasnecessary that some token event of the type the swimmer'sreceivingalife preserver hould occur. The event of that type which actuallyoccursis the one which actuallyprevents the swimmer from drowning; t thuscomes to him as a benefit.III. CONCLUSIONIt is customary,when discussing the moral significance of the distinc-tion between killingand letting die, to focus on cases in which the primafacie objections to killingand letting die come into conflict. Defendersof the distinction'ssignificance, for example, usually try to explain whyit is impermissible to kill one person in order to save five others-whyit is better to let the five die than to kill the one. I have not done this.Instead, I have tried to undermine the skeptic'scase for denying that itis impermissible to kill one person in order to save five. The skepticthinks that since the two prima facie objections have a commonsource-since killingand lettingdie are violations of a single moralprin-ciple (perhaps one requiringus to "see to it"that people's lives do notend prematurely)-then neither objection takes precedence over theother.Conflictsshould thus be settled by choosing the course of actionthat minimizes the number of prematuredeaths. Butif, as I have argued,the grounds of the two prima facie objections are quite differentfromone another, then I think there is no reason to suppose, in advance offurtherwork, that one of the objections does not take precedence overthe other in cases of conflict.32My argument has reliedheavily upon ourjudgments about particularcases-especially upon the judgment that X'skillingY is objectionablein the hit-man case (and moreover that it is objectionable for the verysame reason that his killingYwould be objectionable in the absence ofthe hit men). The skeptic could try to reject this judgment. He alreadyrejects the judgment that it is wrong to killone person in order to savefive; why not reject this one as well? The cases are different, however.The skeptic's argumentforrejectingthe judgment that it is wrong to kill

32. I have objected to Quinn'saccount of what makes actions violate positive and neg-ativerights;his account of why the negative rightnot to be killedtakesprecedence overthe positive right to be saved may nevertheless be substantiallycorrect. See "Actions,Intentions, and Consequences:The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing,"pp. 305-12.


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one in order to save five relied upon his having uncovered a glaring(apparent) nconsistency within so-called common-sense morality.Theskeptic thought that if we were to reflect upon our ordinaryjudgmentsabout the circumstances under which killing and letting die are primafacie objectionable, we would conclude that the two are prima facieobjectionable for the same reason; and if killing and letting die are ob-jectionable for the same reason, how can the objection to one of thembe more stringent than the objection to the other?In other words, theskeptic sought to use our own intuitivejudgments about the nature ofthe prima facie objections to killing and letting die to discredit our intu-itive judgments about the relative strength of those objections. Com-mon-sense moralitywas to provide the ammunition for its own (partial)destruction.Can the skeptic employ the same strategyto underminethejudgment that X's killingY is wrong in the hit-man case? Perhaps hecould appeal to the idea that all that mattersmorallyis the differencewemake to the quality of people's lives: Since X's action does not make Yworse off than he was otherwise going to be, X's action is not objection-able. But attractiveas it might sound, I do not think this idea is part ofcommon-sense morality.Indeed, it runs counter to a very deep-seatedcomponent of ordinarymoralthought:the idea that at least partof whatmattersmorallyis whether token harms or benefits can be attributedtoour agency.The skeptic is really askingus to abandon one broadethicaloutlook and to replace it with another. Perhaps he can argue that hispicture of morality is superior to the one presupposed by commonsense morality,but that argument must be made. For there is nothingobviously irrational or internallyincoherent about the picture that theskeptic wishes to reject. The common-sense moral theorist thus neednot feel so much on the defensive.Of course the idea that it is wrong to kill someone whom anotheragent is going to kill anyway can seem puzzling, and the "picture" hatthis idea presupposes certainlyneeds to be better understood. Indeed,it seems to me that a largepart of the reason we arepuzzled by the factthat it is wrong to kill one person in order to save five is that the primafacie objection to killing is quite generally puzzling. But to grant thatthere are puzzles here is not yet to grantthat there is cause for skepti-cism. Ratherthere is cause for more work.

why are killing and letting die wrong

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