Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.
Wählen Sie Textabschnitte aus um mit Künstlicher Intelligenz passenden Patente zu finden.
powered by
Markieren Sie Textabschnitte, um KI-gestützt weitere passende Inhalte zu finden.
powered by
Excerpt
Since even before WWII,1 the discussion of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE2) has been intertwined with the discussion of terror bombing and strategic bombing.3 The concepts of ‘terror bombing’ and ‘strategic bombing’ are, both in historical and philosophical context, quickly clarified by looking at how the British changed their directives to their pilots sometime in late 1940. Frankland writes that in June 1940 British authorities still “specifically laid down that targets had to be identified and aimed at. Indiscriminate bombing was forbidden.” (1970: 244) Here indiscriminate bombing is what has come to be known in the literature as terror bombing. And it has presumably acquired that name because the British soon changed their fighting ways: already in November 1940 “Bomber Command was instructed simply to aim at the center of a city… the aiming points are to be the built-up areas, not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories” (1970: 24) And built-up areas here means residential areas, as the British did not care to hide: Churchill spoke in the Commons of the “the systematic shattering of German cities.” (July 19435); “the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.” (joint British-American Casablanca conference); “To the RAF fell the task of destroying Germany’s great cities, of silencing the iron heart-beat of the Ruhr, of dispossessing the working population, of breaking the morale of the people” (Target: Germany, an RAF official publication of that period). Finally they ended up calling it ‘terror’ bombing themselves: “Here, then, we have terror and devastation carried to the core of a warring nation.” (Still from Target: Germany as quoted by Ford 1944: 294). …
For the earliest examples known to me, see Ryan 1933 and Ford 1944. Gury also talks about the killing of non-combatants in the context of his seminal discussion of double effect (see Boyle 1980: 528–29).
Here I will just assume previous knowledge of the Doctrine of Double Effect, and restrict my discussion of the actual principle to this footnote with the following representative definitions:
McIntyre in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “sometimes it is permissible to bring about as a merely foreseen side effect a harmful event that it would be impermissible to bring about intentionally” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/);
Woodward in the Introduction to his standard anthology on DDE: “intentional production of evil… and foreseen but unintentional production of evil” (2001: 2);
Aquinas, which is often credited with the first explicit version of DDE: “Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention” (Summa II-II, 64, 7);
Gury: “It is licit to posit a cause which is either good or indifferent from which there follows a twofold effect, one good, there other evil, if a proportionately grave reason is present, and if the end of the agent is honourable – that is, if he does not intend the evil effect” (Boyle's translation 1980: 528);
Mangan: “A person may licitly perform an action that he foresees will produce a good and a bad effect provided that four conditions are verified at one and the same time: 1) that the action in itself from its very object be good or at least indifferent; 2) that the good effect and not the evil effect be intended; 3) that the good effect be not produced by means of the evil effect; 4) that there be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect” (1949: 43).
I have discussed other aspects of double effect elsewhere: Di Nucci 2013a, Di Nucci 2013b, Di Nucci 2013c, Di Nucci 2014a, Di Nucci 2014b, Di Nucci 2014c, Di Nucci 2014d, Di Nucci 2014e, and Di Nucci 2015.
Here the terminology is a bit confusing: in modern philosophical discussions, the talk is always of ‘terror’ bombing and ‘strategic’ or ‘tactical’ bombing. Some (such as for example Cavanaugh 2006: xii) distinguish between ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ on historical grounds, finding the latter more appropriate. Others (such as for example Ford 1944: 263) object to both ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ and opt for ‘precision’ bombing. Other terms for ‘terror’ bombing are ‘obliteration’ bombing, ‘area’ bombing, and ‘indiscriminate’ bombing (Walzer 1991: 11). To make matters more confusing, the adjective ‘strategic’ is sometimes used for ‘terror’ bombing as well. I stick to ‘terror’ bombing and ‘strategic’ bombing throughout because it is the most common usage in the literature (as a brief Google search revealed).
To be sure: Bennett is a critic of DDE, but he has contributed decisively to the establishment of the thought-experiment as a standard one. See also Bennett 1995.
The epistemic characterization is here important, but it can vary: we can talk of certainty, high probability, or even just possibility, as long as there is no epistemic gap between the two cases.
As I already said, here I will not get into issues of interpretation of DDE. Let me just say that moral permissibility is both the strongest and most common interpretation of DDE (see Boyle 1980 for an argument as to why we should interpret DDE this way); alternative interpretations may involve different attributions of responsibility, excuse as opposed to justification, or different sentencing. At the other end of the spectrum we find the claim that not even the action-theoretical distinction upon which DDE is found is a legitimate one (this last possibility is discussed here too).
From the point of view of military ethics in general and just war theory in particular, there is an important difference between talking about ‘civilian casualties’ in general, as Bennett does, and talking about school children, as Bratman does. The civilian casualties referred to by Bennett may very well be the munitions factory workers, and their moral status is controversial. On this, see debates on non-combatants, civilians-m, and civilians-w (where ‘m’ and ‘w’ distinguish between those civilians which provide military equipment such as munitions and those which provide welfare equipment such as food); in particular, see Fabre 2009 and McMahan 2009. While Bennett’s reference to ‘civilian casualties’ may be a reference to civilians-m who may actually turn out to be liable to attack, Bratman’s reference to school children simplifies the thought-experiment by providing a group (school children) which none of the contrasting views would consider liable to attack. That is why I shall stick to Bratman’s school children throughout, which help identify the DDE debate on terror bombing and strategic bombing as independent from the non-combatant debate.
Here my talk of causal beliefs does not presuppose causalism about action-explanation: I say that the beliefs are ‘causal’ to refer to their being beliefs about the causal structures of the world, such as the causal effectiveness of different strategies. Elsewhere I have criticized causalism in action theory (Di Nucci 2008, Di Nucci 2011a, Di Nucci 2011b, and Di Nucci 2013d), but my argument here is supposed to be independent from the truth or falsity of causalism.
Still, some of these irrational combinations may still play a role in the intuition that our moral judgement on Terror Bomber should be different from our moral judgement on Strategic Bomber. Take the following:
Terror Bomber does not believe that killing children will weaken enemy and she does believe that destroying munitions will weaken enemy. Strategic Bomber believes that destroying munitions will weaken enemy and she does not believe that killing children will weaken enemy.
This is a permutation in which Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber have the same causal beliefs, but I have excluded it because it involves Terror Bomber in criticisable irrationality: why does she embark on the plan to kill the children in order to weaken enemy if she does not believe that killing children will weaken enemy? Still, maybe this possible combination of the two agents’ beliefs may be at least a part of the intuition that Terror Bomber is morally criticisable while Strategic Bomber is not morally criticisable. But this would be seemingly unfair: the two, in such a case, have the same beliefs and cause the same amount of suffering. Can we possibly blame Terror Bomber more just because of her error of judgement? It seems not, because it was not an error of moral judgement (if it were, then Strategic Bomber would have committed the same error).
This is, indeed, the core of Bratman’s non-reductive planning theory of intention; and here I am not offering a general critique of Bratman’s theory, which I have discussed at length elsewhere (Di Nucci 2008 and Di Nucci 2009).
