Acts, intentions, and moral permissibility: In defence of the doctrine of double effect

Abstract

At the heart of the doctrine of double effect (DDE) is the claim that intentions can be relevant to an act’s permissibility. Rachels, Thomson, and others reject this claim on the grounds that it makes an act’s permissibility turn on facts about particular agents’ characters, with absurd results. I argue that this objection is based on a fundamental and persistent misunderstanding of the way the concept of intention figures into the DDE. Using a type/token distinction, I offer a proper formulation of the DDE that avoids the objection, and illustrates its plausible application.