Killing and letting die

• Main Author: Hanser, Matthew
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-1993
• Subjects: Philosophy
• ISBN: 9798208697269

Some philosopher argue that the distinction between killing and letting die lacks moral significance, since the prima facie objections to both arise from a feature which killing and letting die share: Either way, an agent chooses a course of action resulting in someone's dying, when he could have chosen a course of action having the opposite result. I find this claim ambiguous. Does it mean that in either case, if the agent had chosen the alternative course of action, the victim would not have died at all, at least not for some time yet? Or does it mean that if the agent had acted differently, the victim would have died a death numerically distinct from his actual death? I argue that killing is prima facie objectionable owing to the causal relation connecting the agent's action to the victim's token death. If an agent kills someone, his action is prima facie objectionable even if another agent would have killed the person moments later anyway. But failing to prevent a token death event is not in itself prima facie objectionable. On the whole, such a failure is prima facie objectionable only if preventing that token death event would have benefited the victim. And on the whole, preventing a token death event benefits the victim only if it prevents there from occurring any event of the type death of that person, at least for some time yet. I do not provide a positive rationale for attributing moral significance to the distinction between killing and letting die. Rather, I try to undermine skepticism about the possibility of providing such a rationale by demonstrating that the prima facie objections to killing and letting die cannot be accounted for in the same way. I also discuss the nature of killing and letting die, how both differ from enabling someone's death to occur, and the relationship between the concepts of harm and benefit.