Change the Description

Green: The fact is that he kills the man to save himself.

Grey: Green is quite right. There is an old trick in Ethics; describe an action in one way and it is a good action, describe it in another and it is bad. This is what gives ethics a bad name. Some philosophers have argued that, if necessary, one can remove the brain from the head of an unborn child and crush the skull to enable the child to be delivered and so save the mother's life. They do not call this process "killing the child" but "reducing the dimensions of the head". Of course, they will say one does not intend to kill, only to reduce dimensions. You might as well say that when you lop off a man's head you only intend to stop his headache.

White: Certainly, we have to consider what a person actually does when we evaluate his responsibility. And the agent has to be sincere and rational in describing his choices and intentions. A person who beheads another to stop his headache is completely irrational. But a driver who finds that the brakes of his car are faulty can swerve to avoid killing a number of people and knowingly but unintentionally kill one person who happens to be on the road. He is not guilty of murder. A pilot who crashes his damaged plane in the sean because he does not want to kill people on the beach where he might have landed safely is not guilty of suicide. Descriptions are important. But they must fit the facts.

Means, Ends and Side-Effects

Green: How is all this relevant to our present problem?

Black: Well, as in the case of self-defence, we want to save our lives. Our purpose is good. The way in which we do this is by removing our fat friend from the opening of the cave. To do so we choose to blow him up. We do not intend to kill him but only to free the opening. His death is the unintended side-effect of the act of opening the cave.

Green: How on earth can you blow a man up and not intend to kill him?

Black: It is one thing to want to remove a man from the entrance to the cave. It is anther thing to want to kill him. It is possible to imagine that we can blow him out of the cave without killing him.

Grey: That is exactly the kind of sophistry that I was talking about a few moments ago. It is known as the technique of "directing one's intnetion". You can justify anything with its help. You can bomb a city and its inhabitants into dust and claim that you only intended to destroy the buildings. Of course, you can imagine a bomb that will destroy buildings and not kill people... it will cause the buildings to disintegrate slowly so that the people will have time to escape... it is one thing to bomb a city... another to annihilate its inhabitants. But in reality, you must not drop a nuclear bomb on a city.

Green: That is true. Clearly, it is one thing to imagine something and it is something else for it to be possible. You can imagine the time before creation or the space beyond all space, but could there be a time before creation or a space beyond all space? I can imagine shooting a person in the head and merely making him unconscious... the possibilities of imagining things are endless. And so too are the possibilities of self-deception if we admit such rationalisations into our moral thinking.

Towards a Solution

White: Let us get back to reality. As a result of scientific progress, it is now possible for a person to live, at least for some time, with an artificial heart. Would we allow a person will a strong heart but a malignant and inoperable brain tumour to donate his heart before death? He does not want to kill himself, and he does not save the life of the recipient of his heart by killing himself, but by having his heart implanted successfully in the recipient. It is one thing to donate a heart: it is another thing to kill oneself. I do not know of any ethician who would permit the donation of a heart of a living donor in any circumstances.

Green: A good point!

Brown: There are indeed similarities between our present problem and the case of killing in self-defence. But there are significant differences also. In the first place, our fat friend is not an unjust aggressor. Secondly, merely blowing him up will not, of itself, save us. We then have to get out of the cave. In the case of self-defence one and the same action has a good and a bad effect. The one act both saves and kills. In the third place, I do not accept the contention that the death of our fat friend is merely a side-effect of our blowing him up. To open the cave it is necessary to choose to blow him up, to make his body disintegrate, in order to free the opening. It is because he has been blown to pieces - i.e. killed, that we will be able to get out of the cave. If we blow up our friend intentionally, we shall be intentinally blowing up an innocent man. And the immediate effect of our action will be that we are murderers.

Grey: Out fat friend has not been showing much interest in our discussion.

Brown: It seems that we shall have to adjourn our little meeting and resume it in more propitious circumstances. The problem concerning our friend, I should say, our dear late lamented friend, is now a merely theoretical one, and the water is rising fast in the cave. It will soon be up to our necks. I thank you, ladies and gen tleman, for a most interesting and stimulating discussion.

And so the discussion ended.