On Killing vs. Letting Die: Negative and Positive Rights (and Duties)

• One influential theory of right and wrong: Consequentialism

• Consequentialism: The view (in its simplest form) that all that matters to the rightness or wrongness of actions is the goodness or badness of the consequences.
• Specifically, consequentialism is the view that an action is morally permissible if and only if it would lead to overall consequences that are at least as good as those of any other alternative available to the agent; if an act would have better consequences than alternatives, then it is morally required. (Note: utilitarianism is a species of consequentialism.)

• Advantage of consequentialism: simplicity.

• Disadvantage of consequentialism: it seems too simple. Aren't factors other than an action's consequences often relevant to determining whether it is right or wrong?

• Foot: Yes, so we should reject consequentialism. The way the consequences are brought about can matter morally.

One morally important distinction that gets ignored by consequentialism is the distinction between killing and letting die: even if the consequences of a killing are exactly the same as the consequences of an otherwise similar case of letting die, the two actions may be morally very different.

• Initial intuitive examples: Sending contaminated food to Oxfam for tax write-off vs. Not contributing to Oxfam; Transplant vs. Scarce Drug (recall first lecture).
• But we need to flesh out what really underlies the killing/letting die distinction (which isn't always linguistically clear-cut), and give a theory to explain why it should be thought to make a moral difference in at least some cases.

• Foot: the killing/letting die distinction can be more precisely understood as the distinction between (i) initiating or actively sustaining a harmful sequences of events, and (ii) merely failing to intervene to stop a harmful sequence already underway, i.e., allowing it to run its course.

• Example to illustrate: Rescue I vs. Rescue II.
• This is a pair of examples equalized for everything else except the fact that one is a case of letting die (i.e., allowing a lethal sequence to continue) while the other is a case of killing (i.e., initiating a lethal sequence).
• And while the action in Rescue I seems permissible, the action in Rescue II seems impermissible. So the distinction in question seems to make a moral difference here (contrary to consequentialism)!
• Cf. Transplant vs. Scarce Drug.

• But why is this? Why does this distinction matter morally, as it seems to?

• Because this distinction is related to a different distinction between two kinds of rights (and duties): negative and positive, and these rights typically have different strengths.

• Negative rights: rights to non-interference. (Negative duties correspond to negative rights).
• Positive rights: rights to goods and services. (Positive duties correspond to positive rights).

• Cases of killing run up against which kind of right? _______________

• Cases of letting die run up against which kind of right? _____________

• Foot's thesis: negative rights are more stringent than positive rights: it takes more to legitimately override them than it takes to legitimately override positive rights. So in some contexts it may be the case that a person's positive right to aid is overridden by other considerations (i.e., morality does not require that we satisfy it, because the other considerations outweigh it), but her negative right not to be killed is still standing (i.e., morality does still require that we satisfy it, because the other considerations do not outweigh it).

• This difference allows for the possibility of its being permissible to let someone die in a certain context where it would nonetheless be impermissible to kill him.

• Return to Rescue I and Rescue II to illustrate the point in terms of rights theory.

• This explains why the killing/letting die distinction can make a moral difference in at least some contexts, contrary to the consequentialist claim that all that matters are the ultimate consequences. (Be sure you understand this and can explain it and apply it to other possible cases.)

• Complication: The Trolley Problem (bystander version).

• Why this poses a puzzle for Foot. (You should be able to explain this.)
• What is Foot's answer to it?

• NOTE: We will return to Foot's theory when we discuss euthanasia (we will be reading the article by Rachels that she mentions) and when we discuss abortion (we will also be reading the article by Thomson she mentions).