PBA303H: Double-Effect Reasoning

Prerequisite: PBA203Y

• Simple example: a mother cleaning her child's wound with alcohol that causes her child to scream out in pain¹⁾
  • The child's pain is a direct result of her willful and direct actions
  • Yet we can see that her child's pain is not part of her moral object, that reason grasps the difference between the effects and the choice that's actually being made – to heal her child
  • This is double-effect reasoning, how we can understand the difference between the moral object and the effects when good and evil and intertwined