War Case Study Assignment

Due November 3rd

Case Study #4 starting on page 703 please answer questions 5 and 6.

The case study assignments for the rest of the semester are only going to be half as long as before. Instead of doing two cases with two question a piece we will only be doing one case with two questions. This means that the length of your total pages should also be cut in half. I expect it will take you anywhere between 3/4 to 1 and 1/2 pages to answer the questions fully.

Anscombe: War and Murder

Elizabeth Anscombe: War and Murder

Main Points:
It is wrong for the government to kill innocents as a means to killing non-innocents. But it is the job of the government/sovereign to exercise power when the stability of the community depends on it

“It is so clear that the world is less of a jungle because of rulers and laws, and that the exercies of coercive power is essential to these institutions as they are now...”(643)

“[S[ociety without coercive power is generally impossible”(644) Just so long as it is only used on non-innocents.

How is a non-innocent described: “What is required, for the people attacked to be non-innocnet in the relevant sense, is that they should themselves be engaged in an objectively unjust proceeding which the attacker has the right to make his concern; or-the commonest case- should be unjustly attacking him. Then he can attack them…”(644-645)

Some violence can only be stopped by killing. Her basis for this argument is that it is true because history shows that often evil will not be stopped by anything other than killing


Anscombe’s Assumptions:
(1) that the world is not just a jungle but a place where the reasoning man can be assured that such noble concepts as justice, evil, and good have a place.
(2) that "evil" is something which should be stopped or prevented.
(3) that "neutral" is something that is not evil yet not the opposite of evil.
(4) that "non-innocents" are those who commit evil.
(5) that the Bible is the truth and the guiding light in determining ‘what is moral’.

Her attack on Double effect and the idea that intention is all that matters:
Review of double effect: also known as the rational for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Review of Kant’s categorical imperitive and the example of your friend hiding in the back room and someone who wants to kill him asking you where he is. Do you uphold the maxim “ I ought not ever lie” or do I lie and act maliciously in order to prevent a more malicaious act from occurring?

Review of Kant’s good will and the primacy of intention

Anscombe’s attack on intention as moral tool:
“Now if intention is all that is important…a marvelous way offered itself of making any action lawful. You only had to “direct yoru intention” in a suitable way. In practice, this means making a little speech to yourself: “What I mean to be doing is this…”…This same doctrine is used to prevent any doubts about the obliteration bombing of a city.”(647)

It comes about by attempting to maintain the new testament and pacifistic ideal of never doing committing any wrong towards someone. If you are intending a good outcome you can slip any action under the moral rug.

She concludes: the Principle of Double Effect should not allow evil to be committed as a means to achieving good

But Double Effect is not a completely fallacious argument, as long as it is not abused. Killing in self-defense is not an evil it is neutral. Her basis is that as killing in self-defense is not the means to the good but rather concomitant with the good, thus it passes the test of the Principle of Double Effect.

Case Study 1

pacifism and conscription

Pacifism:

All violence is wrong even if it is only for self defense.

Reject idea of eye for an eye as basis for moral justice.

“An eye for an eye leaves the world blind” – Ghandi

Emphasize a respect for persons, including the enemy, and the recognition of a common humanity of all people.

“For example, despite our claim that civilians in enemy countries are innocent, their deaths as “collateral damages” are not given the moral weight of deaths of American combatants.”(639)

If we respect innocent humanity globally as much as we respected the humanity of members of our own communities then we would be less cavalier in sacrificing innocent lives in wars with other countries.

Problems:
Assumes the right not to be attacked but not the right of self defense which means there is no way to protect that right

Has some problems actually working

Discussion question: We initiated violence with Iraq in 2002, we started the war. Is the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent war able to be defended by an argument of a pre-emptive strike in the interest of our own self defense?

Conscription:
“The primary moral argument against conscription or the draft is based on autonomy. The draft, which puts the draftee at risk for death or permanent disability, is a violation of a person’s liberty rights.”(639)

Can we force members of our community to sacrifice their lives in order to protect the safety of that community?

“Living in a county of one’s own volition and benefiting from its protection and advantages creates a prima facie duty of fidelity or loyalty to that country. There is considerable debate, however, about what this duty entail. Do we have a duty to fight for our country or at least not to undermine our country’s war efforts?...What about instances where one’s own government is unjust?”(641-642)

Just War Theory and initial questions

What is war?

Is war ever morally justified?

Facts:
21st century 191 million people killed directly or indirectly by war.
WWI – 15 million, WWII – 27 milion
400 wars since the end of WWII.


Why go to war:
Self defense against aggressor
Desire to expand one’s territory
Religious reasons aka Holy War

“Most wars have mixed motives. For example, the current war on terrorism is a war in response to the threat of aggression that also has ideological/religious undertones in it that re portrayed by both sides as a war of good against evil with each side claiming to be doing God’s will.”(630)


Terrorism:
What is it – “involves the use of politically motivated violence to target noncombatants and create intimidation.”(630)
Used by groups who have a minority voice that want to be heard on large scale

Note on jihad: In Islam it does not mean holy war, this is something that has been assigned to it in the past couple of years in America.
Greater jihad: Struggle with self against own internal evil

Just War Theory:
Put together into a system for the first time by Aquinas. Changes the ‘eye for an eye’ justice theory to accommodate the possibility of restitution, while also implementing rules to make sure that the war is not fought with evil intentions.


Jus ad bellum:
1. War must be declared and waged by a legitimate authority
Hobbes and the state of nature:
“In civil society the authority to use violence is transferred to the sovereign whose power is absolute.”(631)
How do we determine if someone has authority?

2. There must be a just cause for going to war
3. War must be the last resort
4. There must be a reasonable prospect of success
5. Ther violence used must be proportional to the wrong being resisted

Jus in Bello
1. Noncombatants should not be intentionally targeted
Koran’s comments: wrongful aggressor, noncombatants, and last resort
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Principle of Double effect:
“According to this principle if a course of action, such as bombing a town, is likely to have two quite different effects, one legitimate and the other not, the action may still be permissible if the legitimate effect was intended and the illicit effect (e.g. the killing of civilians) unintended.”

2. The tactics used must be a proportional response to the injury being redressed


What about Jus ante bellum?

Mary Anne Warren - The Moral Significance of Birth

She argues for the fundamental right for a women to make her own decision about her body.

“Unlike “genetic humanity’ – a property possessed by fertilized human ova- sentience and self-awareness are properties that have some general relevance to what we may owe another being int eh way of respect and protection. However, neither the sentience criterion nor the self-awareness criterion can explain the moral significance of birth.”(108)

A fetus may have some sensory experience but a mouse has sensory experience and we would not grant a mouse equal moral standing as a person, so just because it can feel pain and pleasure does not necessarily make it human. “They have sensory experiences, but, as Tooley points out, they probably do not yet think, or have a sense of who they are, or a desire to continue to exist. It is not unreasonable to suppose that these facts make some difference to their moral standing.”(109)

She makes an argument regarding awareness and sentience that gives hierarchical priority to the mother because she already possesses these things where it is in doubt that the fetus does. “Other things being equal, it is surely worse to kill a self-aware being that wants to go n living than one that has never been self-aware and that has no such preference. If this is true, then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that neither abortion nor infanticide is quite as bad as the killing of older human beings.”(109)

She concludes:

“[T]o extend equal legal rights to fetuses s necessarily to deprive pregnant women of the rights to personal autonomy, physical integrity, and sometimes life itself. There is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin. That is why it is birth rather than sentience, viability, or some other prenatal milestone that must mark the beginning of legal parenthood.”(112)

John T. Noonan Jr. - An Almost Absolute Value in History

“The most fundamental question involved in the long history of thought on abortion is: how do you determine the humanity of a being?”(103)

The question of when does life begin requires first answering the question what is it to be human. His answer “[I]f you are conceived by human parents, you are a human.”(103)

He is arguing that life begins at conception. He does this by arguing against the two other most common points given for the beginning of life. They are viability (when the fetus is able to survive outside the womb) and when the brain waves start and the fetus is able to begin to have experiences.

He attacks viability by saying that it is too inconsistent of a point in time to be the beginning of life. Also there is a chance that technology will remove the need to be at the womb at all which would make the concept of dependence on the mother a non-issue. He argues that at the core of the viability debate is that pre-viability the fetus is reliant on the mother, whereas post viability it could survive outside of the womb. He counters this by saying:
“The most important objection to this approach is that dependence is not ended by viability. The fetus is still absolutely dependent on someone’s care in order to continue existence; indeed a child of one or three or even five years of age is absolutely dependent on another’s care for existence; uncared for, the older fetus or the younger child will die as surely as the early fetus detached from the mother.”(103)

He attacks the ‘ability to experience as the beginning of life’ argument by saying that the ability to have experiences is not what makes us human. Where as there are certain experiential requirements to define oneself as a baseball player, there are not such requirements to call oneself a person.

“It could be argued that certain central experiences such as loving or learning are necessary to make a man human. But then human beings who have failed to love or to learn might be excluded from the class called man.”(103)

After denying these two other points for the beginning of life he argues that life begins at conception. His argument rests on the probability after conception for a fetus to develop into a “reasoning being, possessed of the genetic code, a heart and other organs, and capable of pain.”(105) The probality prior to conception for the spermatozoon or the oocytes to actually become human beings is extremely minute, but after conception there is a 80% chance that it will develop into a fetus. This drastic increase in the probability of developing marks a good point for him to say that life has begun, because left to its own devices it has a high chance of doing so.

Judith Jarvis Thomson - A Defense of Abortion

Instead of arguing whether or not the fetus is a person or when life starts she grants the fetus temporary personhood for the sake of the argument.

She makes the distinction between an acorn and an oak tree. An acorn has the ‘potential’ to be an oak tree but is not considered one. Similarily a fetus has the potential to be a person, but is not one yet.

She argues that there are two prima facie moral truths at stake:
1) Every person has the right to life (the fetus has been granted personhood for the argument)
2) The mother has a right to decide what happens to her body

One might presume that the life of a person(1) is most important, but Thomson intends to show that special circumstances of a pregnancy where the life of the mother is in danger make the life of the fetus less important than #2

The Violinist Analogy:

Imagine that someone was plugged into unwillingly to use your kidneys or whatever in order to survive. You were an unwilling participant. You have the ability to unplug the person at any time, but if you do it will end the life of that person because they are unable to live unplugged. Surely #1 is a moral consideration here, the life of the violinist plugged into you is of moral value and would be considered immoral to unplug him. Your right to your own body, #2, is being violated but it does not outweigh the moral value of #1. (There is much to argue with this, but we will grant it truth just because it is a maybe)

If you change the scenario and make it that if you don’t unplug the violinist that you will die. Now not only is your right to your body being violated (#2) but also someone is forcibly taking your right to your own life, violating the moral principle laid down in #1. Thomson says that you can’t justify violating two moral principles in order to keep one.

unplugging the violinist = is a moral bad in that it violates #1, everyone has a right to life

Taking the life of the unwilling person plugged into the violinist = is a moral bad on both #1 and #2. It takes the life of the person plugged in while at the same time violating #2 by not allowing someone to decide what happens to their body.

“If anything in the world is true, it is that you do not commit murder, you do not do what is impermissible, if you reach around to your back and unplug yourself from that violinist to save your life.”(94)

If you compare this analogy to abortion for the sake of the mother, then surely the mother has the right to defend her own life against someone forcibly trying to take it. Or in other words, if the life of the mother is in jeopardy if she carries the fetus to term then she should have the right to opt for an abortion to save her own life.

She then talks about what right to life the fetus has and modifies #1. One may have the right to life, but this does not entail that everyone has the right to everything that they need and that we ought to provide it for them. For example, if someone I don’t know somewhere I don’t know ‘needs’ a kidney to survive, I have no moral obligation to give him that kidney. It might be very kind of me to do so, but nobody has the right to hold me down and take my kidney.

The burglar analogy:
“If the room is stuffy, and I therefore open a window to air it, and a burglar climbs in it would be absurd to say, “Ah now he can stay, she’s given him a right to the use of her house- for she is partially responsible for his presence there, having voluntarily done what enabled him to get in, in full knowledge that here are such things as burglars, and that burglars burgle.” It would be still more absurd to say this if I d had bars installed outside my windows, precisely to prevent burglars from getting in , and a burglar got in only because of a defect in the bars…after all you could have lived out your life with bare floors and furniture, or with sealed windows and doors. But this won’t do – for by the same token anyone can avoid a pregnancy due to rape by having a hysterectomy, or anyway by never leaving home without a (reliable!) army.”(97)

She wraps up her position by stating that she thinks that there are circumstances where an abortion is morally permissible but that there are also situations where it is not especially if the reason for an abortion is not because there is any great burden being placed upon the mother. “It would be indecent in the woman to request an abortion, and indecent in a doctor to perform it, if she is in her seventh month, and wants the abortion to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad.”(100)