Violent Deaths, Vicious Preferences, and Bare-Differences: A Reply to Hill

ABSTRACT

Hill [AJP, 2018] argues that Rachels’s famous bare-difference argument for the moral irrelevance between killing and letting die fails. In this paper, I argue that certain features in Hill’s cases might lead our intuitions astray. I propose new cases and suggest that they support the conclusion that, in itself, intentional killing is morally equivalent to intentional letting-die.

KEYWORDS:

• killing and letting die
• the bare-difference argument
• contrast cases
• James Rachels
• euthanasia
• applied ethics

Notes

1 That is, the feature is morally equivalent to the variant feature. See, e.g., Kagan [1988: 5–6], Perrett [1996: 133], Oddie [2001: 317–18], and Kopeikin [forthcoming].

2 I have changed ‘Jones’ to ‘Smith’ to keep it constant that Smith kills and that Jones lets-die.

3 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this.

4 Thanks to two anonymous reviewers at AJP for raising this objection.

5 I will also put aside the debate about whether we intend or merely foresee deaths due to poverty, because this is complicated and orthogonal to the present discussion. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

6 There are exceptions to this pattern (e.g. so-called ‘angels of mercy’) who claim to be motivated by benevolence to kill their patients, but (i) their benevolence seems misplaced and paternalistic and (ii) many medical serial killers have vicious motivations like thrill-seeking, selfish gain, or the exerting of power and control [Khin Khin et al. 2014]. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

7 Special thanks to Graham Oddie, Michael Tooley, Scott Hill, Stephen Hetherington, and two anonymous reviewers at AJP.