Kieran Healy

Causal and Moral Responsibility

It now appears as though all of the hostages killed in the Palace of Culture theatre died from the effects of the gas the Russians used rather than from gunfire or the direct action of the terrorists. The question is, how much blood is on the hands of the Russian Special Forces? At OxBlog, David Adesnik thinks the Russians were brutal and incompetent in their “reckless use of poison gas”. His co-blogger Josh Chafetz disagrees, arguing that the choice for the Russians was between killing all the terrorists together with 1/8 of the hostages versus having the hostages blow up the theatre killing everyone. He thinks that’s a bitter tradeoff, but worth making. Matthew Yglesias agrees, adding that the long-term consequences of appeasing the hostages should also be taken into account. He says “It’s tragic, of course, that those people died, but it’s also wonderful that the majority of hostages were rescued. More broadly, however, the standoff wasn’t fundamentally about saving the lives of the hostage, cold-hearted as this sounds. The goal had to have been trying to deter future atrocities…”

Matthew embraces realpolitik a little too quickly for my liking—- one wonders what other means he could justify with this reasoning—- but I think I agree with the basic intutition. Cases of this sort are horribly difficult to reconcile with moral principles we think we’d like to support, which is why moral philosophy is horribly difficult to do (as opposed to moral certainty, which is very easy to do).

Let’s assume that the choice really was as stark as it seems: 800 dead at the terrorists’ hands or 117 by the Russians’. We might also need to assume that there wasn’t anything the Russians could have done to reduce the death toll by much—- like wait another 6 hours for an extra batch of antidote to be cooked up, for example.

Stylized versions of cases like this are common in philosophy courses. In Moral Luck, for example, Bernard Williams tells us about Jim and the Indians. Jim has been invited by the local Leader to shoot one of 20 locals lined up against a wall. He gets to pick which one. If he kills one, the other 19 go free. If he refuses, the local Leader will kill all 20. What should Jim do?

If you’ve ever been in (or taught) a class where this comes up, you’ll know that students tend to have three stock responses: (1) Be a Utilitarian, pick some poor unfortunate at random, and kill her. The greater good is thereby served. This is a tough choice, but the utility of the many must outweigh that of the few. (2) Be a Kantian and refuse to choose someone to kill. Twenty people then die, but Leader is responsible for their deaths, not you. Besides, you ought not treat someone as a means to an end. The life of, say, Indian #12 is not an expendable item to be written off as the cost of achieving a goal, however noble. (3) Reject the case as unfair and absurd.

The problem with (1) is that you are the one who pulls the trigger, and the logic for your action holds all the way up to killing 19 out of the 20 people. Beyond that, how can you possibly calculate the ulility sum, anway? What if the Indian you shot dead would otherwise have gone on to Harvard and developed a cure for cancer? Even if you don’t look that far ahead, how many dead hostages will your realpolitik tolerate? 250? 401? 799?

The problem with (2) is that, although you are not directly causally responsible for the deaths of all 20 people, you know for certain you could have saved 19 had you acted differently, and you also know you could have acted differently. Beyond that, are you confident that the distinction between an act and an omission is strong enough to save you from moral responsibility for all those deaths? What would people’s reaction have been if the Chechens had blown up the theatre while the Russian forces stood outside, doing nothing? Would David Adesnik have been able to write essentially the same post, accusing the Russians of brutality and incompetence?

The problem with (3) is that you are standing behind an Armored Personnel Carrier on 1st Dubrovskaya Street and there are 800 people trapped in the building across the road.

Unanticipated Solution

Option (4): Canine out.

You seem to be raising two separate objections to what you call “realpolitik” and what I would call “consequentialism.” In your discussion of option one in the Jim and the Indians case you point out that it’s not really possible to know what all the consequences are. In your discussion of my post, you seem to be offering a more standard Kantian line that this kind of means-ends reasoning will conflict with first-order moral intuitions in many cases. I don’t have an answer to the first objection, I think it’s more-or-less a knockdown against the general thesis of consequentialism (note how Parfit totally fails to discuss it in Reasons and Persons which is probably the best defense of consequentialism out there). The second objection, though often made, doesn’t really sway me. So much the worst for first-order intuitions. Holding with Kant that you’re somehow “not responsible” for deaths that it was totally within your power to prevent just seems silly, even though one will want to say that Leader is, perhaps, more responsible since he caused the problem in the first place.

You’re right that there are two issues. The consequentialism part is just whether you (I don’t mean you personally) are prepared to sacrifice 117 hostages to save the rest. The realpolitik part is whether you’re not even paying that much attention to the actual hostages, but have bumped up a level of analysis to look at the longer-term consequences—- the degree to which you think the decision “wasn’t fundamentally about saving the lives of the hostages.” The Jim and the Indians case speaks more to the former than the latter.

You say “So much for first order intuitions,” which is fair enough, but someone on the other side of the fence can make a symmetrical move. The simple Kantian response, where the 20 people end up dying, violates our intutitions as much as the simple Utilitarian response. So it’s not simply a question of bravely deciding to bite the bullet. Which bullet to bite is the problem, more like.

The Jim and the Indians hypothetical is new to me but it seems there’s a fourth choice which, to me, is the obvious one. When the Leader gives you the gun to shoot one Indian, you shoot the Leader. Maybe you and all 20 Indians then die, but you’ve at least killed one bad guy, you’ve fought back, and – in my mind – you haven’t done anything that’s not justifiable homicide. And perhaps most importantly, you haven’t passively accepted your fate by playing the game according to the Leader’s rules. I think that’s what the Russians opted for: fighting back and I think it worked in the near term by saving a lot of hostages and in the long run by discouraging this type of suicide hostage-taking.

I think Mike’s idea clearly falls under (3), as would committing suicide once you got the gun. And there’s nothing to say there isn’t an infinite number of other choices which tweak or ignore the assumptions as they see fit (e.g. hold the gun on the leader as you free the hostages, which would undoubtedly be the most morally unassailable proposal).

Putting oneself in the position of the Russian tactical commander, you have to assume certain things about the information available. Were the troops experienced? Was the commander experienced? Was equipment & antitode medicine available? Were human experiments known and were they applicable? Were observers able to report on the progress of the gassing or did they have to guess? It’s different if you go in to such a decision with expert advice that you can expect 1% casualties (which is the rule of thumb for Western research into non-lethal weaponry), or going in with full expectation of 15-20% casualties (probably up to 150 when it’s all over).

Was there a “You told me it was safe!” scene afterward? (I suspect not, actually.) Was there a pre-raid casualty assessment, something Western agencies would routinely do? (Possibly, but even if so, probably much more cursory.) This is roughly the Russian version of the “Take the shot!” scene in The Peacemaker.

But then, that’s part of the key here—we’re dealing with Russians, who are notoriously utilitarian. This is the culture that, faced with Napoleon’s vast army drawn from most of Europe, decided to burn its own capital and lay barren most of the farmland along the route there and back.

Freon gas may have been involved, too. Since it was pumped through the ducts of the A/C system, what if the refrigerant was pushed out, too? Freon is heavy and deadly. It EATS oxygen. Just a thought. Since the Russians are naming the agent they used … but have engineers actually looked at how it was delivered? It wasn’t brought in by the pizza delivery guy. Fer shur.

Freon gas may have been involved, too. Since it was pumped through the ducts of the A/C system, what if the refrigerant was pushed out, too? Freon is heavy and deadly. It EATS oxygen. Just a thought. Since the Russians are naming the agent they used … but have engineers actually looked at how it was delivered? It wasn’t brought in by the pizza delivery guy. Fer shur.

Freon gas may have been involved, too. Since it was pumped through the ducts of the A/C system, what if the refrigerant was pushed out, too? Freon is heavy and deadly. It EATS oxygen. Just a thought. Since the Russians are naming the agent they used … but have engineers actually looked at how it was delivered? It wasn’t brought in by the pizza delivery guy. Fer shur.

How should the brain-dead die?

I’ve been tracking The Terri Schiavo case [*] and I think it presents some interesting ethical issues. The background here is that Terri Schiavo had a stroke about 13 years ago and has been persistently vegetative ever since. Her husband…