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Foresight and Blame: Eight Cases That Break the Doctrine of Double Effect
Why We Still Disagree on Responsibility for Unintended Harm

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About this book:

Foresight and Blame: Eight Cases That Break the Doctrine of Double Effect We deploy missiles knowing civilians will die. We titrate morphine knowing breath will stop. We approve algorithms knowing some patients will be sacrificed, sanctions knowing children will starve, and autonomous vehicles programmed to choose who survives. In every case, decision-makers insist they never *intended* the horror—only foresaw it as a tragic side effect of a necessary good. For seven centuries, the Doctrine of Double Effect has been the moral shield behind which institutions take refuge, drawing a bright line between what we aim at and what we merely tolerate. But what if that line is a fiction we tell ourselves to sleep at night?

*Foresight and Blame* drags this venerable doctrine out of the seminar room and into eight brutal crucibles where it shatters: saturation bombing, terminal sedation, corporate pollution, pandemic triage algorithms, hostage rescues, economic siege warfare, climate transition sacrifice zones, and the pre-programmed ethics of self-driving cars. Through meticulous case analysis, the book exposes how the distinction between "means" and "side effect" dissolves under scrutiny—revealing a pattern of linguistic gerrymandering that lets power repackage atrocity as accident. The architecture of plausible deniability turns out to be a hall of mirrors.

This is not another trolley-problem exercise. It is an investigation into the psychology of evasion and a demand for a moral vocabulary equal to the complexity of modern power. By the final chapter, you will understand why foreknowledge without intent is not innocence—it is complicity wearing a mask. If you have ever wondered how good people authorize catastrophic harm and call it virtue, this book holds the mirror up.

Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: The Architecture of Unintended Harm
  • Chapter 1: The Genesis of the Doctrine: From Aquinas to Modern Moral Philosophy
  • Chapter 2: The Closeness Problem: Untangling Intended Means from Foreseen Effects
  • Chapter 3: Case One: Strategic Bombing and the Calculus of Collateral Casualties
  • Chapter 4: Case One Unpacked: The Illusion of the Purely Military Target
  • Chapter 5: Case Two: Terminal Sedation and the Fog of Palliative Care
  • Chapter 6: Case Two Unpacked: Agency and the Redefinition of Bodily Death
  • Chapter 7: Case Three: Corporate Reckoning and Toxic Runoff
  • Chapter 8: Case Three Unpacked: Profit Motives Versus Foreseen Externalities
  • Chapter 9: The Psychology of Ascription: How We Assign Blame in Ambiguous Contexts
  • Chapter 10: Case Four: Algorithmic Triage in Public Health Crises
  • Chapter 11: Case Four Unpacked: Code, Prediction, and Automated Culpability
  • Chapter 12: Case Five: Tactical Police Intervention and the Shield of Hostages
  • Chapter 13: Case Five Unpacked: The Boundary Between Self-Defense and Shared Threat
  • Chapter 14: Case Six: Sovereign Sanctions and Civilian Starvation
  • Chapter 15: Case Six Unpacked: Coercive Diplomacy and Structural Deprivation
  • Chapter 16: The Epistemic Defense: Ignorance, Willful Blindness, and Foresight
  • Chapter 17: Case Seven: Climate Policy, Energy Transition, and Sacrificed Communities
  • Chapter 18: Case Seven Unpacked: Intergenerational Burdens and Distributed Harm
  • Chapter 19: Case Eight: The Autonomous Vehicle Dilemma on Public Roads
  • Chapter 20: Case Eight Unpacked: Programming Survival and the Elimination of Moral Luck
  • Chapter 21: Beyond Double Effect: Consequentialist and Deontological Alternatives
  • Chapter 22: The Legal Impasse: Translating Moral Permissibility into Criminal Mens Rea
  • Chapter 23: The Myth of Neutral Action: Why Means Always Shape Ends
  • Chapter 24: Restructuring Moral Responsibility: Foreknowledge as Complicity
  • Chapter 25: Living with Inevitable Harm: A New Framework for Blame and Foresight
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Author:

Emily U. Stewart

Published By:

MixCache.com Extended Catalog

Type:

Nonfiction

Date Published:

October 1, 2026

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