Ann Frank & the Boiling Baby
Jeremy GayedMy last essay discussed the classic thought experiment the “Ann Frank dilemma”, in which the subject is asked to imagine that he lives in Germany during the Third Reich, that he is hiding Ann Frank and her family in his attic, and that an SS officer appears at his door and asks him, “Are there Jews in your attic?” The thought experiment, at least on its face, forces a Hobson’s choice between the intrinsically deontologically immoral act of lying and the consequentially immoral act of exposing Ann Frank’s family.
I suggested that a Christian seeking guidance from the Scriptures ought to conclude that must approach such–and all–moral problems deontologically, and, specifically to the Ann Frank dilemma, ought not lie. The bulk of the essay examined the Biblical commandment against lying, and concluded it does not prohibit deliberate falsehood per se, but rather establishes a particular relationship between the speaker and the listener, invoking rights and duties related to truth-telling that are not violated by misleading the SS officer.
Although my conclusions are deadly serious, they have the appearance of a trick when taken in the context of the Ann Frank dilemma. The subject is no longer forced to choose between acting immorally and endangering others; he can avoid both. Voila–the insoluble dilemma is dissolved. To a skeptical eye, the solution looks too pat; a little too conveniently tailored to the problem. As a courtesy to skeptics, I will (eventually) apply the same approach to a different problem–the Boiling Baby dilemma. Before I apply my methodology, however, I’d like to see how readers, using other methodologies, respond to the dilemma:
Imagine that you are a federal law enforcement agent in New York. In the course of your duties, you capture an Islamic terrorist just before he can set off a nuclear explosive in the heart of the city. The terrorist tells you that another bomb has been planted in Chicago, where your family happens to live, that he knows where it is, and, unless it’s stopped, it will be detonated within the hour. The catch is that he won’t tell you the specific location. Other agents attempt to torture the information out of the terrorist, but he knows that he only has to hold out for an hour to prevail. Torture is completely ineffective.
Another agent locates the terrorist’s newborn son. The baby is brought to the interrogation room and handed to you. One of the other agents prepares a large pot of boiling water.
You are certain of four things: (1) the terrorist is telling the truth about the existence of the second bomb and his knowledge of its location; (2) there is no way to find the bomb before it detonates without being told its location; (3) if the bomb is not located and defused, it will detonate and kill hundreds of thousands of people; and (4) if you begin to boil the baby, the terrorist will eventually reveal the location of the second bomb.
What do you do, and what is your moral justification?
December 4th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I have to say that I’ll take my chances with the search parties finding the bomb. I can’t boil the baby.
For one, the child is too young to be considered a combatant. He can’t have developed conceptions and convictions to be used as grounds for placing him on the enemy’s side. If you harm the baby, you might as well start killing babies and harvesting their organs to save people’s lives. All you are doing is sacrificing one life to save other jeopordized lives.
Second, I know this is a given, but in reality you couldn’t have certainty about the effectiveness of boiling the baby. The terrorist might lose his mind at the site of his dying child. He is radical enough that he might consider a martyr’s death to be the best thing for his child. You can’t count on the torture of the baby to work.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:11 am
While in completely real life your second point is appropriate, John, for the purpose of this example it is also irrelevant. You’re right, but that’s not the point.
I hesitate to say what I absolutely would do in such a situation. My family would be in immediate jeopardy — my judgment would likely be compromised. But from a remove I say it would be wrong to boil the baby. Unlike the Mosaic examples, the baby is not the member of a cursed nation and I’m not being given an explicit divine command to leave none alive. The child is innocent and cannot, as a rule, be used as a means to an end, regardless of the lives at risk.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
This has happened on 24 several times. Jack Bauer is of course genius enough to stage the children’s deaths. And it ends up working…
Actions are immoral primarily by their intent. There is a distinct moral primacy to an act’s intention, because it is the ontological source of being for all moral (=voluntary =rational) actions. Furthermore, the means of an action, and the action’s intent, cannot be morally separated. It is rationally (and thus, morally) impossible that an action’s means be evil, yet its intent be good. This is true because the means of an action are entirely encompassed by its intent; i.e. the ‘why’ of an action always morally precludes the ‘how’. This is because the ‘how’ is always psychologically born of the ‘why’. Foreseen side effects are not included in the ‘how’. These are, by definition, effects which are not intentionally intrisic to the intent of the action. If the terrorist’s baby were in a safehouse, and by bombing the safehouse, we were to destroy the terrorists computer, which was necessary for the circuitry of the remote bomb, then the death of the baby is a side effect. It is not connected with the causational ‘intent’ of the action… …On the flip side, foreseen side effects are related to the ‘intent’ of an action in that they are judged to amount to less total evil. Thus, consequentialist methodology is actually imbedded in the action, but in an a priori sense, and never within the analysis of the action itself.
Misapplications of double effect are common in modern ethics. I believe the 4th certainty above that you have posed, i.e. our certainty how the terrorist will react, is a sneaky way of trying to export the boiling from the intent of the action, or to disregard the boiling of the baby as a means, by arguing that the terrorist’s reaction is a sort of foreknown means to the ultimate end, which is unquestionably good. But the problem is that boiling the baby is still a primary means, and eliciting information from the terrorist, a secondary means.
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“Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental…” Summa Theologica Part II-II, Q. 64, A. 7
December 5th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Are states held to the same moral codes as individuals? This is a question I have never had answered in a way that left me satisfied and smiling. That said, if I am interrogating a terrorist, I assume it is safe to believe I am acting as a representative of the state and should be held to the state’s moral code, which may or may not be the same as one I adhere to as an individual. I am not Jack Bauer when I boil the baby, I am the hand of Uncle Sam. I just don’t know if there is a difference…
December 5th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Interesting question, Benji. Whether or not states share the same moral code as individuals, it seems that the proper answer to your question is that, even when acting on behalf of the state, you the individual are still subject to the moral code of individuals. Otherwise, it seems that all people acting on behalf of, for instance, the Stasi, or the KGB, or Che Guevera’s death squads were — so long as they understood their actions to be necessary to the defense and preservation of society — acting morally. But if all, or even most, of the agents of a state acting on its behalf are acting morally, it seems paradoxical to say that the state’s actions themselves could still be considered immoral.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
So you are asserting that a state and individuals should be held to the same moral standards because a man can never act without acting on his own behalf. Another way to state your position might be that even if the state’s moral code is different than an individual’s, it is arbitrary because no man can ever act on behalf of the state without also acting as an individual and is therefore personally responsible for all his actions.
I see that a state may wage war, and individuals may only murder. I don’t know much about just war theory, but that seems evidence that state’s are not in fact held to the same moral code as individuals in which case you or I or Jack Bauer may boil away assuming the state were at war, and you are a just war theorist, or have some other philosophy justifying war, and are acting on behalf of the government.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
False premise, Benjamin. Homicide isn’t always wrong. The moral and formal law provide for a number of circumstances where killing is justified, sometimes presumptively so, as in the case of self-defense from lethal threats. How does your rebuttal fare against the argument that war is, like self-defense, merely another the circumstances in which a man can take life without moral error on his own behalf or on behalf of the state?
December 5th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Thank you for pointing out that killing may be at times be justified. Your comment strengthens my point by identifying that war may be morally justified as a kind of state vs other body self-defense act (or something akin to this). The man may have no basis on which to kill the baby on a personal level (the baby is not an immediate threat to the man), but the state may have an interest in its own protection against some other body (the baby, as part of the other body, is a threat to the members of the state, which threat may be neutralized by boiling the baby). If the man is acting on the state’s behalf, his action is justified.
What you point out is that man and state really may have the same moral code. However, as men are the actors enforcing the will of the state, a man might be confronted with a action that is paradoxically right and wrong at the same time.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:29 am
In order to get to the heart of the matter I will assume that there are no alternatives that allow me to lead the terrorist to believe the baby is being boiled without actually committing the act though this would have been my solution to the dilemma.
Given no other alternative to gaining the information or saving the lives of Americans and specifically my family I would boil the baby. My moral justification would be that my first responsibility is to my family and if the only way for me to save my family is to take another life I’m willing to do that. I may not even be convinced that this is morally right but I’ll live with guilt and any necessary punishments as long as I know that my family was saved. This reminds me of a story I heard in Church youth group where a draw bridge operator chose to let his son be ground in the gears of the bridge to enable the train (and it’s passengers) to pass safely. It’s supposed to represent God allowing Jesus to die and it’s supposed to be an example of grace I suppose - I’d let the passengers die instead.
Secondly, my responsibility is to my fellow countrymen. The terrorist, in my opinion, put his own family at risk when he decided to bring them (or raise them)into the US and to commit an act of terrorism - the death or injury of his son is on his head.
But my moral justification does nothing to answer your moral dilemma. Your question asks whether or not a person can be morally justified to boil the baby if this prevents another atrocity. The baby is innocent, as opposed to the SS of the previous dilemma or the terrorist himself in the present situation. To be honest I’ll look forward to your solution. I’ve given what I’d do but I think what should be done is to let the baby alone and trust that a just God will protect the innocent lives endangered by the terrorist. This is against my nature but I can’t rationalize another response.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:12 am
A just God may protect the innocents, but then again, he may not. Not by our definition, anyway. He doesn’t protect the thousands of innocents who die every day in civil wars or from famine, for instance. “A just God will protect them” reminds me of the joke about the man hanging off a cliff who prays to God to save him. Another climber and a helicopter both separately come by to help him, but the man waves them away because God will save him. Eventually the man falls to his death and, upon reaching heaven, asks God why He didn’t save him. “Well,” answers God, “I sent you a climber and a helicopter. What more did you want?” The meaning, of course, is that usually we are God’s instruments.
That being said, I simply don’t think there is justification, either in scripture or in holy tradition, to justify the explicit use of a completely innocent life as a means to an end. There seems to be no justification whatsoever for commiting an act whose immediate (as opposed to indirect) end is the death of an innocent. If you, Benjamin, can find such a justification, please let me know.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I don’t pretend there is a scriptural justification for taking an innocent life. I also assume that scriptural guidelines, explicit and otherwise, apply to individuals, and not necessarily to nations.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Of course a just God, whom Christians also claim to be an omnipotent God, could chose to let those Americans die as well as my family. The difference between the climber and that helicopter scenario and my playing the role of a federal agent is that my hands are tied to help without directly violating said just and omnipotent God. Perhaps part of the answer lies in your observation that God allows “innocent” people to die everyday though I’m at a loss for how exactly. My point was simply that in a position where I am seemingly powerless I am left with only the option to trust that God will act and that justice will be had. We call that faith.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I wouldn’t boil the baby. I would hope that if I were the one in Chicago, and my family member were the one with the baby, he or she wouldn’t boil the baby and would instead let me die. Quite frankly, I would far rather die in a nuclear bomb blast than be saved at the cost of having a loved one boil a baby.
The fact is, the deaths of my family members, and each and every person I love, are inevitable. They will happen sooner or later, at a time which is ultimately arbitrated by God. If I accept as a premise that moral laws do exist, beyond simple self-interest or utilitarianism (which is sort of like self-interest on behalf of one’s species, instead of one’s self), then I am not at liberty to commit an overtly, hideously evil act simply on the questionable presumption that it will result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. (God laid down the moral law in question with a much more accurate idea than I have as to what will ultimately create the greatest good - that’s something I accept in following moral laws rather than my own utilitarian estimates to begin with.)
Frankly, taking a liberal view of the afterlife (which I tend to do), my family members and those thousands of other people will probably be much happier in heaven than they were in Chicago. The tragedy of their deaths is simply that they all happened all at once instead of happening spread out over the years. (If we want to get really abstract, its only our mortal limitations in time and space that make 100,000 people dying at the same time and in the same place seem any sadder or more tragic that 100,000 people all dying at separate times in separate places. It hurts their families just as badly either way - but only in the former case does the nation mourn with the families and provide outpourings of love and support.) On the other hand, unlike the deaths of my family members, the damage to my soul, if I boiled a baby in an attempt to prolong lives I valued, is completely avoidable. The baby’s pain is also completely avoidable.
It just wouldn’t make sense, committing an avoidable atrocity in order to delay an inevitable event - the deaths of everyone in Chicago. If God wanted to provide me with a means to prevent the bomb from going off, he would certainly be capable of providing a means that didn’t involve torturing an innocent child. A “choice” to boil a child alive is not really a choice at all - morally, I’d consider my hands completely bound. The lives of my loved ones would be where they always have been - in God’s hands. (This choice would be a lot tougher if you changed the scenario so the baby would be boiled either way, and the only difference was that if I personally boiled the baby, Chicago would live. I don’t think it changes the analysis, but I’d be less likely to do the right thing.)
As a sidenote, I agree with Benjamin that scriptural guidelines apply to individuals but not governments. (Governments are soulless and I don’t see them as moral or immoral actors - utilitarian principles combined with a hands-off respect for inalienable human rights are the best they can aim for.) However, I don’t think working for a government excuses someone from obeying a higher moral authority. If acting on behalf of the state excused a person from their individual moral duties, then no one killing and torturing Jews in the concentration camps of WWII committed any sins. That’s ridiculous. We need to create and support governments that don’t require us to violate our moral duties, or, failing that, we need to have the courage to refuse to accede to our government’s demands when our religious principles require it.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Anne, I adore your summary of utilitarianism. Right on. British atheists and many who talk about ’speciesism’ rarely consider the idea that publich health, and international interest, are genuinely born of traditional morality, and not consequentialist morality. And traditional morality is about things like developing the beatitudes, which are gloriously anti-utilitarian. Blessed are the used, and blessed are the useless.
Whether an action is intended by the state, or by individuals, is I believe a moral variable entirely independent of an action’s moral value. Soldiers may kill for both just and unjust causes, all sanctioned by the state, and pedestrians may kill for both just and unjust causes, all sanctioned by the individual. Following duty is no excuse for immoral state-sponsored actions, and the absence of state-involvement (law) is no excuse for actions done in private. It is up to the individual, and his or her moral responsibility, to weigh all decisions against one’s own reason, and to weigh one’s reason against natural law and divine revelation.
Even if I were king, in wartime, acting from pure motives, I would not boil the baby. As I have said above, the baby is not a foreseeable side effect, but a primary means. There are plenty of situations (of genuine double-effect) in which it would be ok that a baby gets boiled. But this is not one of them. Actions are properly defined moral or immoral only with reference to reason, and to individual responsibility. Not to consequences, utility, or situation.
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‘Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. Hence Augustine says (De Verb. Dom. [The words quoted are to be found not in St. Augustine’s works, but Can. Apud. Caus. xxiii, qu. 1): “True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good.” For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): “The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.” Summa Theologica II-II, Q 40, A1
December 10th, 2007 at 12:45 am
You have setup a situation which cannot be evaluated. We do not know WHY the terrorist has planted the bombs, or what the repercussions will be if they do not detonate.
Let’s pretend, for the sake of coming at an answer, that Bush is holding the baby over the pot of boiling water. There is no doubt in his mind the terrorist has planted the bombs for the simple fact that he is muslim.
Generally, we assume that the value of life is in being alive. This problem forces us to examine if this is its true value. Perhaps the value of life is only found in death. Some great men find honor in death. It is a reasonable assumption.
In this situation, who would find the most honor in death?
The people of Chicago would certainly be honored, but would most likely be reduced to a statistic and recognized as a whole. The honor would be divided some 2.9 million ways. Forgetting the fact that this is a cute cuddly baby, the sum honor would only be for saving the life of a single individual.
However unlikely it would be that the public would be made aware that a baby was boiled on their behalf, the baby would receive the honor of saving the city of chicago. He would be spared the toil of life. He would also be hard-pressed to find a more honorable way to die if he were spared.
Choice is irrelevant in this situation because neither party, the city or the baby, is privileged enough to make one.
Boil the baby. You are justified and your family lives.
December 13th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
“It is rationally (and thus, morally) impossible that an action’s means be evil, yet its intent be good.” — Tom Cook
This is 100% false, and history is chalked full of examples of moral acts that were subjectively moral (that is, their intent was good), but objectively evil (that is, their end was bad).
I will say that an act cannot be good without a pure intent, but an act must be objectively good — irregardless of intent — before we call it a good act.
December 14th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I’m a little confused by the assertion that an act is “objectively” good or evil based on its end, or its result. First of all, its pretty difficult, practically speaking, to say what the ultimate “end” of any given act is. For example, say some 14th century oddball decides to free a rat that’s trapped and starving somewhere, with the good intention of being kind to animals. (In the 14th century, he’d be quite an oddball.) As a result, the rat doesn’t starve. Good end? As a result, the rat has a chance to spread its plague-carrying fleas to other rats, and most of the community dies of the bubonic plague. Bad end? As a result, labor becomes valuable, leading to the rise of the middle class and all the political and educational advances that go with it. Good end? Its impossible for us to know what the large scale, long term consequences of any act will be. If an act’s ends have to be good before we can call it a good act, we shouldn’t call anything a good act.
An act, itself, and a person’s intentions in performing the act are within the person’s control. The ultimate result of the act, once performed, is not within their control. I don’t believe the objective morality of someone’s actions should be judged on the basis of eventualities that are often both unpredictable and uncontrollable.
When I was in college, a father of four died pushing a baby carriage (the baby in it was not his) out of the path of a drunk driver. Arguably, the baby he died saving could grow up to be a new Hitler and his own children might themselves grow up to be deliquents, rather than saints, because of the trauma of his death. Would that bad end mean his act, in giving his life to save the baby, was not a good act? Of course not. Outcomes don’t make something moral or immoral.
I think Tom Cook’s point with the above quote is that you can’t possibly have good intentions when you intend to boil an innocent baby alive. It’s somewhat self-evident that your immediate intentions, holding that baby above the boiling water, are bad, whatever your philosophical justifications.
December 16th, 2007 at 1:57 am
k. Let’s put Jesus on the cross.
Would you say that self-martyrdom is a valid means? He had the safety of his family and friends to think about. The state of Judas’ (the one doomed to destruction) mental health and physical well-being. Can you risk anyone’s life, even your own, to achieve a good end? Where is the line between suicide and victimization?
At some point a person is responsible for Jesus’ death even if the person or group isn’t Jesus. If “it is rationally (and thus, morally) impossible that an action’s means be evil, yet its intent be good,” can the redemption of the world be good?
December 18th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
1. When I said ‘it is rationally impossible’, I meant that insofar as the evil means of an action are included in its intent, the intent can never be good. And I also argued that the specific rational (voluntary, willed) means of an action are subsumed under its intent. Can you easily assume that?
2. Tom Lyons: when you say ’subjectively good’, that formally includes both the means and the intent of an action. When you say ‘objectively evil’ you may be talking about two things: either the species or object of the action, which is an intrinsic part of the action, (intrinsically in the mind, rational, planned, voluntary) or you are talking about downstream evil effects which were either unplanned or probabilistically planned, in which case you would have to defend the action from ignorance, or by the principle of double-effect, respectively. When you say an act must be objectively good, apart from its intent, I fully agree. However, remember that actions are only moral or immoral with reference to the human will, which is a rational, voluntary, mental, planned, willed event. (Ethics ultimately is closely related with epistemology, because it has to do with the relations of our mind (an its spiritual free will) with surrounding objects, and the degree of certainty between the two.)
3. Jeremy Oldfather: Your point about Jesus and suicide is interesting. Cf. Gen. 50:20 ‘you meant to harm me, but God intended it for good’… what does this actually mean? It means that two contrary wills are struggling. One is evil, one is good. Let me assure you, God never intends evil, he is passive in relation to it, he merely allows it to have a temporary, parasitic relationship which is dependent on goodness and existence. And to kill the Incarnate God, obviously requires a great deal of evil. BUT: it is evil foreknown but not predestined. Satanic intelligence is transcended by divine intelligence. If God ‘knows our thoughts’ he also knows Satan’s. I think it is a profound misunderstanding to think that Jesus in essence killed himself. It is in the same vein as the pseudo-heretical Calvinist idea of ‘penal substitution’, that Jesus voluntarily suffered an eternity of hell in our place.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Jeremy, will you be applying your methodology here anytime soon, or is that to be released in a separate essay?