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Continues the consideration of when it is and is not permissible to kill some to save others, by presenting a new proposal (related to an earlier one made by the author) for a Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH) for dealing with the Trolley Case and related cases. One upshot of this proposal is to show that many redirection‐of‐threat cases are not sui generis but one of a class of cases in which greater good (or its structurally equivalent component or a means that has greater good as its non‐causal flip side) may permissibly cause lesser harm. This PPH is compared with the Doctrine of Double Effect, and a morally crucial distinction concealed within the concept of ‘intending’ is pointed out. The problem then is to explain what important moral notions the PPH expresses; an investigation is made of this (focusing on the maintenance of appropriate relations between victim and beneficiaries) and of why the PPH does not govern omissions (even when there are positive rights). Concludes by examining the bearing of the PPH on the killing/letting‐die distinction, and the problem of euthanasia, also noting how its application is limited by, among other considerations, the Principle of Secondary Permissibility and the distinction between intra‐ and inter‐personal benefits.

Examine the question of whether it is morally permissible to treat people in ways ruled out by the Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH; this was introduced in Ch. 7 and provides an account of certain restrictions/constraints on killing) only for the sake of minimizing violations of the PPH itself, or whether there is a constraint on doing this. Having considered alternative grounds for a constraint in Ch. 9, Ch. 10 fleshes out a victim‐focussed, agent‐neutral, rights‐based view founded in a strengthened PPH right (constraint), which protects against minimizing violations of the right by violating the right; consideration is given to whether and in what sense minimizing violations of PPH rights by violating them would be both strictly irrational and also exhibit lack of concern for the right. Rejecting this as a route to founding the constraint (on grounds that strict irrationality would arise only if there were already a constraint (or an absolute right not to be killed)), a constraint is generated by focusing on a concern that is at the heart of the PPH and applying it to the pursuit of any goal (utility or minimization of rights violations), the chapter considers how the permissibility of minimization would alter every person's status, and examines the distinction between eliminating a right, violating it, and infringing it, focussing on the significance of negative residues of, and compensation for, rights violations. An exploration is made of whether the structure of deontological and consequentialist theories can be brought closer together via the agent‐neutral value of an inviolable status (of a certain sort), though a distinction is made between the irrationality argument against minimizing the violation of constraints, and support for a concept of the person as strongly inviolable. It is also considered whether creatures who are inviolable are therefore more important entities whose existence makes the world a better place and whether belief in a constraint affects both how good the world is and the effect of acts done in accord with or in opposition to the constraint; further examination is made of the futility of permitting minimization of rights violations by violating rights (‘futilitarianism’) by contrasting the role of utility vs rights per se in motivating minimizing.

This chapter examines four agent-relative principles that, if true, entail that systemic effects do not give Group O (the group of judges with correct moral judgment) any reason to adhere to the law in suboptimal-result cases, even if additional deviation will push the system past its deviation density threshold (see chapter 11). The principles that entail this result are ones that assign moral significance to intention, means, spatiotemporal proximity, and intervening agency. The chapter argues that we must abandon, qualify, or demote all of these principles if we wish to support the principle that judges have moral reasons to obey a nonpermissive rule. Adjudication theory should be foundationally agent-neutral.

Lecture II first considers Thomson’s proposal for why many people believe—mistakenly, she thinks—that a bystander may turn the trolley. It then considers an alternative proposal (called the Principle of Permissible Harm), and a possible justification of it, that would explain why both the conductor and the mere bystander may turn the trolley (or shift people threatened by the trolley), thereby killing someone else. The principle focuses on how the trolley comes to be turned or otherwise stopped from killing the five. While some criticisms of the principle are presented, the lecture considers how something like this principle relates to the moral distinction between killing and letting die, and whether crucial parts of it can help justify sometimes killing more people to save fewer. The lecture concludes by considering whether cases that involve redirecting a threatening agent rather than a device should be considered as “trolley problems.”

Examines the question of whether it is morally permissible to treat people in ways ruled out by the Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH; this was introduced in Ch. 7 and provides an account of certain restrictions/constraints on killing) only for the sake of minimizing violations of the PPH itself, or whether there is a constraint on doing this. Ch. 9 examines further one approach to the Selection Problem introduced in Ch. 8 that arises in justifying restrictions/constraints, namely, agent differentiation: the fact that something would be done by me rather than by someone else. Traditional victim‐focussed views (the victim's right or the inappropriateness of the relation in which he would stand to those for whom he would be sacrificed constrain and make it wrong for the agent to kill) are contrasted with four revisionist (agent‐relative and agent‐focussed) views on dealing with cases in which one person is killed in order to save others from being killed. Different notions of the self, act‐scenes, negative factors to be avoided, temporal dimensions, doomed victims, and degrees of self‐indulgence are examined in relation to the problem of justifying the constraint. One revisionist view is shown to bear a crucial similarity to the traditional view.

The first three chapters of Part III of the book (Chs 8–10) examine the question of whether it is morally permissible to treat people in ways ruled out by the Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH; this was introduced in Ch. 7 and provides an account of certain restrictions/constraints on killing) only for the sake of minimizing violations of the PPH itself, or whether there is a constraint on doing this. Ch. 8 first examines the arguments Samuel Scheffler presents against both restrictions and constraints, and his defence of prerogatives not to maximize good or minimize harm (his Hybrid Theory); since Scheffler's views on prerogatives are in some ways related to those of Bernard Williams, the latter's views on integrity are also considered. The criticism made of Scheffler in Sect. I of this chapter is concerned with his view of the supposed gulf between prerogatives and restrictions, and consideration is given to whether too great an emphasis on an active/passive distinction does not underlie his strong opposition to restrictions and whether (by a transitivity argument) he is committed to no restrictions even in pursuing personal non‐optimal projects. Possible similarities between prerogatives and restrictions (or constraints) are considered, but the focus is on crucial differences with respect to minimizing the violation of prerogatives and restrictions, these differences giving rise to what are called the Value and Selection Problems; solutions to the Selection Problem based on asymmetries in victims and differentiation between agents are considered. Sect. II of the chapter re‐examines the foundations of a prerogative (not to maximize good or to minimize harm) that Scheffler located in the personal point of view (PPV); rejecting the sufficiency of Scheffler's account, the chapter focuses on freedom of choice over entitlements in creatures who are ends‐in‐themselves, discussing briefly the idea of reasons generated from the PPV in such creatures; finally, an examination is made of the arguments Shelly Kagan has constructed for and against prerogatives, including the Negative and Positive Arguments, and the Argument from Vividness.

This comment asks us to imagine that we have discovered a principle that completely matches our intuitions about the various actions that might be performed in all the different versions of the trolley problem. Would that constitute a solution to the problem of providing a plausible principle to cover these various cases? Not necessarily, since the principle might turn on distinctions that have no obvious moral significance, and we might be unable to provide the principle with a compelling and plausible rationale. It argues that this might well be the situation we find ourselves in with regard to the book’s proposed solution to the trolley problem: even if the principle does match our intuitions in how it sorts the cases, it is difficult to see why the distinctions on which it turns should matter, and appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this comment believes the book has not provided the principle with a plausible account or rationale.