Lecture 1: Killing (the written version is co-authored with Christina Dietz)

Abstract: There has been a good deal written about the moral significance of the contrast between killing and letting die. The canonical contrast here is between cases where someone’s death is the result of some positive action, as opposed to cases where it is the result of a failure to do something. But there has been rather less written about the distinction between cases where someone’s death is counterfactually dependent on some positive action by an agent and cases where an agent kills someone, and there has in particular been little extended discussion of the ethical significance of this latter distinction. I introduce the distinction, explore its conceptual underpinnings, and then discuss its moral significance.