University of Notre Dame
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1995
San Francisco, California, United States of America
  •  16
    Double-Effect Reasoning: Doing Good & Avoiding Evil
    Oxford University Press UK. 2006.
    T. A. Cavanaugh defends double-effect reasoning, also known as the principle of double effect. DER plays a role in anti-consequentialist ethics, in hard cases in which one cannot realize a good without also causing a foreseen, but not intended, bad effect. This study is the first book-length account of the history and issues surrounding this controversial approach to hard cases. It will be indispensable in theoretical ethics, applied ethics, and moral theology. It will also interest legal and pu…Read more
  •  29
    Proportionate palliative sedation and the giving of a deadly drug: the conundrum
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 39 (3): 221-231. 2018.
    Among the oldest extant medical ethics, the Hippocratic Oath prohibits the giving of a deadly drug, regarding this act as an egregious violation of a medical ethic that is exclusively therapeutic. Proportionate palliative sedation involves the administration of a deadly drug. Hence it seems to violate the venerable Hippocratic promise associated with the dawn of Western medicine not to give a deadly drug. Relying on distinctions commonly employed in the analysis and evaluation of human actions, …Read more
  •  40
    Double Effect and the End‐Not‐Means Principle: A Response to Bennett
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 16 (2). 1999.
    Proponents of double‐effect reasoning — relying in part on a distinction between intention and foresight — assert that it is worse intentionally to cause harm than to cause harm with foresight but without intention. They hold, for example, that terror bombing is worse than tactical bombing in so far as terror bombing is the intentional harming of non‐combatants while tactical bombing is not. In articulating the ethical relevance of the intended/foreseen distinction, advocates of double effect em…Read more
  •  9
    Capax Veritatis: Against Student-Commodification
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 94 1-21. 2020.
  •  4
    T. A. Cavanaugh's Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession articulates the Oath as establishing the medical profession's unique internal medical ethic - in its most basic and least controvertible form, this ethic mandates that physicians help and not harm the sick. Relying on Greek myth, drama, and medical experience (e.g., homeopathy), the book shows how this medical ethic arose from reflection on the most vexing medical-ethical problem -- injury caused by a p…Read more
  •  10
    Lawrence Masek, Intention, Character, and Double Effect
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 18 (2): 194-197. 2021.
  •  10
    Relating Hippocratic and Christian Medical Ethics
    Christian Bioethics 26 (1): 81-94. 2020.
    This article articulates the Hippocratic medical ethic found in the Oath and the Christian medical ethic as exemplified in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It proposes that the Oath has a natural-law-based deontological character (as understood by Aquinas) that governs friendships of utility (as understood by Aristotle) between student and teacher and physician and patient. The article elaborates on the Samaritan’s conduct as exemplifying Christian agapeic-love. It contrasts agapeic-love with …Read more
  •  16
    This is a condensed description of the contents and overarching argument found in Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession. In that work, I maintain that the basic medical ethical problem concerns iatrogenic harm. I focus particularly on what I refer to as ‘role-conflation’. This most egregious form of iatrogenic harm occurs when a physician deliberately adopts the role of wounder. A contemporary practice such as physician-assisted suicide exemplifies a doctor’…Read more
  •  6
    In what follows, I reply to critical appraisals of my book entitled Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession. Professors Tollefsen, McPherson, and Potts separately offer these thoughtful critiques. Professor Tollefsen approaches the work from the standpoint of the physician-patient relationship. Professors McPherson and Potts both address it in terms of virtues. Potts treats the theme of virtue generally while McPherson focuses on the virtue of piety. Since vir…Read more
  •  11
    Act Evaluation, Willing and Double Effect
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 71 243-253. 1997.
  •  2
    Double-effect Reasoning Defended: A Response to Scanlon
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 267-279. 2012.
    Common morality endorses some form of an exceptionless prohibition against killing innocents. Natural lawyers employ double-effect reasoning to address hard cases involving deaths of the innocent. Current deontologists criticize DER-proponents as conflating act-with agent-evaluations. Scanlon develops this critique extensively. I respond to his criticism. He maintains that the DER-advocate tells a badly-motivated agent to refrain from an obligatory act. Thus, he asserts, the natural lawyer who e…Read more
  •  32
    Anscombe, Thomson, and Double Effect
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2): 263-280. 2016.
    In “Modern Moral Philosophy” Anscombe argues that the distinction between intention of an end or means and foresight of a consequentially comparable outcome proves crucial in act-evaluation. The deontologist J. J. Thomson disagrees. She asserts that Anscombe mistakes the distinction’s moral import; it bears on agent-evaluation, not act-evaluation. I map out the contours of this dispute. I show that it implicates other disagreements, some to be expected and others not to be expected. Amongst the …Read more
  •  57
    Anscombe, Thomson, and Double Effect
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2): 263-280. 2016.
    In “Modern Moral Philosophy” Anscombe argues that the distinction between intention of an end or means and foresight of a consequentially comparable outcome proves crucial in act-evaluation. The deontologist J. J. Thomson disagrees. She asserts that Anscombe mistakes the distinction’s moral import; it bears on agent-evaluation, not act-evaluation. I map out the contours of this dispute. I show that it implicates other disagreements, some to be expected and others not to be expected. Amongst the …Read more
  •  17
    Double-effect Reasoning Defended: A Response to Scanlon
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 267-279. 2012.
    Common morality endorses some form of an exceptionless prohibition against killing innocents. Natural lawyers employ double-effect reasoning to address hard cases involving deaths of the innocent. Current deontologists criticize DER-proponents as conflating act-with agent-evaluations. Scanlon develops this critique extensively. I respond to his criticism. He maintains that the DER-advocate tells a badly-motivated agent to refrain from an obligatory act. Thus, he asserts, the natural lawyer who e…Read more
  •  14
    Cause for Thought: An Essay in Metaphysics by John Burbridge (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 69 (1): 122-123. 2015.
  •  13
    DER and Policy
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 89 (3): 539-556. 2015.
    If viable, DER justifies certain individual acts that—by definition—have two effects. Presumably, it would in some fashion justify policies concerning the very same acts. By contrast, acts that sometimes have a good effect and sometimes have a bad effect do not have the requisite two effects such that DER can justify them immediately. Yet, a policy concerning numerous such acts would have the requisite good and bad effects. For while any one such act would lack the relevant two effects, a series…Read more
  •  24
    How We Act (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 266-268. 2005.
  • Double Effect Reasoning: A Critique and Defense
    Dissertation, University of Notre Dame. 1995.
    Double effect reasoning is a nonconsequentialist analysis of the ethical status of an agent's acting to realize an end which is ethically in the clear when the realization of such an end inextricably causes some effect the causing of which is, prima facie, not ethically in the clear. In this work, I remove certain misunderstandings which attend discussions of DER: the relation between contemporary accounts and Aquinas's originating account , the relation between the intended/foreseen distinction…Read more
  •  20
    Double-effect Reasoning Defended: A Response to Scanlon
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 267-279. 2012.
    Common morality endorses some form of an exceptionless prohibition against killing innocents. Natural lawyers employ double-effect reasoning to address hard cases involving deaths of the innocent. Current deontologists criticize DER-proponents as conflating act-with agent-evaluations. Scanlon develops this critique extensively. I respond to his criticism. He maintains that the DER-advocate tells a badly-motivated agent to refrain from an obligatory act. Thus, he asserts, the natural lawyer who e…Read more
  •  24
    Aristotle’s Voluntary / Deliberate Distinction, Double-Effect Reasoning, and Ethical Relevance
    International Philosophical Quarterly 54 (4): 367-378. 2014.
    In this essay I articulate Aristotle’s account of the voluntary with a view to weighing in on a contemporary ethical debate concerning the moral relevance of the intended / foreseen distinction. Natural lawyers employ this distinction to contrast consequentially comparable acts with different intentional structures. They propose, for example, that consequentially comparable acts of terror and tactical bombing morally differ, based on their diverse structures of intention. Opponents of double-eff…Read more
  •  20
    Carlos Aldana-Valenzuela, MD, is Chief of the Department of Neonatology at the Hospital de Ginecopediatria of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. He is also a member of the Center for Studies in Bioethics at the University of Guanajuato
    with M. L. S. Bette Anton, Claire Brett, Michele A. Carter, Pieter de Vries Robbe, Richard Gorlin, Michael L. Gross, and Matti Häyry
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 10 3-5. 2001.
  •  10
    We acknowledge with thanks receipt of the following titles. Inclusion in this list neither implies nor precludes subsequent
    with Don S. Browning, Celia Deane-Drummond, Peter Manley Scott, Malcolm Duncan, Julia A. Fleming, and Stephen J. Grabill
    Studies in Christian Ethics 20 318-319. 2007.
  •  35
    Double-Effect Reasoning, Craniotomy, and Vital Conflicts
    The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11 (3): 443-453. 2011.
    By analogy to justifications offered for craniotomy by Catholic moralists (e.g., Germain Grisez and Rev. Martin Rhonheimer), a recent instance of casuistry (by the moral theologian M. Therese Lysaught) attempts to apply double-effect reasoning and, separately, the concept of a vital conflict to justify dilation and curettage in order to preserve the life of a pregnant woman. This paper examines and rejects these bases for justifying craniotomy and D&C. It concludes with a consideration of Pope J…Read more
  •  77
    Much of Roman Catholic discussion concerning bioethical controversies, such as the surgical removal of a life-threatening cancerous uterus when the fetus is not viable, has focused on the employment of double-effect reasoning. While double-effect reasoning has been the subject of much debate, this paper argues first, that there is a distinction between the intended and the foreseen; second, that this distinction applies to the contrasted cases in such a way as to categorize foreseen but not inte…Read more
  •  131
    "Playing God" and Bioethics
    Christian Bioethics 8 (2): 119-124. 2002.
  •  24
    Act Evaluation, Willing and Double Effect
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 71 243-253. 1997.
  •  19
    How We Act (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 266-268. 2005.
  •  16
    Permissible Killing (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 49 (2): 444-445. 1995.
    Suzanne Uniacke has written an adventurous and philosophically elegant work in which she justifies the intentional use of necessary and proportionate lethal force in private homicidal self-defense. Her contribution will interest those engaged in discussions concerning the ethics of homicide.