Essay About Classical Example Of Smith And Old Cousin

Killing Vs Letting Die
Premise 3 of this argument is false. There is no intrinsic difference between killing someone and letting them die. This argument is based on the idea of consequentialism, where we measure the morality of action entirely based on the consequences. Therefore since both killing and letting die lead to the same end result, they are morally equivalent. Even though this goes against most people’s intuition, intention does not change the morality of a situation. Take the classical example of Smith and Jones, both of whom stand to gain a large inheritance if their 6 year old cousin were to die. In short, Jones has the intent to drown his cousin in the bathtub by pushing him down and holding his head under water. However the push knocked his cousin unconscious and Jones stood by, if necessary, to hold his head underwater. But the push was good enough to keep him unconscious and Jones staged the scene as an accident. This is the same plan that Smith has to kill the nephew, however as Smith enters the bathroom he finds his cousin has slipped accidentally and lies drowning in the water. As did Jones, Smith stands at the ready to hold his cousin’s head underwater. But this again is not necessary. As it goes, Smith let his cousin die and Jones killed him. If you view the two situations to be equally terrible, then you cannot deny that killing in and of itself is worse than letting die. By electing to act through inaction in a way that explicitly results in death effectively connects “killing” to “letting die.” With this context in mind, the only apparent differences between these two terms are that of spelling and denotation. Morally, there is no difference between them. They are both just mechanisms of a procedure that ultimately results in death. To summarize, extrinsic factors ultimately play no part in differentiating the morality of killing and letting one die.