MENTAL MODEL · M13192

Doing vs. Allowing Harm

CultureHigh supportEthics

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Updated 2026-09-10

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Is there a moral difference between causing harm and merely allowing harm to occur? If not, then permitting passive euthanasia should count against active euthanasia as well; if there is, then our failure to prevent millions of children from dying of malnutrition, dehydration, and measles should attract the same protest. The distinction is standardly paired with double effect and the trolley problem.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Draw responsibility lines: separate what one brings about from what one fails to prevent, fixing the boundary of duty. - Assess policy: test whether institutions package preventable harm as a natural outcome. - Test intuitions: use paired cases to check whether moral judgments stay consistent.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

The intuitive mechanism is that one who causes harm makes the world worse than it would have been without her action, while one who allows harm merely fails to improve an already bad process, so duties to prevent evil and not to produce it appear asymmetric. Counterfactual analysis reduces the difference to causal structure, and critics reply that choosing a baseline is itself a normative judgment.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Practice this model in one real situation:

Ask first what would happen without the agent's action, establishing the counterfactual baseline. 2. Decide whether the agent made things worse or failed to stop an ongoing process. 3. Check whether the baseline itself embeds a moral judgment. 4. Weigh rights, intention, and duty together rather than deciding from the distinction alone.

Check to track your progress (stored locally)

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Source support: Explicit

link
plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/ZH · Explicit
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