'permissibility' is an acceptable word in written English.
You can use it to refer to whether something is allowable in a particular situation, for example: "The permissibility of the activity depends on the laws in the jurisdiction."
Such a model does not seem able to capture or even accommodate basic deontological notions like strict cutoffs between prohibited and permissible acts, the permissibility of an act depending on more than its expected consequences, or the significance of intended versus non-intended harms and benefits.
Similarly, if the soldier who throws himself on the grenade in order to shield his fellow soldiers from the force of an explosion acts permissibly, and if the permissibility of his action is explained by double effect, then he must not intend to sacrifice his own life in order to save the others, he must merely foresee that his life will end as a side effect of his action.
Though Mr Will never returns to the argument in favour of the permissibility of baby-killing, the connection seems clear enough.
But surely we require an independent argument for the intellectual permissibility of stopping there, as if the extra-national effects are of secondary importance.Of course, as a purely descriptive matter, Lennonism is false: there are countries.
Now, as it happens, Ayn Rand actually staked out a position on the permissibility of accepting public funds in a 1966 essay, "The Question of Scholarships".
The simplest and most common argument for moral skepticism is based on observed facts: Smart and well-meaning people disagree about the moral permissibility of abortion, affirmative action, capital punishment, active euthanasia, nuclear deterrence, welfare reform, civil rights, and so on.
These include the difference between participating in highly risky missions and using suicide as a weapon, the justice of concerted confrontations (both mutually agreed and forced by one of the parties), the permissibility of military alliances with infidels, the rights of soldiers against the sovereign, and justice in the distribution of booty.
As we query how to evaluate existence-inducing acts for their moral permissibility – as well as outcomes or possible futures or worlds, for their moral betterness against still other worlds – we find that some of our most deeply held intuitions regarding the nature and structure of morality are thrown into doubt.
Does the principle of double effect explain the permissibility of switching a runaway trolley away from a track with five people on it and onto a track containing only one person?
These considerations suggest that the principle of double effect does not contain, even when the principle of proportionality is included as part of its content, a sufficient condition of permissibility for bombardment that affects civilian populations.
If the permissibility of an action depended only on the consequences of the action, or only on the foreseen or foreseeable consequences of the action, then the distinction that grounds the principle of double effect would not have the moral significance claimed for it (see the related entry on consequentialism).
