Still innocents are killed, and massively so, whether by drones, by miscalculations and accidents on the ground or in the air, or collaterally, as the unintended but foreseen consequence of actions aimed at critical military targets.
First, while the strict distinction between intended consequence and foreseen consequence may be plausible in theory, it is, in practice, extremely difficult to identify people's intentions with that level of precision.
It was, at most, a welcome, although perhaps foreseen consequence of treatment and care.
Again, in order to employ DDE one needs the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences of the 'act itself.' On Anscombe's view some actions are in and of themselves immoral, regardless of the consequences one intends to bring about in the performance of the action, and certainly regardless of what one foresees as a result of the action.
At the root of the principle is the distinction between intended and foreseen consequences of an action.
Yet many criticisms of the principle of double effect do not proceed from consequentialist assumptions or skepticism about the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences but instead ask whether the principle adequately codifies the moral intuitions at play in the cases that are taken to be illustrations of the principle of double effect.
Some opponents of the principle of double effect do indeed deny that the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences has any moral significance.
These independent considerations are not derived from the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences and do not depend on it (Davis (1984), McIntyre (2001)).
Controversy about the principle of double effect concerns whether a unified justification for these cases of non-intentional killing can be provided and if so, whether that justification depends on the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences.
