Intentions are hard to isolate
Agents may redescribe what they intend, and complex plans make the boundary between means and side effect unstable.
Contemporary philosophy · 1920–2010
Foot
Foot reconnects moral judgement with the evaluation of living things, while using sharply structured cases to test intention, duty and harm.
Philippa Foot was a British philosopher central to the revival of virtue ethics in twentieth-century analytic philosophy. She criticised non-cognitivist accounts of morality, developed an account of natural goodness and introduced the trolley comparison while discussing double effect.
EthicsAgency
The question she enters
The question Foot enters
Why should the direction of a trolley change what it is permissible to do with one person's life?
The central move
Keep the structure of action in view
Foot resists judging action by totals alone. Her discussions of double effect distinguish harms an agent intends from harms foreseen as side effects, while her later work treats human virtues as forms of natural goodness assessed within the life of our species.
Key ideas
Terms that carry the argument.
- Trolley problem
- A comparison between redirecting a threat and using a person as the means of stopping it, designed to test moral distinctions.
- Doctrine of double effect
- The claim that intending harm can differ morally from foreseeing the same harm as a side effect.
- Natural goodness
- Evaluation of human characteristics and actions against the needs and forms of life characteristic of human beings.
- Virtue
- A quality such as justice or courage that corrects human vulnerability and enables sound practical action.
Where the view strains
Objections and limits.
Nature does not settle every norm
Critics question whether facts about characteristic human life can justify moral conclusions without importing contested values.
Sources and routes
Read the work. Follow the argument.
Primary texts
Where to meet the position.
- PhilPapersThe Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double EffectPDFThe paper that introduces the trolley comparison while testing intention, side effects and duties not to harm.Oxford Review, number 5, 1967, pages 5–15; the repository PDF notes its later inclusion in Virtues and Vices and identifies minor stylistic amendments. · Direct full-text PDF from the PhilPapers archive. Checked Aug 2026.
- Oxford AcademicVirtues and VicesWebEssays on virtue, moral reasons, abortion, euthanasia and the trolley comparison.Oxford Academic record for the second edition of the essay collection, published by Oxford University Press in 2002. · Publisher record, contents and chapter abstracts; complete access may require purchase or an institutional subscription. Checked Aug 2026.
- Oxford AcademicNatural GoodnessWebA mature account connecting moral evaluation with life-form judgements.Oxford Academic record for the Oxford University Press monograph published in 2001. · Publisher record, contents and chapter abstracts; complete access may require purchase or an institutional subscription. Checked Aug 2026.
- Oxford AcademicMoral BeliefsWebAn influential challenge to the view that moral judgements merely express attitudes.Official Oxford Academic chapter record for Moral Beliefs in the 2002 second edition of Virtues and Vices; first published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1959). · Publisher abstract and bibliographic record; complete access may require purchase or an institutional subscription. Checked Aug 2026.
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