 Some have developed this kind of criticism by arguing that the appeal of the principle of double effect is, fundamentally, illusory: an agent’s intentions are not relevant to the permissibility of an action in the way that the proponents of the principle of double effect would claim, though an agent’s intentions are relevant to moral assessments of the way in which the agent deliberated (see David McCarthy (2002) and T.M. Scanlon (2008). That an agent intended to bring about a certain harm does not explain why the action was impermissible, but it can explain what is morally faulty about the agent’s reasoning in pursuing that line of action.