This question has been keeping me up for the past few nights, I can't seem to put it to rest. Maybe someone here can help. Do the ends justify the means? The example I've been using is would you rather kill a serial killer directly, or through your inaction let that killer kill twenty other people? My philosophy is that there is no "indirect cause of death", and that if you have the ability to prevent that killer from killing those twenty people, and you do nothing, you're as guilty as the killer himself (just to make this scenario fool-proof, let's say you know he is about to kill those people and the only way to prevent him from doing so is to kill him). Am I wrong? why or why not? Any help anyone can offer in this department is helpful!