Scenario 1:
A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?
Everybody to whom I have put this hypothetical case says, Yes, you may. Some people say something stronger than that it is morally permissible for you to turn the trolley: They say that you must turn it -- that morality requires you to do so. Others do not agree that morality requires you to turn the trolley, and even feel a certain discomfort at the idea of turning it. But everybody says that it is true, at a minimum, that you may turn it -- that it would not be morally wrong in you to do so.
Scenario 2:
As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
Why is it that you may switch the trolley tracks though may not push the fat man? In both cases, one will die if the agent acts, but five will live who would otherwise die -- a net saving of four lives. Is our society becoming too soft on fatties? If anyone can come up with a clean way to distinguish the scenarios please share.
Here's another dilemma of a similar sort, though it may no longer apply once stem cell research progresses:
ReplyDeleteThere are 5 people who need organs in order to live. Their doctor, during a routine checkup, finds that this person's organs are compatible with all 5 of his patients and can save their lives. Should the doctor kill the one person to save the 5?
follow up to Ku's hypothetical--what if all the patients knew that this was the doctor's practice and continued to see him anyway? would there be any way for them to back out? should we let them back out once they know they will be the sacrifice?
ReplyDeleteI would totally go to that doctor, consenting to his practices. Five out of six satisfied patients can't be wrong! (although old number six might disagree)
ReplyDeletein scenario 1, the agent is acting on a switch(inanimate object). in scenario 2, the agent is acting on the fat man. we need jack bauer to push the fat man in scenario 2.
ReplyDeleteI want to clarify and entertain what Luke said. If we compare the similarities and differences between the two scenarios, one of the most significant difference is the proximity of the agent's action and the consequence. By proximity, I mean it to be a measure of the number of causal effects that lies in between the initiating action and consequence.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to see, then, how there are more intervening events in scenario 1 between the action and the undesired consequence (death of the 1), whereas there are much fewer such events when you push someone off of a bridge.
However, proximity can't explain most (if not any) other cases of moral dilemma. For example, you would not say that a brilliant but evil physician is morally justified in introducing a deadly strain of a virus into the Ganges River with the extremely calculated purpose of infecting millions of livestock such as to cause a famine, forcing people in India to feed on beef in an effort to stave off starvation, which then opens the door for McDonalds to enter the market leading to huge spikes in obesity in the global population which prompts enormous grants for research that funds the evil physician's study that now has numerous, suitable, obese non-Oriental asians necessary to run thorough tests of a drug that will save his patient's life.
Anyway, if proximity in events is a relevant factor in evaluating the morality of actions, then it most certainly be necessarily bound to some other factors such as to serve some complex function. That is, if there was a machine that can calculate and give moral judgments onto actions just as we can, then the role of proximity must certainly be an extremely delicate and subtle one.
^ Cont'd:
ReplyDeleteIt's also important to distinguish between proximity and intention, as I think those two can easily be confused for the other. It's often difficult to label a certain action as malicious if the proximity of the action and effect is great, even if the one who initiated the action did solely with the intention of inflicting harm. So, it's very possible to have two actions that vary widely in causal proximity but have equal intentions.
I think the answer depends on whether this circumstance occurs in a vacuum of practicality: if it does, the respective values of the potential victims are not to be calculated -- they all take on a character of existential equivalence (one person is equal to one person is equal to one person). You have no knowledge of their relative status in society (organizational affiliations, prospective ability to influence society,personal philosophies or faiths directing those influences if they exist, no knowledge of personal qualities and vices or financial strength, etc.) The question therefore asks us to weigh life against life. You'd be asking the same question in principle if it instead involved 6 puppies, kittens, rats, cockroaches or plants. That's not difficult to calculate. Greatest happiness principles apply: save more people and more people are happy (the people themselves and the people connected to those people.)
ReplyDeleteBut that's not reality. Its arguable that perhaps the lone man tied to the tracks was a philanthropist whose contributions guaranteed study materials of underprivileged children in Africa or something. If you knew that, and knew that, combined, the 5 people you are on a course to run over contribute nothing to society besides cash flow, the philanthropist is easily worth more than any number of these kinds of people.
For obvious reasons, that circumstance isn’t particularly interesting or enlightening either.
I ran into a samurai exhibit the other day
outlining the educational philosophies of this particular samurai village (apparently one instrumental in the Meiji Restoration.) Their key educational approach was to teach through activity, not studiousness. "Principle without activity is weakness."
The principles in question here must be translated to an a posteriori presence if they are to yield any informative conclusion. Analyzing them as they really exist, in combination with consequences unrelated to their principle morality – maximizes our potential to equip these considerations in reality. For questions of principle to be truly meaningful they must suffer application.
I submit that the appropriate action will consider (1) the maintenance of fabrics that allow society civilization and (2) the implications of immediately available knowledge.
Before going on, I want to make clear that I am not using practical considerations to reduce the complexity of the problem. This question informs morality not in that it considers what kind of action is best, but in that it considers under what circumstances we have a right to act. What is it right for us to do, given that one the one hand we kill, on the one hand we ignore, on another we save and on the last we denigrate society?
That last one sound rando? Here’s what I mean: any particular civilized society equips an organization constructed to secure for everyone involved in it safety and liberty. This is the role of government: to create and maintain an environment within which civilization can take place -- that is, an environment within which the question of survival presents a less pressing concern than questions of function and organization (what will you do? who will you do it for? what is their purpose, their function in society? why is it valuable?)
In order to ensure a likelihood of safety and happiness for everyone, government must necessarily outline your freedoms by limiting your powers.
Therefore, breaking your social contract and committing an action that saves life while taking it, is a violation of the social agreements civilization depends on. In circumstances where the law engineers the social discouragement of a particular solution, you are compelled not to engage in that action, whatever its relative morality. The fabric of society is preserved: no one has been unduly empowered.
If you do act, you have empowered yourself in way unfair to other citizens – especially the dude you just owned with a train. Your interpretations of right and wrong affected society using a forbidden mechanism that both (a) invaded the sole province of the government and (b) made others subject to your interpretations o right and wrong without the consent of the majority – or greatest minority -- of people in that civilization.
Further, life and death are, currently, exclusively legal areas. They are questions to be decided by those invested with control of the law (judges, politicians, or juries.) Where the law prescribes consequence for a particular action, that action must not be taken. If you pull the lever, you are committing first degree murder; if you let it go, perhaps arguing later that you were attempting to activate the break, you are absolved, even in the unlikely event that you are accused. At worst, the train company manufacturing that train would be accused as liable, lose the suit, go bankrupt and you lose your job. But you would be subject to no social penalty, only a financial one.
In an area where the law prescribes action (even in the form of inaction) none should be taken to ensure that unnecessary unrest does not disrupt the safety and liberty of a civilization.
I’ll get to my second point (“ (2) the implications of immediately available knowledge”) tomorrow. I am exhausted.