Pushing intuitive ethical buttons...
May 22nd 2007 22:56
Should you pull the lever?
Most people say yes, and "This judgment is not limited to particular cultures. Marc Hauser, at Harvard University, has put similar dilemmas on the web in what he calls a 'Moral Sense Test,' available in English, Spanish, and Chinese (http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu). After receiving tens of thousands of responses, he finds remarkable consistency despite differences in nationality, ethnicity, religion, age, and sex": Peter Singer "Reason with yourself", Guardian, Tuesday 20 March 2007.
But if you say "no"... Well, how about if there were ten people on one side, and one on the other. Or a million on one side, and one on the other?
And if you say "yes", would you push a fat man into the tracks to get the same effect?
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James Rachels (1941-2003)
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"[S]uppose that Wilt Chamberlain is greatly in demand by basketball teams... He signs the following sort of contract... In each home game, twenty-five cents from the price of each ticket of admission goes to him... The season starts, and people cheerfully attend his team's games... Let us suppose that... Wilt Chamberlain winds up with $250,000, a much larger sum than the average income and larger even than anyone else has. Is he entitled to this income? Is this new distribution... unjust?" -- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)
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Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929-)
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But surely "fetuses" are human persons, with a right to life?
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A PETA anti-fur video, apparently of a Chinese fur farm.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Judith Jarvis Thomson. The images for the trolley problem came from this website and this website. The fetus came from this website. The image of James Rachels came from this website.
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Comment by Damo
Firstly the senario is completely staged and designed to force an attitude along a fiction path. So we are using fiction to determine what to do in real ethical dilemas. This an trick that even the ancient Greeks used to justify slaverly. I believe it was Plato who argued that though slavery is undesirable Athens could not exist with out it. Therefore regretable as it may be for the slaves they must remain so.
In the world of rhetoric these are know as the sadistic alternatives. The saddist offers you two alternatives both equally bad. You must kill your wife or your son or he will kill your whole family. Same story different situation the house is on fire and you can either save your son or your disabled son. The question presuposes the answer in its asking. In other words it is a leading question where you can only condemn yourself as a monster or in agreement with the questioner.
Having had closer contact than I would wish with terrorism I have seen all the dilemas mentioned about in a much more desperate war setting. The philosophical position is the same.
"It is better that one man die for the sake of the people."
It is not a question of fiction for me, because suicide bombers use that motto to justify their actions. In 1990 the government policy of killing all the young men of any small village in order to get at one terrorist. "For the sake of the nation good men must die."
It begs big questions in my head:
Why kill a good person?
What good can you achieve by killing a good person?
Who gains by the murder of a good person?
Fictional senarios are without doubt useful to some degree but must always been as such. Propaganda often based directly upon fictional senarios and often they are created merely as propaganda.
In the case of the violinist, the senerio is so impossble to achieve in the real world that is laughable. Therefore it has to be classed as propaganda. Even if we accept that it is possible to this situation occur Judith Jarvis Thomson has avoided any other possibility.
Such as what if the person was not a violinist but the one person alive who can prevent the world from being destroyed? By changing the type of person tethered to the unwilling victim her logic dictates that the world must be destroyed. (Ah I love playing the saddist in these games.) Yet I have been just as dishonest and created question that is not a question at all. It is an implied statement justified with fictional evidence.
From my viewpoint this is a very poor position to argue from.
Perhaps I could even accuse some of the above of having a position then creating the fictional senario to match it.
What are the ethical implications of that possibility?
Comment by Brenton
Dr Spin
Tales From The Other Side
Blip Blog
Gadget Museum
After readin Damo's spiel you would have to admit some things - the man didn't know that his action could cuase the violinist to be inserted into him
- The Violinist has existed and made something of his life and is known about and loved and has already contributed to society.
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
Concerning the first case, the one of the trolley: how can you know if the guy you're killing to save 100 will not save 101 in the future? How can you know if among these 100 you're saving there is not 99 serial killers?
No one can measure the value of life (from Nietzsche), so in these cases no action is good. And no one is bad. But you can't tell what is the right thing to do.
Cheers!
PS: For the ones interested, the place where Niezsche explains his position:
Twilight of the Idols, Chap2. 2.
Comment by ZanyNenk
Music Is Classical
The Middle East Front
Comment by ZanyNenk
Music Is Classical
The Middle East Front
P.S. sorry about the duplicate response.
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Comment by D. Armenta
The Florida Keys and Everglades
The Black Sheep Chronicles
What constitutes bad manners?
The male mystique
Debate Fan
L.A.M.P.
Bet you five bucks he was saying something like "Suppose this fetus turns out to be the greatest man in the world?"
Suppose the one man was Mozart and the 100 were child molesters? Even assuming Mozart had suddenly blown up into a gigantically obese man?
Instead of standing around supposing, I'd be taking some action, like yelling "Hey! Train's coming!! Get the hell off the tracks!!"
Speculation--feh! Waste of time when you could be gathering facts or taking action.
Too many variables in speculation!!
Comment by D. Armenta
The Florida Keys and Everglades
The Black Sheep Chronicles
What constitutes bad manners?
The male mystique
Debate Fan
L.A.M.P.
arguedebate. Any point, every point.Comment by Henrah
InsightBlog
As is obvious now, these scenarios are effectively telling you to choose the lesser of two evils, and I think that defeats the point of the experiments. Surely they are wanting to collect true data on what people would do in such a situation? By forcing the participants to make an ashamedly evil decision they are voiding the data they are collecting for the purpose of discovering general human ethics and morality, because it is obviously unethical, immoral and downright evil to purposefully choose death upon someone.
If presented with these scenarios, I would like to choose a third option: attempt to save as many people as I can.
Would any of you walk away from a situation where you are being called upon to help?
The action of inaction (i.e. walking away and not pulling the lever or saving any of the fictional people) is plainly not right... but what if inaction due to being confused and pressured upon resulted in the death of everyone involved in the scenario except yourself?
Ok now I'm being suckered into the fictional scenarios, trying to answer them wisely. That cannot be successfully done because they themselves are unwise. If presented with these experiments, I shall decline to participate.
Comment by BigCountry
Wilt Chamberlin was entitled to the monies because the the team offered it to him to get him to play. It was the team owners' money and they offered it as a part of a contract. How could that be unjust or unfair?
For the fiddler, get a dialisys machine and let the other person get on with their life while the musicians' group is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The person with the good kidneys is NOT obligated to be plugged in to the Fiddler.
Abortion is wrong. Period.A woman's right to choose is the biggest bunch of bullshit in the news media today. Did the woman not exercise her right to choose when she had unprotected sex while not being on birth control? She screwed up, and now she want's to kill her baby because it's inconvienient. Act responsibly and you won't need to be inconveinienced. "But what about rape and incest?" What about them? The fetus didn't rape the woman, nor did it commit incest with her. And sometimes, Bad things happen to good people. Sad but true.
If you aren't ready to be a Mommy, then maybe your lover IS ready to be a Daddy. And if he isn't, there are thousands of infertile couples the world over who would love to have your throw away infant to raise as their own
Smith and Jones were both in the wrong.
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
Something I have to ask about (and please understand that I'm not pushing any belief on you by asking this question, neither pro nor anti-abortion) -- how is the sci-fi fiddler example relevantly different from an abortion example?
In the fiddler example, you wake up attached to another lifeform, and you have to stay connected for 9 months for that lifeform to survive.
In an abortion case, you wake up one morning attached to another lifeform, and you have to stay connected for 9 months for that lifeform to survive.
Comment by BigCountry
I was going to argue that the person with the good kidneys had no say in the matter, but was indeed, the victim of a crime. But I had to throw the pregnant rape victim in there, too.
The only argument I have, and I believe it's a telling one, is technology. There are very effective dialisys machines. I used to drive the county bus and I had regular passengers I took to dialisys every other day. It's a crappy life, but I would imagine it's better than all of a sudden being a Siamese twin with an unwilling other half.
There is no way to keep an aborted fetus alive. If there ever is an "artificial womb" invented, it'll change the way humans establish families, along with so many other things that there's no telling what will happen to society as a whole.
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
Another way to put this: -- Thomson is saying, "Consider scenario A, where these are the only options." And I think you're responding, "I don't want to consider scenario A. I want to consider scenario B, where there are more options."
I'm not saying, of course, that fiddler and abortion aren't distinguishable.
For instance: maybe it's the case that we have stronger moral duties towards children than adults, and to family than strangers; so if we woke up attached to an infant fiddler whom we were related to, then we'd be morally obliged to stay connected.
Or maybe pregnancy is simply a special case. So, for instance, if someone took their basic moral principles from a religion, they might scan down the list of commandments in that religion and see the prohibition "Thou shalt not abort a child". In which case, the fiddler and abortion scenarios would not be distinguishable, except for the fact of the prohibition.
So, assuming one wants to play the game of "consider scenario A" in the first place, I think there's all sorts of possibilities for distinguishing the two cases, depending on what moral beliefs you start with, but I'm not sure that dialysis machines is one of these possibilities.
Comment by BigCountry
but when all is said and done, I have to admit, I truly wouldn't know how to answer that one. But, being a soldier (naval Sailor, actually) I do recognise my duty to make sure the music lovers' get totally f%$#ed up, before they did the same thing to someone else..
I know, that's not even an issue insofar as the scenario goes.
But here's one that is; what if I decide that I don't care to live that way and decide to off myself? Do I have that right? Who's going to have a big enough pair to stop me?
I myself feel that suicide is the coward's way out, but I also beleive that we all have the RIGHT to suicide.