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Resolving Ehtical Dilemmas

ecspose
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Posted 05/29/07 - 10:08 PM: Subject: Resolving Ehtical Dilemmas	#1
I've recently been encountering this so-called ethical paradox where there are five people on a train track and a train is on a collision course for them. The only way to save them is to switch the track to where another person is working, killing the one but saving the five. Most people theoretically choose to save the five over the one in this situation. The next dilemma is where there is a runaway trolly with five people in it, and one large person standing beside/above the track. He is large enough that his mass would stop the trolly and save the five, but he would most certainly perish if you were to push him into its path. What do you do? Most people there say they would not choose to sacrifice the one for the many. The results of these answers have been used to say things like moral choices are logically unstructured, or deeply mysterious. One can carefully discern a notable difference between the two scenarios however, one that probably so subliminally drives our choices. For someone who is not already potentially endangered, we have no right to introduce them to new threats. People who are involved in hazardous circumstances partake of the same risk, impartially. A fairer comparison to the first example would be a large man already standing on the trolly track, whom you could choose to either push out of the way or not. I think in this case most people would save the many, and let the one die. I've also heard it spun where there are five men who need organ transplants, and one healthy person who could be sacrificed to save the five. In this case to make a fair comparison the situation would have to be changed so there was one man who needs five organs, one each from the five other men. While the five others could all be saved from a single piece of the one man. Again, in this comparison I'm pretty sure most people would choose saving the five over the one. Why the difference? It's a factor of circumstantial dependence, the weight of letting the one man live is directly connected to the counterweight of letting the five men die in the one comparison. In the other comparison, letting the one man live is not inherently causative to the fate of the other five, merely incidental. You don't cut up a healthy person for organs, it has nothing to do with him being more valuable, but imposing on him a position he is rightfully exempt from. That is, unless the hospital has a reputation for cutting up healthy people when the need arises, that would make it his own risk. Edited by ecspose on 05/29/07 - 10:16 PM. Reason: clarity
Self replication leads to self replication

TheJoker
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Posted 05/29/07 - 10:28 PM:	#2
Would it be wrong in your perception if the one man saved himself on the train leaving the other five to their fates?

ecspose
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Posted 05/29/07 - 10:59 PM:	#3
Good question, The answer is no. A man has a right to save himself. Any person with a choice can not be expected - or forced - to sacrifice themselves for a supposed greater cause. When it happens it is only a gift, not an obligation.
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Wolfman
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Posted 05/29/07 - 11:12 PM:	#4
You might want to check out this thread, ecspose. The questions are nearly identical: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/25814/1/ To answer your questions, I do not feel obligated to save any number of people if it entails committing an intentional transgression.
"That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil" - Nietzsche "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." - Aristotle "It is better to do one's own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins." - Lao Tzu "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." - Kant

TheJoker
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Posted 05/29/07 - 11:14 PM:	#5
ecspose wrote: Good question, The answer is no. A man has a right to save himself. Any person with a choice can not be expected - or forced - to sacrifice themselves for a supposed greater cause. When it happens it is only a gift, not an obligation. Nods. Makes sense to me.

ecspose
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Posted 05/30/07 - 12:27 AM:	#6
Wolfman wrote: You might want to check out this thread, ecspose. The questions are nearly identical: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/25814/1/ To answer your questions, I do not feel obligated to save any number of people if it entails committing an intentional transgression. Thanks Wolfman, I actually searched for a similar thread before posting. I don't understand why you assume gross responsibility for a situation where your only effect was the net result. If you see what I'm saying. Do you believe things operate according to some plan outside of your wisdom to tamper, or do you simply not want to taint your hand with a bad result, no matter if it's the lesser of two evils? TheJoker: The way I see it, most of our lives and individual success relies to some degree on a rule of exclusivity. Living in a world with limited resources is different from creating it, and there is nothing moral about sentencing yourself to misery, just as there is nothing immoral about avoiding it. It doesn't matter if it's yourself or someone else. We are communal creatures, but that is only because it is generally helpful to help others. Where our return dwindles away is where we stop towing the community line.
Self replication leads to self replication

Wolfman
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Posted 05/30/07 - 12:38 AM:	#7
ecspose wrote: Thanks Wolfman, I actually searched for a similar thread before posting. I don't understand why you assume gross responsibility for a situation where your only effect was the net result. If you see what I'm saying. Do you believe things operate according to some plan outside of your wisdom to tamper, or do you simply not want to taint your hand with a bad result, no matter if it's the lesser of two evils? I hope you do not find it disingenuous, but I would rather cite a post from the previous thread in order to explain my logic (I am taking a Kantian approach in this particular case): "...In part, my omission helps to cause the deaths of five people. This is because the train hitting five people counterfactually depends on me not pulling the switch. However, it is misleading to say that I am the cause of the deaths. The omission is but one link in the chain of causal connection. I would assert that the act of commission is worse than the act of omission in this case. Example #1: Martha and Mr. Wilson are doing yardwork. Martha sees Dennis aiming his slingshot at Mr. Wilson, ready to fire. If Martha warns Mr. Wilson, he will move out of the way and no one will get hurt. If she does not warn him, he will get knocked unconscious. Martha chooses not to warn Mr. Wilson, and he is knocked unconscious by a rock fired from the slingshot. Example #2: Martha picks up a slingshot and a rock. She puts the rock in the slingshot and fires it at Mr. Wilson, knocking him unconscious. They produce the same result, but the actions were different. But despite these examples, Kant still holds that actions precede consequences in terms of moral importance. Why is the act of commission in example #2 worse than the act of omission? Because it constitutes an intentional transgression in the form of a crime, (using Kant's definition of crime in the context of The Metaphysics of Morals) which can be imputed to the rational agent. The commission (pulling the switch) is an intentional act, and violates external law. Therefore, the act of commission is unjust. The omission of the unjust action (not pulling the switch) that leads to bad results can not be imputed to the rational agent, for there was no intention. By pulling the switch, you intend to cause the death of one to save five. By not pulling the switch, you do not intend to cause the death of five (even if the resulting consequences are forseeable!) In this case, this is the distinction between the act of commission and the act of omission. This also answers your question: the Kantian man would leave the switch alone."
"That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil" - Nietzsche "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." - Aristotle "It is better to do one's own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins." - Lao Tzu "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." - Kant

Pete
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Posted 05/30/07 - 06:10 PM:	#8
Wolfman wrote: The omission of the unjust action (not pulling the switch) that leads to bad results can not be imputed to the rational agent, for there was no intention. By pulling the switch, you intend to cause the death of one to save five. By not pulling the switch, you do not intend to cause the death of five (even if the resulting consequences are forseeable!) I'm not entirely clear on your response to the Trolley Case. You definitely think he is not required to throw the switch. But do you think he is permitted to throw the switch? If you think it is impermissible because the agent intends the death of the 1 as a means to saving the 5, I have some doubts about this. He does, by throwing the switch, kill the man (death via commission), but killing a man is not the same as intending his death as a means (or as an end). Moving the train to another track is the agent's intended means towards saving the five; the death of the man is merely a side-effect. Moving the train to another track would save the five whether or not the 1 was on it. In ecspose's second case, where the 1 is pushed onto the track in order to stop the train, the agent does intend his death as a means towards saving the 5. So both cases involve killings (death via commission), but in only the second case is the death intended. This may be why most people think throwing the switch to save 5 is permissible, but pushing someone onto the tracks to save 5 is not. In the second case, the agent is aiming at the victim's death in a way which affects the permissibility of his action.

swstephe
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Posted 05/30/07 - 07:33 PM:	#9
All those "paradoxes" are useful to illustrate the emotional bias people have to pure consequentialism. People with brain damage in an area of the brain will have no problem at all with any of those situations and seek out the apparent "rational" solution. I think the idea of there being a "rational" answer begs the question of which school of ethics they are applying. Ethics is a system which tries to match logical rules to a generalized emotional bias in the first place. The bias shows that people can not accept being even indirectly responsibile for a taboo act in an attempt to discount a particular school of ethics. The organ-transplant scenario, for example, is in response to utilitarian schools which try to seek the "greater good", by showing that it conflicts with the taboo against directly harming a single individual in any pursuit. You could modify those situations toward more socially acceptable scenarios. What if the only way to save 5 people would be by jumping in front of the train yourself? A lot of people, in theory at least, would find this acceptable since self-sacrifice is possibly even honored in society. Applying the same modification to the last scenario becomes a bit more problematic -- just to push the human bias to the extreme -- would you give up your healthy life so your child could get a transplant from you in order to save her life if there were no other option available? That pits utilitarian ethics and personal bias against society's taboo against suicide, and shows a preference for society's biases over other groups.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

ecspose
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Posted 05/30/07 - 08:24 PM:	#10
Wolfman, Actions precede consequence - sort of like killing with a smile? You can weigh the act with more importance than the consequence, but why would the intention differ from the end result? You may not be the exclusive cause of their deaths, but actively making a decision about it one way or the other, makes you an active participant whether you like it or not. I think external law ceased as soon as you were made aware of the situation, you are automatically an external cause just like any of the other causes leading up to the catastrophe. But then, ethics is not for inanimate objects. Wolfman wrote: Why is the act of commission in example #2 worse than the act of omission?... I would ascertain that this is humour and does not reflect real world circumstances. If a wife were to allow the neighbour's kid to fire a real rock from a real slingshot at the back or her elderly husbands head, actually knocking him to the ground unconscious while she maybe shared a giggle with the lad, I would find this wholly as morally disruptive as actually picking up the slingshot and firing it herself. It would be abuse. Can you give me another example? ...By not pulling the switch, you do not intend to cause the death of five (even if the resulting consequences are forseeable!) I would say in either case you are not intending them to die. It's like the old problem where you don't want to do something, but you do it anyways. Well obviously if you did it then it was something you wanted to do, otherwise you wouldn't have done it. So how can you do anything you don't want? I think it has something to do with ultimate choice being different from actual choice. Let's say there was a chemical leak and you have an option of turning a valve one way and having it destroy a small corn field, or turning the valve the other way and it wipes out five fields filled with corn. Well if you cared about the food or the environment you would change the direction to where it would cause the least damage. Why would it be any different with people? Aren't we both valuable? What if it wasn't clear where the spill was going to happen, without your interference it would be random. What if the track was half-switched and could jump in either direction? Would that change the decision to not interfere, or make it easier?
Self replication leads to self replication

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