Morality poll

[AWoodside]

I'm going to be a nit for a minute here. Sure there are a lot of external problems associated with the doctor case (trust in doctors, future profit loss, etc) that serve to differentiate it, if it were happening in the real world, for what it's worth this is not the way these types of ethics hypotheticals are meant to be done.

Most philosophers of ethics would say the relevant moral difference between the two cases is something called "double effect" (I think the name is right). In the train case you are diverting the train away from five people, the person on the other track just happens to be there. It was an unintended result and you could have made the decision regardless of whether or not he was there. In the doctor case the 1 person being killed to save 5 is intimately involved with the act, necessary for it's execution. If that patient weren't there, the other 5 would just be out of luck. So in that case you are using that person's life to save the other 5, in the train case the 1 person dies incidentally.

You can further discuss whether or not you think this difference is relevant... but it is this difference that should be under discussion, not external factors grafted onto the problem such as probabilities and profit margins (at least that is typically the intent of philosophers who pose these types of dillemas).

[Sephus]

your tone in this thread is obnoxious.

[nepenthe]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm going to be a nit for a minute here. Sure there are a lot of external problems associated with the doctor case (trust in doctors, future profit loss, etc) that serve to differentiate it, if it were happening in the real world, for what it's worth this is not the way these types of ethics hypotheticals are meant to be done.

Most philosophers of ethics would say the relevant moral difference between the two cases is something called "double effect" (I think the name is right). In the train case you are diverting the train away from five people, the person on the other track just happens to be there. It was an unintended result and you could have made the decision regardless of whether or not he was there. In the doctor case the 1 person being killed to save 5 is intimately involved with the act, necessary for it's execution. If that patient weren't there, the other 5 would just be out of luck. So in that case you are using that person's life to save the other 5, in the train case the 1 person dies incidentally.

You can further discuss whether or not you think this difference is relevant... but it is this difference that should be under discussion, not external factors grafted onto the problem such as probabilities and profit margins (at least that is typically the intent of philosophers who pose these types of dillemas).

[/ QUOTE ]

I must take exception with the "unintended result" of which you speak. I think the problem must be understood with the premise that the decisionmaker already knows there is a person on the other track, and that if ve decides to pull the switch, ve's doing it with the full knowledge that ve is engaging in an act to kill one for the benefit of the five.

Now, you could say that even if this is a knowing act, it is still not "intentional" (and we could go into a side-discussion on what is "knowing" and what is "intentional"), but the way you phrased it, it appears you aren't making that distinction anyway, because you say that "you could have made the decision regardless of whether or not he was there" - meaning you believe the one person isn't even a relevant factor.

As for the "external factors" and "profit margins" you mention, we don't even have to get into that to recognize that there are cost-benefit analyses involved with these decisions outside of simply juxtaposing lives and weighing the numbers. Flipping a switch, in a vacuum, is a fairly simple act that doesn't cost you much energy or time. Imagine the same situation, though, except you were chained to a lamppost 3 feet away from the switch and the only way to get to the switch was to amputate your hand, arm, etc.

[chezlaw]

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I am not turn

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Nice catch, thank you.

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1) do you want to live in a world where the pilot of a crashing plane wont divert its course from the heavily populated areas to an area where some people definitely exist.

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No, but that's not really a comparable scenerio. In the plane scenerio, there is a greater chance the pilot can crash without killing anyone by diverting to a less populated area. This is common sense. The goal of the pilot is to kill no one, not kill less. In the trolley scenerio, someone will die.

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2) do you want to live in a world where if you vist hospital you are available for harvesting if required to save more than one life? Would you work there?, would you live nearby? Would you let your wife/daughter give birth there?

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No.

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Its a nitpick on 1) but you seem to agree the basic point which is that we want the pilot to take the action that minimises life loss. In 2) we do not.

1) doesn't change in nature if some number of deaths is certain.

chez

[AWoodside]

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[ QUOTE ]
I'm going to be a nit for a minute here. Sure there are a lot of external problems associated with the doctor case (trust in doctors, future profit loss, etc) that serve to differentiate it, if it were happening in the real world, for what it's worth this is not the way these types of ethics hypotheticals are meant to be done.

Most philosophers of ethics would say the relevant moral difference between the two cases is something called "double effect" (I think the name is right). In the train case you are diverting the train away from five people, the person on the other track just happens to be there. It was an unintended result and you could have made the decision regardless of whether or not he was there. In the doctor case the 1 person being killed to save 5 is intimately involved with the act, necessary for it's execution. If that patient weren't there, the other 5 would just be out of luck. So in that case you are using that person's life to save the other 5, in the train case the 1 person dies incidentally.

You can further discuss whether or not you think this difference is relevant... but it is this difference that should be under discussion, not external factors grafted onto the problem such as probabilities and profit margins (at least that is typically the intent of philosophers who pose these types of dillemas).

[/ QUOTE ]

I must take exception with the "unintended result" of which you speak. I think the problem must be understood with the premise that the decisionmaker already knows there is a person on the other track, and that if ve decides to pull the switch, ve's doing it with the full knowledge that ve is engaging in an act to kill one for the benefit of the five.

Now, you could say that even if this is a knowing act, it is still not "intentional" (and we could go into a side-discussion on what is "knowing" and what is "intentional"), but the way you phrased it, it appears you aren't making that distinction anyway, because you say that "you could have made the decision regardless of whether or not he was there" - meaning you believe the one person isn't even a relevant factor.

As for the "external factors" and "profit margins" you mention, we don't even have to get into that to recognize that there are cost-benefit analyses involved with these decisions outside of simply juxtaposing lives and weighing the numbers. Flipping a switch, in a vacuum, is a fairly simple act that doesn't cost you much energy or time. Imagine the same situation, though, except you were chained to a lamppost 3 feet away from the switch and the only way to get to the switch was to amputate your hand, arm, etc.

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I suppose I wasn't clear in what I meant. I don't mean unintended in the sense that you didn't know about it, I meant something closer to incidental. The point is that the action taken to save 5 in the train case doesn't necessarily have to kill anyone else, it just so happens that a person is on the other track. You could take the same action (flipping the switch) even in the case were nobody else got killed. In the doctor case, it is absolutely necessary that another person dies because the action you're taking to save the 5 is the act of taking the guy's organs. That's where the key difference lies. In the train case you are flipping a switch to save 5 lives, and another dude happens to get killed. In the doctor case you are killing another dude to save 5 lives, if the guy you were killing weren't around, there just simply wouldn't be a "switch" available for you to flip, the person being killed is the switch.

As far as external factors go, all I meant was that you shouldn't add to a hypothetical. Ethics hypotheticals are meant to isolate a single issue and evaluate it (I think it's the issue between direct and indirect killing in this case). They might not be totally explicit by saying something like, "there is a doctor, and five patients, and they're in a vacuum where there is no hospital, and they all have memory loss and get transported back to earth after, so there is absolutely nothing more to the case than what is being presented here...", but this is definitely the spirit in which the excersise is constructed.

Basically, unless something is explicitly stated in one of these situations, be very wary of introducing it in your answer, because then you're probably just answering a different, more convoluted question.

*edit* Note that I haven't stated what my opinion is on how much moral weight we should ascribe to direct vs. indirect killing, I'm just trying to make sure the philosophy is done correctly

[RoundGuy]

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your tone in this thread is obnoxious.

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Nice contribution. Would you like the discuss the OP, or is a comment on my tone the only thing you can come up with....

[RoundGuy]

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Its a nitpick on 1) but you seem to agree the basic point which is that we want the pilot to take the action that minimises life loss. In 2) we do not.

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Yes, of course I agree, and as I'm struggling with this issue, I'm trying to figure out why. Your pilot example is a problem for me because it essentially throws out my argument for not throwing the switch.

What right does the trolley guy have to kill the one for the sake of the five? What right does the pilot have to kill those in a sparsely populated area for the sake of the populated area?

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1) doesn't change in nature if some number of deaths is certain.

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Well, it does in my mind -- to an extent. Unfortunately, not enough to make my argument valid at this point.

[RoundGuy]

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The point is that the action taken to save 5 in the train case doesn't necessarily have to kill anyone else, it just so happens that a person is on the other track. You could take the same action (flipping the switch) even in the case were nobody else got killed. In the doctor case, it is absolutely necessary that another person dies because the action you're taking to save the 5 is the act of taking the guy's organs. That's where the key difference lies.

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Key difference indeed. So then, should we even go so far as to say that not throwing the switch would actually be immoral?

[Sephus]

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your tone in this thread is obnoxious.

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Nice contribution. Would you like the discuss the OP, or is a comment on my tone the only thing you can come up with....

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obviously i wouldn't like to discuss the OP else i would have.

thank you for recognizing my contribution toward helping you not suck.

[nepenthe]

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[ QUOTE ]
I'm going to be a nit for a minute here. Sure there are a lot of external problems associated with the doctor case (trust in doctors, future profit loss, etc) that serve to differentiate it, if it were happening in the real world, for what it's worth this is not the way these types of ethics hypotheticals are meant to be done.

Most philosophers of ethics would say the relevant moral difference between the two cases is something called "double effect" (I think the name is right). In the train case you are diverting the train away from five people, the person on the other track just happens to be there. It was an unintended result and you could have made the decision regardless of whether or not he was there. In the doctor case the 1 person being killed to save 5 is intimately involved with the act, necessary for it's execution. If that patient weren't there, the other 5 would just be out of luck. So in that case you are using that person's life to save the other 5, in the train case the 1 person dies incidentally.

You can further discuss whether or not you think this difference is relevant... but it is this difference that should be under discussion, not external factors grafted onto the problem such as probabilities and profit margins (at least that is typically the intent of philosophers who pose these types of dillemas).

[/ QUOTE ]

I must take exception with the "unintended result" of which you speak. I think the problem must be understood with the premise that the decisionmaker already knows there is a person on the other track, and that if ve decides to pull the switch, ve's doing it with the full knowledge that ve is engaging in an act to kill one for the benefit of the five.

Now, you could say that even if this is a knowing act, it is still not "intentional" (and we could go into a side-discussion on what is "knowing" and what is "intentional"), but the way you phrased it, it appears you aren't making that distinction anyway, because you say that "you could have made the decision regardless of whether or not he was there" - meaning you believe the one person isn't even a relevant factor.

As for the "external factors" and "profit margins" you mention, we don't even have to get into that to recognize that there are cost-benefit analyses involved with these decisions outside of simply juxtaposing lives and weighing the numbers. Flipping a switch, in a vacuum, is a fairly simple act that doesn't cost you much energy or time. Imagine the same situation, though, except you were chained to a lamppost 3 feet away from the switch and the only way to get to the switch was to amputate your hand, arm, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

I suppose I wasn't clear in what I meant. I don't mean unintended in the sense that you didn't know about it, I meant something closer to incidental. The point is that the action taken to save 5 in the train case doesn't necessarily have to kill anyone else, it just so happens that a person is on the other track. You could take the same action (flipping the switch) even in the case were nobody else got killed. In the doctor case, it is absolutely necessary that another person dies because the action you're taking to save the 5 is the act of taking the guy's organs. That's where the key difference lies. In the train case you are flipping a switch to save 5 lives, and another dude happens to get killed. In the doctor case you are killing another dude to save 5 lives, if the guy you were killing weren't around, there just simply wouldn't be a "switch" available for you to flip, the person being killed is the switch.

As far as external factors go, all I meant was that you shouldn't add to a hypothetical. Ethics hypotheticals are meant to isolate a single issue and evaluate it (I think it's the issue between direct and indirect killing in this case). They might not be totally explicit by saying something like, "there is a doctor, and five patients, and they're in a vacuum where there is no hospital, and they all have memory loss and get transported back to earth after, so there is absolutely nothing more to the case than what is being presented here...", but this is definitely the spirit in which the excersise is constructed.

Basically, unless something is explicitly stated in one of these situations, be very wary of introducing it in your answer, because then you're probably just answering a different, more convoluted question.

*edit* Note that I haven't stated what my opinion is on how much moral weight we should ascribe to direct vs. indirect killing, I'm just trying to make sure the philosophy is done correctly

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It's not absolutely necessary that someone else get killed in the hospital situation - i.e. if there are organs already preserved from a previously dead person at hand, or if there is already another patient at the hospital who faces imminent death (assume a hopeless case) and has already agreed to donate his organs.

Sure, that would be changing the hypothetical, but I certainly can do that if you can also postulate that situation 1 does not require a person standing (or tied up, whatever) on the other track.