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So I've been studying for a philosophy exam and my friend has stumped me with a line of reasoning. This is for all of you philosophers.
So anyways, here's the situation: You are driving a train and there are 5 people on the tracks in front of you. If you keep going you will run over the five people who are tied down and incapacitated, killing them. You have an option, though, to flip a switch and to change rails. There is one person on the other rail. Can you flip the switch? Should you flip the switch? Is it morally better to change tracks?
Another version, continuing the thought experiment. What if there are 5 people on the tracks, but this time you cannot switch rails. The only way to stop the train is to push a fat guy in front of the train. Presumably this will stop the train/slow it down enough to save the others. Is this the same situation? Do you push the person in front of the train?
Now, what if there are 5 people that need organ transplants. They are generally healthy and will go on to live long, prosperous, fulfilling lives if they get the transplant that they need. Is it ok to kill a healthy person and harvest their organs? By OK I mean is it morally acceptable? Is it the right thing to do? Does who the person is matter? What if they are on their death bed and will be dead shortly, but just after the 5 organ recipients die? What if they're a criminal?
I'm curious to see what others think about this.
+ Show Spoiler +Personally, in the first case I feel that a utilitarian would certainly say that switching rails would be the best thing to do in order to be moral and to maximize utility. It seems like it is the 'lesser of two evils' kind of thing and I predict most people, if put in the situation, would choose to kill only one rather than five.
As for the second, I cannot give an reason why the case is any different than the first but it seems intuitively wrong to do so. Pushing the person in front is essentially the same as letting them get run over, right?! You're killing them both ways, so do the minor details matter at all? But it seems like the 5 people have more of a right to live. I'm not sure here. I think from 1->2 is the leap of logic, and if you say kill the person then you should also say harvest the organs.
As for organ harvesting, it seems intuitively wrong because it is morally repugnant to end someone's life prematurely like that. But it's still an interesting dilemma. Kant would say that you aren't respecting people as ends. Anyways, that's just what I think.
 
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Oldest questions in the universe :S
Situation 1) Yes, the intention is to save the 5, it's a tragic byproduct that the 1 person dies, but his death isn't the means of their survival, hence most people will apply the utilitarian train of thought.
Situation 2) No, this time the intention is to kill one so that 5 others may survive - his death is a condition for their survival which it wasn't in the other situation.
Situation 3) Same as situation 2, just made even "scarier".
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Your friend obviously watched Episode 1 of this and ripped every example from it: http://www.justiceharvard.org/
Check out the video, it elaborates on Bentham's utilitarianism quite well.
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OP, the second situation seems "intuitively wrong to do so" because in the first situation, the 6 people are already screwed by being in the life/death scenario. In the second situation, the fat guy isn't in the life/death scenario until you pushed him, so you made the decision to add him into the scenario thus killing him.
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The crux of the second one is that the fat guy isn't on the rails already. There's an implicit risk in the first situation that the person who is already on the tracks accepted. The act that saves the five people is switching tracks, not killing the guy. This is the difference between collateral and murder.
Like Ghostcom said, these are old questions. But with respect to the first one, I never heard it with the detail that the people are tied down and incapacitated. That is a little bit ambiguous because they might be victims of a sadist or they might be part of a suicide club. Depending on probabilities and your views about suicide, you should probably always switch anyway. Actually, to backtrack what I said earlier, if the other guy is also tied down, he is not subject to the thing I said about how he accepted risk by being on the rails. Still, it's the person who tied all the people down who did the murdering anyway.
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a) the track with one
b) if there's a dude hanging by the tracks who is so fat he could stop a goddamn train, you'd best believe i'm pushing his ass out to save a few others
c) no
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Utilitarian choices are usually based on more than maximizing lives saved or happiness. The defining thing about utilitarianism is that it is the outcome that matters. Intentions or following rules and norms is not important. If you choose to accept that killing a couple to save many, you are essentially saying that this can be a good moral choice for everyone. This means that you weigh the life saving more than the you weigh the cost of fearing for your life because at any moment you could be killed for the greater good. What is good or bad all depends on your ability to predict consequences and how you value the different possible outcomes.
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On May 27 2011 01:05 SoF_THeRmiDoR wrote:Your friend obviously watched Episode 1 of this and ripped every example from it: http://www.justiceharvard.org/Check out the video, it elaborates on Bentham's utilitarianism quite well.
No, these examples are far too old and well-known for you to be able to immediately claim that they were 'ripped' from there.
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The google ad on this page says "Answers to life's most critical questions" and leads to a page saying scientists agree there's evidence that the bible is the word of god. 100% scientific accurate.
So to answer the OP questions, I would first need to know which of these people believe the bible is scientific accurate. Only then I can give you a utilitarian response.
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The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
Live long and prosper my friend.
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I'm envisioning this blubbery, bloody rolling mass of flesh being pushed by a train and gradually slowing it down as parts fly off willy nilly.
Thanks for the mental image, OP.
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On May 27 2011 01:05 SoF_THeRmiDoR wrote:Your friend obviously watched Episode 1 of this and ripped every example from it: http://www.justiceharvard.org/Check out the video, it elaborates on Bentham's utilitarianism quite well.
Wow, thanks for showing me this, talk about dispelling any myths that may have existed about harvard students being able to express themselves. "It just feels different". I had a good chuckle over that vid, cheers!
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Actually, you don't have to do anything.
You can run those 5 people over and you wouldn't be at fault. Those 5 people should not be on the track.
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You don't necessarily have to save the 5 people, bentham and Mill's utilitarianism says that the most happiness for the most amount of people should be the chosen moral action. So if that one person is much happier in their life than the 5 others put together I think you should choose that person. Though I"m not sure how much weight they gave the amount of people vs the amount of happiness.
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Hyrule19029 Posts
Utilitarianism is relatively simple in concept: maximize the good and minimize the bad
Killing 1 person to save 5 will always be better than killing 5 to save 1.
In all cases, the 1 dies, the 5 live.
Utilitarianism doesn't muck about with things like "what if that 1 person is Hitler? What if he's Gandhi?" It's 1 person. What they do or what their potential is makes no difference. In utilitarianism, you'd kill 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers. And there's nothing wrong with that.
edit: unless you're not talking about the standard utilitarianism. Bentham's was closer to what I described, Mill's to maximizing good and quantity of people, which often leads to different effects.
edit2:
Here's a graph which shows the big problem with utilitarianism (aka the giant fuckin gray area)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/tofucake/graphs/utilitarianism.png)
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Ah ok, I didn't know that these were really well-known examples.
On May 27 2011 01:55 Torte de Lini wrote:
Actually, you don't have to do anything.
You can run those 5 people over and you wouldn't be at fault. Those 5 people should not be on the track. Can't you be liable if you see a crime happening and don't intervene? I.e. a woman gets mugged and beaten and you have the power to save her but don't?
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On May 27 2011 01:58 tofucake wrote:
Utilitarianism doesn't muck about with things like "what if that 1 person is Hitler? What if he's Gandhi?" It's 1 person. What they do or what their potential is makes no difference. In utilitarianism, you'd kill 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers. And there's nothing wrong with that. I didn't study any of it. But wouldn't that be seen as short-sighted? I mean, when you save a murderer aren't you indirectly responsible for the death of those he murders since you could have stopped it?
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On May 27 2011 01:58 tofucake wrote:Utilitarianism is relatively simple in concept: maximize the good and minimize the bad Killing 1 person to save 5 will always be better than killing 5 to save 1. In all cases, the 1 dies, the 5 live. Utilitarianism doesn't muck about with things like "what if that 1 person is Hitler? What if he's Gandhi?" It's 1 person. What they do or what their potential is makes no difference. In utilitarianism, you'd kill 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers. And there's nothing wrong with that. edit: unless you're not talking about the standard utilitarianism. Bentham's was closer to what I described, Mill's to maximizing good and quantity of people, which often leads to different effects. edit2: Here's a graph which shows the big problem with utilitarianism (aka the giant fuckin gray area)
What? Killing 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers is not good for the good of the people. You're maximizing the good by killing 5 Hitlers to save 1 Gandhi, no question about it in utilitarianism. Different people have different amounts of utility.
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Hyrule19029 Posts
On May 27 2011 02:24 VIB wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 01:58 tofucake wrote:
Utilitarianism doesn't muck about with things like "what if that 1 person is Hitler? What if he's Gandhi?" It's 1 person. What they do or what their potential is makes no difference. In utilitarianism, you'd kill 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers. And there's nothing wrong with that. I didn't study any of it. But wouldn't that be seen as short-sighted? I mean, when you save a murderer aren't you indirectly responsible for the death of those he murders since you could have stopped it?
So what? What he does is a matter of him. What you do is a matter of you. You have not killed anyone (potentially, although with the scenarios someone usually dies). The philosophy deals only with making the most moral judgement possible at that moment. Things are judged based on what you observe. It's not possible to observe the person you are saving/let die/killing murdering someone in the future. That stuff is reserved for virtue systems.
Also, people like Mill came around and said "this system is a good start, but it kinda sucks, so I'm going to add more rules". The problem with that is that utilitarianism is designed to be very very simple, and adding rules complicates things.
Here's a graph
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/tofucake/graphs/complexity.png)
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Hyrule19029 Posts
On May 27 2011 02:34 ieatkids5 wrote:
[snip]
What? Killing 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers is not good for the good of the people. You're maximizing the good by killing 5 Hitlers to save 1 Gandhi, no question about it in utilitarianism. Different people have different amounts of utility.
I said nothing about the good of the people, and moral fiber of those in the scenario plays no part in utilitarianism (again, that's virtue ethics). The simple fact is that by killing 1 person, 5 live. 5 > 1. Therefore you should kill 1.
Another way to look at this is the following:
Death is defined as 1 bad (-1 good)
Life is defined as 1 good
Kill 1 to save 5 is now: 5 good + 1 bad = 5 good - 1 good = 4 good
Let 5 die to save 1 is now: 5 bad + 1 good = -5 good + 1 good = -4 good = 4 bad
QED, Killing 1 to save 5 is the obviously better choice.
It's a matter of either maximizing good or minimizing bad.
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On May 27 2011 02:36 tofucake wrote:Here's a graph ROFL couldn't be more clear, thanks for the graph 
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On May 27 2011 02:37 tofucake wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 02:34 ieatkids5 wrote:
[snip]
What? Killing 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers is not good for the good of the people. You're maximizing the good by killing 5 Hitlers to save 1 Gandhi, no question about it in utilitarianism. Different people have different amounts of utility. I said nothing about the good of the people, and moral fiber of those in the scenario plays no part in utilitarianism (again, that's virtue ethics). The simple fact is that by killing 1 person, 5 live. 5 > 1. Therefore you should kill 1. Another way to look at this is the following: Death is defined as 1 bad (-1 good) Life is defined as 1 good Kill 1 to save 5 is now: 5 good + 1 bad = 5 good - 1 good = 4 good Let 5 die to save 1 is now: 5 bad + 1 good = -5 good + 1 good = -4 good = 4 bad QED, Killing 1 to save 5 is the obviously better choice. It's a matter of either maximizing good or minimizing bad.
no, utilitarianism does not define life and death that way. life and death are defined by the utility of that life or that death. if killing 5 to save 1 ends up maximizing the utility of the people as a whole, then killing 5 to save one is the better choice. the scenario of those 6 lives is not independent of everything else going on in the world. you need to consider the effects of those deaths/lives in order to judge their utility.
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Hyrule19029 Posts
On May 27 2011 03:06 ieatkids5 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 02:37 tofucake wrote:On May 27 2011 02:34 ieatkids5 wrote:
[snip]
What? Killing 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers is not good for the good of the people. You're maximizing the good by killing 5 Hitlers to save 1 Gandhi, no question about it in utilitarianism. Different people have different amounts of utility. I said nothing about the good of the people, and moral fiber of those in the scenario plays no part in utilitarianism (again, that's virtue ethics). The simple fact is that by killing 1 person, 5 live. 5 > 1. Therefore you should kill 1. Another way to look at this is the following: Death is defined as 1 bad (-1 good) Life is defined as 1 good Kill 1 to save 5 is now: 5 good + 1 bad = 5 good - 1 good = 4 good Let 5 die to save 1 is now: 5 bad + 1 good = -5 good + 1 good = -4 good = 4 bad QED, Killing 1 to save 5 is the obviously better choice. It's a matter of either maximizing good or minimizing bad. no, utilitarianism does not define life and death that way. life and death are defined by the utility of that life or that death. if killing 5 to save 1 ends up maximizing the utility of the people as a whole, then killing 5 to save one is the better choice. the scenario of those 6 lives is not independent of everything else going on in the world. you need to consider the effects of those deaths/lives in order to judge their utility.
Nope. Those are unobserved actions in the future, and thus have absolutely no bearing on the decision now of kill 5/save 1 or kill 1/ save 5.
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First question you need to answer is:
Why should we care about this question at all?
This is because the first question of ethics isn't "What is the ethical thing to do?" but "Why do I need a code of ethics."
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On May 27 2011 03:20 lOvOlUNiMEDiA wrote:
First question you need to answer is:
Why should we care about this question at all?
This is because the first question of ethics isn't "What is the ethical thing to do?" but "Why do I need a code of ethics." It's not the first question, it's ANOTHER question  No one is trying to solve the world here, they're just talking specifically about utilitarism.
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Hyrule19029 Posts
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On May 27 2011 03:15 tofucake wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 03:06 ieatkids5 wrote:On May 27 2011 02:37 tofucake wrote:On May 27 2011 02:34 ieatkids5 wrote:
[snip]
What? Killing 1 Gandhi to save 5 Hitlers is not good for the good of the people. You're maximizing the good by killing 5 Hitlers to save 1 Gandhi, no question about it in utilitarianism. Different people have different amounts of utility. I said nothing about the good of the people, and moral fiber of those in the scenario plays no part in utilitarianism (again, that's virtue ethics). The simple fact is that by killing 1 person, 5 live. 5 > 1. Therefore you should kill 1. Another way to look at this is the following: Death is defined as 1 bad (-1 good) Life is defined as 1 good Kill 1 to save 5 is now: 5 good + 1 bad = 5 good - 1 good = 4 good Let 5 die to save 1 is now: 5 bad + 1 good = -5 good + 1 good = -4 good = 4 bad QED, Killing 1 to save 5 is the obviously better choice. It's a matter of either maximizing good or minimizing bad. no, utilitarianism does not define life and death that way. life and death are defined by the utility of that life or that death. if killing 5 to save 1 ends up maximizing the utility of the people as a whole, then killing 5 to save one is the better choice. the scenario of those 6 lives is not independent of everything else going on in the world. you need to consider the effects of those deaths/lives in order to judge their utility. Nope. Those are unobserved actions in the future, and thus have absolutely no bearing on the decision now of kill 5/save 1 or kill 1/ save 5.
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that's not utilitarianism then...
the decision to kill 5 save 1 or kill 1 save 5, if viewed through utilitarianism, must be decided through how well the action provides utility for the collective good of the people, eg how the people value the kill 5 save 1 and the kill 1 save 5. those "unobserved actions in the future" you referred to are how people value these 6 lives, which is what determines utility.
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On May 27 2011 03:29 ieatkids5 wrote:
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that's not utilitarianism then...
the decision to kill 5 save 1 or kill 1 save 5, if viewed through utilitarianism, must be decided through how well the action provides utility for the collective good of the people, eg how the people value the kill 5 save 1 and the kill 1 save 5. those "unobserved actions in the future" you referred to are how people value these 6 lives, which is what determines utility.
You just highlighted one of the problems with utilitarianism. According to the standard you set action is impossible as we cannot actually determine the future effect of our actions, and so cannot know your choice is correct. This leaves us with tofucake's correct statements that a utilitarian makes choices based on current information known. Which brings us to the problem you identified.
As to the OP, tofucake is right, kill the one person in every case to be purely utilitarian. However, even a utilitarian will protest if given this question. There simply isn't enough information for it to be applicable to real life.
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In general for these I tend to agree with the intuitive feelings, because I look from the standpoint of:
Would I be OK living in a world where...
For the train example, I would switch and kill the 1 person that is tied down, but not the fat guy. That is because I am OK with a world where if I am tied down to train tracks, then I may very well die. I am not OK with a world where people will push me into train tracks just because I am walking near them and can save lives.
For the organs, I would let the 5 people die unless the 1 person was very old or sick himself. Again, I do not want to live in a world where I am healthy and others will randomly come in and harvest my organs to let others live. But I'm OK with it if I am near death myself.
The common thing is that I don't want to live in a world where I am fine and someone can randomly take my life to save others. In that case I'd be scared shitless of everyone all of the time.
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On May 27 2011 04:25 IV.Fearless wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 03:29 ieatkids5 wrote:
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that's not utilitarianism then...
the decision to kill 5 save 1 or kill 1 save 5, if viewed through utilitarianism, must be decided through how well the action provides utility for the collective good of the people, eg how the people value the kill 5 save 1 and the kill 1 save 5. those "unobserved actions in the future" you referred to are how people value these 6 lives, which is what determines utility. You just highlighted one of the problems with utilitarianism. According to the standard you set action is impossible as we cannot actually determine the future effect of our actions, and so cannot know your choice is correct. This leaves us with tofucake's correct statements that a utilitarian makes choices based on current information known. Which brings us to the problem you identified. As to the OP, tofucake is right, kill the one person in every case to be purely utilitarian. However, even a utilitarian will protest if given this question. There simply isn't enough information for it to be applicable to real life.
we must be talking about different kinds of utilitarianism here.
current information known is that if there are 5 terrible people and one good person. you can make a decision based on that information, as well as the information you have about whether people will value the lives of the 5 terrible people more or the one good person more. you have enough information to say that killing 5 terrible people and saving 1 good person grants more utility to society than killing 1 good person and saving 5 terrible people.
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Hyrule19029 Posts
On May 27 2011 04:49 ieatkids5 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 04:25 IV.Fearless wrote:On May 27 2011 03:29 ieatkids5 wrote:
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that's not utilitarianism then...
the decision to kill 5 save 1 or kill 1 save 5, if viewed through utilitarianism, must be decided through how well the action provides utility for the collective good of the people, eg how the people value the kill 5 save 1 and the kill 1 save 5. those "unobserved actions in the future" you referred to are how people value these 6 lives, which is what determines utility. You just highlighted one of the problems with utilitarianism. According to the standard you set action is impossible as we cannot actually determine the future effect of our actions, and so cannot know your choice is correct. This leaves us with tofucake's correct statements that a utilitarian makes choices based on current information known. Which brings us to the problem you identified. As to the OP, tofucake is right, kill the one person in every case to be purely utilitarian. However, even a utilitarian will protest if given this question. There simply isn't enough information for it to be applicable to real life. we must be talking about different kinds of utilitarianism here. current information known is that if there are 5 terrible people and one good person. you can make a decision based on that information, as well as the information you have about whether people will value the lives of the 5 terrible people more or the one good person more. you have enough information to say that killing 5 terrible people and saving 1 good person grants more utility to society than killing 1 good person and saving 5 terrible people.
But can we really go with that?
If this incident were to occur around...say...1920, then we have 1 old guy (Gandhi) who we know has done plenty of good, and 5 Hitlers, who at this point are just war vets. We don't know that one day each of them will go on to commit (directly or indirectly) millions of murders. We just know that there's 1 old guy and 5 younger guys.
We are talking about the same philosophy. The issues you are raising are ones that everyone raises with utilitarianism, but as soon as you start considering things you can't know about, you're no longer in a utilitarian mindset, you're in more of a virtue ethics system. If you start basing decisions on things you can't immediately know (where someone has volunteered, criminal records, etc) by direct observation in the moment you need to make the decision, you're also delving into a virtue ethics system.
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On May 27 2011 05:48 tofucake wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 04:49 ieatkids5 wrote:On May 27 2011 04:25 IV.Fearless wrote:On May 27 2011 03:29 ieatkids5 wrote:
...
that's not utilitarianism then...
the decision to kill 5 save 1 or kill 1 save 5, if viewed through utilitarianism, must be decided through how well the action provides utility for the collective good of the people, eg how the people value the kill 5 save 1 and the kill 1 save 5. those "unobserved actions in the future" you referred to are how people value these 6 lives, which is what determines utility. You just highlighted one of the problems with utilitarianism. According to the standard you set action is impossible as we cannot actually determine the future effect of our actions, and so cannot know your choice is correct. This leaves us with tofucake's correct statements that a utilitarian makes choices based on current information known. Which brings us to the problem you identified. As to the OP, tofucake is right, kill the one person in every case to be purely utilitarian. However, even a utilitarian will protest if given this question. There simply isn't enough information for it to be applicable to real life. we must be talking about different kinds of utilitarianism here. current information known is that if there are 5 terrible people and one good person. you can make a decision based on that information, as well as the information you have about whether people will value the lives of the 5 terrible people more or the one good person more. you have enough information to say that killing 5 terrible people and saving 1 good person grants more utility to society than killing 1 good person and saving 5 terrible people. But can we really go with that? If this incident were to occur around...say...1920, then we have 1 old guy (Gandhi) who we know has done plenty of good, and 5 Hitlers, who at this point are just war vets. We don't know that one day each of them will go on to commit (directly or indirectly) millions of murders. We just know that there's 1 old guy and 5 younger guys. We are talking about the same philosophy. The issues you are raising are ones that everyone raises with utilitarianism, but as soon as you start considering things you can't know about, you're no longer in a utilitarian mindset, you're in more of a virtue ethics system. If you start basing decisions on things you can't immediately know (where someone has volunteered, criminal records, etc) by direct observation in the moment you need to make the decision, you're also delving into a virtue ethics system.
ok i guess my interpretation of utilitarianism is just wrong then. i've always thought utilitarianism is how i described it to be, but i guess not.
hmm so let me get this straight: if a utilitarian sees a person he knows is a good person and contributes to society, and sees 5 criminals who have only done bad to the world, and he had to pick who to save, he would pick the 5 criminals? i seriously always thought the utilitarian mindset would be to save the one good guy because saving 5 criminals would decrease utility among the people.
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On May 27 2011 07:21 ieatkids5 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 05:48 tofucake wrote:On May 27 2011 04:49 ieatkids5 wrote:On May 27 2011 04:25 IV.Fearless wrote:On May 27 2011 03:29 ieatkids5 wrote:
...
that's not utilitarianism then...
the decision to kill 5 save 1 or kill 1 save 5, if viewed through utilitarianism, must be decided through how well the action provides utility for the collective good of the people, eg how the people value the kill 5 save 1 and the kill 1 save 5. those "unobserved actions in the future" you referred to are how people value these 6 lives, which is what determines utility. You just highlighted one of the problems with utilitarianism. According to the standard you set action is impossible as we cannot actually determine the future effect of our actions, and so cannot know your choice is correct. This leaves us with tofucake's correct statements that a utilitarian makes choices based on current information known. Which brings us to the problem you identified. As to the OP, tofucake is right, kill the one person in every case to be purely utilitarian. However, even a utilitarian will protest if given this question. There simply isn't enough information for it to be applicable to real life. we must be talking about different kinds of utilitarianism here. current information known is that if there are 5 terrible people and one good person. you can make a decision based on that information, as well as the information you have about whether people will value the lives of the 5 terrible people more or the one good person more. you have enough information to say that killing 5 terrible people and saving 1 good person grants more utility to society than killing 1 good person and saving 5 terrible people. But can we really go with that? If this incident were to occur around...say...1920, then we have 1 old guy (Gandhi) who we know has done plenty of good, and 5 Hitlers, who at this point are just war vets. We don't know that one day each of them will go on to commit (directly or indirectly) millions of murders. We just know that there's 1 old guy and 5 younger guys. We are talking about the same philosophy. The issues you are raising are ones that everyone raises with utilitarianism, but as soon as you start considering things you can't know about, you're no longer in a utilitarian mindset, you're in more of a virtue ethics system. If you start basing decisions on things you can't immediately know (where someone has volunteered, criminal records, etc) by direct observation in the moment you need to make the decision, you're also delving into a virtue ethics system. ok i guess my interpretation of utilitarianism is just wrong then. i've always thought utilitarianism is how i described it to be, but i guess not. I'm no expert, but I'd guess you got your ethics mixed up when you started eating kids.
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On May 27 2011 07:35 VIB wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 07:21 ieatkids5 wrote:On May 27 2011 05:48 tofucake wrote:On May 27 2011 04:49 ieatkids5 wrote:On May 27 2011 04:25 IV.Fearless wrote:On May 27 2011 03:29 ieatkids5 wrote:
...
that's not utilitarianism then...
the decision to kill 5 save 1 or kill 1 save 5, if viewed through utilitarianism, must be decided through how well the action provides utility for the collective good of the people, eg how the people value the kill 5 save 1 and the kill 1 save 5. those "unobserved actions in the future" you referred to are how people value these 6 lives, which is what determines utility. You just highlighted one of the problems with utilitarianism. According to the standard you set action is impossible as we cannot actually determine the future effect of our actions, and so cannot know your choice is correct. This leaves us with tofucake's correct statements that a utilitarian makes choices based on current information known. Which brings us to the problem you identified. As to the OP, tofucake is right, kill the one person in every case to be purely utilitarian. However, even a utilitarian will protest if given this question. There simply isn't enough information for it to be applicable to real life. we must be talking about different kinds of utilitarianism here. current information known is that if there are 5 terrible people and one good person. you can make a decision based on that information, as well as the information you have about whether people will value the lives of the 5 terrible people more or the one good person more. you have enough information to say that killing 5 terrible people and saving 1 good person grants more utility to society than killing 1 good person and saving 5 terrible people. But can we really go with that? If this incident were to occur around...say...1920, then we have 1 old guy (Gandhi) who we know has done plenty of good, and 5 Hitlers, who at this point are just war vets. We don't know that one day each of them will go on to commit (directly or indirectly) millions of murders. We just know that there's 1 old guy and 5 younger guys. We are talking about the same philosophy. The issues you are raising are ones that everyone raises with utilitarianism, but as soon as you start considering things you can't know about, you're no longer in a utilitarian mindset, you're in more of a virtue ethics system. If you start basing decisions on things you can't immediately know (where someone has volunteered, criminal records, etc) by direct observation in the moment you need to make the decision, you're also delving into a virtue ethics system. ok i guess my interpretation of utilitarianism is just wrong then. i've always thought utilitarianism is how i described it to be, but i guess not. I'm no expert, but I'd guess you got your ethics mixed up when you started eating kids.
i do what i gotta do
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Ya, these sorts of questions bring up the problem that most people have with a strict utilitarian system of ethics.
The first response seems to provide a good solution: one must not intentionally commit an evil act, even to produce a good result.
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There are two types of utilitarianism; act and rule. Act is more based on the act in itself, independently whether it leads to the greatest happiness compared to other alternatives while rule utilitarianism looks at if the act is the type of act that is generally included in a set of rules which leads to the greatest happiness. So in the organ case it is wrong in the sense that killing in most cases does not lead to the most happiness. Something like that anyways. This answers most dilemmas where one is faced with a choice to sacrifice the life of one for the sake of many without the person's consent and Mill himself is regarded as a rule utilitarian but I agree theres still a gray line in between.
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Hyrule19029 Posts
Stop using Wikipedia to win internets :|
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I didn't look at wiki for what I wrote lol. It was based off my memory because I took an intro to ethics class where I learned about the 3 major ethical theories which included Utilitarianism. And the same 5 organ example was actually brought up in class. Okay I cheated and looked at the textbook after writing what I wrote, to clarify a bit.
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imo theories of ethics are mostly attempts to make an irrational, inconsistent, and culturally variable set of preferences over outcomes seem a little more consistent.
my preferences are to flip the switch, not push the fat dude onto the tracks, not harvest organs of the young innocent person, but kill the condemned criminal, but I won't pretend to be able to justify them.
tofu: can you explain your graph a bit?
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Regarding OP's question, I think that most people would flip the switch for the first one, but have reservations for the second and third one, because on closer analysis, the three situations are actually very different from each other.
The third one differs the most because the 5 people with organ failure are less fit to survive and naturally selected against, so it makes no sense to kill a healthy person to save them.
Comparing the first and second one, in the first situation, the 5 people and 1 other person are all on the tracks, so they are in the same position. Thus, killing less is preferred. But for the second one, the 5 people somehow managed to get themselves tied to the tracks while the other fat person is in a safe position. Hence taking away the life of somebody in a safe position to save people in a dangerous position would seem to be an injustice.
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Hyrule19029 Posts
On May 27 2011 13:27 palanq wrote:
imo theories of ethics are mostly attempts to make an irrational, inconsistent, and culturally variable set of preferences over outcomes seem a little more consistent.
my preferences are to flip the switch, not push the fat dude onto the tracks, not harvest organs of the young innocent person, but kill the condemned criminal, but I won't pretend to be able to justify them.
tofu: can you explain your graph a bit?
Of course!
Here we have Good vs People, although I admit it's a bit difficult to discern. Also since it's made in mspaint there's no real scale. Also I forgot a part. Here's what it should have been:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/tofucake/graphs/utilitarianism2.png)
The green line is the "net good", so as you can see, doing a shitton of good for 1 person has the same netgood as doing a little bit of good for lots of people.
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Or you could go out the easy way and say "Util is ridiculously vague because nobody can foresee all possible consequences and trying to maximize happiness based off arbitrary amounts of information is the same as flipping a coin in most cases".
And then say "use Deontology. I can now say anything."
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On May 27 2011 23:20 tofucake wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 13:27 palanq wrote:
imo theories of ethics are mostly attempts to make an irrational, inconsistent, and culturally variable set of preferences over outcomes seem a little more consistent.
my preferences are to flip the switch, not push the fat dude onto the tracks, not harvest organs of the young innocent person, but kill the condemned criminal, but I won't pretend to be able to justify them.
tofu: can you explain your graph a bit? Of course! Here we have Good vs People, although I admit it's a bit difficult to discern. Also since it's made in mspaint there's no real scale. Also I forgot a part. Here's what it should have been: The green line is the "net good", so as you can see, doing a shitton of good for 1 person has the same netgood as doing a little bit of good for lots of people.
you're terrible at explaining lmao
I was looking for the explanation that total good is measured by (amount of good per person)*(# of people), and that the blue line denotes all points of equal total good, and that there are several such lines of equal-total-goodness. as you've presented it the graph makes no fucking sense to anyone who hasn't taken a microeconomics class. also you're just making the graph unnecessarily complicated with the green line. but what I really wanted to know is what you're trying to show with the grey area
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On May 30 2011 13:16 palanq wrote:
but what I really wanted to know is what you're trying to show with the grey area I think the gray area is what utilitarianism cannot explain. His complexity vs rules graph makes it more clear. If I understand it right, putting both graphs together would be something like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5n0fU.png)
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EPT
