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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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Hyrule18934 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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Hyrule18934 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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Hyrule18934 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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EPT
