philosophy discussion 3
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Phil 2: Puzzles and Paradoxes
Prof. Sven Bernecker University of California, Irvine
Solutions to the
Trolley Problem
Recap Trolley Driver: As a trolley driver rounds a bend, driving through a steep
point in a valley, he sees five people on the track ahead, who cannot get
off the tracks in time. As he applies the brakes to stop the trolley he
realizes they have failed. He sees an inactive spur of track to the right
onto which he could turn the trolley to avoid hitting the five, but alas,
there is someone stuck on that track too. His choices are to allow the
trolley to continue forward, hitting the five who will surely not survive, or
turn the trolley onto the spur of track, hitting the one, who will also not
survive. Is the driver permitted to turn the trolley?
Transplant: A brilliant surgeon, who is superbly adept at performing
organ transplants, has five patients suffering from organ failure. Two
patients each need a lung, two a kidney, and one needs a heart. If they
do not receive the proper organs today, they will die. A young man with
the correct blood type enters the clinic and, upon being informed of the
situation, politely declines to donate his organs. Is the surgeon permitted
to take the man’s organs to save the five?
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Foot‘s original puzzle: What is the moral
difference between Trolley Driver and Transplant?
Bystander at the Switch: There is a runaway trolley barreling down the
railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people. The trolley is
headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train
yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a
different set of tracks. Unfortunately, you notice that there is one person
on the side track. Are you permitted to divert the trolley onto the side
track where it will kill one person.
Repentance Transplant. A few months ago, a brilliant surgeon was
badly overworked, became careless, and made the terrible mistake of
giving five patients the wrong drugs. These drugs lead to organ failures.
The surgeon repents and would save the five patients if he could. Is the
surgeon permitted to take the organs of a healthy man to save the five
dying patients?
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Thompson‘s new puzzle: What is the moral
difference between Bystander at the Switch and
Transplant, and between Repentance
Transplant and Trolley Driver?
• Trolley Problem: the problem of explaining the moral
difference between these (and similar) cases.
• Utilitarian approach:
– The side effects of a transplant practice will undermine
confidence in hospitals, causing many people to forgo
treatment: and this will outweigh the benefits of
transplants.
• But this can‘t explain the moral revulsion of Transplant: it still
would be morally wrong if the side effects did not occur.
• Let us first discuss two attempted solutions that Thomson
rejects before we get to her positive view.
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Treating People Merely as Means
1st Attempted Solution: The surgeon in Transplant treats the
healthy man he takes the organs from as a means only. The
agent in Bystander at the Switch does not use one victim to
save the five people. The bystander does not treat his victim
as a means only. This is why the bystander is acting morally
permissably but the surgeon is not.
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Kant: “Act in such a way
that you always treat
humanity, whether in your
own person or in the person
of any other, never simply
as a means, but always at
the same time as an end.”
Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)
German philosopher
Thomson‘s objection:
Looping Trolley: This is the same as Bystander at the
Switch, except that the side track with one person on it is
actually a circle, which loops back on to the main track. If
you were to pull the lever without one person on the side
track, the trolley would merely loop around back onto the
main track and kill the five. However, since there is
someone on the side track, the trolley hits this person and is
stopped by his body, thus saving the five.
Bystander at the Switch Looping Trolley
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• In Looping Trolley, the death of the one is intended as a
means to saving the five. However, most people think it is
still permissible to pull the lever. It seems more of less like
Bystander at the Switch.
• Upshot: It is a mistake to claim that the moral difference
between Transplant and Bystander at the Switch has to do
with treating people as a means only.
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Infringement of Rights
2nd Attempted Solution: “Rights trump utilities. If one would
infringe a right in or by acting, then it is not sufficient
justification for acting that one would thereby maximize utility“
(Thomson 1985: 1404). The surgeon in Transplant infringes a
right of the healthy man he takes the organs from. The agent
in Bystander at the Switch does not infringe a right of the
one man on the tracks.
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Thomson‘s objection: The agent in Bystander at the Switch
also infringes a right of the person on the tracks (despite the
fact that it is permissible for him to throw the switch):
– Suppose one turns the trolley toward the one when
there were no other people to save. Surely this would
infringe a right.
– And even when there are other people to save, and
turning the trolley is permissible, one still wrongs the
one. For example, one might be expected to apologize
to his family.
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Thomson‘s Solution
The relevant moral differences between Transplant and
Bystander at the Switch:
1) The bystander saves the five by making something that
threatens the five instead threaten one. He only
diverts an existing threat; he does not create a new
threat.
2) The bystander does not do (1) by means which
themselves constitute an infringement of any right of
the one person.
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Condition (1): only diverting an existing threat:
“The bystander who proceeds does not merely minimize the number of
deaths which get caused: He minimizes the number of deaths which
get caused by something that already threatens people, and that will
cause deaths whatever the bystander does. The bystander who
proceeds does not make something be a threat to people which would
otherwise not be a threat to anyone; he makes be a threat to fewer
what is already a threat to more. We might speak here of a
"distributive exemption," which permits arranging that something that
will do harm anyway shall be better distributed than it otherwise would
be -- shall (in Bystander at the Switch) do harm to fewer rather than
more. Not just any distributive intervention is permissible: It is not in
general morally open to us to make one die to save five. But other
things being equal, it is not morally required of us that we let a burden
descend out of the blue onto five when we can make it instead descend
onto one.” (Thomson 1985: 1408).
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An illustration:
• But now consider a case in which lethal fumes are being
released by the heating system in the basement of a building
next door to the hospital. The fumes are headed towards the
room of five. We can deflect them towards the room of one.
Deflecting the gas is permissible.
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Foot’s Hospital: There are five patients in a hospital whose
lives could be saved by the manufacture of a certain gas, but
that this will inevitably release lethal fumes into the room of
another patient whom for some reason we are unable to
move. Making the gas is not permissible.
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Condition (2): not infringing the rights of the one
• We make what threatens the five (i.e., the trolley) threaten the
one instead. But this does not seem permissible.
• Explanation: Pushing someone off a footbridge is an
infringement of his rights. By contrast, turning the trolley in
Bystander at the Switch “is not itself an infringement of a right of
anybody. The agent would do the one no wrong at all if he turned
the trolley onto the right-hand track, and by some miracle the
trolley did not hit him” (Thomson 1985: 1409).
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Fat Man: we push the fat man off of the footbridge in order to
stop the trolley.
Thomson‘s Self-Objections
• 1st Objection: Wobbling the handrail does not infringe the fat
man’s rights -- hence does not violate condition (2). But it is
still not permissible.
• Thomson’s Reply: But wobbling is not the entire means to
saving the five. The entire means requires somehow knocking
him off of the footbridge, which does infringe his rights.
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Wobbling Handrail: Instead of pushing the fat man off the footbridge to
stop the trolley we wobble the handrail he is leaning on. The wobbling
causes the fact man to fall off, stop the trolley, and save the five.
• 2nd Objection: Isn’t it permissible to, say, trespass someone’s
property to get to the switch, or to break a promise to him in
order to turn the trolley? But this shows that condition (2) is
too stringent. Some rights may be infringed upon.
• Thompson’s Reply: Maybe (2) should require that the
infringed right be a particularly stringent right.
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• 3rd Objection: According to Thomson’s theory, it is not
permissible to kill the one healthy patient in Repentance
Transplant. But suppose that a doctor faces a similar choice in
the present. He must choose between poisoning the five or
killing the one. Here it is permissible to kill the one. Why
should the present tense matter so much?
• Thomson’s Reply: The present tense matters because the
question for the agent at the time of acting is about the
present: Which of the alternatives here and now open to me
may I choose? If I have to choose between killing five and
killing one I should kill one.
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Conclusion
• If we want to maintain the ideal of capturing the intuitions of
“ordinary morality”, we need to come up with a model which
can accurately explain our intuitions in these various cases.
Why is it sometimes permissible to kill one to save five
(e.g., in Trolley Driver), and sometimes impermissible (e.g.,
in Fat Man)? Is there any moral distinction which explains
our moral intuitions in these cases?
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