philosophy discussion 3
1/25/2018
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Phil 2: Puzzles and Paradoxes
Prof. Sven Bernecker University of California, Irvine
The Trolley Problem
Foot‘s Puzzle
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?
Most people think that it is morally
permissible for you to turn the trolley.
Some even say that you are morally
obligated to turn the trolley. 2
• Most people say that the surgeon is
not permitted to the one‘s organs
which will save the five.
• What is the moral difference between
Trolley Driver and Transplant? In both
cases, one will die if the agent acts,
but five will live who would otherwise
die - a net saving of four lives.
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 Answer
Philippa Foot (1920-2010)
was a British philosopher
who taught at Oxford and
UCLA. She was the
granddaughter of U.S.
President Grover Cleveland.
There is a moral difference
between doings and
allowings. It is morally worse
to intentionally harm
someone as a means to an
end than it is to merely
foresee that harm will be
done to someone as an
unintended, unnecessary
side-effect of one‘s end.
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• In Transplant, the choice is between a doing and an allowing:
killing one and letting five die
• Since doings are worse than allowings—since negative rights not
to be injured, not to have harms done to you are stronger than
positive rights to be saved from harms, not to have harms
allowed to befall you—killing the one is morally worse than letting
five die.
• In Trolley Driver, the choice is between two doings:
killing one and killing five
• Here the fact that negative rights are stronger than positive rights
is irrelevant. The agent will kill someone, and violate negative
rights, no matter what he does. So killing the one is morally less
bad than killing five.
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• In Transplant, the surgeon intends to harm one patient as a
means to saving the other five.
• In Trolley Driver, the driver does not intend to harm at all. He
merely forsees it as an unfortunate, unintended side-effect.
The trolley driver does not require the death of the one in
order to save the five. (It is conceivable that he saves the five
without the one being killed, because the trolley derails before
it hits the one.)
Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE): If doing something morally
good has a morally bad side-effect, it is morally OK to do it
providing the bad side-effect was not intended. This is true even
if you foresaw that the bad effect would probably happen.
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• Another application of DDE:
• Strategic Bomber: A pilot bombs a factory that contains the enemy’s store of weapons, and thus shortens the war, saving millions of lives. Unfortunately, 10,000 civilians live next to the factory who will die in the bombings.
• Terror Bomber: A pilot deliberately bombs 10,000 innocent civilians in order to demoralize the enemy, thus shortening the war and saving millions of lives.
• In Terror Bomber, the 10,000 deaths are intended as a means to ending the war and saving millions of lives. In Strategic Bomber, the deaths of 10,000 is merely a foreseen, but unintended side-effect of ending the war and saving millions. On DDE, strategic bombing is morally permissible, but terror bombing is not.
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Thompson‘s Objections
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?
Judith Thomson (born
1929) taught moral
philosophy and
metaphysics at MIT.
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• In Bystander at the Switch, the choice is between killing one and merely letting five die. So it is like Transplant.
• So, given Foot’s DDE principle, it should not be permissible to turn the trolley, just as it is not permissible to take the organs in Transplant.
• But intuitively it is permissible to turn the trolley. Bystander at the Switch seems more or less equivalent to the original Trolley Driver case.
• So there must be some morally relevant difference between Bystander at the Switch and Transplant. What is it?
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Variation on the Transplant case:
• “We tend to forget that some killings themselves include
lettings die, and do include them where the act by which the
agent kills takes time to cause death -- time in which the
agent can intervene but does not“ (Thompson 1985: 1400).
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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• In Repentance Transplant, the doctor intentionally caused the organ failure in the five, but now repents. So his choice is between killing five and killing one. (Remember the original Transplant case was a choice between killing one and letting five die.)
• As far as Foot’s DDE principle is concerned, it should be permissible to take the one person’s organs, just as it is permissible to turn the trolley in Trolley Driver.
• But intuitively it is not permissible to take the one’s organs. Repentence Transplant seems more or less equivalent to the original Transplant case.
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• Foot‘s original puzzle: What is the moral difference
between Trolley Driver and Transplant?
• Thompson‘s new puzzle: What is the moral difference
between Bystander at the Switch and Transplant, and
between Repentance Transplant and Trolley Driver?
• The Trolley Problem is the problem of explaining the moral
difference between these and similar cases.
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