My question is simple.
Can someone/something be blamed for not doing something good ?
It is immoral to walk by a poor man and not land him as much help as you can ?
Can a company be wrong for not paying the highest wage it's cost structure allows it ?
Etc.
PS: I kind thing the thread name sucks =( Suggestions ?
It really depends on the situation. I'd say, unless someone, through inaction, causes another person to come to direct harm, then he/she/zhe is not to be blamed for negligence or apathy.
Leaving someone to die when you -can- help them, or not stopping a tragic accident you have the power to stop, on the other hand, is a very different issue.
Ethical theories often make a distinction between what is morally obligatory and morally supererogatory. An obligatory action you must do, or else you are blameworthy. A supererogatory action you may be praised for performing, but cannot be blamed for not performing.
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Ethical theories often make a distinction between what is morally obligatory and morally supererogatory. An obligatory action you must do, or else you are blameworthy. A supererogatory action you may be praised for performing, but cannot be blamed for not performing.
Nice.
Now how can I decide which action is obligatory and which one is supererogatory ?
My understanding is it normally comes down to how much risk and effort is required. Putting your hand out to catch someone falling to their death would normally be an obligatory action. Risking your own life to catch someone falling to their death would normally be a supererogatory action.
But, when you really get into it you start running into very tricky problems. I think the trolley problem is one of the more well known ones:
"As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"
"As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"
Assuming I know nothing about all those guys, i believe I shouldn't push him over. Everyone is entitled with their right to live. It's not right to sacrifice innocents to save others.
Assuming I know nothing about all those guys, i believe I shouldn't push him over. Everyone is entitled with their right to live. It's not right to sacrifice innocents to save others.
Well, in that case you can probably skip the Utilitarian moral philosophers.
Morally I think you should act to help.
Morally I think you should help do the most good.
Therefore,
You should try to stop the trolley, 5 innocent lives > 1.
Unless the 5 people are child rapists or something equivalent, then the most good would be to let them get run over.
The reason I generally hate the "fat man on a bridge" trolley problem is that it does not offer the solution of jumping in front of the trolley yourself. Maybe you're fat enough to stop the trolley. The most good is self-sacrifice, not making someone else the victim.
You also die a legend and a hero. Maybe get a plaque on a wall somewhere. Bonus!
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“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
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― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Well, my favorite versions go into the human bias between inaction and action. People often have very different answers to:
Out of control train must pick between hitting one person or five, which should it pick?
Out of control train is going to hit five people, would you SWITCH THE TRACKS to make it hit one currently safe person instead?
Or the kin bias:
As a conductor for an out of control train you must pick between hitting one person or five random people, which should you pick?
What if you knew the one person was a good person?
What if you knew the one person as a friend?
What if the one person was your mother?
Answer all of the above again, only it's now 50 random people instead of 5.
Sam Harris had a good take on something simular based on human loss aversion. Most people found these two questions VERY different morally:
If a doctor was supost to administer medication to a newborn at a critical time to increase its potential IQ from 100 to 150, but--due to negligence--didn't and now it's too late, what should be the punishment?
If a doctor--due to negligence--administers the wrong medication to a newborn and this causes the newborn to lose 50 points of potential IQ going from potentially 150 to 100, what should be the punishment compared to the above (more harsh, the same, less harsh)?
The reason I generally hate the "fat man on a bridge" trolley problem is that it does not offer the solution of jumping in front of the trolley yourself. Maybe you're fat enough to stop the trolley. The most good is self-sacrifice, not making someone else the victim.
What you're doing here is like criticizing a taste test between Limburger and lutefisk because it does not offer chocolate cake as well - offering chocolate cake completely defeats the purpose of the experiment. The trolley problem doesn't offer the self-sacrifice solution because it is not intended to test whether we consider self-sacrifice moral. That's not particularly revealing; of course we consider self-sacrifice moral. It shines much more light on our moral reasoning to offer only unpalatable choices, and see which of them people choose.
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The reason I generally hate the "fat man on a bridge" trolley problem is that it does not offer the solution of jumping in front of the trolley yourself. Maybe you're fat enough to stop the trolley. The most good is self-sacrifice, not making someone else the victim.
What you're doing here is like criticizing a taste test between Limburger and lutefisk because it does not offer chocolate cake as well - offering chocolate cake completely defeats the purpose of the experiment. The trolley problem doesn't offer the self-sacrifice solution because it is not intended to test whether we consider self-sacrifice moral. That's not particularly revealing; of course we consider self-sacrifice moral. It shines much more light on our moral reasoning to offer only unpalatable choices, and see which of them people choose.
Not completely accurate.
I was sure to point out only the fat man on a bridge trolley problem and not all of them.
The Fat Man version clearly has room for self-sacrifice.
The TP with a lever to switch tracks doesn't imply that a heavy weight object will stop the train. If it did, I'd argue that I could push a car in front of it, or something.
The TP where you are the conductor also doesn't imply a heavy object will stop the trolley.
The Fat Man TP clearly states that a heavy object can stop the trolley, but doesn't account for the possibility that YOU are that heavy object. This seems patently relevant given the premise.
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are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
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ICM: I feel like you're deliberately missing the point.
"As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"
Presumably, in this scenario you are NOT heavy enough to stop the trolley. It's an imaginable scenario.
Just think of the fat-man trolley problem as "is murdering an innocent person in order to save five justifiable?"
Regarding OP, I think these behaviors are immoral and that all (or at least the vast, vast majority) of humans are immoral for this reason.
In IcecreamMan80 defense, when I was reading the question all I could think about was jumping myself as well.
But, I understood that's not the point of the question. They have you PUSH the fatman and not just switch tracks in that one because the act of PUSHING someone in front of a train is more violent than just flipping a switch. When dealing with biases, something like that matters.
I understood all that; yet, all that was going through my head while I read it was "Well, HOW fat is this guy? I'm a pretty big dude myself and..."
Assuming I know nothing about all those guys, i believe I shouldn't push him over. Everyone is entitled with their right to live. It's not right to sacrifice innocents to save others.
Well, in that case you can probably skip the Utilitarian moral philosophers.
I had a ethics discipline in my under-graduation and it covered the differenes between utilitarianism and the point of view defended by Kant (i believe) that actions have a moral in itself.
I kind feel like both evaluations are worthy to point I'm utilitarian in many aspects, such as public choice (taxing people to solve social problem, for example).
Well, my favorite versions go into the human bias between inaction and action. People often have very different answers to:
Out of control train must pick between hitting one person or five, which should it pick?
Out of control train is going to hit five people, would you SWITCH THE TRACKS to make it hit one currently safe person instead?
I see now that i'm extremely biased toward inaction.
If all options leads into morally wrong outcomes i will always pick inaction as the least worse. I did not put the train accident in motion so I do not feel responsible to one person life anymore then the other.
However, there are plenty of moral non-utilitarian people out that would willing bet their life to save others, even if the bet was 100% assuredly against them (which a court case is not).
I would shout at the people in the trolley's path. That way, they were given adequate warning. I have no right to commit a murder. I say that, ultimately, one's fate is in one's own hands and comes down to the decisions one makes.
I would shout at the people in the trolley's path. That way, they were given adequate warning. I have no right to commit a murder. I say that, ultimately, one's fate is in one's own hands and comes down to the decisions one makes.
I believe people are missing the point of the thought experiment, and probably shouldn't read Sophie's Choice.
It's not a D&D game. You're given a limited set of choices not so you can think of more options, but to see which of those given choices you find the most moral. They're meant to be difficult options, if you add "easier" options the point becomes moot. As BS already wrote:
On apathy - If you want to read up on a philosopher who really, really doesn't think apathy is moral, you should look into Emmanuel Levinas. I find his notion of "infinite responsibility towards the face of the Other" to be the ultimate argument against apathy.
In a nutshell, Levinas believed that humans are inherently violent, that all of our actions do some inherent harm as a consequence of living (eating, engaging in sexual activity, even thinking about things by labeling them or naming them is some form of violence), and that there seems to be no escape from violence. At least, the younger Levinas thought so.
The older Levinas seemed to have found a way. He believed that every single person's humanity is revealed through their face; the face of the Other shows us one's life, one's suffering, and one's vulnerability (it is the only part of the body which is routinely naked, and one that a person cannot see for themselves without a mirror, meaning that the experience of seeing one's own face is normally done by the Other), and that this nakedness of the face is symbolic of the infinite harm we can inflict upon it, and likewise the infinite care.
Why infinite harm? Because life is violent. All our actions have complex repercussions we can't even begin to fathom. Even such seemingly harmless things (like say, posting a trolling comment on the internet) could have consequences you simply don't know about (another person on the other side of the world could be having a really bad day, and they snap at that comment, resulting in a massacre), and while you may not be legally involved, Levinas argues that it basically is your fault if anything bad happens as a consequence of any action you do. Thus, one cannot afford to be apathetic.
Why was Levinas so extreme? Understand that he was a Jew, and his philosophical writings were influenced by the events of the Holocaust. In those days, the lives of his people were put under the ultimate test. Thus, he wished to find a way to justify the need to attempt to be caring at all times in order to try and lessen (but not completely hinder, since that's impossible) the violence that life inflicts. This is by caring for the Other. That can only be done by not approaching the face violently, but in a caring manner.
How do we do that? By respecting each individual person's unique humanity, just as we do for our close friends and/or family. If you know other people well enough, you'd be able to appreciate their life stories better, to see their faces up close. Random people walking by on the street are not special to most people; you don't know them. You don't even really see their faces. But if you got to know them like you do your friends or family, you'd interact with them and find out that meeting them face-to-face makes it difficult to say no to them. If you understand that every person on the planet has a face, then you realize that even if you don't know other people, everyone has the same humanity by virtue of being alive, and therefore, the same right to live. It gives life itself value, because life itself has infinite potential. To Levinas, this potential must be put to helping others.
Which leads us, finally, to the trolley problem: As mentioned earlier, humans have generally reacted completely differently to this situation if they know the people involved (and have, from a Levinatian perspective, personally experienced seeing their faces), rather than not knowing them (therefore, not having a face, being "nobody"). In that problem, trading one life for five seems easy if you don't know any of those people. The dynamic might change if the one person you intend to sacrifice was your best friend. You know him. He has a face to you. What choice would you make then?
Thus, at least to Levinas, one cannot afford to be apathetic in any way, because the consequence of our apathy is that our capacity for the infinite is hindered when we become apathetic. Not only that, but because life itself is violence, then being apathetic is already destructive, because you are not doing anything but live (and in living, unknowingly influence, or even potentially take away, the lives of others). On the other hand, if we were not apathetic, if we exhausted our time and energy to care for others and also watched our own actions so that we could minimize the pain we inflict on others, we could actually do something better than just live and consume resources that could be put to better use elsewhere in the world, in places we don't even know, and for faces we will probably never see...
I participate yearly in a survival challenge in which I am dropped off in the wilderness with 1 days rations, a knife, and no other supplies, and have to find my way home. This is typically several weeks hiking from civilization.
I have personally killed several bears in the course of this challenge, with the use of snares and other traps.
My understanding is it normally comes down to how much risk and effort is required. Putting your hand out to catch someone falling to their death would normally be an obligatory action. Risking your own life to catch someone falling to their death would normally be a supererogatory action.
But, when you really get into it you start running into very tricky problems. I think the trolley problem is one of the more well known ones:
"As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"
I believe that you wouldn't be obligated to do anything in this situation, both choices would be supererogatory. I would like to think that I would make 1 of the choices based on my perception of them as people, but I'm still objectively not morally obligated to do anything.
I would like to think that I would make 1 of the choices based on my perception of them as people, but I'm still objectively not morally obligated to do anything.
I believe part of the point of the question is that you don't know anything about the character of the other people, good or bad. As in, the assumption is that each of them is 'equal' based on your knowledge of them. In that example anyway.
I believe that you wouldn't be obligated to do anything in this situation, both choices would be supererogatory.
Why do you believe that?
The reason why either choice is supererogatory because both outcomes have a positive "silver lining".
If I was there to intervene/not intervene, either choice results in a life being saved. The fat man would be indirectly saved as a result of inaction or the victims would be saved at the expense of the fat man, whichever choice you choose to label as obligatory boils down to personal philosophies (utilitarianism or deontology). I know there are more philosophies out there and that both sides can argue for either course of action, but for simplicity's sake, let's just say that the deontologist is in favor of saving the fat man and the utilitarian is in favor of saving the five people. Both sides are concerned with an outcome, and both outcomes are arguably legitimate.
However
If I was not there to intervene (or not intervene), then the outcome would end in the five people dying in favor of the fat man, thus resulting in the outcome of fat man living, which just happens to be in favor of the deontologist. I also wouldn't be held responsible since it's impossible for me to make a choice in absence of this situation
Utilitarianism and Deontology are both reasonable moralities, but their rivalry has proven to boil down to nothing but "you're wrong because you are wrong"
You can't just say that the deontologist is wrong, nor can you just say that the utilitarian is wrong in this scenario. You're lack of presence just happens to favor the deontologist
When I am present in that scenario and presented with a choice, either outcome is still beneficial or positive to one of the two parties. Therefore I can ethically choose which ever course of action that happens to suit me best at the time without directly/indirectly committing anything unethical on the grounds that you can't reasonably say that either action is unethical without being ethical to an opposing philosophy and vice versa
I would like to think that I would make 1 of the choices based on my perception of them as people, but I'm still objectively not morally obligated to do anything.
I believe part of the point of the question is that you don't know anything about the character of the other people, good or bad. As in, the assumption is that each of them is 'equal' based on your knowledge of them. In that example anyway.
I would make my choice based on my perception of the people at the time, but I'm subjectively arguing that any course of action is objectively fine whether or not they are based on my subjective means of measuring the net positivity of either outcome. If I were to perceive them all as total strangers (or had a personal connection with the five on the rail), then I would kill the fat man for the five. If I had a close connection to the fat man, then I would be more likely to allow the five strangers to die, I would also not feel any guilt nor experience any cognitive dissonance.
Or to simplify my argument
Both outcomes are concerned with a net positive
Both outcomes result in a net positive
Therefore, both choices are supererogatory
I've only dabbled in philosophy and I admit that I can't really put my argument into a perfect flow of wording, this is just my best way of communicating my interpretation of it
The reason why either choice is supererogatory because both outcomes have a positive "silver lining".
It's oxymoronic for jointly exhaustive choices to both be supererogatory. Supererogation by definition requires that an action stand above some alternative that is obligatory. What you're describing isn't supererogation but rather simple moral neutrality.
EDIT: Also, you'd be hard-pressed to find a philosopher who was comfortable calling "supererogatory" a course of inaction.
My understanding is it normally comes down to how much risk and effort is required. Putting your hand out to catch someone falling to their death would normally be an obligatory action. Risking your own life to catch someone falling to their death would normally be a supererogatory action.
But, when you really get into it you start running into very tricky problems. I think the trolley problem is one of the more well known ones:
"As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"
To me the trolley problem is a simple problem. I don't need to concern myself too deeply with the moral dimension because there are sufficient countervailing concerns that would dictate my behavior.
From a legal standpoint, killing the fat man to save five is murder. Our laws have the defense of necessity however.
Generally necessity is a defense to breaking the law, except in the cases of committing murder. (that might vary from state to state however)
In a jurisdiction where I do not have the right to commit murder to save 5 people, what the law is saying to me there is that the authority to make that decision is not within the right of its citizens to make that necessity call.
The state legislature that wrote the law is simply saying something to this effect:
We don't want our citizens making judgment calls where they might feel murder is a necessary means towards an end. We want to say categorically murder as a means to any end is illegal.
Though the odd case may exist where more harm in a single instance may be wrought by not committing the murder, such as in the trolley case, we think these cases are rare enough that our society as a whole is better off by not empowering citizens to make those judgment calls that include murder as a means to an end.
Laws must be written for the entire population. However what constitutes a 'better' end in the mind of a citizen is likely to be largely subjective. To therefore empower citizens with the recourse of murder to justify means which appear subjectively superior in their own individual minds may well cause more dysfunction and damage to fabric of our society than any loss that might occur under rare and unique 'trolley' cases.
In a final sense however, if a citizen does so choose to engage in murder to save others, he or she must do so with the presumption that he or she will be tried for murder. Even then however, that person's guilt is not absolute, as our criminal laws are written that a person must be unanimously found guilty by a jury of peers.
It is our system of condemnation by jury of peers which leaves open a final door of flexibility for any countervailing moral considerations that may account for each unique circumstance.
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at any rate, situations like the trolley problem have indeed occurred before in American and English history.
In the American case, where 16 passengers were forced out of an overcrowded lifeboat and therefore killed as a result, the jury refused to indict for murder. One of the crewman was found guilty of manslaughter and served 6 months in jail with a $20 fine.
The trolley problem has had real analogues in US history, and the case of US v. Holmes serves to illustrate how our courts have dealt with such situations in the past.
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As for what I would do in the trolley case. I would let the people die. The law is the law, and I'm content to let that fact deflect any moral responsibility on my part. Had society as a whole wanted a law where pushing the fat man was permissible, they would clamor to have such a law in our democracy. The fact that they don't is a reflection of our society's values.
As for what I would do in the trolley case. I would let the people die. The law is the law, and I'm content to let that fact deflect any moral responsibility on my part. Had society as a whole wanted a law where pushing the fat man was permissible, they would clamor to have such a law in our democracy. The fact that they don't is a reflection of our society's values.
So, you feel morals and the laws of man are one and the same? That society's values define piety?
I would not expect such a sentiment from you, TomCat26.
Can someone/something be blamed for not doing something good ?
It is immoral to walk by a poor man and not land him as much help as you can ?
Can a company be wrong for not paying the highest wage it's cost structure allows it ?
Etc.
PS: I kind thing the thread name sucks =( Suggestions ?
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Leaving someone to die when you -can- help them, or not stopping a tragic accident you have the power to stop, on the other hand, is a very different issue.
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Nice.
Now how can I decide which action is obligatory and which one is supererogatory ?
Thnx for all responses !
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Depends on which moral philosopher you ask.
My understanding is it normally comes down to how much risk and effort is required. Putting your hand out to catch someone falling to their death would normally be an obligatory action. Risking your own life to catch someone falling to their death would normally be a supererogatory action.
But, when you really get into it you start running into very tricky problems. I think the trolley problem is one of the more well known ones:
"As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"
Assuming I know nothing about all those guys, i believe I shouldn't push him over. Everyone is entitled with their right to live. It's not right to sacrifice innocents to save others.
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Well, in that case you can probably skip the Utilitarian moral philosophers.
Sounds like you're closer to Libertarianism or maybe Objectivism.
Morally I think you should help do the most good.
Therefore,
You should try to stop the trolley, 5 innocent lives > 1.
Unless the 5 people are child rapists or something equivalent, then the most good would be to let them get run over.
The reason I generally hate the "fat man on a bridge" trolley problem is that it does not offer the solution of jumping in front of the trolley yourself. Maybe you're fat enough to stop the trolley. The most good is self-sacrifice, not making someone else the victim.
You also die a legend and a hero. Maybe get a plaque on a wall somewhere. Bonus!
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Out of control train must pick between hitting one person or five, which should it pick?
Out of control train is going to hit five people, would you SWITCH THE TRACKS to make it hit one currently safe person instead?
Or the kin bias:
As a conductor for an out of control train you must pick between hitting one person or five random people, which should you pick?
What if you knew the one person was a good person?
What if you knew the one person as a friend?
What if the one person was your mother?
Answer all of the above again, only it's now 50 random people instead of 5.
Sam Harris had a good take on something simular based on human loss aversion. Most people found these two questions VERY different morally:
If a doctor was supost to administer medication to a newborn at a critical time to increase its potential IQ from 100 to 150, but--due to negligence--didn't and now it's too late, what should be the punishment?
If a doctor--due to negligence--administers the wrong medication to a newborn and this causes the newborn to lose 50 points of potential IQ going from potentially 150 to 100, what should be the punishment compared to the above (more harsh, the same, less harsh)?
Humans are weird, aren't we?
What you're doing here is like criticizing a taste test between Limburger and lutefisk because it does not offer chocolate cake as well - offering chocolate cake completely defeats the purpose of the experiment. The trolley problem doesn't offer the self-sacrifice solution because it is not intended to test whether we consider self-sacrifice moral. That's not particularly revealing; of course we consider self-sacrifice moral. It shines much more light on our moral reasoning to offer only unpalatable choices, and see which of them people choose.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Not completely accurate.
I was sure to point out only the fat man on a bridge trolley problem and not all of them.
The Fat Man version clearly has room for self-sacrifice.
The TP with a lever to switch tracks doesn't imply that a heavy weight object will stop the train. If it did, I'd argue that I could push a car in front of it, or something.
The TP where you are the conductor also doesn't imply a heavy object will stop the trolley.
The Fat Man TP clearly states that a heavy object can stop the trolley, but doesn't account for the possibility that YOU are that heavy object. This seems patently relevant given the premise.
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“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Presumably, in this scenario you are NOT heavy enough to stop the trolley. It's an imaginable scenario.
Just think of the fat-man trolley problem as "is murdering an innocent person in order to save five justifiable?"
Regarding OP, I think these behaviors are immoral and that all (or at least the vast, vast majority) of humans are immoral for this reason.
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21: 28.9%
22: 27.5%
23: 26.3%
24: 25.5%
25: 25.1%
26: 25.3%
But, I understood that's not the point of the question. They have you PUSH the fatman and not just switch tracks in that one because the act of PUSHING someone in front of a train is more violent than just flipping a switch. When dealing with biases, something like that matters.
I understood all that; yet, all that was going through my head while I read it was "Well, HOW fat is this guy? I'm a pretty big dude myself and..."
I had a ethics discipline in my under-graduation and it covered the differenes between utilitarianism and the point of view defended by Kant (i believe) that actions have a moral in itself.
I kind feel like both evaluations are worthy to point I'm utilitarian in many aspects, such as public choice (taxing people to solve social problem, for example).
I see now that i'm extremely biased toward inaction.
If all options leads into morally wrong outcomes i will always pick inaction as the least worse. I did not put the train accident in motion so I do not feel responsible to one person life anymore then the other.
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An true utilitarian since 2 is less than 5.
However, there are plenty of moral non-utilitarian people out that would willing bet their life to save others, even if the bet was 100% assuredly against them (which a court case is not).
It's not a D&D game. You're given a limited set of choices not so you can think of more options, but to see which of those given choices you find the most moral. They're meant to be difficult options, if you add "easier" options the point becomes moot. As BS already wrote:
Very much so, apparently.
On apathy - If you want to read up on a philosopher who really, really doesn't think apathy is moral, you should look into Emmanuel Levinas. I find his notion of "infinite responsibility towards the face of the Other" to be the ultimate argument against apathy.
In a nutshell, Levinas believed that humans are inherently violent, that all of our actions do some inherent harm as a consequence of living (eating, engaging in sexual activity, even thinking about things by labeling them or naming them is some form of violence), and that there seems to be no escape from violence. At least, the younger Levinas thought so.
The older Levinas seemed to have found a way. He believed that every single person's humanity is revealed through their face; the face of the Other shows us one's life, one's suffering, and one's vulnerability (it is the only part of the body which is routinely naked, and one that a person cannot see for themselves without a mirror, meaning that the experience of seeing one's own face is normally done by the Other), and that this nakedness of the face is symbolic of the infinite harm we can inflict upon it, and likewise the infinite care.
Why infinite harm? Because life is violent. All our actions have complex repercussions we can't even begin to fathom. Even such seemingly harmless things (like say, posting a trolling comment on the internet) could have consequences you simply don't know about (another person on the other side of the world could be having a really bad day, and they snap at that comment, resulting in a massacre), and while you may not be legally involved, Levinas argues that it basically is your fault if anything bad happens as a consequence of any action you do. Thus, one cannot afford to be apathetic.
Why was Levinas so extreme? Understand that he was a Jew, and his philosophical writings were influenced by the events of the Holocaust. In those days, the lives of his people were put under the ultimate test. Thus, he wished to find a way to justify the need to attempt to be caring at all times in order to try and lessen (but not completely hinder, since that's impossible) the violence that life inflicts. This is by caring for the Other. That can only be done by not approaching the face violently, but in a caring manner.
How do we do that? By respecting each individual person's unique humanity, just as we do for our close friends and/or family. If you know other people well enough, you'd be able to appreciate their life stories better, to see their faces up close. Random people walking by on the street are not special to most people; you don't know them. You don't even really see their faces. But if you got to know them like you do your friends or family, you'd interact with them and find out that meeting them face-to-face makes it difficult to say no to them. If you understand that every person on the planet has a face, then you realize that even if you don't know other people, everyone has the same humanity by virtue of being alive, and therefore, the same right to live. It gives life itself value, because life itself has infinite potential. To Levinas, this potential must be put to helping others.
Which leads us, finally, to the trolley problem: As mentioned earlier, humans have generally reacted completely differently to this situation if they know the people involved (and have, from a Levinatian perspective, personally experienced seeing their faces), rather than not knowing them (therefore, not having a face, being "nobody"). In that problem, trading one life for five seems easy if you don't know any of those people. The dynamic might change if the one person you intend to sacrifice was your best friend. You know him. He has a face to you. What choice would you make then?
Thus, at least to Levinas, one cannot afford to be apathetic in any way, because the consequence of our apathy is that our capacity for the infinite is hindered when we become apathetic. Not only that, but because life itself is violence, then being apathetic is already destructive, because you are not doing anything but live (and in living, unknowingly influence, or even potentially take away, the lives of others). On the other hand, if we were not apathetic, if we exhausted our time and energy to care for others and also watched our own actions so that we could minimize the pain we inflict on others, we could actually do something better than just live and consume resources that could be put to better use elsewhere in the world, in places we don't even know, and for faces we will probably never see...
How well do you do against one?
I believe that you wouldn't be obligated to do anything in this situation, both choices would be supererogatory. I would like to think that I would make 1 of the choices based on my perception of them as people, but I'm still objectively not morally obligated to do anything.
I believe part of the point of the question is that you don't know anything about the character of the other people, good or bad. As in, the assumption is that each of them is 'equal' based on your knowledge of them. In that example anyway.
The reason why either choice is supererogatory because both outcomes have a positive "silver lining".
If I was there to intervene/not intervene, either choice results in a life being saved. The fat man would be indirectly saved as a result of inaction or the victims would be saved at the expense of the fat man, whichever choice you choose to label as obligatory boils down to personal philosophies (utilitarianism or deontology). I know there are more philosophies out there and that both sides can argue for either course of action, but for simplicity's sake, let's just say that the deontologist is in favor of saving the fat man and the utilitarian is in favor of saving the five people. Both sides are concerned with an outcome, and both outcomes are arguably legitimate.
However
If I was not there to intervene (or not intervene), then the outcome would end in the five people dying in favor of the fat man, thus resulting in the outcome of fat man living, which just happens to be in favor of the deontologist. I also wouldn't be held responsible since it's impossible for me to make a choice in absence of this situation
Utilitarianism and Deontology are both reasonable moralities, but their rivalry has proven to boil down to nothing but "you're wrong because you are wrong"
You can't just say that the deontologist is wrong, nor can you just say that the utilitarian is wrong in this scenario. You're lack of presence just happens to favor the deontologist
When I am present in that scenario and presented with a choice, either outcome is still beneficial or positive to one of the two parties. Therefore I can ethically choose which ever course of action that happens to suit me best at the time without directly/indirectly committing anything unethical on the grounds that you can't reasonably say that either action is unethical without being ethical to an opposing philosophy and vice versa
I would make my choice based on my perception of the people at the time, but I'm subjectively arguing that any course of action is objectively fine whether or not they are based on my subjective means of measuring the net positivity of either outcome. If I were to perceive them all as total strangers (or had a personal connection with the five on the rail), then I would kill the fat man for the five. If I had a close connection to the fat man, then I would be more likely to allow the five strangers to die, I would also not feel any guilt nor experience any cognitive dissonance.
Or to simplify my argument
Both outcomes are concerned with a net positive
Both outcomes result in a net positive
Therefore, both choices are supererogatory
I've only dabbled in philosophy and I admit that I can't really put my argument into a perfect flow of wording, this is just my best way of communicating my interpretation of it
EDIT: Also, you'd be hard-pressed to find a philosopher who was comfortable calling "supererogatory" a course of inaction.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
To me the trolley problem is a simple problem. I don't need to concern myself too deeply with the moral dimension because there are sufficient countervailing concerns that would dictate my behavior.
From a legal standpoint, killing the fat man to save five is murder. Our laws have the defense of necessity however.
Generally necessity is a defense to breaking the law, except in the cases of committing murder. (that might vary from state to state however)
In a jurisdiction where I do not have the right to commit murder to save 5 people, what the law is saying to me there is that the authority to make that decision is not within the right of its citizens to make that necessity call.
The state legislature that wrote the law is simply saying something to this effect:
We don't want our citizens making judgment calls where they might feel murder is a necessary means towards an end. We want to say categorically murder as a means to any end is illegal.
Though the odd case may exist where more harm in a single instance may be wrought by not committing the murder, such as in the trolley case, we think these cases are rare enough that our society as a whole is better off by not empowering citizens to make those judgment calls that include murder as a means to an end.
Laws must be written for the entire population. However what constitutes a 'better' end in the mind of a citizen is likely to be largely subjective. To therefore empower citizens with the recourse of murder to justify means which appear subjectively superior in their own individual minds may well cause more dysfunction and damage to fabric of our society than any loss that might occur under rare and unique 'trolley' cases.
In a final sense however, if a citizen does so choose to engage in murder to save others, he or she must do so with the presumption that he or she will be tried for murder. Even then however, that person's guilt is not absolute, as our criminal laws are written that a person must be unanimously found guilty by a jury of peers.
It is our system of condemnation by jury of peers which leaves open a final door of flexibility for any countervailing moral considerations that may account for each unique circumstance.
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at any rate, situations like the trolley problem have indeed occurred before in American and English history.
In the American case, where 16 passengers were forced out of an overcrowded lifeboat and therefore killed as a result, the jury refused to indict for murder. One of the crewman was found guilty of manslaughter and served 6 months in jail with a $20 fine.
The trolley problem has had real analogues in US history, and the case of US v. Holmes serves to illustrate how our courts have dealt with such situations in the past.
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As for what I would do in the trolley case. I would let the people die. The law is the law, and I'm content to let that fact deflect any moral responsibility on my part. Had society as a whole wanted a law where pushing the fat man was permissible, they would clamor to have such a law in our democracy. The fact that they don't is a reflection of our society's values.
So, you feel morals and the laws of man are one and the same? That society's values define piety?
I would not expect such a sentiment from you, TomCat26.