The following is one of my favorite thought experiments from moral philosophy. It essentially consists of two similar scenerios that generally provoke two different reactions from the same person. So here we go:
Scenerio 1: Suppose that you are a doctor. One morning, six very sick people are rushed into your office. It turns out that they all have been poisoned and that all six of them will die unless they receive an antidote. However, you have only a limited supply of the antidote and there is no time to get more from another location. Witnesses to the poisoning confirm that one of the six people took in far more poison than the other five, so he would need more of the antidote to survive.
It turns out, in fact, that the guy who received the most poison would require
all all of antidote in order to survive. Alternatively, you could divide the antidote evenly among the other five patients and they would all survive. Is it moral to save the one person requiring the full dose or to instead save the five people requiring the lesser dose? More importantly,
why is that the moral decision?
Scenerio 2: Suppose that you are a doctor. One morning, six very sick people are rushed into your office. One of the patients has a severely broken finger. The other five all are suffering from organ failures that will prove fatal if they do not receive immediate transplants. My some remarkable coincidence, each of the five is suffering a failure of a totally different organ, so theoretically one donor could provide all the organs. Unfortunately, no donor organs are available and time is of the essence. Is it moral to allow the five people in need to die, or to instead kill the guy with the broken finger and give his organs to the five patients, thereby saving a net four lives? More importantly,
why is that the moral decision?
See if you can give consistent justifications for your conclusions in the two scenerios...
