politicophile

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...

Lebell

I don't recall the philosophic schools that my reasoning stems from, but here you go:

1) No brainer. It is commonly accepted triage to save as many people as you can. Therefore it would be acceptable to give the five the antidote at the expense of the one (Greatest Good). BUT! I always try to get around such pesky problems. Would it be possible to give PART of the antidote to each, thus increasing the time to move them to another location where they could all be saved? (Not a part of the mental exercise I realize.)

2) Also, this has been worked out by many. People die of such organ failures all the time. It's called life. Sooner or later you and I will face death by this way or another. To prolong our lives at the expense of another is evil as it takes away the gift of life from someone else who wasn't facing their time to die.

So no. It would be evil to take the life of the one man to prolong the life of the five others.

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politicophile

Would you feel the same way if more than 5 lives were at stake? At some point, the killing of one person to save the lives of [dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, everyone on earth] must become justified. Or does it?

cyrnel

It isn't a matter of killing one person, it's a matter of saving 5. All six are dying, you choose to do the most good you're able. How can that be faulted?

Now what if the one person were Bill Gates who promised to donate $5bil to the charities of your choice if you saved him? Surely, you can save many, many more than 5 people with $5bil.

Your last post appears to be reversed. You're making it a simpler decision by saving dozens, hundreds, etc. instead of the one. Saving two would be enough for me. Doesn't mean what-if's won't haunt me on bad days but the logic is easy.

The difficulty for me would be making a choice between two people. One vs. one.

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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

archpaladin

In general I believe that the intentional execution of one life is immoral regardless of external circumstances. I might be talked out of this stance if we're discussing murderers, serial killers, or provokers of genocide, as in those cases we're dealing with a person who is actively seeking the lives of others. The case presented here, however, does not involve the particular nature of the person being saved.

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Suave

Making a definitive statement without considering the circumstances would be proven faulty once the situation arose.

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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

Johnny Pyro

1.- The guy who had more poison, "I'm sorry sir, I can't help you, your gonna die." I would save the 5 who could be saved. Its not a question of morality or the right thing to do, but the logical thing to do. 5 to 1, not bad, I could live with that. "Nurse we need to be properly stocked on that antidote, so next time this won't happen!"

2.- Umm... in a medical sense, death is a natural part of life, (Yoda quote), I would let them die. "I'm sorry we have no organs for you guys......now excuse me, I have to tend to this patients broken finger."

The first ones easy, but I don't feel right about the second one. Hmmm...

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CandleInTheDark

2. It is wrong to kill an innocent life to save others.

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politicophile

Is this true in all circumstances?

Robert_XX

My answer is
1. Save the 5 at the expense of the 1
2. Let the 5 die

The moral reasoning that is consistent with both answers is
1. Do none harm
2. Save the most lives possible.
in that order of precedence

Lebell

The number of persons saved is irrelevent to the morality of taking a life to save another.

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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politicophile

It's easy to say that, but someone who actually lived by this maxim would be terribly immoral from my perspective. This strikes me as a sort of high horse mentality where one refuses to compromise one's ideals regardless of the consequences. While this might be admirable when it comes to things like peer pressure, I would say that a person who is unwilling to violate their ideals (let's say a prohibition against killing people) in order to save the human race is downright evil.

How many lives is one's principle worth? Why, why is murdering one person worse than allowing large numbers of people to die? Does it come down to vanity?

Seeker

Where do you draw the line with that sort of reasoning?

You either kill people or you don't... I would not kill one healthy innocent person just to save five others!

Scenerio 1: Save the five I can... call an ambulance for the one that needs more antidote... (greatest good)

Scenerio 2: Call ambulance to my office to pick up the five organ failure patients (why were they not taken directly to the hospital anyway? ) and attend the broken finger... reasoning: I can only do what is in my capabilities.

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optik_nerve

Scenario 1 = easy to answer

Definately save the 5 I can.

but...

Scenario 2 is a different story. I would first (probably) ask the fellow with the broken finger if he was willing to sacrifice his life to save 5 others...if he said no, so be it, but I wouldn't just kill him to save the other 5 due to the fact that death is a natural part of life...(confusing)

Suave

Principles are all one has when it comes down to it. Valuing the survival of the human race is also a principle. Some people may not hold it in as high esteem as that of not killing a person directly, and therefore would avoid it.

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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

politicophile

It seems as though everyone is dancing around the underlying point of this thread without quite addressing it. We seem to agree universally that it would be immoral to save only the one person in Scenerio 1 instead of the five. Yet, in the second scenerio, where you have to actively kill someone to save five people, the concensus seems to be that we should allow five people to die rather than actively causing the other one to die.

I'll pull out an old Kantian example to illustrate the problem with taking the "principled" stand in situations like this:

Suppose that you are asleep in your bedroom when your sleep is disturbed by a madman with an axe. The madman asks you where your children are sleeping. Now, if you don't give him an answer, you are confident that he will search around your house for your children and inevitably find them. Furthermore, you are absolutely morally opposed to lying: you think that intentionally lying is a terrible moral offense and have avoided telling a lie for your entire adult life up to this point.

You have three options:
1. You can tell the axe-carrying madman where your children are sleeping, despite the fact that you have every reason to believe the madman will kill them.

2. You can not answer him, in which case, the madman would conduct a brief search of your very small house and find your children anyway.

3. You can violate your longstanding moral principle of not intentionally lying and tell the madman they are in the backyard (e.g.), giving you and your children time to escape.

In this soemwhat different scenerio, should one be held morally responsible for the death of one's children if one chooses option 1? If so, why should the same responsibility not apply to the doctor who is unwilling to kill one patient to save five?

Seeker

By chance are you trying to find out if we are capable of having a universal model of morals that can be applied to every conceivable situation that may arise?

The first scenario calls for the 'greatest good'... the second scenario is not the same because that also includes 'murder' (a wrong) to achieve the greatest good... thou shall not kill is therefore stronger than the 'greater good'.

I also asked earlier... where do you draw the line in the reasoning that you can kill one person to save five... do you kill one person to save two? How do you decide who should die and who should be saved? I'm sure if you wanted to kill one person to save five, would you not consider killing the nurse or administrative clerk? Why the patient with the broken finger?

If someone believes it is wrong to take a life and save another, then yes it could be true for 'all' circumstances. If one person could save the world but you had to kill them to do it, then it would still be wrong. Do you have a different opinion? I am really not sure what you are trying to get across...

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Lak

An interesting point to note here is the implied distinction between "intentionally killing a man" and "letting a man die". It seems to me that people are more comfortable with the death of man 1 because he is dying anyway, thus passing the blame to whatever poisoned him. However, if it is in one's power to prevent his death, wouldn't not taking action be the same as killing him? You could rewrite the scenarios thusly:

Man 1: You can save him (with the antidote) or kill him (by doing nothing) and save 5.
Man 2: You can save him (by doing nothing) or kill him (intentional murder) and save 5.

Ignoring personal stance on 'killing' versus 'letting die' (which it makes sense to do in a general case), these two scenarios are completely equivalent. There or two identical outcomes in both and the doctor is totally capable of selecting either in both circumstances.
Thus, the actual difference between these scenarios is... (dat da da daa): the responsibility for the one death.
In case 1, if the man dies it is the fault of some random faceless party. In case 2, if the man dies then it is YOUR FAULT. Is there where the problem lies? I think so. I think that it must be, because its the only difference between these scenarios. I can hear the response "Yeah but I just couldn't live with the knowledge that I'd killed someone" which is perfectly fine, and I understand the reasoning well,
however... let me get old school on yo ass.

I could argue that the doctor that chooses NOT to kill Man 2 is actually afraid for himself, ie, scared of "living with the knowledge". Maybe someone who is truely "strong" will shoulder this burden for the sake of the five, thus sacrificing his own sanity alongside the life of the one man. Afterall, what it boils down to is killing FIVE people instead of one, for your own sake. One should instead kill one man, save five, and live with it no matter the pain. Isn't that the most selfless path? Isn't that what the bigger man would do?

Well, not according to federal law. But think about it.

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archpaladin

While I understand the reasoning behind your statements, it strikes me that compromising one's principles depending on circumstances is basically equivalent to having no principles at all. Bending the ideals under pressure is an admission that the ideals being bent are not really worth upholding in the first place, but instead are there because they are personally and momentarily convenient. What stops a person from taking that kind of mentality and taking it to the extreme - saying something like "because it is ok to kill one individual to save the lives of five others, then it is now ok to go out killing many for the sake of my own advancement"?

An interesting example, but the presentation is flawed. While we may assume that some reactions by the madman are likely, in truth the person being woken up in the middle of the night has no idea what the madman will do regardless of the answer given, and thus you cannot present cause-effect scenarios as options to pick from. For example, the person might tell the truth as to where the children are, and the madman may respond with "Good. I'll be sure to avoid that room later," and never actually enter it.

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archpaladin

I would argue that there is another difference between the scenarios, and that being the principle of the matter involved. This scenario is not about placing blame. It's about upholding principle. The question at hand in case 2 is whether or not murder is justified when compared with the physical wellbeing of others.

People can bear anything they have the intention to bear, though you can't fault them for having a weak(er) psyche compared to others. Regardless, this argument is moot when considering the issue of the principles involved.

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politicophile

Slippery slope argument: just because one believes that there are some instances in which [killing people, lying, cheating, torture, etc.] is acceptable does not mean that one would then be free to engage in those behaviors at any time. This inference is clearly fallacious.

Are you trying to argue that because there is an extremely remote possibility that the madman would not murder your children, you are justified in telling him where they are? Isn't this a bit like playing Russian roulette when you don't know how many bullets are in the revolver? Not smart, in my book.

Yakk

First of all, I do not believe in the existence of an ethical oracle. "Good" and "Evil" do not form a distinct set. While there are acts you can say are "Good" and acts you can say are "Evil", this does not mean that for every you can tell if it is "Good" or "Evil".

Believing you have a moral or ethical oracle is an "Evil" in my experience.


Secondly, note that organ transplants are band-aids, not cures, for the most part. So your example is not good, because it ignores life-span issues.


Thirdly, you are ignoring secondary effects. If you kill one patient to save 5 others, nobody will ever trust you again as their Doctor -- for good reason. And more importantly, people will trust Doctors less.

This is why Doctors need to follow the 'first, do no harm' rule. Because if you trust your Doctor to 'first do no harm', then you can put yourself under his knife.

This is roughly the same reason as why a Lawyer, acting as a Lawyer, should not tell the police that the person she is representing is a murderer.

The long term societal benefit of the Lawyer or Doctor acting in particular ways, and the structure it provides to society and to the interactions of society with those professions, is a huge factor that cannot be ignored if you expect to get an answer that makes any sense.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

Lak

Ok, good, true. How does one go about comparing the principles involved however? One can only do this in thier own case, for principles vary wildly depending on the person involved. If we wanted to reason about a general case, we would be forced to cut out this fluctuation alltogether, for these are difference between individual examples in addition to differences between the 2 scenarios (and these can't be separated).
This leaves us with the position I outlined above which is, I agree, largely moot in the context of the question, and only good for mental fodder. So perhaps it can say something about mankind in general (which obviously the original question cannot hope to do).
At any rate, I had fun coming up with it.

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Lebell

This is called "Playing God".

I need to say very clearly that I am not attacking you nor am I speaking with hyperbole when I say this but I think that it is interesting that you use the term 'evil' in your post.

IMO, it is the view that somehow saving another or many others at the expense of anyone's life (innocent or not), is 'downright evil'. By this logic have many horrors been committed because one or one group has decided, usually arbitrarily, what the 'good' is that someone else must be sacrificed for. Indeed, you can justify doing almost anything horrible to anyone with this kind of logic. Need human test subjects for an AIDS vaccine? Pull people randomly off the street. Afterall, millions will be saved by their sacrifice. Need organs for dying rich children? Go into ghettos and randomly grab kids. Afterall, if just one of the rich kids becomes another Bill Gates and donates millions to worthy causes, isn't it worth it? (Plus, if you pick carefully, you will probably just be eliminating a future crack addict headed for prison.)

No sir. In your view, "greatest good" is saving as many lives as possible, as if preserving life is the greatest good there is. While I agree that life is precious, there are times when sticking to your principles are much more important.

My hallmark is the example set by Jesus. He also was sacrificed for the "good" of the many (something He let happen willingly). But it is quite clear that it was an evil act ("Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."). My own interpretation is that part of the message of His death (and subsequent Resurrection for the believer) is that death is not something to be feared, even a bloody and brutal one because you stick to your principles.

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Phage

Scenerio 1: The solution is obvious, save the four who can be saved. This is based on the principal of saving as many lives as possible.
Outcome: 4 saved, 1 dead.

Scenerio 2: The first supposition is that you are a doctor which makes it easier; I seem to remember doctors having an oath they take which states "Do no harm..." or something similar. Therefore killing the otherwise healthy man is out of the question, unless of course he agrees to be the donor. Obviously you are not a viable candidate for donating organs as you will be performing the procedures and because the example did not mention any other peopled I will assume you are alone.

Your materials to work with are now restricted to the four critically injured people. If you can talk with any of them do so and explain the situation, if you are lucky someone will volunteer. Failing that look at the four injuries/operations and rank them based on their chance of success. You should then decide not to perform the operation least likely to succeed and instead use that person's good organs to save the other three patients. Afterwards tend to the broken finger.
Outcome: 4 saved, 1 dead.

politicophile

Allow me to clarify, since I am new to this forum, that I have a nasty habit of playing devil's advocate and that most, if not all, of the views I have been advocating on this thread are not my own. My purpose here is to show that, although we all want to prevent humans from dying, we are not willing to do certain things to accomplish this end. But why not? Why is killing so reprehensible that we would allow four (net) people to die rather than do it? Are clean hands worth more than four human lives?

EDIT: Damn, I can't fix that tag!

lebell edit: fixed it for you

Yakk

Phile, because down that road hell lies.

This isn't a supposition, or a religious statement, or even a philosophical maxim.

It is what humankind has observed of itself over the ages. Once you start accepting the slaughter of innocents for a greater good, bad things happen.

If your ethical model of humanity does not predict this, then the odds are that your model is wrong.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

Suave

It is still a matter of principle. Simply because the protecting the lives of one's children is generally a fundamental and nearly universal principle makes it no less a principle. All of these decisions are not "principle versus other", they are "principle versus principle", and the principle chosen by that person as most important wins. All decisions are principled, regardless of the situation.

The reason a person would or would not be held morally responsible for his or her actions depends on whether the principles used in the decision were shared by society. For example, the greater society believes that the lives of children are more important than lying to a murderer. Hence, if one were to choose to lie, one's actions would not be considered morally reprehensible. It is not a question of right or wrong, it is a question of with or against. Does the decision coincide with the values of society as a whole, or does it not?

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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

Seeker

I'd like to hear a different moral framework that would enable you to decide who should live and who should die... that to me is what this boils down to.

It would seem that your reasoning principle is quantity (greater good)... there is no opinion of the 'value' of an independant life. If you can view people as just numbers then I can see why you question this.

This arguement to me looks just like the 'death penalty' arguement. Killing one to save others from his evil doings (quantity, or greatest good). The only difference in your scenarios is that you are removing any 'values' placed with the individual that you wish to kill.

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Zeraph

Yakk hit the nail on the head. These situations only take face value into account. They only seem paradoxal because they arn't real situations. We don't live in theory.

One thing I'm curious about though, in scen 2 why did you give the option to kill the guy with the broken finger, what does he have to do with it?...why wouldn't you give the option to kill one of the ones already dying? Since you said none of the dying patients had the same failed organs.

Suave

Haha yeah you don't even have to kill them. Just harvest whichever one dies first.

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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

politicophile

Uhhhh, I don't think either of these situations are necessarily theoretical. Furthermore, even if they are only theoretical, they can be useful as controlled experiments to help us isolate a single moral variable.

As for the broken finger... that really had nothing to do with the example: I just didn't see why a perfectly healthy person would be hanging around the hospital unless they were a friend or relative of one of the injured (or of you) and that would just complicate things.

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archpaladin

Not so. My point is exactly what Lebell argued, though I did it in perhaps a less-than-clear fashion. Humanity has a tendancy to push the limits on what's acceptable in the eyes of general society, as Lebell and Yakk said. Once you take a step down that road, it's a long slope down to the bottom.

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Yakk

But, they fail to isolate that moral variable. Isolating moral variables is extremely hard, especially when dealing with something as ethically reactive as death.

Secondly, do you accept the possibility that a moral of ethical system need not be "complete"? A "complete" moral or ethical system is capable of comparing the morality of every choice put to it.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

Blue Fish

#1 5 Live
#2 5 Die

The hospital has broken even for the day

In a hypothetical like this you can add in other factors. In #1, what if the higher dose patient was responsible for a cure for cancer but his research would be lost with his death. By administering him one of the smaller doses you can prolong his life long enough to get more antidote. But, 1 of the other 5 is now left with none. One person is still going to die (and 5 will still live) but a decision has to be made on which life is more valuable. My decision would be to save the researcher and use a random method to choose the other 4. At some point the good of others has to be taken into account.

As for #2, the broken finger adds nothing to the decision. Killing this man would be no different then opening the front door of the hospital and grabbing the first person who walks by. You are randomly killing the living to save others who are already dying.

Zeraph

I still disagree. The first situation is not an ethical concern but a judgement call. Since we cannot forsee the future, we can never have all that information at once. Meaning someone has to arrive before the other. You do what you can, not try to cure everyone. If that were the case then docs would never treat minor symptoms or do any paper work. The second situation is similar, we can't know if some corpse is seconds away from coming in that has all the correct organs. We can't know how long each has to live so because we can't see into the future, these are not ethical or moral concerns, but rather judgement calls, and you just have to hope you made the right call.

And what I meant by the broken finger was that it makes no sense to even bring that guy into the equation. You have 4 (or 5 or whatever) people with organ failures, none have the same failure, so if you were going to kill someone you'd kill one of the ones that is already terminal, not a healthly bloke.

Peat

Its not really a question of good or evil, more a question of responsibility. in the first case, there are a whole bunch of factors not taken into account here, but the decision in who gets the antidote would whos contribution to the community would be more daming if they were to leave. The person or persons who are more important to the survival of the community should be saved, and the other or others let to die. But then again this all depends on the wisdom of the person with the antidotes opinion.

as in the second case, it is not your decision to make. This seems to be clear cut as you have no power to end someone elses life. This power remains and should always remain in the control of the person concerned.

pennywise121

this has proven some interesting intellectual fodder, and i have waited to post for a while in order to get a feel for the standings of other members before contributing my two cents.

with that in mind, lets get down to it......
first, i agree with yakk insofar as the concepts of "good" and "evil" are completely meaningless without the framework of the society in which they exist. what is good to you may be evil to me, and vice versa. moreover, the concept of "greater good" still implies a shared view of good and evil, which is fallacious to assume.

Now, unfortunately, the same is true of "moral" and "ethical". morality is determined by the system of ethics, which is in turn dependant upon the societal framework within which they exist. (for an example: in the united states it is considered ethical to tip a waiter/waitress (assuming good service and all that jazz). in many places in europe, however, it is actually insulting for a patron to tip their waiter/waitress).

in other words, what we think doesnt matter, because it will never jive with what every other person thinks. i.e. no system of morality, ethics, law, justice can ever be universally acceptable.

now, just to further show the complication that these assumptions create, let me pose a modification to the theme that people have only hinted at.....

in situation 1, imagine it was your wife or child that had recieved the largest dose of poison. in a universally acceptable ethical system, there would still be no question, let the one die. but we are not like that. damned near ever single one of us would be loathe to let a loved one slip away under those circumstance, knowing that all it would take to save them would be to let 5 other names die.

now, even our idea of "do no harm" cannot withstand a line of reasoning of this nature. again, in situation 1, imagine instead that there is one young girl that has the most poison, and 5 convicted sex offenders that have the lesser dose. how many of us would "do no harm" to the 5 sex offenders and let the little girl with her entire life ahead of her die?

basically, although i agree with the idea that we can never come up with a system that establishes value on life, i believe this is only symptomatic of the true problem: lack of applicability for our system of ethics and morals.

until we can acknowledge that our own moral standings are different than other people's, and realize that it is ok, we will keep trying to browbeat our opinions on other people, and we will end up with a flame war

sorry if that made no sense, i didnt get much sleep last nite

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Food for thought.