Yes, but this does not permit them to sacrifice innocent people to fulfill such duty. — Bob Ross
This is a really good example, that tripped me up a bit (: — Bob Ross
Firstly, I would like to disclaim that this is different than the airplane example because you are stipulating that the people being sacrificed are actually already victims — Bob Ross
Secondly, I would say that one must continue to go straight, assuming they cannot try to veer away to avoid all 4 altogether (and have to choose between intending to kill the two to save the other two and letting all 4 die), because, otherwise, they would be intending to kill two people as a means toward the good end of saving two people.
A person that says otherwise, would be acting like a consequentialist full-stop: they would be allowing a person to intend to kill an innocent person for the sole sake of the greater good. I don’t see how the principle of Double Effect gets one out of this without it becoming inherently consequentialist.
Now, in practical life, since such stipulations are not in place, I would veer away intending to miss all 4 and would not ever intend to kill two to save the other two. If I happen to kill two instead of four because I didn’t manage to swerve far enough away; than that is a bad outcome but I had good intentions and thusly didn’t do anything immoral (unless, of course, there is reason to blame me for reckless driving or something). — Bob Ross
The pilot is not, in your example, in a situation where they are morally responsible for the deaths of innocent lives. — Bob Ross
If they keep flying because there are no ways to crash land without intentionally killing innocent people and the plane eventually just crash lands itself (by slowing falling to the ground) and it kills innocent people, then the pilot would be without moral fault. — Bob Ross
The pilot has a duty not to kill, but he also has a separate but related duty to cause as few deaths as possible in the event where he cannot avoid causing deaths (whether or not we decide to call this "causing of death" killing). So the good pilot will land in the area with fewest people to minimize injury and death. — Leontiskos
You don’t think that that pilot, by intentionally veering into an area of innocent people to crash land to avoid crashing into more innocent people in a different area, is intentionally killing innocent people? I don’t see the reasoning there. It isn’t merely an evil effect: the pilot has an evil intention (to sacrifice innocent people for the greater good). — Bob Ross
I think so; but only proportionally to whatever they are doing to forfeit it. For example, the axeman should be lied to (even though one should normally tell people the truth) because one knows the axeman is using that information to actively hunt and kill an innocent person—this causes the axeman to forfeit their right to be told the truth (in this instance). — Bob Ross
If the pilot diverts the plane to kill less people, then they have intentionally sacrificed those people for the sake of other people; just like how a person who pulls the lever intentionally sacrifices the one to save the five. Am I missing something? — Bob Ross
If the plane is out of fuel, and it is not the pilot’s fault — Bob Ross
Nor is there any differential value in the variant examples I offered unless you have something against fat men or people who need transplants. Let me say something callous sounding.
There are way more people in the world than it can sustain, and we are destroying the ecosystem on which we depend. Therefore it is better that five people die than one. Assume the facts are true; is the moral logic wrong? This is the logic of accelerationism. Human population is in overshoot and the sooner it is radically reduced, the better it will be both for the planet and for humanity. Only the most fortunate will have a quick death by trolley; most will die of heat-stroke or starvation. — unenlightened
Doing nothing is still a decision in the scenario.
Besides, it's easy enough to come up with a scenario where doing nothing would result in more deaths than, say, two other options.
Say, pulling lever left results in x deaths, pulling lever right results in y deaths, doing nothing results in x+y deaths. — jorndoe
Suppose you are driving your car. Four people appear on the road, two on each side. If you keep going in the same direction you will hit all four. If you swerve left you will only hit the two on the left. If you swerve right you will only hit the two on the right. You don't have time to stop. What do you do? — Leontiskos
Leontiskos
Curious if you agree with the thrust here but for different reasons — Fire Ologist
Well, firstly, you can't decide questions in moral philosophy by appealing to courts of law. The most a study of legal systems can tell you is what the people who drafted the laws thought was morally right; it won't tell you if they were correct.If one diverts a track to save 5 people knowing 1 person will die as a result of it (that wouldn’t have otherwise), then they are intending to sacrifice that 1 person to save the 5. They cannot validly say “the 1 person was merely a bad side-effect of saving the 5”. That doesn’t cut it, nor has anything remotely similar cut it in the court of law. — Bob Ross
That’s fine. I just think this indicates that your ethical view isn’t fully fleshed out; and you will have to hierarchically adjust your moral principles to fix this paradox/antinomy. I have my solution, which you already have heard, but if you don’t like it then you will have to come up with your own. — Bob Ross
I would say obligation is a duty towards something; and duty arises out of commitment to what is (actually) good (viz., commitment to being moral). — Bob Ross
Well, I don’t mean forever. — Bob Ross
You think that the five innocent people should die because the one person was being extremely negligent? — Bob Ross
I see, so while innocence is a factor, the an important ingredient here is self-agency.
I would say both are important. Not everything one does to themselves is morally permissible (in virtue of ‘self-agency’). — Bob Ross
So I assume in the case of the one person on the track yelling, "Do it!" dramatically like out of a movie, you would be ok with throwing the track to hit them instead of the five who yelled, "No, please don't!".
Not necessarily. I would have to be certain that they really mean it: otherwise, I would error on the side of assuming they don’t consent. — Bob Ross
What if both sides plead with you to kill them and save the other side?
Assuming both parties really mean it and are in their right minds to mean it genuinely (e.g., they aren’t mentally ill, impaired, etc.), then I would pull the lever. — Bob Ross
The five plead with you to kill them instead of save the one, while the one is pleading with you not kill them, but kill the other five?
This was just to see if numbers ever came into play. No worry. — Bob Ross
The trolley problem is a thought experiment where you’re asked to either watch five people be killed or pull a lever so that only one person gets killed.
In this hypothetical scenario which choice would you make?
For those who would let the five people die by not pulling the lever to kill one person is there a minimum number of people on the track that would make you choose to kill the one person?
50? 100? 1,000? 10,000?
What is your reasoning? — Captain Homicide
Exactly so. The whole point about the greater good is that it IS the greater good, i.e. is better than the alternative. That is precisely why one should aim to achieve it. (And yes, I am a consequentialist. Tell me what you think is wrong with that.)Secondly, I would say that one must continue to go straight, assuming they cannot try to veer away to avoid all 4 altogether (and have to choose between intending to kill the two to save the other two and letting all 4 die), because, otherwise, they would be intending to kill two people as a means toward the good end of saving two people.
A person that says otherwise, would be acting like a consequentialist full-stop: they would be allowing a person to intend to kill an innocent person for the sole sake of the greater good. — Bob Ross
But their duty as pilot allows them to stop flying the plane, even though they know that by doing so innocent people will die?
Firstly, I would like to disclaim that this is different than the airplane example because you are stipulating that the people being sacrificed are actually already victims — Bob Ross
Did I? Not that I know of...?
It seems to me that you have given two different scenarios, one to which you have given a theoretical answer and a different one to which you have given a practical answer.
We must go back to the single problem, the single scenario.
According to the standard Catholic version of double effect, one can swerve with the intention of avoiding pedestrians even though they know with certainty that they will hit pedestrians on the left or the right.
They are permitted to do this only on two conditions: 1) that the evil effect is not a means to the good effect, and 2) that there is a sufficient proportion between good and bad outcomes to justify acting thusly
In my analysis I claimed that the pilot has two duties, not just one:
... if the pilot takes your recommendation then he would apparently be without moral fault according to his first duty, but not according to his second duty.
In the first place I would want to stress that the two effects are intended in wholly different ways.
In the trolley example, the situation is thrust upon me from nowhere and I am shown how to direct the trolley - left or right. I am sitting there, and then I have to make a decision with innocent lives about to be killed.
In the plane example, I am the pilot.
And if I know the plane is going down, I already have to take responsibility for innocent death, so I have killed innocent people. It’s done for me the minute I see my plane is going down. I know this before the plane lands because I am the pilot, the intentions and some of the reasons the plane is in the air at all.
Well, firstly, you can't decide questions in moral philosophy by appealing to courts of law. The most a study of legal systems can tell you is what the people who drafted the laws thought was morally right; it won't tell you if they were correct.
Secondly, I agree that the operator intentionally sacrifices 1 person to save 5. Since either 1 or 5 people must die, and he can't prevent that, and since 5 lives are more valuable than 1, sacrificing 1 to save 5 is the morally right thing to do. The fact that he may be punished for doing it is irrelevant.
Thirdly, you did not answer my point, which was that the 1 person who is killed is not the means of saving the other 5
I don't see the need to come up with a fixed solution to this problem if there is no fully satisfactory choice.
It seems very straightforward to me that in a scenario where either everyone was going to die or only two people, it is better to choose two.
By black-and-white I mean it seems implied that once someone gives up their right to something like life then it removes the badness of killing them, which isn't intuitive to me
This is the point I was trying to get to. For you, if the case of human agency is a non-factor, you'll pull to save the greatest number. But you favor human agency over the the greatest number. I also don't disagree with this.
Arguments by analogy are never sound, they just confuse the issue.It was an analogy, and perfectly sound. — Bob Ross
Thirdly, you did not answer my point, which was that the 1 person who is killed is not the means of saving the other 5 — Herg
A means is something that facilitates or enables the performance of some action. The presence of the 1 person on the track does not facilitate or enable the switching of the train to another track and the consequent saving of 5 lives; it's the lever that does that, the presence of the person on the track is irrelevant.It absolutely is, if you intentionally kill one person to save five. No way around that. — Bob Ross
There is no such thing as moral responsibility, because it would require free will, and there is no such thing as free will.The biggest problem with consequentialism I have is that it rests on a false assumption of how moral responsibility works. Not sure how deep you want to get into that debate though. — Bob Ross
Hmmm. Ok. Imagine a serial killer has 12 people in their basement and are torturing them. Imagine the serial killer tells you that they will let 11 people go if you personally go kill 1 of them: would you do it?
If so, then you do not think it is immoral to, per se, to kill an innocent person; which is incredible to me. — Bob Ross
An easy example is self-defense: a person is morally permitted to kill another person if that person is an aggressor and their response is proportional. This only works with this kind of “counter-intuitive” thinking your profess here — Bob Ross
This is the point I was trying to get to. For you, if the case of human agency is a non-factor, you'll pull to save the greatest number. But you favor human agency over the the greatest number. I also don't disagree with this.
For me, it is that I cannot intentionally kill an innocent person (where it is implied it is against their will) period. — Bob Ross
Let me clarify, as I may have said differently before: the pilot wouldn’t let go of the steering wheel but, rather, would keep flying as best they can to avoid any collisions. — Bob Ross
A duty towards something cannot excuse a person from their other duties. A pilot’s duty to fly cannot excuse them from their duty to not intentionally kill innocent people. — Bob Ross
Maybe I misunderstood, then. Were you positing that I could either (1) continue and run over 4 people or (2) swerve and hit 2 of those 4 instead of all 4? Or were you positing that I could either (1) continue and hit 4 people or (2) swerve and hit 2 separate (to the 4) people? — Bob Ross
Correct. The practical one was just an additional FYI; and not an intended answer to your question. The theoretical one is my answer. — Bob Ross
See, this is where it gets interesting; because, to me, this is a cop-out: it is a consequentialism-denier coming up with a way to be a consequentialist on some issues. — Bob Ross
If one swerves to the left to hit 2 people to avoid hitting 4, then they have absolutely intended to sacrifice those 2 people to save the 4 and, consequently, used those 2 as a mere means toward a good end. Am I missing something? — Bob Ross
This seems to sidestep the issue: to justify this “Double Effect”, you would have to sufficiently demonstrate that swerving to hit 2 people instead of 4 is not an intention to hit those 2 people to save the 4...what say you? Your analysis in the above quote just assumes it is merely an evil effect, without commenting on the intention. — Bob Ross
The pilot would be without moral fault in both; because one cannot blame a person for not fulfilling their duty to A because the only way to do so would have been to violate a more important duty to B. — Bob Ross
This is a completely different scenario though witli different connotations where you are introducing another malevolent agent who you are bargaining with. This makes the scenario a lot less straightforward. You have also completely complicated the choice because here it is not about an arithmetic of deaths but also torture.
This is a totally vastly different scenario to one where you're driving in a car and for whatever reason, lets say just a horrible accident, there are 4 people in the road and you can make a choice to save 0 lives or 2 lives. The scenario you have brought up just now cannot be compared and the car one is much more straightforward.
My point is that just because its we can mitigate much if not all of the blame for killing someone in self-defence doesn't mean that killing anyone still isn't bad. To my mind, the idea of this forfeit you talk about implies that this badness is completely removed. Thats why I dont like this language. It works better in a kind of legal context, not a moral one imo.
Interesting. So if we have the trolley problem, both sides have innocent people, and both sides plead for you to save them by throwing the switch or walk away, what would you do?
Walk away. I cannot sacrifice innocent human beings to save other innocent human beings: the consequences are not what dictates what is right or wrong but, rather, the act—and the act is immoral. — Bob Ross
Does the pilot have "a separate but related duty to cause as few deaths as possible in the event where he cannot avoid causing deaths"?
So I am wondering if they have a second duty at all. If they do then we have a case of what is sometimes called moral perplexity, where two duties come into conflict.
Presumably you are saying that the relevant difference between the airplane and car scenarios is that in the car scenario all of the potential victims were initially in the path of the vehicle?
It's not at all clear that the same thing is happening in the car scenario.
If someone is on the shoulder, and I hit them, and I knew I was going to hit them, it does not follow that hitting them was a means to avoiding the others. The circumstances here are very different from the transplant case. In the transplant case two literally need to die in order to save the four. How do you differentiate these two cases?
A police officer might investigate and ask my why I swerved. I might say, "I swerved to hit the guy on the shoulder, because I knew that if I could hit that guy on the shoulder then I would be able to avoid the two on the median."
you would have to sufficiently demonstrate that swerving to hit two people instead of four is based on the intention to hit those two people to save the four. What say you?
The plane/car will cause the death of innocents no matter what, and therefore the first act is inevitable, and one is not responsible for the inevitable.
(Again, I have no idea how I would square my own reasoning with the trolley :lol: )
Why is B a more important duty?
You didn't strike me as one to believe in fate. So because one innocent person would die if you saved five people, you would let the five people die because other forces that are already in motion would lead to their death. If that is your answer, how do you arrive at that decision?
I agree they aren’t the same; but I brought it up to counter your view that: “It seems very straightforward to me that in a scenario where either everyone was going to die or only two people, it is better to choose two.”. — Bob Ross
Are you saying that it is bad to kill a person in self-defense, to some degree, while still being morally permissible to do so (in appropriate self-defense scenarios)? — Bob Ross
From what you said (in the above quote), you are implying that I would be equally morally responsible for the five deaths as the one; and thusly it wouldn't make sense to, then, let the five die at the expense of the one. — Bob Ross
In the trolley dilemma, I am not morally responsible — Bob Ross
I am seriously struggling to see how the police officer would not communicate in their report, just based off of your statement to them here, that you intended to kill the guy on the shoulder to avoid hitting the two on the median; and this is essential to your argument that you provide a basis against this.
[...]
If they know that swerving will most certainly (or as a probabilistic certainty) will kill those two people and they continue with their plan of swerving, then they thereby intend to kill those two people to save the other people. I am tying the sufficient knowledge the person has, to what they intend to do. I think this is pretty standard practice in law. — Bob Ross
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