Immiment Death Question

[devonin]

Well, I mean, come to that we aren't especially morally obliged to do -anything- unless our personal morals happen to dictate that we are obliged to.

It just so happens that my morals tell me that I must consider any decision in a situation I am -involved- in to reflect more directly upon me, my morals and my responsibilities than you do in your morals. That's in no way anexplicit virtue or defect in either of our codes, I just tend towards assigning myself a greater responsibility in cases where I'm aware of the situation and know I can effect it.

I'm just not a "stand by and let things pass" kind of person. If I can take steps in support of what I consider to be the "right" thing, I will do so.

[Kilroy_x]

I generally will as well; just not when it has a human cost, because that violates a fundamental principle of my moral system. Good is subjective, but human beings confer good. The result is I don't feel opposed to doing anything I want to, as long as it doesn't conflict dramatically with another human beings negative rights. Killing a person poses such a conflict.

[devonin]

In my particular moral system, standing there doing nothing while I watched 5 people die would put the deaths of 5 people on my conscience.

[Kilroy_x]

And in mine I recognize a firm distinction between having death on my conscience and having it on my hands. Basically, I don't trust my judgement enough to let it tell me that because I feel bad about watching people die, I'm obligated to step in and cause someones death. That's letting my emotions trump the inviolability of another individual human being. Do an individuals emotions extend beyond themselves in any real sense to give them meaning to the outside world? Not as far as I can tell.

[devonin]

Well, again, the entire situation as presented is patently absurd anyway, and not many moral systems at all have a very good answer for something this crazy. Why are these people tied to train tracks? Why isn't the train conducter trying to stop the train? Are there people on the train? Who puts a train track switch lever a hundred feet away on a random hilltop?

The whole thing makes no sense because it is, itself, a reductio ad absurdam of Mill's pleasure calculus, so I mean, even defining why and how we'd react in such a situation doesn't really do much because the situation is inherantly untenable as an existing thing.

[Kilroy_x]

I think there are a few real world applications for this if you get abstract. The famous "drifter and 6 patients in need of organs" scenario, for instance. People try to pretend the distinction between this and the train scenario is that one is direct cause and another is indirect cause, but I would honestly treat this as the true equivocation.

[devonin]

Of course the problem with that one is that if you are assumed to be a doctor (thus why you can both evaluate his suitability as a donor and carry out the surgery) you would be immidiatley disqualified from carrying it out by the Hippocratic Oath.

[xObserveRx]

The two scenarios are completely different IMO.

Having the ability (like devon said) to determine that the drifter is suitable for donation and carrying out the surgery to remove them are something of another matter.

In this scenario, you're not alone in decision making. As a morally intact person, you'd most likely not be mentally able to take the organs forcefully. If the drifter was to deny access to his organs and remain alive, you would still have done everything (legally and morally correct for all intents and purposes here) in your power to save the six patients.

In the train scenario, you're faced with much less, option-wise. There's no intimate encounters with the rest of the people in the scenario, thus their opinions and feelings and all that are irrelevant. What becomes relevant in this scenario, however, is YOUR perception of their feelings and decisions. (If they had it their way, they'd live, obviously.) You don't have the luxury of being able to do everything in your power and still not get anything done.

However, On some moral level, each of the scenarios will certainly affect the individual being placed in them. I would have to say that (in the situation that you did save the 5 people on the railroad tracks) the level of moral guilt, or whatever would most likely be the same.

1 person to lose 5 or saving 5 but still losing one. In most cases, to the individual, life is life; there isn't an "okay" or "it was better that a higher number lived". That makes complete sense in the logical mind, but in the emotional, it's a much different story.

[Kilroy_x]

Originally Posted by xObserveRx

Having the ability (like devon said) to determine that the drifter is suitable for donation and carrying out the surgery to remove them are something of another matter.

Merely an addendum.

In this scenario, you're not alone in decision making. As a morally intact person, you'd most likely not be mentally able to take the organs forcefully. If the drifter was to deny access to his organs and remain alive, you would still have done everything (legally and morally correct for all intents and purposes here) in your power to save the six patients.

Usually the scenario is presented to suggest that you would forcefully kill the drifter as the option of action.

In the train scenario, you're faced with much less, option-wise. There's no intimate encounters with the rest of the people in the scenario, thus their opinions and feelings and all that are irrelevant. What becomes relevant in this scenario, however, is YOUR perception of their feelings and decisions.

This is an extremely reprehensible way of thinking. Their feelings are relevent. They don't become irrelevent just because you can't perceive them. A persons feelings about their life are to be respected above all else.

And seriously, imposing your own feelings on others to the point of murder is about as disgusting a thing as I could imagine. I just realized the other problem with this argument; It suggests that because the 5 peoples feelings are numerically greater than the one persons feelings, they trump them.

This is also an issue of imposing personal feelings on another person to the point of murder, the only difference is they are only doing it in their heads, they do't actually commit the act. So if you want to argue that thoughts constitute actions, the thoughts of the 5 people on the railroad tracks, which constitute the basis of your decision in many ways to kill the one person, are contributory to homicide.

1 person to lose 5 or saving 5 but still losing one. In most cases, to the individual, life is life; there isn't an "okay" or "it was better that a higher number lived". That makes complete sense in the logical mind, but in the emotional, it's a much different story.

That's precisely the point. Letting your feelings move you to an action that kills someone is wrong in virtually any circumstances, even if there is a rather large "payout".

[devonin]

That's precisely the point. Letting your feelings move you to an action that kills someone is wrong in virtually any circumstances, even if there is a rather large "payout".

The part that makes it difficult is precisely that for -most- people, they would at least internally view standing there and doing nothing as being moved to an action that kills five people. The usual mentality is "Well, if -someone- has to be killed regardless, better one than five."

I mean...let's turn the question around a little. Say there's instead of the 5, and the 1, and you on the hill, and instead of having to pull or not pull the lever, to make it so the train crushes 1 or 5 people...the 1 person is -you- and the handle is right next to you.

In a bubble most people would like to think they could make the noble sacrifice, and pull the lever, take a train to the face and die knowing you saved 5 other people, but in practice its at least as likely that you couldn't bear to give up your own life even to save others, especially if they were strangers.

But then...if its -you- then by pulling the lever you "save" 5 people...if you do not pull the lever are you in any way involved in the situation of the 5 people?

[Kilroy_x]

In this situation I would pull the lever. In this modified scenario, technically you are involved, but not in a way that would make you responsible for the deaths of the other 5 people if you didn't pull the lever.

The driving difference between this contextualization and the other is that the decision here actually applies to the feelings of person making it. If you decide your life is worth less than the lives of five people, you are personally choosing to use your life to save 5 people. If you do nothing, you are refraining from making that judgement. Now, it's possible that you choose to refrain from making this judgement by deciding you're "worth more" than the other 5, and this judgement is a reprehensible way of thinking, but at the same time you aren't the train, or the train conductor, and contributing to the death of 5 people by this form of negligence, although highly selfish and tragic, isn't exactly immoral. It borders on being amoral, and the negativity of the deaths of those people may make it seem like there is a relationship between the negative outcome and the amoral thought process of the individual, but in reality there is none.