During the
symposium the trolley problem was referenced by Mr. Matthew Hein, an upstanding
gentleman, in the form of a doctor problem where if you were a doctor and you
had five patients that needed five different organ transplants, could you kill
one healthy patient to save the five? Well, I thought of a different version of
this moral dilemma that removes the issue of murder, keep the five patients
needing new organs, but instead of having one healthy person with the organs
needed replace them with someone freshly dead, but not an organ donor. This removes
the complexity of killing from going against both Kant’s and Mill’s
philosophies against killing someone that is not putting yourself in danger.
But since the dead man, who I will refer to as John Doe, was not an organ donor
it means in life he had no wish to donate his organs after death. So by taking
his organs it would mean you are going against his will.
This scenario
brings into question which is more important, a dead man’s will or the
continuation of the lives of five people? The easy way out of this argument would
be to say that a dead man has no will but that also brings one into the more
complicated arguments of an afterlife and the morality of how to treat the
dead. I think that Mill would go ahead and take the organs from the dead man
and give them to the five patients needing organs because that brings the
greatest happiness to the greatest amount of people.
What would you
do if placed in this situation? How would you rationalize taking a dead man’s
organs against their will? Could you really do it? What if it was to save five
puppies?
This is a really good point, because I think it is important to enforce a choice that somewhat makes for themselves. To not take his organs is wrong, and to take them is wrong; although not a universal or intrinsic wrong, a wrong that is only so because we have made it so. I think this is a good parallel of the depreciation of noble morality to slave morality. I think Nietzche would say a master would walk into the room with the dying man and take his organs (however he might do that), and that a slave pays mind to the reverence of personal freedom we have established in our society.
ReplyDeleteAll of the religious laws that prohibit corporeal dismemberment after death are antiquated. If, for example, Mill is right, and all religious and moral metrics can be boiled down to causing the greatest good for the greatest number, I think that this move is pretty acceptable. How can you logically refute the inherent good of this action. Even for Kant, you could easily will this maxim as a universal: when you die, you give up your organs--easy. No contradictions, no problems. If someone has an intuitive squeamishness about this act, explain to them that their inanimate bodies won't be able to form the concept squeamishness.
ReplyDeleteThis newly made scenario isn't really a moral dilemma is it? As you pointed out, Mill would choose to save the lives of the 5 sick people over preserving the will of 1 dead person in a heartbeat. Unless the dead man specifically wrote out in his will that he absolutely did not want his organs to go to anyone else upon his death, then taking them would technically not be going against his will. Yes, I am aware that it is not the dead man's will for his organs to be donated, but in a way, it is also not his will for them not to be donated. The good of this action, saving the 5 sick people, completely trumps the wrong of taking the dead man's organs.
ReplyDelete- Jessica Ealy
This issue has been brought up several times on the blog and in our class, so I don't feel that I would be contributing by simply repeating my points. So i'll inlcude the link to my post for a slightly different situation. I encourage you to read my response there because a few of the points still apply.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link: http://ethicsatrhodes2013.blogspot.com/2013/10/mill-doctor.html.
Items of note is this post: why others would need such organs, violation of right to personal property, skewed justification of almost anything with a basic understanding of Utilitarianism, what Mill's other definitions do to stop such interpretations.