In our symposium on Kant and Mill Thursday, it was inevitable that the Trolley problem would have come up. But what was interesting was our variation to this problem. In the Trolley problem, a train is coming down the tracks and cannot be stopped and will kill whoever is standing on the track in front of it. The track is split in to two, with one person standing on one side unable to move, and five people standing on the other side unable to move. Currently, the train is directed towards the track with five people, but you are standing next to a lever that could switch the tracks to allow the train to travel down the track to only kill the one person. Would you pull the lever?
According to Utilitarian calculus, we would pull the lever. This is because the Greatest Happiness Principle calls for us to create the most happiness and the least amount for the greatest number of people. So killing the one person instead of killing five would be in keeping with this. In class we switched this problem around to represent a doctor instead of a train. The doctor has six ill patients. Five of the patients need different organs that one of the patients can provide. To apply Utilitarian calculus, it could be argued that it would provide the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of pain to save five of the patients and sacrifice the one.
Though there was some controversy with this, I felt like there was a strong Utilitarian argument to carry out the saving of the five patients. But I have a new twist on the problem. All six patients need organs and will die without them. But instead of just saving five patients with the organs of a patient that will die no matter what, a doctor must choose one of the patients out of the six that could be saved with new organs, but their organs will save the other six. All patients are equally sick and have an equal chance of surviving after receiving new organs. Does having to choose one of the six patients make the moral dilemma more difficult? All the patients will die if the doctor does nothing. How would the doctor make the choice? WWMD? (What would Mill do?)
For Mill I still think logically it makes sense to kill one person to save five because greatest happiness would be achieved that way. How the doctor should go about choosing is the interesting thing about this situation. You are violating the same right you would have in the other situation, only this time you have to choose whose right to violate. Choosing the person least useful to society would make sense, e.i. if anyone was a criminal than the choice would be obvious for Mill. But still if it was not clear I think it would pose quite the problem who to choose.
ReplyDeleteA very interesting twist you have suggested. "If you can only save one who should be saved?"- I believe this is what your question is getting at? I think there are two ways to go about this situation: 1.) We can apply Act Utilitarianism to the situation and consider each person's role in the society, weighing which life will ultimately lead to the greatest amount of happiness if saved; or 2.) We can apply Rule Utilitarianism, making a judgment about who to save based on those past experiences in human history and whatnot. The 1st option doesn't seem useful in that you would need too much information about each person's life and eventually all 6 people would die because it takes too long. The 2nd option has to potential to ignore each person's individuality (for let's say we judged each person based on their occupation) and in general makes assumptions about the future which are very fickle. If one of the patients is a U.S. president we could say they would produce the most happiness because of examples such as FDR or Clinton (basically good ones), but could also say they would produce very little happiness from examples like Nixon or, if you will, Bush. To me, the Utilitarian view doesn't seem to be useful in such a situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Mill would want to kill one person to save the rest because that would promote the greatest happiness. I think that the best way would be to see who was the most important to society, however mean that is to say. The person who is affecting the most lives, obviously like the president or somebody else important, would need to be saved and the one that doesn't affect many lives would be the one sacrificed. This sounds horrible and I don't personally think that its a good decision because of the equality of human life, but i think that Mill would do this because of the greatest happiness principle. If those five people who are saved bring about the most happiness in the situation, then that is the moral decision to make.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that Mill would say we have the right to kill an ailing person in order to save the other five patients. In case this didn't come up in the discussion: organ transplants are HEAVILY regulated for good reason (and organ theft is a very real crime). Mill believed human beings have inherent rights for a good reason: the utilitarian calculus can be bastardized and abused to justify just about every abuse possible. It would be convenient for me and my family to have a human slave, but we can't call it moral just because we would benefit. We would be demeaning that person's humanity. In this situation, we do not know if the ailing patient will live. If we kill them to harvest organs, we are setting the precedence that could cause us to just steal organs. We would be treating a human as no more than their parts.
ReplyDeleteMill's Greatest Happiness Principle dictates that we should choose the action which promotes the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. Some may argue that this means choosing to kill someone in order to save the lives of a greater amount of people. However, I believe that by choosing to kill an individual, although he or she may be ill and dying themselves, is unduly taking away a person's right to life. By taking away this right, it makes all people aware that their lives could just as easily be taken for the "greatest happiness" of a larger amount of people against their will and against their rights. This, therefore, causes fear in all people, and does not promote happiness. The best decision that would promote the greatest happiness is to keep the people feeling safe from being deprived of their rights and used arbitrarily to save other ill people and keep the people feeling safe to go to a doctor when they themselves are ill.
ReplyDeleteSo far, no one has brought up Mill's definition of what a right is: A right is a "valid claim [which the person] has on society to protect him in the possession of [something], either by force of law or by that of education and opinion" (xii, our Mill book). I think everyone has a valid claim to hold possession of their organs in any case... even if a large number of people would die as a result. The condition of a person’s body is largely an individual thing. That is, barely anyone contributes to the cultivation of another’s body in a direct and purposeful way.
ReplyDeleteThis definition of a right is closely aligned with the idea of property. If we cannot possess even the most personal without fear that a doctor, or the government, or any group of people can just take them, how could society function?
I believe Mill puts in these definitions, because they are not clearly derived from a basic understanding of Utilitarianism; but also because--and i think Andrea is right on here--that with a basic understanding of Utilitarianism almost anything can be justified... at least in a Utilitarian sense. I don't think Mill intended for a state where people would bring themselves into healthcare and end up dying, not by their own choice, but by the choice of the doctor who they thought would help them and keep them alive.
I think everyone is seriously underestimating this scenario, and that we have not thought about the severity of our actions. For one thing, stepping aside from Utilitarianism, those people who are dying from organ failure might have caused the organ failure themselves. For example, they might have smoked too much tobacco and be dying of lung cancer, or they might have had a tendency to drink alcohol heavily and often. In both of these cases, these people should have known the risks. I don't think their organ failure could possibly justify the removal of anyone's beyond those who volunteer their organs.
AND I cannot believe that we have just walked over the right of a person to consent or to life for that matter. Does Mill really think these can be violated in any case other than the case of the most heinous and horrible crimes, in which a person has practically declared war against his own reason or humanity? I do not think so. People die every day. In fact, people die by the thousands every day. Does this mean that we have to kill possibly 167 people on a daily basis, walking over their rights, just to save 833 people who will, IN FACT, die anyway? And might be dying as a result of their own idiocy or ignorance?
By walking over this right, we have effectively labeled one person as less than another. The effects of this action are to say that other human beings are actually less important than other. This allows for all kinds of messed up scenarios. If you believe that we can kill one person for the sake of others, you have better be prepared to take on the situations that follow… and I can tell you that they’re pretty bad.