Philosophy

To preface, I don't have marxist language to describe this with, so bear with a lot of kantian social contract talk.

Anyway, recently in my "ethics" class we were going over some dilemmas. Basically it was

Trolley problem, cannibalism while shipwrecked, and a doctor killing a patient for their organs.

Trolley problem you know by now. One Trolley, one lever, kill one or five, blah blah blah

The shipwrecked on was basically "was it morally justified to kill a weak crew member so the others could eat them and survive."

And the doctor one was "if a doctor has a patient who is terminally ill and will die in a week, is it justified for them to kill that person if their organs will save 5 people."

The basic idea being that these are "technically" all the same scenario, asking between killing one person and letting 5 die.

Firstly, a smaller note, I hate how there's not option to object to these questions in the first place, or say that no action is immoral. Objectively, maybe we could say "if you have the wherewithal and the ability, then it technically is better to save the 5 people in the Trolley problem." But simultaneously, this can't be used to justify anything beyond this, because these are extenuating circumstances.

1. The Trolley problem presupposes that you have all the information. In real world scenarios, this is never the case. Take the killing of the Romanov royal family. You could argue that this is a Trolley problem, killing one family to potentially save thousands, if not millions from a white Russian victory. But since we don't have the ability to time travel we don't know what the other outcome would have been.

2. This is a pure bystander situation. You just so happen to be at the switch at the exact right second, and have had no previous hand in this situation. It's incredibly unlikely for this to be the case either.

You could say objectively that maybe one case is better than the other, but it's impossible, in my opinion at least, to extrapolate it out to any grand moral position beyond "more people being alive is good." And the way the question is framed, a choice of pulling the lever being moral inherently implies you think the opposite choice is immoral, and visa versa.

This is similar to the shipwrecked one. These are extenuating circumstances, as people are not usually shipwrecked and starving. So the conditions under which you can extrapolate this decision to are "when you are starving and going to die..." This also has the same issue as the Trolley problem, where neither choice is inherently immoral unless going by strict moralistic interpretations of a philosophy. Choosing between one or the other necessarily means saying some trait is immoral. If you think eating the person is immoral, then youre saying that looking out for the majority is immoral. If you say that not eating the person is immoral, you're saying not committing murder and respecting that person's innocent autonomy is immoral. And, like i said, this can't be extrapolated.

The last question honestly pissed me off, which is why I'm writing this. Basically it goes "you [literally you reading this] have received a terminal diagnosis and will die in a week. A doctor comes in and asks you if you'll accept being euthanized so your organs can be donated to five people who will die [before you die naturally] without them. You say no and they kill you anyway. Was what they did immoral?"

The question is essentially a "gotcha." The idea is that they, if you answered to pulling the lever on the Trolley question and eating the person in the shipwrecked question, that you're a self centered hypocrite for answering that you should've been left alive in this question.

But...these situations aren't the same.

1. This is not extenuating circumstance. People on organ wait lists are dying every day. So whatever answer given here can be extrapolated to something common, which is "if someone needs organs for a transplant."

2. The doctor is naturally involved in this situation, and can exhibit whatever traits this act encourages into further situations. It's unlikely a shipwrecked crew member or poor guy standing by railroad tracks can apply their decision again. But a doctor is in that position of authority constantly.

Ergo, these situations are different. No going to not get a job as crewmember on a ship because "oh no. What if we get shipwrecked and the crew eats me." And people already have a natural aversion to getting tied up on railroad tracks. But we do need people to trust that, if they go to the hospital, the doctor won't kill them. Already there's been controversy around actual cases of people nearly being accidently killed for their organs. And guess what peoples first reaction is? "I need to get off the organ donor program." If people cannot trust their doctors, they are not going to donate their organs and, guess what, they might not go to the doctor either, which might kill them too. So this decision has a lot more societal "social contract" weight than the other two.

I think my main issue is that these types of questions often forget that the answers have their own morality to them. Take the infamous torture question version of the Trolley problem. It asks "a terrorist has hid a bomb in a building and it will detonate in 1 hour, killing thousands of people. It will take a full day to search the city, which means the bomb will most likely detonate before being found and defused. However you can torture the terrorist and he will give you the location in time. Will you torture him?"

This is basically my least favorite philosophical dilemma. It's basically designed to give no right answer and for the person asking it to feel better about themselves.

1.This is the epitome of philosophical omnipotents. How do we know he'll crack under torture? How do we know theres no other leverage we can use? How do we know that he won't just lie to us to either waste our time or get us to stop?

2. This is also the definition of extenuating circumstances. How many terrorist plots, if any, are solved by interrogating someone literally an hour before a bomb goes off? This is almost definitely the result of the questioner watching too much 24 and NCIS and other such United Statesian slop. I get the idea is to say that "well you said that torture isn't good under all circumstances. However, under this one circumstance youll say its good, therefore it can be justified." But this circumstance is so specific it really comes down to adding and asterisk when saying "torture is never justified*." It really exemplifies all of my problems with these types of questions and the fact that you, for the most part, aren't allowed to the questions framing, despite the fact that the question itself if unethical.