Thought experiments Flashcards
Placating the angry mob
.
Drowning child in pond
d
Starving child in room
d
Robert Nozick’s state
.
The trolley problem
“Edward is the driver of a trolley, whose brakes have failed. On the track ahead of him are five people; the banks are so steep that they will not be able to get off the tracks in time. The track has a spur leading to the right, and Edward can turn the trolley onto it. Unfortunately there is one person on the right-hand track. Edward can turn the trolley, killing the one; or he can refrain from turning the trolley, killing the five.”
Intuition: It is at least permissible for Edward to turn the trolley.
In that case, though, in what sense is killing worse than letting die?
The experience machine
m
The violinist
j
The utility monster
g
The consequentialist challenge: killing vs. letting die
Compare two cases.
1. Alfred hates his wife & puts cleaning fluid in her coffee, thereby killing her.
2. Bert hates his wife. She gets muddled and puts cleaning fluid in her coffee. Bert has the antidote but does nothing; he lets her die.
Intuitively, what Bert does is no less bad than what Alfred does.
But, if killing were worse than letting die then what Bert did would be less bad than what Alfred did.
So killing is not worse than letting die….so say consequentialists
The transplant problem
“David is a great transplant surgeon. Five of his patients need new parts…all are of the same, relatively rare, blood type.
By chance, David learns of a healthy specimen with that very blood type.
David can take the specimen’s parts, killing him, and install them in his patients, saving them.
Or he can refrain from taking the healthy specimen’s parts, letting his patients die.”
Thomson: It would be wrong to kill the one in this case.
In that case, she suggests, surely killing is worse than letting die – at least five times as bad!
The health pebble
“Floating in on the tide is a marvellous pebble, the Health-Pebble, I’ll call it: it cures what ails you. The one needs for cure the whole health pebble; each of the five only needs a fifth of it. Now in fact the Health-Pebble is drifting towards the one, so that if nothing is done to alter its course, the one will get it. We happen to be swimming nearby, and are in a position to deflect it towards the five.”
The lying promise
If I promise to do something with no intention of actually doing the thing promised, then I undertake a lying promise. The maxim of action I make for myself is something like “If I want something and can get it by promising, even if the promise is meaningless to me, I should promise in order to get the thing I want.”
For Kant, to determine if an action is ethical, I should universalize my maxim. So then it becomes, “Anyone who wants something and can promise some other thing to get it should do so, even if they cannot possibly fulfill their promise.” This in turn makes the whole system of promising worthless because a promise is predicated on our holding true to our word.
