Trolley Problem and Utilitarianism - Assignment Example

Thesis: Trolley problem and Utilitarianism The Trolley Problem really tests the measure of a utilitarian’s willingness to stick to his guns. For the utilitarian every action is right or wrong depending upon whether its consequences yield happiness. If consequences are all that matter then the Trolley Problem won’t matter much to a utilitarian, but, few would argue that it raises some serious difficulties with the said moral philosophy. 2) The Trolley Problem presents a utilitarian with a predicament. A train is coming; its current course is going to kill four hapless workers. You, the utilitarian, have the power to flick a switch that will save the four men, but you will as a result kill some other worker as the train will be diverted to his track. Most utilitarian thinkers would not have a problem with doing this. One life is worth sacrificing for four; the end justifies the means-consequences are all that matter, after all. But, if there wasn’t a switch, and instead a very large man, large enough to stop the train, was standing over a bridge in front of the workers, would you be prepared to push him in front of the train to save the four of them? If consequences are all that matter, then this is exactly what the utilitarian would have to do: commit murder. 3) John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism posits that the right action is that action which generates or leads to the most utility or happiness (utilitarianism.com). He begins though by stating that whatever action that is proved to be good, must be proved to be good by its ability to achieve something that is good in itself (utilitarianism.com). Happiness, he argues, is good in itself, and so any action that leads to the outcome of making more happiness is a good one relative to its alternative (utilitarianism.com). Utility, for Mill is pleasure or the absence of pain; this is where he defines his term ‘The Greatest Happiness Principle’ upon (utilitarianism.com). Mill argues that this is the goal of moral reasoning because it is the only thing good in itself. So, the consequences of any one good utilitarian action will always lead to relative happiness or the removal of pain. Regarding the idea of justice, Mill suggests that the principle of utility is central to it (utilitarianism.com). He argues that human rights are protected through a judicial system only as a means of securing happiness (utilitarianism.com). Happiness is the primary pursuit of man, and the principle of utility is, by definition, the most direct path to it. To Mills the utility principle is a natural social sentiment between humans and that human society would bond and benefit greatly from embedding utilitarianism into it foundations (utilitarianism.com). The responsibility of an individual in this kind of society is to make as much utility for as many people as possible even if that means sacrificing or endangering themselves for the good of others (utilitarianism.com). Any one person is not allowed to value his happiness over the happiness of others. 4) There are several difficulties with utilitarianism. Most importantly, it places too much emphasis on the consequences of actions. If we were to make all of our decisions based on our expected outcomes of events, how are we to feel about those decisions if we are so often wrong in our predictions? This point is intended to raise doubt; simple doubt in the primary means of divining decision-making for the utilitarian. Furthermore, the Trolley Problem would make even the most hard-nosed kind of utilitarian reconsider their position, because it takes their principle of utility to a point where it condones murder. Most people would have serious trouble pushing a large man to his death to stop a train from killing four other people. What this says is that humans have some other moral codes or ideas about common decency that is disagreeable to strict utilitarianism. So thinking only in consequences might not be the answer for every occasion; we have to temper the principle with other ethics. There is another weakness that the Trolley Problem reveals about utilitarianism. It seems as though Mill would like us to remove the emotional or humanistic component from ethics. It is as though he would like to see the world as a bunch of utility-crunching robots, always analysing every single situation to find the best choice to make more happiness. He wants us to remove the human element from ourselves, to become moral mathematicians, rather than humane members of a community. Life is secondary to utility. It’s no problem to kill any number of people, so long as it weighs less than the utility that can be gathered. A basic common sense morality would have a problem with some of these sentiments. #2 What does it take to be a whistleblower? In order for someone to be considered a whistleblower, a certain context needs to be in place. Firstly, there has to be an evil, corrupt or inhumane system or protocol or business in place that is constituted by people (or at least one person) capable of the autonomous action required to stop it. One of these people, a cog in the corrupt wheel, then would have to report to the media in some way on the wrongdoings of their own organization. Whistleblowers are those then that report on wrong doings in their own business, schools, organizations etc. Central to their ability to blow the lid on some injustice is knowledge, as they need to have evidence of what they have seen, and of course the courage to do the right thing. This can be very hard for many people in these situations because of the consequences of whistle blowing. Most people would just act in their own self-interest and continue to keep their heads down and their mouths shut, in order to avoid trouble. It takes real courage, a real Good Samaritan, to blow the whistle. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was a forty-year-long study run by the US Public Health Service that was, and is still today, considered to be a wholly immoral and inhumane act against innocent people. Characters such as Nurse Eunice Rivers, an African-American who helped gain the trust of the sharecroppers was crucial to the process of infecting these men over the course of the study, could have been a whistleblower but chose to keep silent (infoplease.com). Obviously, there was a clear hierarchy from public health officials, to doctors, then nurses, and so it must be conceded that she would not have had a great deal of authority or autonomy in her actions. The evil that she did, if one were inclined to call it that, was done by concession to authority, by surrendering her own volition. She was just doing as she was told, she may have argued. What then is her level of guilt in this matter? Might it depend on how much she knew about the experiment? It must be surmised that if Nurse Rivers was privy to the damage that she was doing to the victims of the Experiment, and she continued to do so anyway, on threat of losing her job or promise of gaining a promotion, then she is guilty, if only of collusion with the overall crime. She was certainly no Good Samaritan. Perhaps Nurse Eunice bought into the falseness of the PHS doctors; perhaps she actually believed that what she was doing would help the sharecroppers. Either ignorance or an unwillingness to investigate matters would then perhaps strengthen her claim to innocence. The same may be said for Leni Riefenstahl, a German filmmaker whose documentaries supporting the Nazi’s and the rise of Adolf Hitler share a similarity with Nurse Rivers’ story. Without doubt, Hitler and his Nazi movement was an inhumane and wicked one, even in the context of World War. In order for a big military machine like this to become powerful it first needs to have political power. In order to do that, among many other things, it needs to have a strong image. So, were the people that contributed, wittingly or otherwise, to the power of this killing machine through propaganda or media, guilty of collusion with this evil contingent, just like the nurse from Tuskegee? It could be argued that Riefenstahl was simply following her passion (for filmmaking) and it just so happened that a charismatic man and his powerful party promised to rescue her county was around when she was. It was the socio-cultural context that she found herself in. Was she immoral to do as she was taught to, to be a patriot and support her country, whatever the motivations of its leader? Judith Jarvis Thomson defines an act as morally right if it is the least that a Minimally Decent Samaritan would do (spot.colorado.edu). She uses two different thought experiments to support her argument. The first involve a box of chocolates that is meant to be shared between two boys at Christmas. If the older brother takes all the chocolates, he is doing an injustice to the other because the agreement was that they shared it. This she asserts is wrong. Then she proposes the ‘Violinist thought Experiment’ which suggests that someone who was involuntarily acting as a human dialysis machine for a famous violinist with bad kidneys for nine months, has every moral right to remove himself from the situation, even if that involved killing the violinist(spot.colorado.edu). Anything altruistic beyond that would be beyond the call of their moral duty, they would be Good Samaritans. The biblical story is an important one for Thomson’s argument. She says that, while it is not expected of the older brother with his chocolates to share, if the agreement was that it was a gift for him alone, or if the violinist was refused help by the involuntary human dialysis machine, even if he only needed his kidneys for an hour, the moral obligation of these two is not to give their health or bodies if they haven’t consented to it. So abortion would be a Minimally Decent Samaritan thing to do if the pregnancy was caused by rape or, as Thomson euphemistically puts it, if ‘person-seeds’ fly through the mesh- meant to keep them out- of the window. In the story of the Good Samaritan, we see the two characters; the Levite and the priest do absolutely nothing to help the hurt man. Thomson says that this is unacceptable; even a Minimally Decent Samaritan would do something to help the hurt man. To go out of your way, to engender cost to yourself for the health of another, that is the hallmark of the Good Samaritan. But it is not an obligation, says Thomson. Would Thomson consider Riefenstahl or Nurse Rivers to have been Minimally Decent Samaritans then? Both were put into difficult situations. If either refused to do what they were told they may have put themselves in danger of unemployment, poverty, ridicule, even physical harm. This is not a certainty however. They both probably claimed to have been innocent, good people who were just working for evil entities. But were they not much like the Levite and the priest, who simply walked by the hurt man in the Good Samaritan story? Whistleblowers are, for the most part, Minimally Decent Samaritans-at least. They don’t have to mention their names to the press or judicial authorities, so it isn’t necessarily a risk to them to stop injustice. Thomson would argue that Nurse Rivers and Riefenstahl did not to the Minimally Decent thing. For two important reasons: they voluntarily chose to support or work for their inhumane services/movements and they did not do a thing to stop the harm that was being done to other human beings. In fact, they actually propagated it, actively made it happen or helped facilitate it. Would one be considered to be an ethical person if they lived only by the Minimally Decent Samaritan principle? The author contends that this question can dissolve into a semantic debate as the word ‘ethical’ is actually what is most contentious. If by the term ‘ethical’ one presupposes that each individual’s life and affairs takes precedence over everyone else’s in their decision-making, that every person has absolute sovereignty over themselves, and furthermore, only responsibility for their own wellbeing, even if one or a dozen people depended on them for survival, unless they agreed to have the responsibility of other lives, then being a Minimally Decent Samaritan would suffice as ‘ethical’ living. The author contends that this is only Minimally Decent Ethics. Good Ethics should imply equal concern for individual matters as well as community or collective rights and welfare. If twenty million people depended on one’s blood, say, and that it needed to be harvested over the course of nine months or even nine years, forcing the donor to be bed-ridden for the entire time, we find that the bar is raised a bit. The author contends that it would be indecent and self-centered for anyone to refuse such a special responsibility. But, admittedly, the issue becomes difficult to have concrete claims about real moral obligations. If someone in this situation declined to help the twenty million about to die, would it be fair to say that they were unethical to do so? The author is be inclined to take a hard stance on this matter and say yes, that in extreme cases like this, a moderate amount of utilitarianism is useful. That we should all be in agreement that individual concerns and rights are secondary to special cases of mass-concern or threat to human life. The author asserts that Nurse Rivers and Riefenstahl were certainly not Good Samaritans and furthermore, were not even Minimally Decent Samaritans. They had an obligation to their fellow man to protect them, to the best of their ability from threat to their health and peace. Thomson’s position seems to be in accordance with the author’s in this regard. #3 Father Daughter is a short animated film by Michael Dudok de Wit. It is about the relationship between a girl and her father. They cycle to a pier where the father leaves his daughter, travelling by boat to an unknown location. The daughter watches him go and eventually leaves. As she grows up without him she continues to come back to the pier, searching for her father. Even when she is an old woman she still comes back to the point where she lost him. She finds his boat at the end of her life, and then can only find him in her dreams, or the afterlife. Two philosopher’s paradigms will be used to analyze this film, namely, Sigmund Freud and Frederick Nietzsche. First, it is important to gain some insight into their reasoning and positions on ethics and human nature. In ‘Beyond Good an Evil’ Nietzsche heavily criticizes a large body of philosophical thought that had come before him. He claims that all systems of morality put forward by philosophers are just arguments for their own prejudices and predispositions (records.viu.ca). Nietzsche argues that among all humans there is a kind of spiritual hierarchy that one everyone should appraise themselves against (records.viu.ca). Strong people, high up the ranks, are those who approach self-evaluation cynically, always trying to get to the bottom of their prejudices (records.viu.ca). There is no overarching universal truth or system of morality in Nietzsche’s ethics, except for certain core principles such as ‘the will to power’ and the ‘free spirit’ (records.viu.ca). Nietzsche also talks about a concept called ‘eternal recurrence’ which means that everything is linked and nothing is absolutely stable in the universe (records.viu.ca). For Nietzsche therefore, if you say ‘yes’ to any one thing in this linked reality, then you say ‘yes’ to all else. Freud describes the ’oceanic feeling’ that his friend, Romain Rolland, mentions to him as a response to his writing on religion. His friend describes it as a feeling of ‘eternity’ that seems to him real and powerful and is perhaps what religious institutions take advantage of (adolphus.nl). Freud compares this feeling to the presence crocodiles in modern times; he argues that the feeling is a kind of left-over piece of evolution from early human phases of development (adolphus.nl). He relates it to the feeling that a father’s presence provides for an infant which is essentially helpless and very vulnerable in the big external world. This ‘oceanic feeling’, Freud argues is likely just a longing for the ‘limitless narcissism’ that the father-figure’s protection provides (adolphus.nl). For Freud, personal ethics develops over time, from infancy, from the pure ‘pleasure-principle’, when an individual begins to differentiate between the world of the ego and the external world (adolphus.nl). The ‘pleasure principle’ is the heart of the Id which is always seeking to gain pleasure, whether physical or otherwise, and remove or avoid pain (adolphus.nl). As the human being develops, according to Freud, they begin to learn to balance the demands of reality and their social context, with its expectations and rules, with the demanding pleasure-principle of the Id (adolphus.nl). In terms of finding or defining man’s purpose and/or destiny in life, Freud states that it is still defined by the ‘pleasure-principle’: man seeks primarily to find, create or maintain happiness and avoid or eliminate pain or unhappiness. Ideally, this involves being a part of collective humanity and bringing nature under the control of the will and science (adolphus.nl). If Father Daughter is read from the perspective of Freud or Nietzsche, the symbolism of the departed father, the river and those actions of the aging daughter have more significance. Nietzsche would say that as the daughter got older and continued to search for her father she repeatedly rejected her future, or her ‘will to power’. She was not willing to say ‘yes’ to life or to her future. Except for when she is with her boyfriend, she is otherwise continuously looking into her past, looking for her lost father. Freud’s perspective would also have a great deal to say about the father-daughter relationship, specifically as it relates to the ‘pleasure-principle’. When he talks about disorders of the mind, Freud repeatedly relates them to inabilities to regulate the pleasure-principle with the reality-principle. The girl in the film finds herself returning to the painful reality of the loss of her father. For Freud this girl is likely searching for the great protective feeling that the father-figure instils in the infant, as discussed earlier, but more importantly, the girl is pathologically reliving a painful experience, instead of seeking to fulfil the important ‘pleasure-principle’ that Freud discusses. Only when the girl is with her boyfriend does she forget about the pain of her loss, then she is enjoying her happiness, pursuing and engaging with the pleasure-principle. Both Freud and Nietzsche seem have serious difficulties with religious ideas about man and his role in the universe. They are also both dissatisfied with looking at man without a kind of uncompromising cynicism. For Freud, and Nietzsche to a lesser degree, all explanations of humans and their motivations are originated somewhere in their early life. For Nietzsche this shows up in their prejudices which shape their moral views and thoughts, and for Freud their earliest experiences come to dominate almost all of their later behavioural protocols. Where they differ though is in their final dictum on the relationship of man with his fellows. Nietzsche has a highly individualistic idea about man. He sees the purpose of man, and his Will to Power, to rise above all others, towards the goal of the ‘Superman’. Freud argues that the ‘community of men’ is indispensible to true human happiness and the advancement of mankind. It is the author’s view that both of these paradigms have strong merits, although Freud’s ideas seem to be more realistic, more grounded in scientific methodologies. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s attacks on philosophers and their ideologies as being just dressed up versions of latent prejudices is really an indictment against his own work. This, ultimately, is not a huge problem, logically, except that it reduces his ideas to exactly what he sets out to chastise in his writings. With regards to their philosophic approaches to the film Father Daughter, clearly both disciplines have ready explanations for the narrative and imbedded symbolism. While neither would likely have much sympathy for the girl, but they would explain her actions in vaguely related manners. Fundamentally, the narrative is about this girl’s happiness or pursuit of it. Freud would argue that the only time that the girl finds any semblance of happiness is when she puts down the pain of the past and pursues the pleasure-principle. Nietzsche would say that she finally says ‘yes’ to her life and the universe when she crosses the river searching for her father. In a way, she is getting to the bottom of her past ideas, putting the past pain of her loss to rest. Freud would say of the life or subjective world of the girl that she was pathological: she was living unhealthily, regressing to past pain and ignoring the pleasure-principle most of her life. She was searching perhaps for the ‘oceanic feeling’ but was perhaps unaware of the world that she was missing out on. Nietzsche’s perspective is all about the power of the individual. This girl did not say ‘yes’ to the universe and explore the roots of her unhappiness, of her feelings towards her lost father until she was very old. #4 Pope Benedict’s speech seeks to address the central issues or difficulties in the relationship between faith and reason. This is a very old endeavour. Philosopher’s like Kant and Aristotle have both written philosophical work while still being religious themselves. Their writings are layered with ideas that aren’t always demonstrable in hard science and so they would also have things to say on the matter. For The Pope, his strict attention in this speech is on the important role that theology and faith-based study of man and the universe has in all epistemic works, even with regards to empirical science. He begins with a fairly favourable account of reason and the pursuit of knowledge through, as he calls it, ‘the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements’ (vatican.va). He then discusses the ‘exclusion’ of God from the scientific discourse because of the way that it sets up its parameters for knowledge or certainty (vatican.va). He views this limitation as a problem because he argues that it restricts the gamut of human knowledge or understanding. He evolves this point by arguing that science, by presenting itself as being contained within the strict parameters of empiricism and mathematics, reduces mankind itself (vatican.va). Matters outside of the realm of strict science such as consciousness and death, divinity, the origins of mankind and his destiny, argues Pope Benedict, are reduced to the subjective world, thereby eliminating the crucial sense of community between man and his fellows that is so valuable to him (vatican.va). The Pope declares that his critique of science and reason is not a rebuke of it; he believes that the intention behind the quest of empirical inquiry is in fact, a Christian one, that the great technologies won by modernity are a gift to mankind (vatican.va). He points out however, that theology has a role to play in human inquiry. Theology can, and should, meet rationality half-way to broaden the scope of human insight and understanding, according to Pope Benedict (vatican.va). The Pope consistently mentions the influence of Greek thought or the Greek ‘idea’ with Christian though, talking about the ‘rapprochement of Biblical faith and Greek inquiry’ (vatican.va). He states that during the Hellenistic period the faith of the Bible met harmoniously with the centre of Greek Philosophy, despite the religious beliefs of Greek culture at the time (vatican.va). The core of both Christian Faith and Greek thought was joined, at the earliest stages of the development of Christianity and its scriptures. Dehellenization’ is the process that began to undo this important synthesis, argues the Pope, and to remove matter related to God from reason and intellectual thought (vatican.va). The sixteenth century and its Reformation saw the beginning of the dehellenization process. There was a movement to remove faith from philosophical domains so that it could be viewed as a separate pure, divine reading of the scriptures. Faith was ‘liberated from philosophical discussion of the universe (vatican.va). The Pope mentions Kant as a proponent of this segregation between faith and reason. Kant wanted to establish a way of thinking that forced itself to let go of theological or Christian thinking, to pursue philosophical knowledge. This process of dehellenization continued through with Adolf Von Harnack, who intended to simplify Christianity somewhat, to distil it to the teachings of Jesus Christ and to make it an historical testament of the ‘religious’ development of humanity (vatican.va). The Pope argues that Von Harnack contributed to the further alienation or religious thought, of removing theological discussion from matter of reason and science (vatican.va). As the church has expanded into more modern times it has segregated itself from its Greek origins and its role in metaphysics and science. Aristotle would agree with the Pope’s inclination to explore the inner or divine purpose of man. The Greek philosopher’s discourse in ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ seeks to get to the true definition of the ‘human good’ he touches on virtues with inherent values that the Pope aims at (classics.mit.edu). He mirrors the Pope’s sentiment regarding the necessity for going beyond purely empirical boundaries when thinking about man and ethics: ‘for no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences)’’ (classics.mit.edu). The Pope may disagree on what Aristotle considers to be virtuous traits of man, as the former as Christian doctrine as his primary reference for morality. But here, in this piece, we see Aristotle asserting the importance of cultivating aspects of man and knowledge systems beyond the parameters of empiricism. Aristotle’s ideal world would be populated by virtuous people that attempt to promote good in the world. This principle is secondary to the sciences and arts for Aristotle, although they are also important in the domain of man. Pope Benedict and Aristotle may only disagree on exactly what is virtuous and what the ‘good life’ would entail. Considering that Christian philosophies are very strongly influenced by Greek thinkers like Aristotle, the foundations of their ideas are not too dissimilar. Kant’s response to the Pope’s speech would likely be similar to Aristotle’s. Kant’s ethics can’t be understood without the Categorical Imperative. Certainly, tenets of the Christian faith would resonant fairly strongly with the notion of universal rules or obligations to all sentient beings inherent in Kant’s idea. The Pope’s speech addresses problems with modern scientific empiricism that Kant may well have difficulties with too, were he alive today. Kant made great leaps of faith with his work on his philosophy of ethics. His Categorical Imperative is based on the assumption, an optimistic belief perhaps, that there is in fact a shared obligation amongst rational beings. The Pope’s ideal world is, in terms of its blueprint and fundamental initiative, probably a happy, prosperous place to live in. He does not censure the freedom of science, nor does he fear the powerful developments of technology –which so many of his predecessors have- and so it must be concluded that his ideal world would be free from the former tyranny of religious fanaticism. As for his predilection for melding theology with science, that too is a fine pursuit, so long as it is tempered with equal reverence for the empirical method. The Pope’s identification of one of the weaknesses of science is a valuable point. Science does not have, by definition, the ability to provide knowledge or truth on matters that are objectively imperceptible. Perhaps this is a problem with an expiry date, for, as we have seen over the course of modern science’ maturity, its horizon of identifiable reality continues to broaden as its own technology improves. The contention that the author has with the pope’s advocacy of Christian doctrine as a solution to the hole in scientific knowledge is that it is arbitrary. It is indeed true that Science has not yet charted some of the mysterious aspects of human existence and the universe. This is as demonstrable a fact as the law of gravity. What is not clear is why Christianity is the answer to this dilemma. It could just as well be the dictates of Islam, or Judaism, or Buddhism. What give Christianity hierarchy over these other unscientific explanations of the universe and mankind’s purpose? The author agrees that it is important to address questions of the nature of metaphysical phenomena such as the universe and consciousness, but why assume a Christian position from the start of this investigation? It seems like philosophically suicidal and backward to set up an investigation from a position that already assumes that it has the answers, based on a two-millennium-old piece of text. The Pope’s talk of the community of man and the subjective experience of man are humanistic thoughts that resonate with Aristotle’s thoughts in ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ and Kant’s ideas of goodwill and the Categorical Imperative. However, the Pope is predisposed to presenting an answer to this gap in science with his own organizations’ agenda. He may say that he would like to open debate on the ‘rational inquiry’ (vatican.va) into unscientific matters of man, but ultimately he is talking about getting people to accept the Christian Gospels as the answer. If not, then he wouldn’t be a very devout man. Works Cited: http://utilitarianism.com/mill1.htm http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil5.htm http://www.adolphus.nl/xcrpts/xcfreudciv.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html Read More