May 2010 - First Year - Introduction to Ethics
In emergency rescue cases, like Trolley, it seems to many people that it is permissible to kill an innocent person. Explain your attitude to Trolley cases, and justify your view with reference to some of the theories we have discussed in the unit.
Trolley is an emergency rescue case where a runaway trolley careens down a track. Unless the trolley is diverted, it will collide with five workers, causing their death. A bystander could flip the switch to divert the trolley, but this will kill the lone worker on the other track. Should the bystander flip the switch to save five lives? This essay considers Thomson’s (Thomson 1990) justification that it would be permissible to do so. Firstly I consider if turning the trolley is justified solely by the number of lives to be saved. This idea has disturbing implications and thus must be rejected. I introduce the idea that the right to life explains why it is wrong to kill people, even if there are favourable consequences. I explain Thomson’s account that the lone worker forfeits the right to life, and do not find it plausible that one could be bound by a promise to forfeit such an important right. I wonder if Thomson’s idea of tacit consent might instead provide an argument that infringing the right to life is justified.
My intuition is that it is permissible to turn the trolley, and this intuition is shared by many. Do the numbers at stake justify this? Other things being equal, it seems better to have five survivors than one, so perhaps it should always be permissible to have a consequentialist principle, bring about an outcome where the most will live. But this idea has disturbing implications. In the transplant case, a surgeon has five ill patients needing organ transplants. The patients are expected to die very soon as no matching donors can be found. By coincidence, the surgeon encounters a healthy patient, a perfect match for the five needed organs. The surgeon asks the healthy patient if he is willing to give his life so his organs can be used to save the five. The healthy patient refuses, should the surgeon kill the patient and take his organs anyway? Like the bystander in trolley, he could save five by killing one. I think it would be obviously wrong for the surgeon to do so. Intuitively it is deeply disturbing, even macabre, to imagine this happening. Maybe there is a number of lives to be saved that would always justify killing one, a very large number, like ten thousand or a million, but even this would be problematic to settle. Saving five lives cannot provide sufficient justification to turn the trolley.
What is wrong with killing someone, if the outcome will benefit other people? I argue we should consider more than the consequences of killing. I contend that individuals have a right to life – a high priority justified reason not to kill them. Rights are claims that protect an individual’s interests and it is usually very wrong to infringe them. Turning the trolley would appear to infringe the lone worker’s right to life; to settle its permissibility we will need to understand the mechanisms of rights thinking. Two accounts permit actions that appear to infringe rights. Firstly, a rights bearer can forfeit a right - give it away, trade it, or lose it by some wrongful action. Secondly, a rights infringement can be justified by overwhelmingly good reasons. The reasons must significantly eclipse the importance of the right; consider the earlier consequentialist consideration as an argument, saving five lives does not sufficiently eclipse the importance of the lone worker’s right to life.
Rights theorist Thomson (Thomson 1990) has an account for the permissibility of turning the trolley grounded in the idea of rights forfeiture. Before we consider it, we need to understand that consent to rights forfeiture can be assumed rather than explicitly given. This is known as tacit consent. Australian citizens tacitly consent to forfeit some freedom and property rights so the government can require them to obey laws and pay taxes. It is generally in the citizens self interest to do so; they benefit from law and order, and infrastructure like roads, schools and hospitals. Thomson argues that track workers would probably consent to a policy of turning the trolley, and this tacit consent provides grounds for permissibility. Suppose the workers were randomly allocated their stations each day, they would have a five in six chance of being on the first track, and a one in six chance of being the lone worker. The workers would likely consent to a track turning policy before they were given their stations because the policy gives each a better chance of survival, if runaway trolley circumstances arise. Thomson successfully argues tacit consent distinguishes the trolley case from transplant; sick patients may consent to the healthy being killed to save themselves, it is unlikely that healthy patients would.
Thomson’s (Thomson 1990) account requires us to accept that a promise to forfeit your right to life should be binding. I disagree. A particular track worker may indeed give up their right to life in an emergency rescue situation; a brave and selfless act. Promising you would be willing to do so, if the extremely unlikely circumstances arose, raises doubts about whether the worker would follow through with the agreement. Imagine the lone worker, faced with his co-worker’s imminent doom, shouting to the bystander “Take me instead!” and reflecting that it was a shame to have to die, but after all, he had made a promise. This is an implausible degree of altruism to attribute to the lone worker. An agreement where one party is realistically not likely to deliver is not a legitimate agreement. It does not seem plausible to say the lone worker has actually forfeited the right to life, merely because he probably would have agreed to a trolley turning policy. (Hobbes 1651)
Perhaps there is another interpretation of Thomson’s argument. Tacit consent could form part of justifying right to life infringement rather than suggesting forfeiture. The difference is significant. If the lone worker can be understood to have forfeited his right to life, there is nothing bad about the bystander redirecting the trolley. But I think it is obvious that there is still something bad, something upsetting, about taking a life in these circumstances. Justified infringement acknowledges that something disturbing has taken place but is nevertheless permissible. Saving five lives is not reason enough to justify infringement, but maybe Thomson’s argument shows that if five lives are to be saved, AND the rights bearer would have consented to the policy by which the decision was made, it can be justified. This account needs further consideration; it is not obviously beyond reproach but it is intuitively more just.
In this essay I have argued that saving five lives is not reason alone to justify turning the trolley. I have explained the lone worker has a right to life but sometimes a right to life can be forfeited or justifiably infringed. I have argued Thomson’s account of right to life forfeiture by tacit consent should not be accepted. I have not rejected Thomson’s account entirely however, I have argued we may interpret her idea of tacit consent as explaining how the right to life could be justifiably infringed in this case.
References
Thomson, J. 1990. The Realm of Rights. Excerpt reproduced in LDM Study Guide. Monash University, 2010.
Hobbes, T. 1651. Leviathan. Excerpt reproduced in LDM Study Guide. Monash University, 2010.
Trolley is an emergency rescue case where a runaway trolley careens down a track. Unless the trolley is diverted, it will collide with five workers, causing their death. A bystander could flip the switch to divert the trolley, but this will kill the lone worker on the other track. Should the bystander flip the switch to save five lives? This essay considers Thomson’s (Thomson 1990) justification that it would be permissible to do so. Firstly I consider if turning the trolley is justified solely by the number of lives to be saved. This idea has disturbing implications and thus must be rejected. I introduce the idea that the right to life explains why it is wrong to kill people, even if there are favourable consequences. I explain Thomson’s account that the lone worker forfeits the right to life, and do not find it plausible that one could be bound by a promise to forfeit such an important right. I wonder if Thomson’s idea of tacit consent might instead provide an argument that infringing the right to life is justified.
My intuition is that it is permissible to turn the trolley, and this intuition is shared by many. Do the numbers at stake justify this? Other things being equal, it seems better to have five survivors than one, so perhaps it should always be permissible to have a consequentialist principle, bring about an outcome where the most will live. But this idea has disturbing implications. In the transplant case, a surgeon has five ill patients needing organ transplants. The patients are expected to die very soon as no matching donors can be found. By coincidence, the surgeon encounters a healthy patient, a perfect match for the five needed organs. The surgeon asks the healthy patient if he is willing to give his life so his organs can be used to save the five. The healthy patient refuses, should the surgeon kill the patient and take his organs anyway? Like the bystander in trolley, he could save five by killing one. I think it would be obviously wrong for the surgeon to do so. Intuitively it is deeply disturbing, even macabre, to imagine this happening. Maybe there is a number of lives to be saved that would always justify killing one, a very large number, like ten thousand or a million, but even this would be problematic to settle. Saving five lives cannot provide sufficient justification to turn the trolley.
What is wrong with killing someone, if the outcome will benefit other people? I argue we should consider more than the consequences of killing. I contend that individuals have a right to life – a high priority justified reason not to kill them. Rights are claims that protect an individual’s interests and it is usually very wrong to infringe them. Turning the trolley would appear to infringe the lone worker’s right to life; to settle its permissibility we will need to understand the mechanisms of rights thinking. Two accounts permit actions that appear to infringe rights. Firstly, a rights bearer can forfeit a right - give it away, trade it, or lose it by some wrongful action. Secondly, a rights infringement can be justified by overwhelmingly good reasons. The reasons must significantly eclipse the importance of the right; consider the earlier consequentialist consideration as an argument, saving five lives does not sufficiently eclipse the importance of the lone worker’s right to life.
Rights theorist Thomson (Thomson 1990) has an account for the permissibility of turning the trolley grounded in the idea of rights forfeiture. Before we consider it, we need to understand that consent to rights forfeiture can be assumed rather than explicitly given. This is known as tacit consent. Australian citizens tacitly consent to forfeit some freedom and property rights so the government can require them to obey laws and pay taxes. It is generally in the citizens self interest to do so; they benefit from law and order, and infrastructure like roads, schools and hospitals. Thomson argues that track workers would probably consent to a policy of turning the trolley, and this tacit consent provides grounds for permissibility. Suppose the workers were randomly allocated their stations each day, they would have a five in six chance of being on the first track, and a one in six chance of being the lone worker. The workers would likely consent to a track turning policy before they were given their stations because the policy gives each a better chance of survival, if runaway trolley circumstances arise. Thomson successfully argues tacit consent distinguishes the trolley case from transplant; sick patients may consent to the healthy being killed to save themselves, it is unlikely that healthy patients would.
Thomson’s (Thomson 1990) account requires us to accept that a promise to forfeit your right to life should be binding. I disagree. A particular track worker may indeed give up their right to life in an emergency rescue situation; a brave and selfless act. Promising you would be willing to do so, if the extremely unlikely circumstances arose, raises doubts about whether the worker would follow through with the agreement. Imagine the lone worker, faced with his co-worker’s imminent doom, shouting to the bystander “Take me instead!” and reflecting that it was a shame to have to die, but after all, he had made a promise. This is an implausible degree of altruism to attribute to the lone worker. An agreement where one party is realistically not likely to deliver is not a legitimate agreement. It does not seem plausible to say the lone worker has actually forfeited the right to life, merely because he probably would have agreed to a trolley turning policy. (Hobbes 1651)
Perhaps there is another interpretation of Thomson’s argument. Tacit consent could form part of justifying right to life infringement rather than suggesting forfeiture. The difference is significant. If the lone worker can be understood to have forfeited his right to life, there is nothing bad about the bystander redirecting the trolley. But I think it is obvious that there is still something bad, something upsetting, about taking a life in these circumstances. Justified infringement acknowledges that something disturbing has taken place but is nevertheless permissible. Saving five lives is not reason enough to justify infringement, but maybe Thomson’s argument shows that if five lives are to be saved, AND the rights bearer would have consented to the policy by which the decision was made, it can be justified. This account needs further consideration; it is not obviously beyond reproach but it is intuitively more just.
In this essay I have argued that saving five lives is not reason alone to justify turning the trolley. I have explained the lone worker has a right to life but sometimes a right to life can be forfeited or justifiably infringed. I have argued Thomson’s account of right to life forfeiture by tacit consent should not be accepted. I have not rejected Thomson’s account entirely however, I have argued we may interpret her idea of tacit consent as explaining how the right to life could be justifiably infringed in this case.
References
Thomson, J. 1990. The Realm of Rights. Excerpt reproduced in LDM Study Guide. Monash University, 2010.
Hobbes, T. 1651. Leviathan. Excerpt reproduced in LDM Study Guide. Monash University, 2010.
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