The Trolley Problem Essay

 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.

Bernard Williams Defusers of Subjectivism Summary Assessment

April 2011 - Second Year - Ethics

What is the view held by those Williams calls ‘defusers of subjectivism’?
Some people are unnerved (or made uncomfortable) by the philosophical doctrine of subjectivism, which has as one of its tenets that there are no objective moral facts. Defusers of subjectivism argue the discomfort arises from mistaken ideas of what follows from subjectivism. By correcting these mistakes, they seek to make subjectivism a more acceptable theory. Firstly, the defusers tell us, indifference does not logically follow from subjectivism. To think that it does would be to make the mistake of equating subjectivism with moral relativism. Secondly, the defusers make a more ambiguous claim: subjectivism ‘leaves everything where it was’ and does not encourage other practical consequences.

Williams offers some reasons that support ‘the defusers of subjectivism’. What are
those reasons?
A person could be indifferent because she believes (subjectively) that she is not justified in judging anyone else, but this would be to believe that there are some objective facts she doesn’t have access to, and objective facts are incompatible with subjectivism. Alternatively, she could be indifferent because she believes that no one is justified in judging anyone else, but this position requires that belief to be held in a ‘mid air position’, which is not compatible with subjectivism. The mid air position is a place for thought outside the individual’s subjective thoughts, and so it can feature facts, but not moral thought.

What is the argument that Williams supposes shows that ‘the defusing operation’
succeeds ‘in certain vital respects’?
In science when there are persistent disputes despite the same facts, concepts, and observation, it is rational for the disputers to acknowledge the matter is genuinely uncertain, when they cannot reach agreement. This reasoning, applied to moral disputes, would produce relativism. But the nature and extent of moral and factual disagreement are different. The defuser argues it is not a requirement of rationality that we apply this reasoning to moral disagreement. This contrast should not worry us - morality does not need to mirror the world of empirical facts, because it is normative rather than descriptive – it tells us how we ought change the world, not how the world is.

What remaining difficulties does Williams see for ‘defusers of subjectivism’?
The defusers have not succeeded in eliminating all practical consequences of subjectivism that might worry us. Firstly, in excluding the possibility of moral facts, it seems the subjectivist excludes constraints on moral thoughts. But we don’t think moral thoughts could be entirely creative, we think constraints are necessary (so we can reject attempts at moral thinking like ‘all jews ought to be killed’). Secondly, in arguing that morality comes from the will, but morality is something we decide, there seems to be a contradiction. Either we are psychologically attuned to act morally, or we must take action (like deliberation) to decide and then act morally.

How—if at all—might ‘defusers of subjectivism’ respond to Williams’ final
criticism?
I think defusers of subjectivism would appeal to facts about human nature as potential constraints on the kind of conclusions we could draw as moral conclusions. These types of appeal are to things about our psychology or biology that gear us towards sympathy, to temperance, to altruism. They would also appeal to these types of facts to argue that we are drawn to deliberate, and drawn to live an examined life. But these rely on strong empirical notions that may not have adequate foundation, and don’t give an obvious example of how we could excuse someone who (perhaps due to mental illness, or not) makes claims such as ‘all jews ought to be killed’ and claims moral legitimacy for these views, as they are views held subjectively.

Hume Summary Assessment - 'Of the Influencing Motives of the Will'

Written March 2011 (second year) - Ethics Summary - 500 Words

 1. What two claims does Hume endeavor to prove? (Paragraph 1) (2 marks)

Hume is responding to traditional views that right action can and should be determined by reason, arguing two claims in opposition to these views. The first claim is that reason can never motivate action (in isolation from passions or emotions). The second claim is that reason can never oppose or prevent actions motivated by passions or emotions.

2. What two operations of the understanding does Hume distinguish? (Paragraph 2) (2 marks)

Hume identifies two ways understanding (reason) exerts itself: demonstrative and probabilistic. Demonstrative reasoning is deductive; it allows us to draw specific claims from general ideas. Probabilistic (or causal) reasoning is inductive; it allows us to make general claims from specific ones.

3. How does Hume argue that the first operation of the understanding is never the sole cause of our actions? (Paragraph 2) (2 marks)

Hume draws a distinction between the world of ideas and the world of realities. Our motivation to act is concerned with realities, with specific ends and purposes (like wanting to clear a debt). Contrastingly, our reason is concerned with the world of ideas, with means for those ends (like aggregating numerical sums to calculate the total owed). Hume thinks it is generally accepted that the world of ideas and world of realities are so removed from one another no one would argue deductive reasoning could be the sole cause of action.

4. How does Hume argue that the second operation of the understanding is never the sole cause of our actions? (Paragraph 3) (2 marks)

Hume explains that probabilistic reason allows us to discover the relations between cause and effect. We then direct our actions in ways that cause our desired effects (ends). The choice of end arises from our passions; reason does not direct the choice to act, only which means to exercise. If we were emotionally indifferent to any cause or end, reason could never motivate us to be concerned with it.

5. How does Hume then go on to argue that reason alone is incapable of opposing passion in the direction of the will? (Paragraph 4) (3 marks)

Hume argues that if reason has force to generate action, it necessarily has force to counter action. This is consistent with the way we conceive of force in general, that it can initiate as well as oppose. He then draws on his earlier argument that reason alone cannot initiate action; if we accept that argument we should accept that reason cannot obstruct action willed by emotions.

6. What further considerations does Hume advance in support of his two main claims? (Paragraphs 5, 6, and 7) (4 marks)

Hume argues that we cannot use reason to say our desire ends are false or unreasonable, but there are two types of cases when it would appear that reason is showing our desired ends to be wrong. Both cases are factual mistakes about how our desired ends can be achieved.  In the first case, we believe that a thing exists, when it does not. In the second case, we believe a certain means will produce a specific end, when it will not.

When our factual misunderstandings are corrected, the originally desired end (born from emotion rather than reason) will persist. What will not persist is the means we desired, the means we had been directed to by our mistakes of reason.The impact of this is Hume can be right that man is driven by his emotions, without being impervious to reason: as emotion dictates ends, reason supplies the means. Reason performs the role of slave or servant to passion.

7. What is the main point of Hume’s discussion of ‘calm passions’? (Paragraphs 8, 9, and 10) (5 marks)

Hume is using the notion of the struggle between calm passions and violent passions to replace the traditional metaphysical conception of a struggle between passion and reason.  He explains two types of calm passions that may be commonly mistaken for reason, providing an explanation for human kindness and charity as well as a general propensity to seek goodness.

Violent passions have a powerful influence on the will and may make people act in ways that are threatening to other people - this could seem a problem for Hume seeking to ground a theory of morality in emotions. So Hume also wishes to illustrate that calm passions, those he associates with good and moral behavior, can constrain other more violent passions.   Hume argues that these violent passions can actually be sensible (in a self-defense situation) and that when they are not sensible, calm passions can counteract them.

When an agent is observed to have a conflict of will to act in a violent or calm way, and chooses the calm, Hume is arguing that this is the effect of their calm passion rather than reason.

Bibliography

Hume, David (1888) ‘Reason and Passion’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.118-23