To
explore John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ideas on justice, we explored a few
variations of an interesting psychoanalysis known as the Trolley Problem. In
the first scenario there was a trolley approaching that was either going to
kill ten people unless the trolley track was switched to a track that would
kill one. The switch was left in the hand of each classmate individually. At
first the class was hesitant to let anyone die, but with the definition of
utilitarianism set in front of us the answer started to become very clear for a
majority of the class. In order to create the least amount of pain for the
greatest number of people, it was imperative to pull the switch.
After
moving through many of the ins and outs of the switch scenario, we had moved to
the example known as the “Fat Man”. In this scenario you could either let the
ten people die, or you could push a fat man off the bridge blocking the trolley
and killing the man. Like the last problem either ten people are dying or one
is, yet the new scenario blurred the path to decision for most of the class.
Under the umbrella of utilitarian philosophy, the decision should be easy. If
you push the fat man off of the bridge, you will create the least amount of
pain for the greatest amount of people. So my question is, “Why not push the
fat man?”
My
initial assumption is that the people who will not the fat man do not want to
be responsible for the man’s death, but what makes that one fat man’s life any
different from the five lives that lie in the way of the trolley? I believe
that the conscience act backed by the sensory experience creates a wall that
blocks the will to push the man. This reveals the difference in the personal
disconnect between you and the five hundreds of feet away on the track and the one
between you and the fat man. I believe that the reason most people will not
push the fat man is because the physical contact now creates a much larger
personal responsibility for the death of a human, which is something that most
cannot handle. This responsibility allows the mind to justify the fact that
pushing a fat man that you knew briefly or for an extended period of time,
although the utility is lower, the better option would be to let the anonymous
five die. Maybe the utilitarian approach is the most just, but human nature
believes, in the fat man’s case, that it is not the most practical.
http://tomkow.typepad.com/tomkowcom/trolley_problem/
Trey, I definitely agree with you. I think there's also an element of passivity. Although logically it would make sense to sacrifice one life for the sake of five lives, pushing the fat man over requires an action where doing nothing is the lack of action. It is easier for our minds to justify letting something happen even if we could have done something to interfere rather then making a pointed attempt to kill one individual. Like Dr. J has said many times, this is a moral dilemma because it is not a choice between a wrong and a right but instead a matter of picking the better wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think Esha makes a good point, which is where I struggle with the "fat man" scenario. I can imagine myself passing by this situation and maybe pulling the lever, but I cannot see myself happening on this (odd) circumstance and pushing a man to his death. If, however, I am placed directly in this situation and must choose one of the two possible outcomes, I think I would always choose the utilitarian stance. We hesitate to accept a moral obligation. The fat man scenario is especially tricky, because, if this situation happened to us in reality, we'd be considering a number of variables, including the fact that walking by would incur no legal punishment, but pushing the man, whether it is in the best interest of humankind or not, would have serious personal consequences. This is just another of the obstacles, just like you mention physically, actively killing the man would be one. So, we may say that one SHOULD push the man, but it's much more difficult to say that we would actually do so.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that bothers me about this situation is that we all keep saying that Mill would view pushing the fat mas as the just action to take, but I'm not so sure he would. We said in class that Mill thinks that it is unjust to infringe upon someone's legal or moral rights. Are we not infringing on his rights by killing him? We also said that breaking an agreement is unjust in Mill's eyes. Are we not all in an agreement when we willingly live in a country with a defined set of laws, and aren't we breaking that agreement when we kill the fat man?
ReplyDeleteI think actively killing a person is a more direct infringement of rights and a more severe violation of your agreement with society than allowing the "trolley problem"'s events to carry out on their natural course. We said that Mill views social utility as "preserving the peace and harmony"--I think a trolley accident is a smaller disruption of everyone's peace of mind than a murder is. What do you think? I still agree that the original argument to save the larger group of people definitely has merits, but I think there are other valid interpretations if we consider all of Mill's ideas that were discussed in class.