Can the end justify the means?

[jitsuwarrior]

Missy,

I know exactly what you mean, but Damon is a little tapped in the head to say the least, half Navajo, half English. Already been shot when serving in Kosovo and Bosnia and still seems to think he is invincible.

 

[Rebel Tackleberry]

The question of sacrificing one person to save multiple others is an interesting one and a lot of thought experiments and investigation has been done on how people respond to these type of dilemmas.

For example:

1) A train is heading towards a junction in the track. Down one fork there is one person on the line. Down another there are 10 people on the line. You are at the points and have the choice of which way to send the train. Which do you choose?

2) A hospital has 10 people in need of various organs to save their lives. If they receive organs it is guaranteed they will live. A healthy person is sitting in the waiting room. If you kill the healthy person you can use his/her organs to save the other 10. What do you do?

In the first scenario people will generally agree that sending the train down the fork with a single person is the right thing to do. In the second scenario people will generally agree that it's not right to kill the one person to save the other 10.

Why? What is the difference?

 

[Biscuit]

would i do hell yes
have members of my family had too do it yes
have members of my family been classed as dead by the government yes
even though you can talk too them
i could tell you some serious crap but i would have too send somebody too see you

 

[Robbo]

Here's the difference; on one had it's implied [though not stated unequivocally] that the train example MUST choose one one of the two because it HAS to go down one or the other to complete its journey.
I am of course presuming [not wrongfully in this case] the train's momentum is gonna travel way past either option in terms of physical position.

Now this is obviously predicated upon the train completing it's journey and I can imply this because there wasn't a third course of action in terms of stopping the train.
The situation as described and implied made it impossible to select stopping thus saving them all.

In the second example, there is no such guarantee in that the course of action you are on .. ie just standing there wondering which choice to make [kill one person for their organs to give to 10]; the first example dictates you have to willfully choose to intervene in a situation and therefore decide which one's you kill.
The train is unstoppable [presumably] and therefore there is nothing but one of two options to select but in the second example, you don't have to choose and decide the fate of 1 or 11, the fact the train is moving in the first example means you will have to to travel down or or the other.
And so, I select the 'one' person's death for the first example and I elect to not select either one of the second in terms of proactively selecting the one to die for the benefit of the others.

Just to make sure you realise what I am saying here, the first example implies the train is traveling so fast and no matter what you decide the trains momentum will have to go over one of these two.
The second example allows the possibility for you to choose neither.
The first being a dynamic certainty [that one of the courses will be taken, it just remains for you to decide which one] and the latter example dictates that's you elect the single person's fate [for the benefit of the ten] and therefore the option isn't circumstantially primed like the first.


I know I have repeated myself a bit there but I wanted to make sure you understood what I meant because as I wrote this response out I was kinda thinking I wasn't being as clear as I needed to be.

 

[Rebel Tackleberry]

Yes, totally understand what you mean Robbo and it's how most people assess it, even unconsciously, without even being able to express it clearly.

It interests me how our morality works though.

Now consider a slightly different thing.

A train is heading for a group of 10 people on the track. You are standing on a bridge and a large boulder is to hand. If you drop the boulder on to the track you can stop the train and save the 10 people.

Now replace that boulder with a single person. Would you throw the person on to the track to stop the train and save 10?

No-one would have much trouble with the first one as it's pretty clear cut. Drop an inanimate object to save 10 people.

The second scenario obviously involves killing someone so you would naturally not normally consider it right to take any positive action to do that (or most people wouldn't).

The interesting thing is to compare the second scenario above, dropping and killing one person to stop the train and save ten, with the first one in the previous post, switching points to kill one and save ten. Logically the two questions are the same. Why do we end up considering them differently?

Complicate it more by making the one person you drop a convicted murderer, or someone who is terminally ill with only weeks to live. Does that change your assesment?

 

[Duncan Berry]

i think what your situations are begining to hint at is that morally people seem to have a problem with actually commiting the act of murder even if it is for the greater good.
perhaps this is simply because we are bought up to beleive murder is wrong (and on the whole rightly so lol)

 

[Storm.trooper]

if the ends dont justify the means then what does? always thought that was a very good quote
Also the needs of the many outweigh the few but i suppose thats a controversial one with the argument is any life worth more than any other but hey thats my 2p

 

[Missy-Q]

And as a further consideration, what if that one person who was to be sacrificed for the greater good was a child .. does anything change here ????

If you put the child on a plane, sat it in the seat behind me, and it cried for more than 30 seconds, I could probably pull the trigger.

 

[AirHead]

Yes, in almost every scenario. The only problem I feel I could have with it is if the person who has to die isn't going to be responsible for the deaths of the 1000.

Now here's an interesting one - what if you had to kill yourself to save the 1000 (may not be 1000, may be any large number of people)?

 

[Robbo]

Now consider a slightly different thing.

A train is heading for a group of 10 people on the track. You are standing on a bridge and a large boulder is to hand. If you drop the boulder on to the track you can stop the train and save the 10 people.

Now replace that boulder with a single person. Would you throw the person on to the track to stop the train and save 10?

No-one would have much trouble with the first one as it's pretty clear cut. Drop an inanimate object to save 10 people.

The second scenario obviously involves killing someone so you would naturally not normally consider it right to take any positive action to do that (or most people wouldn't).

The interesting thing is to compare the second scenario above, dropping and killing one person to stop the train and save ten, with the first one in the previous post, switching points to kill one and save ten. Logically the two questions are the same. Why do we end up considering them differently?

Complicate it more by making the one person you drop a convicted murderer, or someone who is terminally ill with only weeks to live. Does that change your assesment?

I do not believe the two proposals are the same Reb, the first one is obviously using an inanimate object with the second being a person; whilst the mechanics of both remains the same, the 'tools' available to bring about the saving of ten lives aren't the same at all.

Obviously the second proposal involves the complication of pro-actively murdering one person to save the ten.
Whilst the first situation includes no moral dilemma, the second most definitely does.
Murder is a sin and not something I'd ever contemplate under normal circumstances .. and therein lies the rub, I have to decide what abnormal circumstances need to transpire before I throw this person off the bridge.

The first case does not involve any dereliction of personal moral codes or laws but the second needs to be considered differently because to save the lives, not only do you have to murder an innocent [presumably] you also have to abandon your principles whether they be religious, moral and legal.

The sacrifice of an innocent if you have to compromise your core beliefs is not acceptable.
The fate of the ten thus gets deferred to circumstances or the hand of God .. whatever you believe to be the case.

This problem is then complicated by introducing notions of someone being terminally ill or indeed a convicted murderer.

For the first option, I wouldn't murder them to save ten even though they did have a terminally ill prognosis but what I would do is give that terminally ill person the option to take his own life for the benefit of ten others thus assuming the responsibility for his premature death [albeit by a few weeks or whatever].

The second proposal, that of a convicted murderer does cause me a problem; firstly I would follow the same route as the first in giving this murderer the opportunity to redeem himself by offering his own life to save ten .. the problem arises if he elects not to save the ten by throwing himself over the bridge.

Personally, I think I would abandon my normal principles in favour of lobbing him in front of the train to save the others .... I might spend the rest of my life pondering what i had done and feeling guilty but i could offset these feelings in knowing that ten people are alive and well because I did choose that route.

But the bottom line is this, I don't think anybody has the right to take a god-given life and to act like a god in determining who lives and who dies is far beyond our abilities and remit ... let god choose what happens and then everybody can escape any resultant pangs of guilt.