Judith Jarvis Thomson: Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem
Can we reduce ethics to a calculus—or are there other considerations than mitigiating bad outcomes and bringing about good outcomes?
Thesis
Thomson claims that the trolley problem in Foot’s article is underdescribed.
- There are vague points which require clarification (whether the two groups are on a par with respect to all relevant questions)
- There are also peculiarities of the trolley case which would make the generalisation of the lessons learned in it illegitimate
For this reason Thomson explores variations on the problem in order to see what is ethically decisive in it, and whether any general rule such as “killing is worse than letting die” can be found. She finds that in fact the generalisation of this rule is inappropriate. However, she may be proposing an alternative rule.
When killing is worse than letting die it is because of some extrinsic (non-essential) character of the killing
- Such as something being done to the person, rather than something happening to the person
Methodology
- Rather than reasoning from fundamental principles (as Mill and Kant do), Thomson examines our ethical intuitions, sometimes pitting them against each other, and analyses what principles can be derived from them.
- The benefit of this is that it does not require us to decide on principles abstractly and in advance
- It has a serious drawback—what if our intuitions are wrong?
Is killing worse than letting die?
This would be (possibly) what makes certain cases an exception to the general rule (triage, Foot’s five doses) that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few: (Spock)
Transplant surgeon case (544)
- Is killing worse than letting die in this case? Why?
- The math is the same
- Thomson: something done to the person
cases:
- The two spousal slaughter cases at the beginning show that there are cases (if extreme) in which letting die is as bad as killing.
- But the punching/head chop shows the danger of allowing ourselves to be misled from seeming truths by extreme examples.
- The surgeon cases show that in some cases killing certainly is worse than letting die
So why is killing worse than letting die in some cases but not in all
The doctrine of double effect
“it is sometimes permissible to bring about a result that one foresees as a consequence of one’s action but does not intend that it would be impermissible to aim at either as a means or an end” (Foot SEP entry)
Variations
What is the point of all of these variations?
- The numbered cases are all situations in which the choice is between killing and letting die, and their point is to show that our moral intuitions as to teh question vary from case to case and to try to develop our understanding as to why
- Harm:
- Charles and David (3 & 4): surgeons
- Edward (5): trolley driver
- Frank (6): trolley passenger
- George (7): fat man
- Harry (8): diverted bomb
- Irving (9): bombing Worcester
- Unequal claim against trolley death (i, iv), avalanche, or bombing
- Health pebble
- Minority claim on the HP (such as ownership)
Ethical distinctions
- A species of doing vs allowing
- Intended consequences vs foreseeable consequences
- See doctrine of double effect (DDE)
- Deflecting vs originating harm
- Note this is not the same as DDE
- Distributing harm by doing something to the trolley vs by doing something to a person (550)
- George, Irving, shoving away from the HP, surgeons
- permissible vs required
- Individuals’ claims against violence
- Difference in claims seems like the key distinction, but 4’ shows it is not
Deflecting vs. originating harm and doing something to a person, vs. something happening to a person as a result of what you do
- This seems to be the most plausible candidate for a rule but does Thomson want to rely on it as a rule?
- She wants us to be wary of the application of a general rule to individual cases
- 551: “cases have to be looked at individually”
Quotes:
“There is no Principle of Moral Inertia: there is no prima facie duty to refrain from interfering with existing states of affairs just because they are existing states of affairs.” 546
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Activity:
- In groups: is there a single theory we can develop to explain what makes the difference between those cases where it is permissible to distribute harm, and those where it is not?
- If so, what is it?
- If not, why not? What cases block, one or more candidate theories?
The use of this toy example
What are the more realistic implications of the moral considerations discussed around these contrived scenarios? Think about it and bring in suggestions.
- Interventionist warfare (Kosovo, Vietnam)
Why can we not think of warfare or taxes along these lines?
A danger in abstract thought experiments?
- Abstracting away from real world problems can help us consider the ethical core without getting distracted from our prejudices
- Even very broad and not necessarily wrong prejudices such as those against killing
- The danger is that we must be very careful in applying our thinking back to the real world, because what we learn in the thought experiment
Rules and their application
- This is a broader difficulty in ethics—we seek general rules, but we must apply them to particular circumstances (which always challenge the generality)