(January 25, 2018 at 4:04 am)Mathilda Wrote:

(January 25, 2018 at 3:42 am)bennyboy Wrote: Yes, but would it get FIVE times more?  Let's think of the views per casualty for maximum efficiency, please.

The only way to be sure is to record the death of the five people, then switch the points to the first person and wait for the next trolley to come along.

I think you'd need a lot better controls for this.  First of all, you need to collect as many identical twins as possible.

(January 25, 2018 at 9:03 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(January 25, 2018 at 4:04 am)Mathilda Wrote: The only way to be sure is to record the death of the five people, then switch the points to the first person and wait for the next trolley to come along.

I think you'd need a lot better controls for this.  First of all, you need to collect as many identical twins as possible.

Good point.

Five pairs of twins. Take one of each twin and tie them to the track the trolley is to go down. Have cameras set up to record the deaths / reactions and upload the footage separately.

Then do the same for another pair of twins.

It could be that the single pair of twins would be more compelling.

(January 25, 2018 at 9:30 am)Mathilda Wrote:

(January 25, 2018 at 9:03 am)bennyboy Wrote: I think you'd need a lot better controls for this.  First of all, you need to collect as many identical twins as possible.

Good point.

Five pairs of twins. Take one of each twin and tie them to the track the trolley is to go down. Have cameras set up to record the deaths / reactions and upload the footage separately.

Then do the same for another pair of twins.

It could be that the single pair of twins would be more compelling.

We haven't even mentioned how we will measure these people's physical attractiveness yet.  I mean. . . it just feels like this experiment is going nowhere!

(January 24, 2018 at 11:22 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: The question here is: are you a consistent consequentialist? If you saved five lives at the cost of one in the trolley example, did you do so in the doctor example? If there is inconsistency, how do you justify it? Keep in mind, both examples are essentially the same: you can either ACT and save five lives (at the cost of one) or NOT ACT and let five people die. I'd like to hear people's reasoning for deciding differently or remaining consistent concerning both thought experiments.

(Even if you don't reply, please answer the attached poll. I'd like to get some raw numbers. I set it up to be anonymous.)

Personally, I think this is not just a numbers game in the organ scenario. In our society we place an extraordinary value on our right to our own body and have elaborate systems to defend our bodies. The thought that, in a predatory fashion, our society could condone the sacrifice of our organs for the greater good, scares us. I wouldn't feel safe going to the doctor if this were an option! Thus, we structure and work tirelessly to achieve a world in which our bodies are safe.

A train running over people - that's a freak accident. Knowing that in that scenario I might be sacrificed doesn't bother me one bit. However, if doctors, some of the most trusted people in our society behave that way, that would upset our entire world, concept of individualism and the notion of a right to our bodies.

Excellent moral question, though. I'm not sure if this is the answer but it's definitely a distinction in my mind when I look at it from a more sociological perspective.

The problem with much consequentialism is that it focuses on the immediate and obvious to the detriment of equally important longer focus issues. There is a divide between virtue ethics and deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics for a reason. Virtue ethics acknowledges that the changes we make to ourselves may be as important and lasting as the changes we make in the world. Would I want to be someone who regularly sacrifices relevant interests of the few to the interests of the many? I don't think a good world lies at the end of that path. Likewise with deontological ethics, we recognize that some impromptu solutions, if ethical in and of themselves, would become onerous if codified into rules for behavior. We might, on some exigent circumstance, choose to sacrifice the life of one in order to save five. But we wouldn't want people doing that at every opportunity, as that would quickly become intolerable. In the trolley situation, one is forced into making a decision one way or another. No rule or enduring changes to self follow from our responding to the exigent circumstance. However if we volunteer to take that life as the organ donor situation suggests, we begin down the path of shaping who we are and what rules we live by in a way that is not ultimately to our benefit.

Why do you think consequentialism focuses on the immediate or the obvious?  OBVS people do, but perhaps that;s why consequentialism is generally an institutional referent?

Quote:We might, on some exigent circumstance, choose to sacrifice the life of one in order to save five. But we wouldn't want people doing that at every opportunity, as that would quickly become intolerable.

-that's consequentialism. The end of a society that isn't made intolerable justifies the means of allowing some people who we might be able to save to die. Even if we maintain that it's a virtue to be the kind of person who could/would save them. Even if we set a rule that says you can't, by and large, sit back and watch people die.

We can't, for example..watch a building burn with people inside and fail to call the fire department. Only a very bad person would do that. However...we don;t want private citizens running into burning buildings to save people.

rule - virtue - consequence.

We can expand upon that for a range of individuals and behavior, showing the relationship between each component and an individual and this forms the basis of all of the different ways we may view that person, their act, and what they do or don;t deserve on account of it. There may be no chasm between the three except insomuch as people insisting that the "right" system is one of them attempts to assert it. Consider how each component affects the other above. A good person who breaks that rule is no longer considered a good person. A bad person who makes that call is thought to have been a good person at least in that event. The good and heroic person who makes the call and then runs in to save people is praised..but also considered to be somewhat of a lucky idiot who might have just as easily contributed to the deaths of others or themselves...something we generally associate with bad people who don't follow the rules.

(January 24, 2018 at 7:22 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Since, in context here we may not discussing an inconsistency of a system, as your poll suggests, but a possible misapplication of an unsuitable system to a particular portion of any given hypothetical.  

Absolutely. I expected most to be inconsistent. My poll may have given the impression that inconsistency is to be avoided. This was not my intention. The inconsistency is to be examined. This inconsistency itself is a huge question mark. Not only does it bring consequentialism into question, but (in a more limited way) all of ethical monism. Morality obviously isn't a numbers game, but numbers have a place in it, and they deserve due consideration. To ignore utilitarianism as important to ethics is to miss the point that there is a precise difference between genocide and the murder of a single person.

We are morally blind if we ignore consequentialism. Let's examine two moral universes, identical in every way except: a murder occurs in the streets of New York in universe A -- In universe B, the murder in New York doesn't happen, but a genocide of 10,000 people occurs elsewhere. A moral theorist who pronounces both universes equally good is blind. A utilitarian is not blind in this regard and would correctly endorse moral actions which favor universe A over universe B. In other words, he would pull the trolley switch without blinking, and we need that in ethics. Otherwise we are morally blind. But (as we have figured out upon closer inspection) the numbers game is insufficient.

Virtue ethics is a good counterbalance. If any theory is not a numbers game, it's virtue ethics. It's not even a "rules" game. It's obvious to see how it utterly fails as a monistic theory though. In a world populated entirely by Adolf Hitlers, a virtue ethicist would be forced to choose Hitler as a moral exemplar. Utilitarianism doesn't suffer from this constraint, and would be of service to a world of Hitlers in a way virtue ethics never could. Taken as a monistic theory to be implemented all by itself, virtue ethics fails hard. But used in conjunction with other theories in pluralism, it bolsters all the others.

Quote:How would you prioritize, if you were looking to make suggestions?

Yeah that's the problem with prioritizing them. As soon as you prioritize one over another you ALSO prioritize its weaknesses. If there were a way to address a theory's weakness as they came up, you could just cook that into the monistic theory. I like your idea better than the heuristic.

Now, how would votes change if the lone person on the other tracks was a brilliant scientist that had just figured out a cure for cancer? Does that affect the moral decision?

I'm suggesting that they -weren't- being inconsistent to consequentialism.  

That both answers, save the 5 on the trolley and save the 1 at the hospital were completely consistent with consequentialist ethics.  That a person simply didn't see the deaths of the five in the organ example as being the worst outcome..they saw the body farm concept of medicine as the worst outcome, despite the deaths of those five people.

If the ends, at least in some cases, justify the means; then letting those people die in order to avoid that outcome is a consequentialist justification. If we say the doctor is duty bound..that;s a virtue justfication. Duty bound to what, though? The rules of the trade. Deontology. Why are those rules the way they are, though? The consequences of them being otherwise.

You have a point there, Khem.

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(January 25, 2018 at 11:50 am)polymath257 Wrote: Now, how would votes change if the lone person on the other tracks was a brilliant scientist that had just figured out a cure for cancer? Does that affect the moral decision?

That would obviously warrant not pulling the switch, regardless of one particular ethics.