In general, we are morally permitted to turn the trolley in order to save five, but kill one. On the other hand, we are not permitted to transplant the organs of one healthy person in order to save five who will otherwise die. According to consequentialists, there is no moral difference between “Trolley” and “Transplant.” Consequentialists believe that “consequences are the only things of moral relevance” (Quinn 287). Actually, the consequences of both cases are either saving the lives of five or the life of one. However, our moral judgement leads that the case of “Trolley” is morally permitted, but “Transplant” isn’t permitted. Why do we think that they are different? I think that the difference between the two cases come from the doctrine …show more content…
In the former choice, we decide to turn the trolley to save five, but kill one. Warren S. Quinn argues that “if our action is a certain kind of withdrawing of aid, it naturally enough seems to count as negative agency” (Quinn 303). The purpose of this choice is not to kill the lives of five. Actually, we have to kill the life of one, but it seems to be the failure to save one. This decision comes from negative agency. On the other hand, the later choice is decide to allow to kill five, but save one. According to Quinn, “negative agency would include the foreseeably harmful inactions that could not or need not have been avoided” (Quinn 292). The purpose of this choice is not to kill the life of one. The consequence that the lives of five is killed also seems to the failure to save them. This choice also comes from negative agency. In this case, we can’t avoid to sacrifice either the lives of five or the life of one. Moreover, this is the conflict between the agencies which have the same nature. Therefore, we can compare the moral values of the two choices by the amount of the sacrifice. As a result, we are morally permitted to turn the trolley in order to save the lives of five, but kill one in this …show more content…
Quinn mentions two rights: negative and positive. At the first, “Negative rights are claim rights against harmful intervention, interference, assault, aggression, etc” (Quinn 306). “Positive rights, on the other hand, are claim rights to aid or support” (Quinn 306). Negative agency comes from negative rights and positive agency comes from positive rights. It means that in “Transplant” the positive rights of five people to be saved by transplanting the organs compare with the negative rights of one healthy person not to be killed by harvesting organs. In general, negative rights are morally stronger than positive rights. The reason is that negative rights strongly connects with the moral sense in which our life is ours. It doesn’t mean that positive rights are not important, but negative rights are essential to our general moral sense more than positive rights. Therefore, we are not permitted to harvest the organs of one healthy person in order to save the lives of five because this choice comes from positive
The way I see it, if we have rights to any of the avenues we would pass on our genes or donate our organs then we have rights to all avenues thereof. Because there's already precedent in our culture("My body my choice!") of autonomy concerning one's flesh I don't see how an argument could be made otherwise. That being said once you release your tissues and genes I believe your forfeit all rights to them thereafter. This might seem the obvious course of action when ...
Consequentialism is ordinarily distinct from deontology, as deontology offers rightness or wrongness of an act, rather than the outcome of the action. In this essay we are going to explore the differences of consequentialism and deontology and apply them to the quandary that Bernard Williams and J.J.C Smart put forward in their original analogy of “Jim and the Indians” in their book , Utilitarianism: for and against (J.J.C Smart & Bernard Williams, 1973, p.78-79.).
The ‘Trolley Car Problem’ has sparked heated debates amongst numerous philosophical and jurisprudential minds for centuries. The ‘Trolley Car’ debate challenges one’s pre-conceived conceptions about morals, ethics and the intertwined relationship between law and morality. Many jurisprudential thinkers have thoroughly engaged with this debate and have consequentially put forward various ideologies in an attempt to answer the aforementioned problem. The purpose of this paper is to substantiate why the act of saving the young, innocent girl and resultantly killing the five prisoners is morally permissible. In justifying this choice, this paper will, first, broadly delve into the doctrine of utilitarianism, and more specifically focus on a branch
Consequentialism tells us not to look at the act, but to look at the outcome. The one thing that Jim should consider is how many lives are saved. To kill one of the Indians in order to save nineteen or to not kill and all 20 will die. Jim would Compare and weigh both outcomes. Therefore, Jim as a consequentialist chooses the better outcome and kills one in order to save the other nineteen Indians. Who does the act is morally irrelevant, when the outcome is for the good of the whole. This is what matters as the greatest happiness principle like John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) who gives importance to the consequences of the act for the good of the whole. The outcome is what matters and not the process that gave rise to the outcome. Therefore, a consequentialist sacrifices his morality in order to save 19 lives. In this case, Jim has to choose who of the Indians to kill in order to save the rest of the nineteen India...
It has long been one of the standard criticisms of consequentialist approaches to ethics that they too easily justify "trade-offs" that are morally unacceptable. The criticism which holds "the end justifies the means" philosophy inherent in consequentialism to be a source of great immorality is expressed, for example, in the famous scene from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Remember how Alyosha reacts to the prospect offered by Ivan of a harmonious world order, a system that would bring about peace and rest and happiness for all men. A lovely idea, but the structure comes at the price of torturing one tiny child to death. And Alyosha will not consent to that "exchange."
Consequentialism, which is a segment of the grander Value Theory, asserts that the rightness or wrongness of an action is a matter of measuring the outcome of the action itself. Moral decisions can then depend on the latent costs and/or benefits that result from doing the action. Utilitarianism, the most popular form of consequentialism, is in the same vein with regard to moral actions and their likely consequences. A utilitarian will attempt to question the results of an action as would a consequentialist, however they ask the additional question: “furthermore, how much pleasure (happiness) would be created by the action?” A utilitarian’s moral concentration is on maximizing pleasure, as the utilitarian maxim affirms that one should act always as to maximize total pleasure. Maximizing total pleasure, a utilitarian believes, is equivalent to minimizing total pain, and this forms the basis for morality.
My question stems from the “The trolley problem” which gives a person the imaginary option of pulling a lever to save five people from an oncoming trolley and killing one person or letting the trolley go and kill the five people saving, that one other person. Another way this dilemma is set up is: say you were walking on a bridge with a fat man and you saw that a trolley was coming below you and was about to hit five people but, you knew if you pushed this fat man off the bridge to block the trolley then you could save the five people at the expense of the fat
People in support of organ transplantation argue the cost/benefit ration and have determined their arguing points to be these: Social Responsibility, Improves the Quality of Life, alleviation of familial grief, encourages hope to live, lessens the cost of patient care, improves research and research methods. The opposing side offers an alternative view, offering these augment points: Risk of complication during and after surgery, degradation of health in the long run, adverse physiological effect on donor’s family, financial burden, objections based on religious belief, unethical trade and harvesting of human organs, and finally, the donor has no rights to choose the recipient.
The philosophy of rights has been a perennial subject of discussion not only because it is embedded in the intellectual tradition and political practices of many countries but also because it exhibits deep divisions of opinion on fundamental matters. Even a cursory survey of the literature on rights since, say, the time of the Second World War would turn up a number of perplexing questions to which widely divergent answers have been given: What are rights? Are rights morally fundamental? Are there any natural rights? Do human rights exist? Are all the things listed in the UN's Universal Declaration (of 1948) truly rights? What are moral rights? Legal rights? Are basic moral rights compatible with utilitarianism? How are rights to be justified? What is the value of rights? Can infants have rights, can fetuses have them, or future generations, or animals? And so on.
The first moral theory studied in the course this semester was classical utilitarianism. Utilitarianism at its base argument is the attempt to maximize utility. When a person uses the moral theory of utilitarianism, they are looking at that action that benefits the most people or that has the higher good for the most people. Utilitarianism say that a person does a certain action that helps or benefits a higher number of people then that action is moral good. Before discussing Utilitarianism further, there is a need to explain what it has to do with consequentialism. Consequentialism is when a person looks at actions or something that someone does and judges that action based of the criteria that of consequences that action brings. To a consequentialist the only way for an action to be moral good the action itself and what the outcome it brings must be good. Let’s say that person is talking a final on Tuesday and decides to bring a bag of candy to the whole class during their final to have something to keep them up. If this action was to benefit the whole class and that action brings good consequence than that action is morally right to a consequ...
The Bystander at the Switch case is a fundamental part of Thomson’s argument in “Trolley Problem.” The basis of her paper is to explain the moral difference between this case, which she deems morally permissible (1398), and the Transplant case, which she deems morally impermissible (1396). In the Bystander at the Switch case, a bystander sees a trolley hurtling towards five workers on the track and has the option of throwing a switch to divert the trolley’s path towards only one worker. Thomson finds the Bystander at the Switch case permissible under two conditions:
It is almost unanimously agreed upon that the right to life is the most important and sacred right possessed by human beings. With this being said, it comes as no surprise that there are few issues that are more contentious than abortion. Some consider the process of abortion as immoral and consisting of the deprivation of one’s right to life. Others, on the opposite end of the spectrum, see abortion as a liberty and a simple exercise of the right to the freedom of choice.
slope. I think that out of all the variables, this is the one which is
Consequentialism is an ethical theory that evaluates the consequences of a person’s action to determine if their actions are right or wrong (Slote 34). According to the theory, a morally right act is one that has more good outcomes than bad ones. In this ethical theory, the end justifies the means; hence, it argues that people should first determine the good and bad consequences of actions before they do them. After determining the total outcomes, it is important to investigate whether the total good consequences are more. If the good ones outweigh the bad ones, then that action is morally right, but if it is the reverse, then the action is morally wrong.
The theories and ideals shared among consequentialists are by no means to be scrapped; philosophical theories are theories, not prescriptions. While they do all make an attempt to describe a solution to various moral conundrums, one can not forget that validity is shared among theories. Holes may seem larger in certain standards and ideals, but these holes are never refutable and should be used to create a larger discourse between philosophical theories. Consequentialism and all it’s sub-groups (direct, universal, hedonism, aggregative, evaluative, maximizing, etc.) are based around two dominant principles: For an act to be in the right or wrong one must look solely to the results of the act, and subsequently second, the more net-good produced