5 lives for 1 do not equal 1 life for 5.

5 lives for 1 do not equal 1 life for 5.

Almost
every renowned university´s philosophy faculty has a discourse with their
philosophy students about the dilemma of the locomotive which you can change
its course for by shifting a switch point level to save five lives at the cost
of one life. There are two divides; categorical moral reasoning and
consequential moral reasoning, the latter also called Utilitarianism. [Utilitarianism
= Maximizing happiness for as many people as possible, if necessary at the
expense of the minority but the very nature of Utilitarianism is to maximize
happiness for as many as possible, only it might not be possible to maximize
happiness for the many without reducing happiness for some, especially since
Utilitarianism has come to be associated with political philosophy.]

Imagine
that you stand beside a train tracks switch point level where the track divide
into two tracks. The train is moving fast, and you notice that the switch point
is set so that the train is going straight ahead. Ahead of the train and its
course straight ahead after the tracks divide, stands five workers not knowing
about the trains course or noticing the train, perhaps because they are deaf
and facing the other way. On the other track there stands a single worker,
unaware of what is obviously going to take place at the alternate track and
unaware of the train. What are you going to do? Are you going to shift the
switch point level so that the single guy will get run over and save the five
at the alternate track? You have the power in your hands! If you are not the
type of person who is willing to shift the switch point level you are apt to categorical
moral reasoning, and if you are you are apt to consequential moral reasoning
which means that you have a Utilitarian view. So far, most people would say
that they are consequential in their moral ethics. I am a Utilitarian in this
example!

Assume
another alternate theoretical situation; Instead of a divided track you have a
single straight track. You stand on a bridge over the track. But still there
are five workers that are going to be run over – If.., you don’t push down a really big fat man who is leaning
over the reeling right over the track on the bridge, thereby killing him, but
it will stop the train you are sure. Would you kill him? If it makes it any
easier you can assume that the fat man is going to die by cardiac disease in
the course of a year anyway. If you would not kill him, maybe the next example
provides sufficient reason for you to act utilitarian?

Let us alternate
the situation further: If you are one of the relatively many people whom would,
in the first example, shift the switch point level and there by kill one person
to save five, but not push the fat man over the reeling in the second example
because you consider it to be murder. Would you consider turning a wheel that
opens a trap door on which the very big fat man is standing on, on the bridge
in the second example? You wouldn´t physically be pushing the fat man down from
the bridge, you would merely be doing the same thing as you did in the first
example, both this example and the first example involve certain technicalities
and you would still be sacrificing one to save the five!

In the
latter example, as opposed to the first example, very, very few people are
inclined to even indirectly kill the fat man to save the five. But there is
evidently no moral difference between the two examples, so why is it, so few
people are apt to kill the fat man on the bridge and so many are apt to kill
the person standing on the alternate track in the first example? Perhaps it
comes from that by turning the wheel you kill the fat man directly almost
immediately, whereas when you shift the switch point level in the first example
there is a delay between when you shift the level and when the train actually
hits the one worker, and much can happen in the meantime? Secondly; partly it
is the unmanageable train which hits and kills the one worker, and on top of
that, a train is subconsciously and consciously assumed as having an engineer
which can be seen as a participant with responsibility, in the event. I´m just
saying, I don´t want to be a philosophy kill!

Take a
doctor. This doctor is a transplant surgeon, and you are him! Let us assume
that involuntary euthanasia is legal in your country. Five men are lying dying
in the ward, in desperate need of all in all a heart, a liver, two people need
a kidney, and one person need a couple of lungs. In another room lies a
perfectly healthy man sleeping.  The five
sick people all have compatible blood types and stuff, with the sleeping
healthy man. You as a surgeon have the power to go in to the healthy man and
give him anaesthecia, and take out his organs to save the five, rending the one
man to die. Would you do it? Of course not, almost no one would apparently. That
means that almost every person alive thinks in categorical moral reasoning
terms when faced with this example, even many non die hard Utilitarian´s would
refuse to steal the sleeping mans organs to save the five, or so I understand.
Only very rigorous Utilitarian´s would admit to stealing the single mans organs
when faced with this situation. Why? I´m speculating here, but for one thing
it´s shameful to admit to this morally perverted behavior of stealing a man´s
organs. Only bad associations come to mind, one comes to think of Doctor Joseph
Mengele. Perhaps in a different time people would have deemed organ stealing
morally convincingly? Also, who among you would trust your life with this kind
of Utilitarian Doctor? No one I presume, and that is because we humans if we
are normal don´t function like this Doctor, and this in turn is supported by
the low number of people who would say that they would steal the one person´s
organs and transplant them into five very sick people. It goes against every
fiber in the Hippocratic oath*/*, to steal organs from a patient despite of how many
people you can save, which is to show how deeply rooted the categorical moral
reasoning is in humans. There is no consequential moral reasoning alternative
to the Hippocratic oath, that Doctors can chose to take! Yet, there are many
occasions when we act out of a Utilitarian view, if we even are one of the few
who are aware of this little mind-twister called Utilitarianism. But weather
you are aware of it or not you still act either
consequential or categorical in moral
dilemmas.

*Among other things, the Hippocratic oath states: I
will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed
to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in
matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But
it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must
be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I
must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a
fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may
affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes
these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.*

Let us take the discourse
into the world of cinemas; “Saving Private Ryan” for example. The story is in short, that a handful of soldiers
are sent into German lines to rescue a man who´s four brothers in the course of
a few days recently were killed in the war, and this man was the sole surviving
kid his parents had left. The man was supposed to be sent home by the army to
his parents when they had found him. All of the soldiers, except for the man
they were looking for, died in the mission. Of course this was only a film, but
the soldiers were ready to risk their life for this one man, just like it
sometimes is in real life. I´m not talking about five men risking their life
for a general, but five men risking their life for a private, and one of the
men is a captain, at least in the movie. Similarities to the events in this
story, happens in real life! It is more likely that you would send out the men
if you, as soldiers do, have a personal tie to the one man and his dead
brothers. In this example you roll the dice, but the principle is the same,
only, the general is the one turning the switch point so you have to imagine
yourself being the general. And the
roles are reversed, you are now killing of five men to save the one. You are
not effectively killing of the soldiers, but there is a good chance that some
soldiers will die, either among the group itself, or among some other soldiers
lacking sufficient support somewhere else because of the absence of these
soldiers in an unforeseen fight. There is a moral dimension with this even if it´s
a lottery on life and death, but would you
send the men in if they were willing to go? You could be killing five in order
to save one! If you would you most surely take a categorical moral stand in an
ethical dilemma like this one. I imagine that a voting among philosophy
students about how they would have acted would turn out about fifty-fifty in
favor of either side. If you are one of the people who would have turned the
switch point in the first example with the divided track, and if you also would
have sent the five men to save the one man (I
am, in contradiction to my own view in the first example, raising my hand here),
you have some explaining to do! For these examples contradict each other and
you must relinquish the idea of one of them, 5 lives for 1 does not equal 1 life
for 5, it is the very opposite of Utilitarinism. It can be hard to do, if you are a man of
principles (I know it is for me). Of
course you can always say that “I don´t know if the one man will die also, so I
would abstain from sending the five men in”, but we have to look at this as a
theoretical example and say that we know that the one man will be saved, but
whereas we know this we assume that we don´t know whether the rest of the men
will live or die. But of course, as I said, it´s a roll of the dice in this
example! But it doesn´t have to be a role of the dice, we could assume that you
are an almighty general who can see into the future and establish that two of
your men are going to die in order to save this one man so that he can go home
to his family as the sole survivor of the family´s five kids. This makes people
unwilling to send in the men, I assume? But it´s a hypothetical objection,
because in real life most people would not be willing to trade one individuals
life for another individuals life, even if it meant that one individual could
go home as the sole survivor of five kids whereas the other individual could be
an orphan. But that doesn´t apply to war! Because in war most often men are
sent into battle to support other soldiers and preventing them from dying, and
of course to enable their own side to win the battle, and extended, the war.
Sometimes the reinforcement numbers more than the reinforced own troops, and
sometimes it is the opposite. The general (you) would perhaps refuse to
actively make such a gambling decision and send five to bring back the one?

But even in the other examples there
is a theoretical dimension and a gambling. Like we don´t know if the one man
standing on the other train track will get out of the way in time to save his
own life, or if the bunch of five will see the train coming and get out of the
way whereas the one man will not. We don´t know whether the fat man on the
bridge will really stop the train with his body if we push him down from the
bridge. Let´s assume that you are convinced that chances are fifty-fifty that
the five men on the track will not see the train coming in time to jump out of
the way, would you still shift the switch point level, and thereby causing the
death of one man? This version of the example applies better to the not fully
informed general´s decision making situation and makes the example more
realistic and equalized to real life situations. The problem is that the agent
(you) must be fully informed to make important decisions in these instant
cases, in real life, or the decision gets arbitrary and disqualified from moral
aspects. The not fully informed agent becomes capricious and cause arbitraries
in the decisions. You must be able to look into the future, much can happen in
the time it takes for the train to travel the distance to the worker/workers.
This is circumstances one must take into account, and people strive to do that
but they need information, and sufficient information, and time to consider
their actions.

It is interesting
how almost all people see´s the pushing down the fat man from the bridge as
murder, even though one is saving five men. Saving five men does of course not
make it less of a murder. But many of us don´t see our self as murderers if we
push the level on the switch point. How come?

Well, who
amongst you would like to be acquainted with a man whom is ready to push down
the fat man from the bridge? Who would spend time with him? What can he commit?
Can you even trust him? Next time it could be you whom is pushed down the
bridge! Can you even trust him in trivial
matters? Who wants to have a doctor, whom takes out livers and hearts from
perfectly healthy persons against their consent, as his physician? There is no
surprise that these two examples have the most slanderers among people, as well
as philosophers, for such agents as mentioned above are psychos. But the other
two examples with the switch point level and the train, and the contradictory
example with the five rescuing soldiers, can apply different to different
people. People are as apt to one or the other example, but they cannot be apt
to both at the same time! Or can they? I know I can!

Roger
Klang, Lund Scaniae Sweden, 10/17/2011