The Trolley Problem / Das Trolley-Problem (Englisch/Deutsch). Judith Jarvis Thomson
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Название: The Trolley Problem / Das Trolley-Problem (Englisch/Deutsch)
Автор: Judith Jarvis Thomson
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
Серия: Reclam Great Papers Philosophie
isbn: 9783159617213
isbn:
It should be stressed: The fact that he will do something worse if we do not send the fumes in does not entail that we ought to send them in, or even that it is permissible for us to do so.
How after all could that entail that we may send the fumes in? The fact that we would be saving five lives by sending the fumes in does not itself make it permissible for us to do so. (Rights trump utilities.) How could adding that the taker of those five lives would be doing what is worse than we would tip the balance? If we may not infringe a right of the one in order to save the five lives, it cannot possibly be thought that we may infringe the right of that one in order, not merely to save the five lives, but to make the villain’s moral record better than it otherwise would be.
For my own part, I think that considerations of motives apart, and other things being equal, it does no harm to say that
(II) Killing five is worse than killing one
is, after all, true. Of course we shall then have to say that assessments of which acts are worse than which do not by themselves settle the question of what is permissible for a person to do. For we shall have to say that, despite the truth of (II), it is not the case that we are required to kill one in [86]order that another person shall not kill five, or even that it is everywhere permissible for us to do this.
What is of interest is that what holds inter-personally also holds intra-personally. I said earlier that we might imagine the surgeon of Transplant to have caused the ailments of his five patients. Let us imagine the worst: He gave them chemical X precisely in order to cause their deaths, in order to inherit from them. Now he repents. But the fact that he would be saving five lives by operating on the one does not itself make it permissible for him to operate on the one. (Rights trump utilities.) And if he may not infringe a right of the one in order to save the five lives, it cannot possibly be thought that he may infringe the right of that one in order, not merely to save the five lives, but to make his own moral record better than it otherwise would be.
Another way to put the point is this: Assessments of which acts are worse than which have to be directly relevant to the agent’s circumstances if they are to have a bearing on what he may do. If A threatens to kill five [1415] unless B kills one, then although killing five is worse than killing one, these are not the alternatives open to B. The alternatives open to B are: Kill one, thereby forestalling the deaths of five (and making A’s moral record better than it otherwise would be), or let it be the case that A kills five. And the supposition that it would be worse for B to choose [88]to kill the one is entirely compatible with the supposition that killing five is worse than killing one. Again, the alternatives open to the surgeon are: Operate on the one, thereby saving five (and making the surgeon’s own moral record better than it otherwise would be), or let it be the case that he himself will have killed the five. And the supposition that it would be worse for the surgeon to choose to operate is entirely compatible with the supposition that killing five is worse than killing one.
On the other hand, suppose a second surgeon is faced with a choice between here and now giving chemical X to five, thereby killing them, and operating on, and thereby killing, only one. (It taxes the imagination to invent such a second surgeon, but let that pass. And compare Trolley Driver.) Then, other things being equal, it does seem he may choose to operate on the one. Some people would say something stronger, namely that he is required to make this choice. Perhaps they would say that
(II’) If a person is faced with a choice between doing something here and now to five, by the doing of which he will kill them, and doing something else here and now to one, by the doing of which he will kill only the one, then (other things being equal) he ought to choose the second alternative rather than the first
[90]is a quite general moral truth. Whether or not the second surgeon is morally required to make this choice (and thus whether or not (II’) is a general moral truth), it does seem to be the case that he may. But this did seem puzzling. As I put it: Why should the present tense matter so much?
It is plausible to think that the present tense matters because the question for the agent at the time of acting is about the present, viz. “What may I here and now do?,” and because that question is the same as the question “Which of the alternatives here and now open to me may I choose?” The alternatives now open to the second surgeon are: kill five or kill one. If killing five is worse than killing one, then perhaps he ought to, but at any rate he may, kill the one.
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