The Trolley Problem - Philosophy undergraduate taster lecture

it's a great pleasure to see so many of you here today I hope you're enjoying the open day so far my name is Ian law I'm the admissions tutor for philosophy programs that's my name that's my email address if you want to ask me questions via email later this is going to be a taster lecture a kind of sample of what a lecturer at Birmingham is like I should say it's a sample of what my lecturers are like so many of my colleagues use PowerPoint and display slides and stuff like that I don't also I teach ethics so I'm going to give you an ethics lecture that's not because it's the only subject we teach in philosophy if one of my colleagues was on today you might have got something completely different but what I'm going to do is tell you a bit about ethics try and get you to have some moral intuitions hopefully we'll have a bit of fun leave you wanting more so when we think about ethical questions we could think of them as running along a continuum which at one end goes to the particular particular ethical ethical questions and at the other end is more general here's what I mean by that suppose you have an opportunity to cheat on a test someone comes up to you and says hey I've got the answers to this week's test you want them and you're thinking is it morally okay for me to take this opportunity well you're thinking about a specific action a particular action you're not thinking about the ethics of cheating in general or maybe you've got a decision to make about whether it's time to have your cat put down your cat sold and you're beginning to think is it wrong for me to delay this is it the right thing to do to take my cat to the vet you are not thinking about cat euthanasia in general you're thinking about this specific cat you're a cat right so you're right down here at the single action very particular kind of ethical question is it okay for me to do this if we move a bit further along the continuum to somewhere around here we might think about action types so we might think about euthanasia in general not any specific act of euthanasia but is euthanasia Oh morally permissible um there are some seats if you come further forward if you want to or you could go back out and in the other door in there some seat or it might be abortion is that morally permissible capital punishment it's always death have you noticed almost always so that's the kind of thing you might find in an applied ethics course or a practical ethics course but right down at this end we wouldn't be thinking about particular action types we would be thinking about actions in general we would be thinking what is it that makes the right Act the right act what is it that makes things morally wrong for any action whatsoever if we could answer that question we would have what we call a moral theory a moral theory would be an account of what it is for an action to be right or wrong and it would be great if we had one because then when new problems arise in our personal lives or new public policy questions arise about practical ethics we'd be able to deploy our moral theory and get an answer and new questions come up all the time right for instance 20 years ago the ethical question is it permissible for me to download Game of Thrones on BitTorrent would not have been a question is it okay for me to download Game of Thrones on bit time Pleet please say yes I really want or you know gene editing that wasn't a thing but now it is and so there are ethical questions about whether we should edit genes so new questions down here could be answered if we had a moral theory something which said the right thing to do in any situation is whichever action something something something so what I would like to do today is try to generate a candidate moral theory we're going to have some moral intuitions that's going to suggest a moral theory and then we will test whether that moral theory stands up against other moral intuitions that we might have by the way some people have nicked my open day talk a former colleague of mine at another university I won't mention emailed me a few years ago and said Ian I'm doing your open day talk hope you don't mind I mind so moral problem featuring you here's you looking a bit uncertain you have gone out for a walk on a lovely autumn day like today you have walked up a hill and on this hill there is an old disused railway line but some people are working on that line hoping to bring it back as one of those preserved railways a tourist attraction with steam trains and stuff like that so down at the bottom of this slope there are five people who are working on this line and they're looking down at the track and they're using noisy equipment so they're wearing your protectors which means that they aren't able to hear or see this this is called the trolley in the literature on this this problem some of you have encountered this I can tell from the grins on your faces some of you may even have seen an episode of a TV show which discusses this the good place you know the good place it's on Netflix if you take nothing else from today take this watch the good place it's fantastic the word trolley has always seemed misleading to me to me a trolley is something you push around at the supermarket this thing weighs many tons it's a railway carriage which was left in the wrong place and in the wrong condition it's on a slight slope and when its brakes failed as they have just done that means it's going to trundle down this slope picking up speed hitting these five people unless they happen to look up and jump out the way almost certainly killing them all there's good news though there's a branch line you walk past it you saw it on the way up there's bad news though the points here are set to take the trolley down the main line not the branch line but there's good news you are standing next to a lever and if you pull that lever you will switch the points and divert the trolley onto the branch line but there's bad news there is a single person on the branch line so the problem that faces you is this should you pull the lever thereby diverting the trolley down here and saving these five people but probably killing this one or should you not pull the lever should you do nothing allowing the trolley to continue on and hit those five people let's do a show of hands hands up for ian's I think the right thing to do is pull the lever big show of hands okay hands up for ian's I think it would be wrong to pull the lever you should do nothing much much smaller vote for that okay let's talk about why most people think the right thing to do is pull the lever can anyone without using any philosophical jargon no isms right tell me the reason why morality demands that you pull the lever so someone who voted for pulling the lever tell me why lady there that's an interesting piece of reasoning now you can tell my draftsmanship skills are not very good this is not drawn to scale so this length is five times that length so that the chance of him looking up is supposed to be equal to the chance of one of them looking up so if I say that does it make it a difference or is it still right to pull the Weaver okay so you think the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one well okay but I think it would be a defensible claim to say that people need to go on living hand up right at the back yes true we'll come back to that thought later on do most of you think the reason why those of you who voted for pulling the lever is the reason why you voted for pulling the lever adjust that if you pull the lever there will be one-fifth of the bad consequences right right okay so most of you think the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one that was a Star Trek quote for those of you keeping up with just how nerdy I'm being might as well advertise that at the start people who think it's wrong to pull the lever can anyone say why they think that yes it could be construed as murder if you do nothing and allow the trolley to come down and kill these people well you didn't aim it at them you didn't start it off it could be argued that you are not killing these people you're just letting them die and some people do you think that's a really important distinction because when you pull the lever you causally intervene in the sequence of events you aim that trolley at this person no as you said the back you're not intending that this person died but you could nevertheless be said to be responsible for killing that person not just letting them die go ahead indeed you could so some people do think that it doesn't really make a moral difference whether you kill someone or let them die there's an example of this offered by a philosopher called James Rachel's so imagine two people who both stand to inherit large sums of money if a child in their care dies so somehow this child has inherited their parents wealth if they now die this person will inherit the wealth so both these people intend to kill the child by faking a drowning in a bathtub one of them goes upstairs and drowns the child in the bathtub the other one goes upstairs and discovers it's his lucky day the child is already drowning in the bathtub and they just don't save them they could easily reach in and save the child and they don't does anyone think that the second person is less morally culpable than the first so it seems like when you isolate the factor of are you killing them or are you letting them die if it's the only difference between the two cases we tend to think it doesn't matter okay those people who've done some philosophy before and now get their chance to show off what moral theory is suggested by the intuitions the majority have that the numbers count okay lots of hands have gone up I'll pick someone who hasn't spoken before the man their utilitarianism okay so utilitarianism is one of these things a moral theory a general answer to the question what makes right actions right what do the utilitarian say about that the right actors whichever act what gentleman there the classical utilitarianism utilitarians I'm sorry would have said the greatest happiness of the greatest number so yeah the thought is you look to the consequences of your actions you look to what will happen as a result of what you do and you try to maximize the good consequences happiness welfare whatever it would be or perhaps in a situation like this you try to minimize the bad consequences because you can't bring about good consequences here you can only mitigate the bad ones so utilitarianism in some ways it's a rather beautiful Theory right what is moral actionable it's trying to make people happier it's looking to the future and trying to benefit other people there's something very attractive about that I think but we might have some worries about it so here's a new case a new moral problem for you in this situation you are at work in the future in the future you work in a hospital which does life-saving transplant operations and in the future let's imagine life-saving transplant operations work much better than they do today so if you get an organ transplant it will certainly work that's not the case now but let's imagine it will be in the future tell me about some life-saving organ transplants what organs can you transplant and save someone's life heart good yes and I think else kidneys now how many kidneys do you need one that's right we know this because Homer donated one to grandpa back before most of you were born anything else heart kidneys lungs now any medical professionals in the audience good I can make this up oh there is work I don't think you can take the heart and the lungs from one donor and put them into two separate people you can do a thing called a domino transplant where you take the heart and lungs out of one person and whack them into one person and take the healthy heart out of that second person and put it into a third person isn't that wild so I don't think we can have lungs if we're thinking of a single donor which we will be as you'll hear anything else liver yes anyone know an interesting fact about the liver related to donation among near the back it yeah it regrows it will grow back so you can get away with just a portion of your liver except when you're going to university because then you need actually that's not fair joke young people drink far less than my generation it's your parents who are at risk and need their entire livers okay so at this Transplant Center of Excellence that you work at five people have been brought together from across the country because of the expertise where you work but also because they share the same rare blood type and because they have a rare blood type it means that no donor has been found one of them needs a new heart two of them need new kidneys and two of them need a new liver elsewhere in your hospital someone has come in for surgery on their knee which you know they popped a tendon or something while walking by themselves because they don't have any friends but they do have a donor card and they are the same blood type as the five people who need organs do you see where I'm going so the question now before us is should you turn up the anesthetic because people die under general anesthetics all the time you've checked your Hospital statistics one more won't cause us to suspicious blip should you kill knee surgery man by turning up the anesthetic in order to save five lives hands up for yes Ian it's my moral duty anyone for killing any search one just one there's always at least one well done you you have really thorough utilitarian intuitions you stick to your guns I salute you hands up for ian's obviously this is wrong what kind of ethics are you going to teach my children this is awful hands up for wrong to kill knee surgery person okay so the group I am most interested in isn't the group who voted it was wrong in both cases you're consistent and it's not the one person who thinks you should pull the lever and kill knee surgery at man but it's the vast majority of you most of you think it's right to pull the lever but wrong to kill knee surgery man even though the numbers work out the same so in this case you guys said it's the numbers that matter it's because we have five lives saved at the cost of one death and that's why my intuition is we should pull the lever but now in this new situation you don't think that why what's the difference the period of time maybe so obviously this is in motion right if anyone had thought oh this is a tricky problem let me get my ethics textbook right that would have been tantamount to a vote for letting the trolley kill the people there are versions of this problem which try to take out the time factor so one of my favorites is let's imagine this room is very slowly filling with a poisonous gas and we're trapped in it we can't get out but we could vent the gas into a room next door in which one-fifth as many people are trapped and we've got 48 hours to decide whether to push that button it seems like people have the same intuitions it doesn't generally seem like it's the time factor that makes the difference anything else well yes but why do we have this response is the question well maybe we could try to develop that into a reason but we need to articulate it a little bit better though someone else had their hand up over here yeah right but the features of the situation seem to be parallel at least to the degree that the people who voted for pulling the lever said the features of this situation that mattered to their decision to pull the lever or just the numbers ah good so if you were a doctor you might have a professional obligation not to kill your patients but I never said you were a doctor I just said you worked at this place you're a cleaner do you know the urban myth the boat the person in the ICU the one in the bed nearest the door keeps dying mysteriously because the cleaner comes in and looks for somewhere to plug they it's not true right that's not how ICU beds are powered but it's a good Arbonne myth yes Jeff amendment right right good so yeah it seems like there might be a psychological difference in doing something which is more remote from the consequences you pull a lever and later on someone gets squished by a trolley that feels very different from going up to someone and stabbing them right and maybe killing someone with the general anaesthetic is closer to the stabbing than the pulling of the lever with the trolley but it's not clear that the psychological difference makes a moral difference right it's harder for you to kill in that circumstance but it's not obvious that it's worse for you to kill and that circumstance several people have their hand up but you haven't spoken before so I'll come to you good right however in this scenario it's true these people might live right one of them might go oh my back and straighten up and see it coming push the others like the way but it's possible that a donor will come forward for the five people maybe we'll get an autumn day where it's sunny in the morning and all the middle-aged men like me go out and there are over powered motorbikes and then there's a shower and that's how we get organs you know sorry if this is sad news for you so it's always possible that an organ will be fine I did forget to mention in a detail that time is running out for these five people they're getting sicker and they they needed a donation soon so there's not a lot of chance but what I've tried to do is make it the same chance that these people will will look up yes lady there right okay okay so you might have more information about this person you might see them as a person whereas this is just a figure on a hillside distant from you again I think same answers before that makes a psychological difference to how easy it is to kill them it's not clear that it makes a moral difference I'm aware of time so I'm afraid I'm not going to take more questions at this point because there's another thing I want your intuitions on back in the original case was anyone contemplating heroic self-sacrifice throwing yourself in front of the trolley right I'm afraid that wouldn't work look at you all you're all far too skinny and svelte and in any case in this new scenario that I want to describe to you you wouldn't been able to do it because as you run towards the track there's somebody in the way there's there's a big fat bloke in the way by the time you go around him it's too late so you can't chuck yourself in front of the trolley but you could push the fat bloke in front of the truck and because of his great size let's suppose somehow magically you know that this will be sufficient to bring the trolley to a halt so once again you can save these five people by sacrificing one hands up for push a fat man in front of a train now here's an interesting sociological observation there are always more people voting for pushing the fat man in front of the Train than for killing knee surgery guy and I can only attribute this to prejudice against fat people Hugh monstrance okay hands up for it would be wrong to push the fat man in front of the train okay so just like in the knee surgery case you think that pushing the fat bloke in front of the train is wrong but you think that taking steps that might or will almost certainly kill this person is right and this is a real puzzle I want to come back to the thought that was mentioned by the lady at the back go back to the original scenario okay so you've pulled the lever the points have changed the trolleys trundle down here and now it's here heading towards this single person what have you achieved at this point anything yeah you've saved those five people they're not at risk anymore is anyone dead right so what are you doing after you pull the lever what do you do do you just stand there and watch so you you run down the hillside screaming and shouting look out yeah he does so it's not gonna work but it's not crazy for you to try right it's not irrational for you to hope that this person looks up and dodges out of the way as you said your intention is not to hit this person if they did dodge out of the way you wouldn't be like Oh trapped okay so you don't intend their death however take fat look you're gonna push him in front of a train is it rational to hope that he survives we're using the crushing of his limbs and organs as a means to bring the train to a halt it seems crazy to say that you are also rooting for him what about knee surgery guy you're going to turn up the anaesthetic and then take his heart out it would be crazy to say that you don't intend his death so in the case of knee surgery guy and fat look it seems like we intend them to die whereas with this person it seems like the death is not intended it's a byproduct of something we intend we intend to save the five this death is not intended it is merely foreseen now do you buy the distinction between consequences you intend and consequences you foresee but do not intend not everyone does so let's suppose you want to see the new episode of Doctor Who when it airs but you're running late so you run home you can foresee that you will be out of breath tired sweaty but you don't intend those things because if by some miracle you're fitter than you thought you were and you weren't you wouldn't be disappointed right you can test what your intentions are by thinking what if that didn't come about would I be going Oh bother right or here's another example sometimes when I lecture I foresee that people will get confused but I never intend to confuse them I promise I'm always trying my best some people think that this distinction between intended and foreseen consequences really matters morally and is the explanation for the difference in your intuitions just to finish I'll do a kind of real-world example of this it's another medical one suppose you've got someone who is dying of a painful illness and they have a low level of consciousness so they are conscious enough to feel the pain but not conscious enough to have a conversation about their wishes how will you as a medical professional this time you are a medical professional how will you be controlling their pain keeping your patient comfortable morphine yeah probably morphine has side effects and it can be the case that you need to give bigger and bigger doses of morphine in order to achieve the effect of keeping your patient comfortable so suppose there comes a day when you foresee that if you give an effective dose and dose high enough to keep your patient comfortable that will probably kill your patient and remember they're not conscious enough for you to have a conversation about what they want anyone know what English law says about this is it permissible legally permissible for you to give that possibly fatal dose hands up if you think the answer is yes hands up if you think the answer is no so the majority think the answer is no the majority this time are wrong English law says so long as the intention is to keep the patient comfortable even if it's foreseen that this will bring about the death of the patient that's legally okay so English law recognizes this distinction between intention and merely foreseen consequences of course if you went home and wrote in your diary haha finally I have had the opportunity that would show that you intended the death and that would be murder question in the middle that is indeed the principle of double effect so again you've done this before but not everyone has so I didn't want to use the technical terms we're very nearly out of time go ahead I don't think you might certainly get investigated but I think if the facts were as I described you wouldn't be guilty of any offence under English law now of course the utilitarians have more to say right if this reasoning is right that most of you seem to think than utilitarianism must be false it's the wrong moral theory of course the utilitarians have got more to say of course there's a lot more to say about all of ethics but we are out of time so if you want to do more you'd better come and study philosophy at the University it's been a pleasure talking to you enjoy the rest of your day [Applause]

Channel: University of Birmingham

Views: 12,157

Rating: 4.8700361 out of 5

Keywords: University, of, Birmingham, university of birmingham, ethics, philosophy, iain law, ptr, undergraduate, degree, taster, lecture, morality, trolley problem

Id: 0ghDWYNVjY8

Length: 31min 7sec (1867 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 20 2018