Suppose a highly-advanced (perhaps supernaturally gifted) doctor takes you to a room and places 10 pills in front of you. Each of the 10 pills looks identical, and there is no way you have to tell any of them apart. The doctor says: "Nine of these pills are Jesus Pills. If you take one of the Jesus Pills, here's what will happen: you will 'black out' for one week, and during that week's time, you will save 10 lives, and these 10 lives are lives of innocent people who would have otherwise died. After the week's time, the effects of the pill will wear off and you will return to normal, having no memory of this." The doctor then adds, "Now, like I said, nine of these 10 pills on the table are Jesus Pills, but one of them is what we like to call the 'Dahmer pill.' If you take one of these 10 pills and it turns out to be the Dahmer pill, here is what will happen: You will black out for one week, and during that week, you will kill three innocent people. After the week's time, the effects of the pill will wear off and you will return to normal, having no memory of this."
The doctor then gestures to the 10 pills on the table and gives you two options. One option is to take one of the 10 indistinguishable pills in front of you (nine of which you know are Jesus Pills, one of which you know is a Dahmer Pill). The other option is to walk away.
What should you do, and why?
(And yes, it was a very long drive to El Paso, Texas.)
On the face of it, statistically you should take the pill. However there are a few factors which could alter it.
ReplyDelete1) If there is a mutually exclusive action which is better than saving 8.7 people (adjusted for probability)
2) I'm not going to work out the numbers here, not being a mathematician, but if the 10 people were only to have their lives extended by five minutes, but the three had 40 years ahead of them, then it's a bad idea.
3) Related to this, what effect each person would have on others
4) The cost of being in prison for murdering 3 people
5) This one is probably the most controversial of the 5, but the spiritual status of everyone. Killing (or letting die) someone who is destined for Hell is infinitely worse than someone who is destined for Heaven. The longer they are alive, the more chance they have to be saved. Of course, 3) applies
You take the pill. Explanation: The 10 innocent people will die if you walk away. Take a Jesus Pill and save them, take a Dahmer Pill and only three of them die.
ReplyDeleteGFJ member, regarding your (4): suppose it's built into the story that you won't get caught (either saving lives, or killing) when under the influence of one of the pills. So the prison consideration can be set aside.
ReplyDeleteWhat an ingenious thought-experiment! Although I have some sympathy with the (utilitarian?) mode of reasoning proposed by the other respondents, I do think that there is a deontological line of reasoning which might be invoked to explain why it wrong to take the pill.
ReplyDeleteSuppose, firstly, that there is a moral difference between harming and non-aiding; to be more precise, suppose that there is a duty not to kill, but no duty to save lives. Suppose, furthermore, that under conditions of uncertainty we should (where possible) refrain from risking doing evil (i.e. violating our duties) even where this means that we forfeit the chance to do good (i.e. to perform supererogatory actions). Then, on these assumptions, we should refrain from taking the pill since this is the only way we ensure that we keep our moral house in order and don’t violate any of our duties.
There was no doubt in my mind that the most moral choice is to walk away, for the reasons given by Jeremy Watkins. Additionally, in practical terms, with many historical precedents, a willingness to risk or cause great harm to innocent people in the interests of some noble cause is associated with escalating injustice and casts doubts on whether the cause itself is even defensible.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting how GFJmember weighs the choices against the probability of his victims going to heaven or hell. Very dark and very silly method of reasoning, and yet not an illogical one if one subscribes to Christian dogma.
ReplyDeleteAs Jeremy Watkins said: not taking the pill is the only way of keeping our own "moral house in order" but out of a mind for the consequences of doing nothing I have to say that - since consequences are all that matter - it would be wrong of someone to turn down the chance to save 10 people, especially when the probability of this happening is a staggering 90%.
The choice is 'Keep your own moral house in order' or take the opportunity to (90% of the time) save 10 lives while risking (10% of the time) killing 3. Because the first choice is of no real consequence, and given the second leads to the possibility of making the world a more pleasant place, only the fool would choose the first.
Revolute, you assert without argument "since consequences are all that matters..." Is that so? Here's a contrary thought: you shouldn't violate individual's rights. So: rights matter. Sometimes, one's maximizing the consequences involves violating someone's rights. Hardly any moral philosopher is going to say that, when such situations arise, the only relevant moral considerations here (when deciding what ought to be done) are the consequences, and that considerations about whether rights have been violated do not matter. Even those who endorse some form of Utilitarianism attempt to reconcile their consequentialism with the widely-held thought that other considerations besides consequences can be relevant to morally assessing conduct. On another note: do you really think that only a fool walk away? Perhaps a Kantian would walk away. Also, I suspect quite a few libertarians would walk away. The only clear intuition here seems to be that a utilitarian will take the pill. Given then that it seems most any theory other than utilitarianism could (perhaps) plausibly be thought to require walking away, do you want to say that anyone who is not a utilitarian is a fool?
ReplyDelete