Ethical Dilemmas

A scenario is a runaway trolley car, no….let’s call it a un-Americanize it and call it a “Tram” which is much more recognisable in Europe (especial if you live or work in Edinburgh)…….so the scenario …runaway Tram is careening down a track. Five people stand in its path, unaware of the imminent threat. You stand at the intersection of two different tracks and could, if you chose to, divert the trolley onto another track where only one person would be killed. Do you divert the trolley, intentionally killing one to save five?  Will you make the intentional decision to intervene and kill that one people who would otherwise be safe, or let events unfold without intervention and five people die as would be the course if you were not there? Will it make a difference if the 5 people are paedophiles and the other person is a hard working Nobel  Peace prize winning doctor with lots of children to support?  

 

 

This kind of scenario is what is called an ethical dilemma. There are many questions like it …for example.. ” could you kill one infant to save millions of lives?”  This is the “baby Hitler” question, could you commit infanticide to theoretically prevent Hitler’s rise to power? One of the strongest argument for killing baby Hitler is the Holocaust and the theory by removing him from history they this terrible event would never have happened….But then Hitler did not invent fascism, militarism, or anti-Semitism…If someone took his place, filled the vacuum of where the now murdered baby Hitler would have grown up to be but this other person caused even more misery then would it not be so that by you killing baby Hitler, this intervening to remove him from the future your actions cause even more misery….would your actions ultimately have the best actions for the human race? Should you intervene when not knowing who would fill his boots? Now also consider that Hitler’s rise forced many of Europe’s top physicists, chemists, mathematicians and scientists to seek refuge in the United States. Among them were some of the most famous names was a certain Albert Einstein… so it he never went to America if Hitler was murdered by you when he was a baby then Einstein perhaps would not have the research facilities available to him if he stayed in Germany so some of his theories were not released by his mind so mankind may not have been as developed as it is just now, the same with the other scientists, maybe a chemist who’s research was followed up or relied upon by others to make a vaccine which cures thousands of kids .

We can perhaps think of a little more practical example of this (if perhaps controversy to some degree) when we went to war and  Saddam Hussein was defeated in 2003. We hoped it would produce a vibrant liberal democracy in the largely illiberal Middle East. Instead it brought about regional instability, ethnic cleansing, civil war, and ISIS with the death of many innocents.

 

One thing that I do find very interesting with such ethical dilemmas is the theoretical choices liberals appear to made when compared to conservatives (not meaning in the sense of Torries but referring to the more traditionalists and the more self-proclaimed  progressive liberals…SJW type)

The result I read from a research done in America was as follows…..” Half of the participants received a version of the scenario where the agent could choose to sacrifice an individual named “Tyrone Payton” to save 100 members of the New York Philharmonic, and the other half received a version where the agent could choose to sacrifice “Chip Ellsworth III” to save 100 members of the Jazz Orchestra.

When faced with this choice, each individual in the study group showed different reactions based on their political leanings–the liberals were more likely to sacrifice “Chip” to save the Orchestra, while conservatives were more likely to sacrifice “Tyrone” to save the Philharmonic.”

Its also worth knowing that while the study didn’t specifically mention each person’s race, the researchers reasoned that “Tyrone” would be stereotyped as black, while “Chip” considered the same being  would be stereotyped as white. On the saving end, they assumed that the Philharmonic would be thought of as white, while the Harlem Jazz Orchestra would be assumed black.

 

The results of that survey concluded that we actually have two sets of morals… “The idea is not that people are or are not utilitarian; it’s that they will cite being utilitarian when it behooves them. People are aren’t using these principles and then applying them. They arrive at a judgment and seek a principle.”   (a side note here ...I also heard on a Sam Harris podcast that on this survey statistically conservatives are more less likely to place any weight on skin colour than the liberals)

One last point I read  ….”While its horrible to bomb Hiroshima, it was morally acceptable because it shortened the war. We act—and then cite whichever moral system fits best, the relative or the absolute”