Moral Dilemma (23): An Eye For an Eye, With a Twist

The movie Valhalla Rising tells the story of an 11th century, one-eyed brawler (Mads Mikkelsen) who falls in with a group of Christians journeying to the Holy Land

We have before us two people: one is blind, the other one has perfect eyesight. Let’s assume that eye transplants are simple and safe. If we were to take one eye from the latter – who, we assume, is an unwilling participant – and give it to the former, overall wellbeing would be greatly enhanced. The former would now be able to see with one eye, whereas the sight of the latter would not be substantially reduced, except perhaps for depth perception. Anyway, any losses for the latter are easily outweighed by the greater gains for the former. The difference between 0 and 1 eye is a lot bigger than the difference between 2 and 1 eye.

Before I can have a look at your answers, my guess is that most of you will not find this acceptable. If that’s the case, we’re not dealing here with a real moral dilemma – something is only a dilemma when the choice is difficult for most of us normal folk. But for those of you who did indeed answer “no” – and I would be one of you – let me make the choice perhaps a tiny bit more difficult by asking a further question: why? What exactly bothers you so much in the proposed procedure? Here’s a list of possible reasons:

1. You object to the implied objectification of the unwilling donor: we shouldn’t treat people as means to someone else’s ends, however laudable those ends. People are not mere organ repositories.
2. You fear a slippery slope: why not also vital organs? If we were to take the heart, lungs and liver from an aging person and give it to a younger person who’s terminally ill, the net benefit would be large: the older person can only enjoy life for a small number of years compared to the younger person, and hence overall wellbeing would be greatly enhanced by the involuntary transplant. The older person will die, but the loss in wellbeing is small compared to the gain for the younger person.
3. You are simply disgusted by the proposed procedure.
4. You value the right to physical integrity, and you value it to such an extent that no other considerations – including the physical integrity of others – should be allowed to override it.
5. You’re opposed to the utilitarianism that is implicit in the proposed procedure. We shouldn’t always or simplistically strive for the greatest overall good.

Now, before I’ll ask you to vote for any – or several for that matter – of these reasons for your “no” answer above, allow me to sow a few seeds of doubt.

1. Perhaps you’re a proponent of capital punishment. Not, let’s say, of the type of capital punishment as it is practiced in China or the US. Or – God forbid – in Saudi Arabia. But you can imagine yourself endorsing capital punishment as an extreme but sometimes necessary act of justice. Capital punishment is usually justified as a deterrent, but I showed here that this justification failed because it objectifies the criminal, just as the eye removal objectifies the involuntary eye donor. If you’re against objectification in the case of the eye transplant, it seems you should also be against capital punishment. Think about that before checking answer #1 below. If you still check that answer, then you may need to revisit some of your strongest opinions.
2. Regarding the slippery slope answer: don’t forget that the slippery slope argument is of very dubious quality. It has been used to defend marriage restrictions for gays, the criminalization of homosexuality, racial segregation etc. Like all metaphors, it has its limits and we shouldn’t automatically assume that one step down the hill will land us nose down in the valley.
3. The disgust reason is also problematic: emotions are usually not the best basis for thoughtful arguments.
4. Physical integrity, while undoubtedly highly important, is not usually considered an absolute right: we regularly incarcerate criminals without thinking a second about the fact that we sentence them to prison rape. And even if there were no physical assaults in our prisons, incarcerating someone is akin to an amputation. A prisoner’s legs are, for all intents and purposes, amputated when we restrict their use to the confines of the prison. If this “amputation” is deemed necessary for the greater good of society, when not also the eye removal?
5. Even if you have your misgivings about utilitarianism – as have I – you still have to accept that you’re a utilitarian in many cases: otherwise you wouldn’t support defensive wars, taxation or immigration restrictions.

Thanks for voting. More moral dilemmas are here.

Moral Dilemma (22): Should Suicide Be a Free Choice?

Laurie Holden (left) and Emily Kinney (right), respectively Andrea and Bethe in “The Walking Dead”

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Suicide watch seems to be relatively uncontroversial. Prisoners or patients who are believed to be suicidal are routinely monitored in order to prevent suicide attempts or to be able to engage in a successful rescue when an attempt occurs. There’s been an interesting story in the press lately about NYC’s “Jumper Squad“, a police unit specialized in trying to talk people out of jumping from bridges and rooftops.

Suicide watch is clearly paternalistic in most cases: if there are no dependent children or others who may incur serious harm resulting from someone’s suicide, then a suicide is strictly self-regarding. If a suicide does not, in general, harm anyone – apart from possibly the perpetrator – then why should anyone be allowed to stop it? Is deciding that someone else has to continue living not an unethical attack on people’s agency and free choice? Most of us have conflicting moral intuitions here: on the one hand, we feel strongly that we have to respect people’s right to make their own fundamental choices regarding their lives – especially when these choices do not harm others; on the other hand, when faced with an actual potential suicide – especially in the case of a loved one – we’ll do almost anything to stop it. We look for any shred of evidence that the person about to commit suicide isn’t clear-headed, hasn’t thought it through, isn’t really able to make an informed choice etc.

Let’s look at a fictional example. In the TV-series “The Walking Dead”, a young girl called Bethe is unable to cope with the zombie apocalypse and lies despondent in bed for several days. She ultimately decides to try to kill herself. When her friends discover her intentions she is placed on suicide watch. Friends take turns watching her. [Spoiler alert]. When it’s Andrea’s turn, she slips outside and leaves Bethe alone. Bethe then does indeed try to slit her wrists. It’s not clear if it’s a serious or half-hearted attempt, and neither do we know if Bethe is delusional, unstable or clearheaded. Andrea afterwards justifies her actions by saying that Bethe should be allowed to make her own choice and to find out whether she wants to die or live. The fact that the attempt failed proves to Andrea that Bethe really wants to live.

Given the following uncertainties about the case:

• Bethe’s state of mind cannot be correctly assessed – she may be either very clearheaded or completely delusional
• Bethe is a very young person, a fact which may render a judgment about her agency somewhat more difficult
• It’s not clear whether the attempt is “for real”, and neither can we tell whether the failure of the attempt proves that Bethe really wants to live

can we decide that her suicide watch was justified, or should we follow Andrea in letting her be?

More moral dilemmas here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (64): Value Pluralism Supports Human Rights

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The justification of human rights – the quest for reasons why they are important and why we need them – is probably the most important topic of this blog (some previous posts are here, here, here, here and here). One element of justification is their compatibility with an important tenet of moral theory, namely value pluralism. Value pluralism is, in my opinion, a principle of morality that comes very close to being a “moral fact“.

In short, the principle says the following. There are many different moral values – or different moral “goods” if you want – such as happiness, liberty, equality, loyalty etc. Those values differ qualitatively from each other and don’t seem to be reducible to one super value. And neither is there a clear ranking of importance so that conflicts between values can be easily decided. Different values can’t be compared to each other. Friendship is not clearly more important or a higher value than loyalty; freedom is not prior to equality; being happy is not better than developing your capacities etc. When two values seem to be incompatible, it’s hardly ever certain which of the two should be favored. And neither is it easy to say that a decrease of x in value v is acceptable if it results in an increase of x or y in value w; it’s often even impossible to determine the x and y in this equation because values are quantitatively and not just qualitatively incomparable. An increase of x in friendship is not comparable to an increase of x in loyalty. What does an increase of x in friendship even mean? Furthermore, there are problems in cases that don’t involve incompatible values: in general, is it better to strive towards increases in value v rather than increases in value w? For example, some say a society and a government should promote equality as the prime value; others prefer to maximize liberty. It’s difficult if not impossible to decide if either of these goals is the most important.

And yet, even if value pluralism is true and moral theory can’t therefore offer guidance in cases of incompatible values or in the choice of the single value to pursue in life, people have to solve conflicts between values on an almost daily basis, and they have to decide which value or values should guide their lives. If moral theory is useless in those everyday decisions, then it’s better to let people decide for themselves about what is good and right. People should be left free to live their own lives according to the guiding values they choose independently, and they should be allowed to decide conflicts between values according to their own conscience. If value pluralism is true, then there is no single way of life that is the highest and the best for all, and then it’s also true that people should be given the freedom to decide for themselves.

This is where human rights enter the scene. Human rights support this freedom in two ways, a direct and an indirect way. They allow people to choose a type of good life independently from the pressures of government or society: minority religions are free, people are free to associate, expression is free, they can use their property the way they like etc. In addition, there’s is nothing in the system of human rights that prohibits self-chosen and self-regarding value decisions, as long as the rights of others aren’t harmed (for example, drug use that doesn’t harm others cannot be prohibited on the basis of human rights).

Indirectly, human rights oppose authoritarian governments which favor and enforce one value or one way of life as the only desirable way of life: communist societies that promote equality at the expense of all other values, Catholic dictatorships that prohibit other religions, Muslim theocracies etc. If value pluralism is true, then there is no basis for coercive policies intended to systematically favor one value or one way of life. (Of course, in specific cases of incompatible values, it may be necessary for coercive government intervention in favor of one value or the other, especially when government inaction would cause more overall harm to certain values than government action; but that is the exception to the general rule that people should be free to solve those issues themselves – a rule that is based on morality’s inability to find good general reasons to favor one value over another. An example of such an action would be a government prohibition on religious child sacrifice).

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One problem with the line of reasoning that I set out here is that the opposite can also be true: value pluralism can support authoritarian government. Not the type of authoritarian government that is paternalistic and that favors the realization of one value above all others, but the type that presents itself as a bulwark against anarchy, instability and factionalization. Governments which take the latter approach start with the presumed fragility of the bonds of community. These bonds, it is said, can only be maintained if society is inspired by a single purpose and a single good. The freedom to let people decide for themselves what type of life they want to pursue can undo the necessary sense of community because it erodes the single purpose, but also because groups of people will turn away from each other in disgust over the other groups’ lifestyles. Conflict and a lack of solidarity will destroy society. One purpose should therefore be enforced, not because this purpose is generally superior to all others, but because otherwise society will fall apart. I’ve argued here against this justification of authoritarianism. The crux of my argument is that you can’t enforce a common purpose; this has to come voluntarily and “from within”, and enforcing it merely encourages violent dissent on the side of those who see their own purposes suppressed. If this is correct, then value pluralism doesn’t support authoritarianism.

More on value pluralism here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (60): Absolute Human Rights and Threshold Deontology

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There’s this difficult contradiction between two moral intuitions about human rights. On the one hand, we tend to feel very strongly about the extreme importance of a particular subset of human rights. Especially the right to life, the right not to be tortured and the right not to be enslaved are among those human rights which are so fundamental that their abrogation or limitation seems outrageous. Other rights, such as the right to free speech or the right to privacy, are hardly ever considered to be absolute in this sense – which doesn’t mean they are unimportant (something can be a very important value without being a moral absolute). Some restrictions on those rights are commonly accepted.

On the other hand, the horror that is provoked by the mere thought of limiting the right to life or the right not to suffer torture and slavery doesn’t preclude the fact that there are few consistent pacifists. Most of us would decide not to submit to a Nazi invasion and to fight back. Hence, the horrific thought of abrogating the right to life does not stop us from conceiving and actively engaging in killing. There’s also the Trolley Problem: experiments have shown that most people would sacrifice one to save many. The same is the case in ticking bomb scenarios.

True, there are some consistent pacifists, as well as some who oppose torture under all circumstances, whatever the consequences of failing to kill or torture. But I’m pretty sure they are a small minority (which doesn’t mean they are wrong). The more common response to the conflicting intuitions described here is what has been called threshold deontology: faced with the possibility of catastrophic moral harm that would be the consequence of sticking to certain rules and rights (catastrophic meaning beyond a certain threshold of harm) people decide that those rules and rights should give way as a means to avoid the catastrophe.

Threshold deontology means that there are very strong and near-absolute moral rules, which should nevertheless give way when the consequences of sticking to them bring too much harm. Threshold deontology can also be called limited consequentialism: rules may not be broken whenever there’s a supposedly good reason to do so or whenever doing so would maximize or increase overall wellbeing; but consequentialism is the only viable meta-ethical rule to follow when consequences are catastrophically bad or astronomically good.

If this is correct, then why not simply adopt a plain form of consequentialism? Do whatever brings the most benefit, and screw moral absolutes – or, better, screw all moral rules apart from the rule that tells us to maximize good consequences. This solution, however, is just as unpopular as strict absolutism. We don’t torture someone in order to save two other people from torture; and we certainly don’t torture someone if doing so could bring a very small benefit to an extremely large number of people (so that the aggregate benefit from torture outweighs the harm done to the tortured individual).

Unfortunately, threshold deontology is not as easy an answer to the conflict of intuitions as the preceding outline may have suggested. The main problem of course is: where do we put the threshold. How many people should be saved in order to allow torture or killing? It turns out that there’s no non-arbitrary way of setting a threshold of bad consequences that unequivocally renders absolute rights non-absolute. At any point in the continuum of harm, there’s always a way to say that one point further on the continuum is also not enough to render absolute rights non-absolute. If we agree that killing or torturing 5 for the sake of saving one is not allowed, then it’s hard to claim that 6 is a better number. And so on until infinity.

We can also think of the threshold in threshold deontology not in terms of harm that would result from sticking to absolute principles, but in terms of harm done by not sticking to them. The threshold then decides when we can no longer use bad actions in order to stop even worse consequences. For instance, we may verbally abuse the ticking bomb terrorist. Perhaps we can make him stand up for a certain time, of deprive him of sleep. At what moment should our near-absolute rules or rights against torture kick in? At the moment of waterboarding?

“It’s not torture when U.S. forces are doing it…” by Carlos Latuff (image depicting waterboarding)

However, the same problem occurs here: a small increase in harm done to the terrorist can always be seen as justifiable, as long as it is very small. Again no way of setting a threshold because of the infinite regress that this provokes. Also, how should we evaluate the following case, imagined by Derek Parfit: a large number of people inflicts a small amount of harm on the terrorist, who is in immense pain as a result, and it’s impossible to tell whose infliction of harm has resulted in the pain threshold being passed. His absolute right not to be tortured is violated, but no one is responsible. This also sucks the power out of our moral absolutes.

Still, the problem of setting the threshold in marginal cases doesn’t mean that there are no clear-cut cases in which harmful consequences have clearly passed a catastrophic threshold. Nuclear annihilation caused by a ticking bomb is such a case I guess. That’s a catastrophe that may be important enough to abrogate the near-absolute rights of one individual terrorist.

However, this means that threshold deontology is useful only in a handful of extreme cases, most of which will fortunately never occur. In the real world, beyond the philosophical hypothetical, most cases of harmful consequences don’t reach the “catastrophe” level. Hence, in the case of a number of rights simple deontology is often the best system, at least compared to threshold deontology – which is most often irrelevant – and plain consequentialism – which would make a mockery of all rights and sacrifice them for the tiniest increment in wellbeing (see here). If we want to protect the right to life and the freedom from torture and slavery in day to day life, we might just as well pretend that they are absolute rights and forget about the catastrophic hypotheticals.

I should also note that although I rely here in part on the ticking bomb case in order to make some which I believe to be important points, the case in question is a very dangerous one: it has been abused as a justification for all sorts of torture with or without a “ticking bomb”. (After all, once you can establish that torture is not an absolute prohibition in catastrophic cases, why would it then be a prohibition in less than catastrophic cases? See the difficulties described above related to the threshold in threshold deontology). And not only has it been abused: one can question the practical relevance of the extremely unrealistic assumptions required to make the case work theoretically. And one can also point out the possibility of a slippery slope. I’ve discussed all this here. (Yes, not all slippery slope arguments are wrong).

More about threshold deontology here.

Moral Dilemma (21): Is Suicide While Pregnant Akin to Murder?

Bei Bei Shuai (AP Photo:Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department)

Here’s an interesting dilemma:

On March 14, Bei Bei Shuai will have spent one full year in jail in Marion County, Indiana. Her crime? The prosecutor calls it attempted feticide and murder. What it really is: attempting suicide while pregnant.

In December 2010 Shuai was running a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis with her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, by whom she was eight months pregnant. Just before Christmas, he informed her that he was married and had another family, to which he was returning. When Shuai begged him to stay, he threw money at her and left her weeping on her knees in a parking lot. Despairing, she took rat poison and wrote a letter in Mandarin saying she was killing herself and would “take this baby with me to Hades”; friends got her to the hospital just in time to save her life. Eight days later her baby, Angel, was delivered by Caesarean section and died of a cerebral hemorrhage within four days. Three months later, the newly elected prosecutor, Terry Curry—a Democrat—brought charges, claiming that the rat poison that almost killed Shuai had killed her baby. If convicted, she faces forty-five to sixty-five years in prison. (source)

The important things to consider are:

• Bei Bei Shuai survived her suicide attempt. No dilemma if she hadn’t, or perhaps a different dilemma. The dilemma we’re considering here is whether Bei Bei Shuai is culpable and this is interesting only because she survived.
• The issue here is not the legality or morality of suicide as such.
• The poor woman was eight months pregnant; had she been two or three months pregnant this would have been akin to abortion, and while abortion is certainly controversial and perhaps even a dilemma, it’s not the dilemma we’re interested in here. Our dilemma is not akin to abortion because most proponents of abortion accept a time limit and abortions at 8 months are generally not accepted, not even by most abortion proponents.
• Time limits on abortion could give way if the child is suffering and has no chance of a decent life. But that is not the case here.

More moral dilemmas here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (54): Torture, Consequentialism and Tainted Goods

scene from the tv-series "24"

Those who defend torture normally do so on consequentialist grounds. They posit cases such as the “ticking time bomb” in which the harm done by torture is insignificant compared to the good it does. The consequences of torture are clearly beneficial, overall: OK, it does some harm to an individual terrorist who has hidden the bomb but at the same time it saves thousands or millions of lives. When so many lives are at stake, a utilitarian calculus will clearly show that the good that will follow from torture outweighs the good that will follow from the refusal to torture.

Usually, we see a kind of threshold consequentialism rather than a pure consequentialism at work in such arguments: if torture can produce one more unit of “utility” (wellbeing, life, etc.) than the refusal to torture, most consequentialists wouldn’t allow torture. The good consequences of torture must far outweigh rather than marginally outweigh the harm it clearly does. Hence the hypotheticals in examples such as the ticking bomb, in which it’s posited that very many lives are at stake. We are allowed to supersede the deontological rule that one shouldn’t torture only beyond a certain threshold of harmful consequences that would result from sticking to the rule. As someone has said, lost lives hurt a lot more than bent principles. Strict moral absolutism, whatever the possible consequences, can indeed land you in all sorts of problems.

a witch being tortured

However, let’s look a bit closer at this seemingly convincing argument. We can overlook some of the possible difficulties and still conclude that the argument is unsatisfactory. Let’s not dwell on the likelihood that in real cases, the numbers of possible terrorist victims is rather small, while the number of people who have to be tortured is probably higher than one: you may need to torture some people before you find the one who has the necessary information about the location of the bomb; then you may need to torture his friends and family because he’s trained to resist torture and because he knows that if he resists for a short time, the bomb will go off. So let’s forget that the utilitarian calculus will most likely be less unequivocal than assumed in the argument above: we’ll never or only very rarely have cases in which torture produces a very small harm and at the same time a very large benefit. The harm and benefit will be much closer to each other.

Let’s also not dwell on the fact that the greater good thinking of the argument puts the torturer on the same footing as the terrorist. The latter also assumes that he fights for a greater good and that the harm he does is small compared to the benefits this harm will produce. The similarity between torturer and terrorist is all the more striking if the torturer has convinced himself that it’s necessary to torture the innocent (when the terrorist himself doesn’t speak fast enough). Putting ourselves on the same level as terrorists means giving up our identity to save ourselves, which really is pointless. If that is correct then we have to remodel the utilitarian calculus: the harm done by self-destruction is probably greater than the suffering caused by exceptional terrorists attacks. So even the utilitarianism of the greater good doesn’t justify torture.

But let’s assume that none of this speaks against the standard consequentialist justification of torture and that we manage to use torture in a way that saves many many lives, that doesn’t impose a high cost, and that doesn’t put us on the same level as the terrorists. So we can save ourselves, our identity and the lives of many of our fellow citizens. Still, the “good” that we achieve through torture is tainted by the methods necessary to achieve it. The notion, inherent in the consequentialist justification of torture, that certain goods can be attainted by problematic means, is itself problematic. We can save ourselves, but once we are saved we believe that our success has been tainted by the immoral methods used to achieve it. We may not be willing to enjoy this success and the goods we have if they have been secured by way of torture.

Jeremy Waldron has interesting things to say about tainted goods. Read this for example.

A Fatal Paradox for Human Rights Proponents?

Like the opponents of human rights, the proponents also face a paradox. Imagine human rights utopia: the world has managed to get rid of oppression, domination, exploitation, discrimination, injustice and suffering. Or perhaps human rights violations haven’t disappeared completely but people have managed to make them a rare occurrence. People find it easy to be moral and to respect the rights of others, and there’s hardly ever a slip-up.

However, we could argue that this world has lost something important. It’s undoubtedly better in one sense of the word, but at the same time it’s worse: people have lost the opportunity to show solidarity, to be charitable, to help each other and to strive towards moral heroism.

Because of the risk that a successful struggle against human rights violations results in this loss (only a potential risk at this moment in time), we should perhaps value the struggle itself, and not just the successful outcome. But then we value the struggle and at the same time we are upset about it. We are upset because we obviously believe it is a struggle that we should end victoriously as quickly as possible, but at the same time we value it because we believe that it’s generally a good thing for people to be working towards a moral goal and to act benevolently (we may also value the struggle because it allows us to signal our own personal moral worth, but that’s another point).

So, paradoxically, we want to win the struggle for human rights as quickly as possible because rights violations are evil; but at the same time we want to cherish and perhaps even prolong the struggle because of the moral value inherent in it. But that means that the struggle against human rights violations confers a certain value to these violations and makes them a bit less evil, which surely isn’t the purpose. If people are morally enriched and ennobled by the struggle against human rights violations, then it’s also these violations that enrich and ennoble. But of course we cannot acknowledge this because we want to abolish those violations; we can’t desire to abolish them and at the same time claim that they have value. If you start to see good in evil, you endanger your mental health.

More on human rights and utopia here, and on human rights and paradoxes here, here and here.

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Moral Dilemma (20): Knowing the Date You’ll Die

Assume your doctor finds out that you, a 12 year old child, have a genetic defect which will inexorably lead to your dead by the age of 30. There’s no cure. He has the choice of telling you this or keeping silent. If he keeps silent, you will live a couple of decades unaware of your fate, and untroubled by it. If he speaks, you may suffer anguish throughout your life, but perhaps you may live your life to the full during the years that you have and plan your life accordingly.

More moral dilemma’s here.

Moral Dilemma (19): Shooting Down the 9-11 Planes

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Germany’s Constitutional Court recently dismissed a law that would allow the federal authorities to shoot down a hijacked plane about to crash into a city. This decision is reminiscent of the usual discussions between Kantian deontological morality and utilitarian calculus of the consequences – take the ticking bomb discussion for example, or the case of the involuntary organ donor.

Let’s make this dilemma, if it is one, a bit more specific. It’s not certain that the hijacked plane will actually reach its target. After all, these things are never certain. Flight 93 didn’t reach Washington. However, let’s assume a case in which it’s very likely that the target will be reached and that catastrophic loss of life will occur. The people who will take the decision to shoot down the plane wait for the last possible moment, in order to make sure that there’s no third option. The people in the plane therefore look like they’re doomed whatever decision is made: let them crash or shoot them down.

A simple calculus of the consequences would favor the latter option, given the fact that the people on the ground are much more numerous. Another reasoning would favor the first option, because shooting down the plane means being complicit with the hijackers, intentionally killing the passengers and thereby treating them as instruments in an operation to rescue the people on the ground. This is similar to what happens to the involuntary organ donor, and equivalent to the treatment they receive from the hijackers, who also treat them as means. There’s an issue of human dignity here. People shouldn’t be instrumentalized. We don’t find it intuitively acceptable that a state can order a fatally ill person to stand between a gunman and his group of victims. So why would the plane case be acceptable? (Assuming that these two cases are equivalent).

So we have two options: shoot or don’t. We could add other options, of course. A third option (one which was actually considered by the Court) could be to let the passengers, knowing that they’ll be killed anyway (with some likelihood) issue a statement of consent and transmit it to the military just in time. However, moral dilemmas are interesting to the extent that they are practical, and this third option is far from practical, I think.

More moral dilemmas here (still open to vote by the way).

Related Articles

• Moral dilemma – refusing to treat a patient (politics.ie)
• Underestimating How Moral We Are (psychologytoday.com)
• Moral Dilemmas (alpup.blogspot.com)
• Kant and shooting down hijacked airliners (crookedtimber.org)

Moral Dilemma (18): Doing the Right Thing, or Trying to be Successful

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You can read more serious discussions about moral dilemmas in the other posts in this series. More Calvin and Hobbes here.

Related Articles

• Moral Dilemmas (alpup.blogspot.com)
• Moral dilemma – refusing to treat a patient (politics.ie)
• Michael Vick Moral Dilemma: Is It Alright To Embrace His Fresh Start If He Wins? (bleacherreport.com)

Moral Dilemma (17): Neutron Bomb or Regular Atomic Bomb?

a Soviet anti-war poster

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Imagine you’re the commander in chief of a country fighting a war with a fascist dictatorship. The enemy army is losing the war but is going to fight until the last man. You have to end the war quickly or millions of soldiers – and a good number of civilians – on both sides are going to die during years of skirmishes. You basically have only one option: one huge explosion killing almost the entire enemy army, but also a large number of civilians. You have two bombs, a traditional atomic bomb and a neutron bomb.

A neutron bomb, or enhanced radiation weapon (ERW), is a type of nuclear weapon designed specifically to release a large portion of its energy as energetic neutron radiation rather than explosive energy. Although their extreme blast and heat effects are not eliminated, the increased radiation released by ERWs is meant to be a major source of casualties, able to penetrate buildings and armored vehicles to kill personnel that would otherwise be protected from the explosion. Most of the injuries inflicted by an ERW come from the intense pulse of ionizing radiation, not from heat and blast. This intense burst of high-energy neutrons is intended as the principal killing mechanism, but some amounts of heat and blast force are also produced. Neutron bombs are commonly believed to leave a good deal of the infrastructure intact.

A neutron bomb is sometimes claimed to be morally superior to a regular atomic bomb since the survivors will be able to rebuild their societies relatively quickly after the end of the war: the destruction it causes is minimal. On the other hand, the neutron bomb is commonly abhorred and has become something like the ultimate horror in popular culture.

More moral dilemma’s here. Those other dilemma’s are still open to vote, by the way. So if you have a couple of minutes, we would very much appreciate your contribution.

The Ethics of Human Rights (44): Human Rights Between Cosmopolitanism and Partiality

James Gillray’s famous political cartoon depicting Pitt and Napoleon carving up the world

Cosmopolitanism and partiality (or parochialism if you don’t mean it in a negative sense) are two very strong and yet contradictory moral intuitions. Let’s start with the former. Most of us have a strong sense of the arbitrariness of national borders. The accident of being born on one or the other side of a border – just like the accident of being born black or female – shouldn’t have any moral weight and shouldn’t determine one’s life prospects, as it unfortunately does.

As a result of this intuition, we believe that all people have the same moral worth, and this in turn convinces us that we shouldn’t condone the notion that the suffering or oppression of a fellow-citizen is more urgent or more important than the equal suffering of someone far away. There is something like humanity and all members of the human species have equal value. Being partial and favoring the alleviation of the suffering of some over the alleviation of the suffering of others, just doesn’t sound like the right thing to do. We should help people because they are human beings, not because they are compatriots. If I see a compatriot and a foreigner drowning in a pool I have no reason to save one before the other.

That’s the cosmopolitan intuition. On the other hand, there’s an equally strong intuition favoring some level of partiality. A father watching his daughter and her friend drown in a pool is allowed to save his daughter first if he can save only one. People care more about their friends and family than about strangers, and that’s completely uncontroversial. A bit less uncontroversial but perfectly common is the fact that citizens of a country – through their tax payments – typically provide relatively generous social security and welfare to their fellow-citizens and much less development aid, even though the beneficiaries of development aid are much less well off than many of the beneficiaries of the welfare state. Countries also impose immigration restrictions as a means to protect the prosperity of their reasonably well off citizenry, even if doing so means condemning foreigners to poverty. And finally, states generally enforce the other human rights of their citizens (poverty is a human right) much more rigorously than the rights of foreigners.

Without staking out my position regarding these two contradictory intuitions, I would argue that imposing strict immigration and aid restrictions means taking partiality too far and that we should have more migration, more global redistribution and more international intervention aimed at the protection of human rights. However, you can demand this and still favor some level of partiality over strict cosmopolitanism.

So, the conclusions people draw from the partiality intuition aren’t always morally defensible, but the intuition itself is. And the same is true for the cosmopolitan intuition. In what follows I will ignore those who draw extreme conclusions from either intuition because they tend thereby to ignore the other intuition. Extreme nationalists, chauvinist patriots, racists, “ethical egoists” à la Rand etc. on one side, and the much less numerous “uprooted” citizens of the world and the corporate or non-governmental “modern nomads” who ridicule origins and meaningful national affiliations on the other side. It’s generally not a good idea to deny strong moral intuitions, and certainly not in this case. So I’ll focus on those who recognize the two intuitions and somehow try to juggle them.

How do people do that? Some choose one as the most important and believe that the other can only be followed in addition. Others just accept this as a case of irreconcilable value pluralism and believe that we can’t solve the dilemma. And still others deny that there’s always a conflict between the two intuitions.

Let’s look at those who favor the priority of partiality, see what reasons they have, and how those who favor cosmopolitanism respond. Many of those who favor the partiality intuition agree that we can and should do more to help others in distant places, but they also claim that we shouldn’t do as much for the billions of poor and oppressed people in the world as we do for our local charity, our relatives and friends and even our compatriots. They believe that once we’ve provided a minimum of care and aid to humanity in general, we’re allowed to focus our attention on a partial group or a limited circle of people that have a special meaning to us. They may provide different reasons for this claim. Let’s look at a few and at the ways in which cosmopolitans can reply:

• Parochialists may argue that we need global institutions similar to national ones in order to provide the same amount and quality of care and aid to humanity as a whole. For example, you need a global welfare state to provide social security to everyone, and an effective global judiciary to punish gross violations of human rights in despotic regimes elsewhere in the world. We can call this the institutional objection to cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans could point to the progress in international criminal justice that has already been made, and could also argue that international redistribution of resources doesn’t necessarily require a global welfare state.
• Parochialist can defend their limited partiality by claiming that relatively small groups of people are best placed to help each other, and that long distance help isn’t the most effective. For example, local judiciaries are better placed to judge local human rights violations than “ivory towery” international institutions, and small groups of people are better able and more motivated to give each other material assistance. Closeness means that you can do more, and if you can do more you should do more. It also means that appeals to help will be better heard and be more persuasive. People far away simply don’t have the necessary information or motivation to help effectively. We can call this the effectiveness and motivational objection to cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans could reply that there’s a certain circularity in this argument and that globalization has eroded much of the salience of closeness. I can go to an internet site and donate money to a specific person thousands of miles away. And the modern media have made the suffering of such a person much more salient and motivating.
• Parochialists can argue that relatively small groups of people are not only best placed to help each other, but have a right to help each other and should be allowed to do so before the international humanitarians come barging in. This is akin to arguments about self-determination and cultural relativism. Caring about other places on the globe means wanting to intervene in those places in order to promote human rights and alleviate suffering. Such intervention may amount to cultural aggression. We can call this the cultural objection to cosmopolitanism. I’ve argued against cultural relativism elsewhere so I won’t repeat myself here.
• Parochialists may claim that partiality is the result of the importance of community membership. People want to belong to communities. This belonging is important for many reasons, notably for personal identity. In order to maintain a community, there have to be special duties towards fellow members. We can call this the community objection to cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan could argue that those special duties are different from the global duties imposed on us by human rights and humanitarianism and don’t diminish or replace those global duties.
• Parochialists can argue that global duties and a global morality are meaningless concepts. Perhaps a real understanding of what a moral duty is can only arise from the communal traditions and language of a particular culture. Morality is then culturally situated, embedded and determined. Moral impartiality and global justice are then oxymorons. This objection to cosmopolitanism is related to the cultural objection, and we can call it the meta-ethical objection. A cosmopolitan could reply that this is a rather strange conception of morality. It’s not uncommon for people to be influenced by moralities from far away. Hence, it’s wrong to claim that morality is completely embedded in culture.
• Parochialists can argue that cosmopolitanism and the need to treat everyone equally imply the imposition of excessive burdens on the wealthier members of humanity and would therefore be both unrealistic and unfair. Treating everyone equally would leave them with little for themselves and for their partial circle of care. None of them would still wear expensive watches or clothes, go on vacations or give their children an expensive education. We can call this the feasibility objection to cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan could answer in different ways. First, things aren’t entirely zero-sum as the parochialist seems to believe. For example, a well-educated child can more effectively help humanity. Hence, the two intuitions don’t have to cancel each other out and people don’t always have to choose. Love for humanity and love for certain people don’t necessarily clash. Secondly, even if it’s not feasible to help everyone, that doesn’t mean we have to be partial. The moral equality of all human beings may require that we select a random group of people to help, rather than our inner circle. Such a random choice would guarantee that we help strangers just as much as relatives, friends and compatriots, even though we can’t help everyone equally. The problem with such a random choice is that you need to know about people in order to be able to help (see the effectiveness objection above). The cosmopolitan could reply that random selection isn’t really necessary and that we can help a lot of people a lot more than we may think, without completely undermining our own wellbeing. It’s not absolutely clear that the world doesn’t hold enough resource to give everyone a decent life.

More about caring for what happens in the world, about charity, about arbitrariness and morality, and about moral dilemmas. More posts in this series are here.

What is a Moral Dilemma?

We have a long running series on this blog asking people to tell us what they think about particular moral dilemmas. However, since this is (in part) a philosophy blog, it’s useful to take a step back and ask ourselves what we are talking about. What precisely is a moral dilemma?

Definition of moral dilemma

Well, it’s obviously a conflict of some sort. If you’re stuck in a moral dilemma you have some good moral reasons to do each of two different things (“dilemma” comes from the Greek for “double proposition”). The problem is that you can’t do both. You do either one or the other, and by failing to do one you fail morally. A moral dilemma condemns you to moral failure. You have an unpleasant choice to make between two moral duties and therefore you’re forced to violate one duty.

Plato

It’s important to note here that both the moral duties are equally important. When it’s clear that one of the conflicting moral obligations easily overrides the other, we don’t have a moral dilemma. For example, you have the moral duty to repay your debts, but giving back a borrowed weapon to a deranged friend will make you an accomplice in murder. (That’s the classic example in Plato’s Republic). This isn’t really a dilemma since the obligation to prevent murder clearly overrides the obligation to honor your debts.

Because the two (or more) options in a dilemma are (or seem to be, see below) equally important, a dilemma presents you with an impossible choice. Hence the typical characteristic of a dilemma: you can’t get out of it. A dilemma is inescapable and inevitable. You have to make a choice but you can’t. You are thrown from one side to the other: from the obligation to make a choice to the impossibility of making a choice and back again and again.

Moral dilemmas and value pluralism

The equal importance of both (or more) options has to do with value pluralism. There are many important values in life – love, loyalty, honor, freedom, equality etc. – and those are generally – but not specifically – equally important. According to value pluralism – a moral theory I personally accept – there’s no way of establishing a hierarchy between these values so that we know which one to choose in case of conflicts (such as moral dilemmas). Some values are sometimes more important than others, depending on the context (see the example from Plato above). But those others are also sometimes more important.

The same value pluralism is the basis of the theory of balancing human rights. Human rights are basically moral values and they often contradict each other – the privacy of a public figure and free speech of a journalist, for example. It’s not obvious to claim that some human rights are more important than others (although there have been attempts) and therefore you’ll have difficult choices to make between respecting the rights of one person or another.

But let’s get back to the topic of moral dilemmas. Value pluralism is one cause of moral dilemmas, but not the cause. In some cases, moral dilemmas involve only one value. Take the example of Sophie’s Choice: Sophie is instructed by a guard in a Nazi concentration camp to decide which one of her two children will be killed, and if she doesn’t decide, both will be killed. There’s only one value at stake here and no conflict between values. (You could argue that there are a few values at stake: love, life, equality etc. but anyway, there are no conflicts between values, only conflicts between the choice of one child or the choice of another).

Types of moral dilemmas

So this brings us to a typology of moral dilemmas. We can indeed differentiate between types of moral dilemmas. The first distinction is the one described above, between dilemmas involving conflicts between values (usually two) and dilemmas involving a conflict within one value. Some would say that the latter aren’t real dilemmas. Take Sophie’s choice again. The solution is easy: give up one of the two children, no matter which one (assuming that there’s no difference in life expectancy etc.). That’s the best Sophie can do, because the other option – not choosing – will result in the death of both. The choice of which child is morally irrelevant. (Personally, I don’t believe things are as easy as that. We do have a real dilemma here).

Jean-Paul Sartre

Another distinction is the one between so-called epistemic dilemmas and non-epistemic dilemmas. The former are dilemmas created by the absence of knowledge, the latter would exist even with perfect knowledge. Perhaps you’re faced with a choice between participating in a war or staying home and caring for your sick mother (Sartre’s example). This dilemma is caused – in part at least – by the absence of knowledge. If you knew that your participation in the war would have a major effect on the outcome of the war, and if you knew that your mother would be OK without your help, the dilemma would disappear and the choice would be obvious. So in this case it’s the absence of knowledge about the consequences of either choice that creates the dilemma. Some people would say that we don’t have a real dilemma in this case because the provision of knowledge solves the dilemma, and a real dilemma has to be impossible to solve even given perfect knowledge. (Again, I don’t think it’s as easy as that. In real life, knowledge is often missing and it’s useless to say to someone facing a dilemma that knowledge could solve the dilemma).

Another type of epistemic dilemma is the one in which a dilemma appears because of the factual uncertainty about a case. For example, you could be faced with the choice of helping a friend vs informing the police of this friend’s crime. The conflicting values here are friendship/loyalty and your duties as a citizen. However, there’s a dilemma only because you’re unaware of the fact that this “friend” isn’t really a friend and just abuses your trust. Better knowledge would solve the dilemma.

And finally, another type of epistemic dilemma arises when the person faced with the dilemma isn’t sure about the particular moral principles that (should) apply. For example, you may believe that loyalty to a group of criminals is an important moral value but there isn’t any good moral theory available that produces justified moral reasons for such a moral principle. When this “moral principle” conflicts with another, better principle (e.g. snitching), you may find yourself believing that there’s a moral dilemma. Again, better knowledge would solve the dilemma.

Some other distinctions between types of moral dilemmas:

• dilemmas can be self-imposed (making two mutually exclusive promises for example), or imposed by the outside world (Sophie’s choice for example)
• dilemmas can result from your own wrongdoing (again the promises) or by chance (Sartre’s example)
• there can be obligation dilemmas in which more than one feasible action is obligatory (Sartre’s example) or prohibition dilemmas in which all feasible actions are prohibited (Sophie’s choice)
• dilemmas can be within one system of morality or across systems of morality (there can be a conflict between our general moral obligations – e.g. do not be an accomplice to murder – and our role-related obligations – the duty of a priest to protect the secret of confession, even when a murderer comes to confess her crime)
• dilemmas can be single-agent dilemmas (Sartre’s example and Sophie’s choice) or multiple-agent dilemmas (should the US bomb Hiroshima?)
• etc.

By the way, you can still vote on our moral dilemmas here and we’ll add some new ones soon.

Related Articles

• Moral Dilemmas (3quarksdaily.com)
• Dealing with Moral Dilemmas (psychologytoday.com)

Moral Dilemma (16): The Senator and the Bus Ticket

Suppose you’re a US Senator (no, not this one) and you’re on your way to an important Senate session where it should be decided if there will be an extension of unemployment benefits because of the high levels of unemployment resulting from the recession. What’s more, you’re most likely to cast the deciding vote in favor of an extension. However, your chauffeur is sick and you have to take the bus. You’re at the bus station with a few minutes to spare but unfortunately you notice that you forgot your wallet at home.

You try to persuade the officials in the bus station to let you on free of charge, without success (you’re not a pretty famous Senator, yet). Your attempts to convince fellow travelers to lend you the money are also unsuccessful (unfortunately for you, the bus station is packed with Tea Party Protesters on their way home and you made the mistake of explaining what you’re up to).

You sit down and hang your head in despair when you spot a wallet lying on the ground just beside the handbag of a woman sitting next to you. The woman looks reasonably well-to-do. The wallet may be hers, but perhaps it’s not. You notice a ten dollar bill sticking out and you realize that this is your only chance to get to the Senate on time.

If yes, and afterward a journalist finds out what happened,

In general, do you think that small harms are a reasonable price to pay for large benefits and that some moral rules (the rule against stealing for example, or – as it may be – the rule of giving back found property) may be sidelined when larger moral issues are at stake?

If yes, how far are you willing to go? Would you allow the Senator to kick people out of the bus and thereby harming them or perhaps even killing them, in order to secure a place inside?

Do you believe that the Senator picking up the wallet is just the same thing as the government taxing people to pay for other people’s unemployment benefits?

Do you think that the bystanders who refused to lend the Senator money, even if they were politically motivated, were guilty of selfishness?

Or do you perhaps think that they wrongly “gamed” the democratic process and should not have intervened out of respect for proper democratic procedures, even if these procedures would lead to an outcome they don’t like?

And you can still vote on our previous moral dilemmas here.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (16): You Always Hurt The Ones You Love

Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni (c. 1616)

Inflicting suffering on people is wrong. This simple and basic moral rule is a large part of the justification of human rights (although there are many other justifications). And yet, the parents among us – the large majority of human beings – simply by bringing children into existence, guarantee that those children will suffer. No life is without suffering. And they do so wittingly and willingly. So ignorance or impotence do not excuse this imposition of suffering. These children don’t get born because they have a right to be born. Non-existent people don’t have a right to come into existence. The opposite sentence would have some really scary and dizzying consequences. They are born because of parents’ choices. And those are informed choices. We all know that no life, not even the best one, is without suffering. Hence, the parents are, to some extent, responsible for this suffering (read more about the chain of causation here).

The fact that people keep reproducing without so much as an ounce of remorse, indicates that the willful infliction of suffering is an acceptable part of life, even if it is an infliction upon those closest to you. Perhaps we can explain this strange fact by the generally rational belief that the good that comes out of life compensates for the suffering we inflict on our children. Life’s suffering is just the price to pay for a greater good. Overall, most people do indeed find life worth living, notwithstanding the occasional suffering. Otherwise suicide would be much more common, I guess. But that kind of cost-benefit analysis is something we usually find repugnant. Many of us shudder at the decision to incinerate thousands of Japanese in order to end WWII.

But perhaps this cost-benefit analysis is much more acceptable when the cost for one persons isn’t intended to benefit another person. In our topic, the costs and benefits that are weighed against each other are for one and the same person. And yet, it’s not this person that does the weighing; it’s her parents. This is a case of literal paternalism: we decide for another person that some harm we do to her is necessary for a greater good. Like we decide that people can’t smoke cannabis (doing so is imposing a harm) because we believe that it’s in their interest and for their benefit. And paternalism is generally only acceptable when dealing with children, and with children as long as they are children. When reproducing we of course also inflict suffering on our children when they are grown up.

If you think all this is just a load of pretentious pseudo-philosophical BS, then maybe you’ll like this instead:

More on the rights of future generations, on children’s rights, and on suffering.

Moral Dilemma (15): Separating Siamese Twins

There was a famous case in the UK some years ago, of a pair of Siamese twins (not in the image above) joined at the waist and sharing a heart and lungs. By the nature of their condition, only one of the pair – the one with the fully developed heart – could survive an operation to separate them. Doctors insisted that the girls be separated, because both would die within three to six months if nothing was done. The heart of the one of the twins could not go on to support both of them forever.

The parents, however, refused to go through with the operation, claiming that they could not save one of their children by killing her sister. They wanted nature and God’s will to take its course. The doctors challenged the parents’ decision, claiming inaction meant death for both girls. The case went to the courts and a judge ruled in favor of the doctors. The operation went ahead and, predictably, one of the girls died. The other one now leads a healthy life.

One of the judges deciding the case even stated that an operation to save the most viable of the pair – the one with the fully developed heart – would also be in the interest of the other girl. This other girl’s life would be hurtful and short anyway and to prolong it would be “very seriously to her disadvantage”. Killing her would not be an act, but an omission – the interruption or withdrawal of the supply of blood

which she received from her sister. As such, the surgery could go ahead by analogy with those cases where the courts have authorized the withholding of food and hydration. Ultimately, however, this reasoning wasn’t followed by the court when upholding the decision to operate. (source)

This is reminiscent of the trolley problem, a famous moral dilemma in which people are asked if they would push a fat man on a track in order to stop a runaway trolley or tram heading for a group of five people unaware of the danger. When you answer the question below, you should know that in most surveys about the trolley problem, people refuse to push the fat man. We also had another dilemma in this series that featured a similar problem: should a surgeon sacrifice some innocent people in order to harvest organ for a dying patient?

And you can still vote on our previous moral dilemmas here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (32): Human Rights and the Chain of Causation

Who causes human rights violations? Causation is a key factor in the attribution of moral and legal responsibility, so it’s an important topic in human rights talk. The problem is that there is often not one single cause of rights violations, and hence not one single violator. Rights violations can be the collective responsibility of an entire group or a government for instance, but the issue I want to focus on here is another type of collective responsibility. It’s possible that there is a chain of causation: a series of events taking place over a period of time, and one event causes the next one until a rights violation occurs. The question is then: is it only the last moral agent, the last one in the chain of causation that results in a rights violation, who is the violator and the morally and legally responsible party? Or do some of the agents earlier in the chain of causation also carry some responsibility?

Let me give an example. Take the case of a drunk driver causing a fatal accident and thereby violating the right to life of his victim. Just before the accident, a pub-owner willingly sold the visibly intoxicated man more alcohol. You could argue that both persons caused the accident: the drunk because of his drunk driving, and the pub-owner because he sold the drinks. Both could have taken action to avoid the accident (assuming that the driver wasn’t sufficiently intoxicated before he bought the extra drinks from the pub-owner). And because they both could have acted otherwise, they are both responsible – morally and legally – for what happened. Both have violated the rights of the victim.

Causing something isn’t a sufficient condition for responsibility. You could go further down the chain of causation and claim that the pub-owner’s parents also caused the accident, because they had the choice of having or no having a child. By having the child, they initiated a chain of causation that led to the accident. They could have taken action to avoid the accident. However, no one would claim that they are thereby responsible for the accident. The difference between the parents on the one hand and the pub-owner and the driver on the other hand, is that the parents could not have foreseen the possible consequences of their actions. Hence, responsibility requires causation plus foresight rather than simply causation (some would say that intent should be added as well). (Of course, in some legal contexts, cause is sufficient for liability: if I drive my car into another one, I may be liable for the damages even if I didn’t intend what happened and could not have foreseen it. Product liability is another example. In other legal contexts, cause is not necessary: if my dog bites you, I’m liable, even though I didn’t cause the harm. But those aren’t the cases I’m interested in).

The pub-owner and the driver could have and should have foreseen the possible consequences of their actions, and probably did foresee them in some part of their brain. We all learn that some consequences flow from some actions, with high degrees of probability. And yet they still went ahead with their actions. Hence both are responsible for what happened because they caused it, because they could have acted otherwise, and because they could have foreseen the consequences. The chain of causation leading up to the rights violation goes back many steps (and many years if not centuries), but the chain of responsibility stops somewhere along the road. It stops with the first person in the chain of causation able to foresee the ultimate result of the chain and able to act otherwise. In our example, the pub-owner.

But, of course, this example is too simple. Often we have to go back more than two steps in the chain of causation to find the first point of responsibility. Suppose the pub-owner bought his pub from some other guy who knew at the time about the reckless way in which the pub-owner serves his customers. (Suppose the pub-owner did something similar before he bought his current pub). How far back in time and in the chain of causation should we be allowed to go in order to attribute responsibility? And do all responsible parties share the same “amount” of responsibility? Probably not; that would violate our moral intuitions, which tell us that the driver carries the heaviest burden. He had many alternative options: he could have decided not to drink so much, not to go to the pub in the first place, or take a taxi home etc. The pub-owner could of course have decided to stop selling booze, but maybe he didn’t know that the drunk was intending to drive back home. And if he knew, how could he have stopped him driving back home? The person selling the pub also could have decided to sell it to someone else, but perhaps there wasn’t another possible buyer, and perhaps he believed in redemption and didn’t want to judge a person’s future on the basis of past mistakes.

But if not all responsible parties share the same “amount” of responsibility, how do we differentiate between the levels of responsibility of the different parties and calculate each party’s share? Does time play a role? Does responsibility diminish as time passes? Those are terribly difficult questions and most of the time we just forget about them and simply punish the last link in the chain and accord him or her the full weight of responsibility, whether this is just or not. One example in which we do try to answer these questions is when a judge or a jury takes attenuating circumstances into account when sentencing: for instance, a criminal may receive a more lenient sentence when it is clear that childhood neglect or abuse contributed to his actions. However, we rarely give the parents their part of the punishment in such cases.

These questions are relevant is a huge number of human rights cases. Take the more important example of world poverty. To some degree, one can argue that the West shares some of the responsibility for poverty in the Third World (Thomas Pogge is famous for this argument). It imposes trade restrictions, it supports corrupt dictators and deficient institutions, and it inflicted colonial rule. Some of these actions go back some steps in the chain of causation. For example, a corrupt dictator may be the last cause in the chain leading to poverty, but support for this dictator by the West is an earlier cause. In the case of colonialism, the chain of causation is complicated by the transgenerational aspect: to what extent are the people in the West who are currently alive responsible for the actions of their forefathers? More on this question here.

More on the causes of rights violations here, and on transgenerational chains of causation here and here. More posts in this series are here.

Moral Dilemma (14): Lenman’s Dog

In an article in Philosophy and Public Affairs in 2000, James Lenman asks us to picture to following scenario: imagine it’s D-Day all over again and we must choose which beach in France we will use as the starting point for the invasion and the offensive against Hitler. There are two beaches which we can choose from, and neither is preferable to the other for military reasons. Or, better, one of them will turn out to be better after all is said and done, but ex ante we don’t know. However, we do know that if we land on beach A we will cause a dog to suffer a broken leg, and this will not be the case if we land on beach B. Let’s assume that we all agree that animal welfare is a worthy moral goal and that the infliction of needless suffering on animals is morally wrong. (I guess most of you will follow me there).

So we are stuck with two rather unappealing options:

1. Choose the beach at random and to hell with the dog.
2. Allow the welfare of the dog to shape our decisions about war and peace.

The first option seems to sideline animal welfare for no particular overriding reason, while the second option seems ridiculous (it’s no coincidence that the case involves just one dog – rather than a human being for instance – suffering a relatively minor inconvenience). This is of course an example of some of the problems caused by consequentialism in moral philosophy. Most people would agree that the consequences of our actions should influence (some even say determine) the morality of those actions. Lenman’s dog seems to argue against consequentialism because the presence of the animal forces us either

• to discard consideration of the consequences (option 1) or
• to look at every minuscule consequence or every tiny advantage or disadvantage of our possible actions when deciding which action to take.

The latter is practically impossible and hence consequentialism is impossible. An intermediary option would save consequentialism but at a considerable price: we could say, to hell with only the small consequences and hurray for the big ones (in this case, “f*** the dog and let’s just do what’s best to destroy Hitler and take the beach we fancy without looking if there are animals we can harm”). The price we pay here is that we would condone Lenin’s (or was it Stalin‘s) horrific phrase that we should be willing to break some eggs to make an omelet. Large consequences then always justify small individual sacrifices, with horrific results.

Personally, I believe that consequences, even tiny ones, should have some weight in determining the moral nature of actions, just like intent should have some weight (although I often criticize utilitarianism, a form of consequentialism).

And you can still vote on our previous moral dilemmas here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (49): Sudanese Girl Dying of Hunger as a Vulture Patiently Waits

(photo by Kevin Carter, a South African photographer who committed suicide in 1994, only a year after taking this Pulitzer Prize-winning photo)

Seeking relief from the sight of masses of people starving to death, he wandered into the open bush. He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding center. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view. Careful not to disturb the bird, he positioned himself for the best possible image. He would later say he waited about 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would spread its wings. It did not, and after he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. Afterward he sat under a tree, lit a cigarette, talked to God and cried. “He was depressed afterward. He kept saying he wanted to hug his daughter.”

The haunting image made Carter a global celebrity, but it also raised uncomfortable questions about whether he should have helped the girl rather than simply watching her die. To be sure, Carter had plenty of emotional and financial problems, and he drank and used drugs excessively. But’s it’s not hard to imagine that his world-famous photo left him wracked with guilt, contributing to his suicidal state of mind. In his rambling final note, he wrote, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners.” (source)

There’s obviously a moral dilemma here, one which always occurs in disaster journalism: drop the camera and help (but what can you do?), or be a witness and mobilize the world (but will it listen?). What’s best? If you’re interested, we have a blog series going on about moral dilemmas. More on journalism here.

Why is this an iconic image of human rights violations? Isn’t famine just a natural disaster for which no one is responsible, like an earthquake? I explained here why this is not the case, why famines happen because of what people do or fail to do.

UPDATE: a reader, Anthony Ratay, writes:

I wanted to let you know that there is some conflicting information out about the fate of the small Sudanese girl in the photograph.  Featured in the documentary “Under Fire”  Paul Watson claims that this girl was eventually given medical attention and prevented from an untimely demise. In fact if you look at the photo in its original frame you can see humanitarian workers in the background.

More about famines, or about Sudan. More iconic images of human rights violations.

Moral Dilemma (13): The Responsibility of Small Contributions

screenshot from the movie "Untraceable"

(source)

In the movie Untraceable, a serial killer rigs contraptions that kill his victims based on the number of hits received by a website (“www.killwithme.com“) that features a live streaming video of the victim dying. Millions of people log on, hastening the victims’ violent deaths. The manner of murder is typically a slow process, for example putting the victim in water and replacing the water with acid. Every single website visit add a tiny amount of acid.

The movie writers assume, quite explicitly, that the serial killer has primary moral responsibility for the deaths and that the website visitors are mere accessories. However, one could plausibly argue that the serial killer is responsible only for kidnapping and hostage taking since he does not himself act in a way that leads to the murder. In that case, the group of visitors of the website is the primary or even sole perpetrator of the murders. On the other hand, one could argue that every single visitor’s contribution to the murder is insignificantly small. When the victim dies or is set to die after 10.000.000 visitors, for example, is doesn’t matter much if the 8 millionth visitor visited or not. Perhaps the 10 millionth visitor is responsible, but the script of the movie doesn’t make it clear that the threshold of number of visitors required for killing the victim is set in advance. On the contrary, the script suggests that even the kidnapper (let’s not call him killer just yet) can’t tell in advance which exact number of visitors is required to kill them victim.

So who do you think carries prime responsibility for the murder? The kidnapper? The entire group of visitors, and equally so (meaning the first visitor just as much as the last)? The last visitor (who can’t possibly know before visiting that his or her visit will be the final straw)? An indeterminate group of visitors who visit near the final moments of the victim (as the progress of the murder is streamed live on the internet, late visitors can see that death is imminent)?

More moral dilemmas (which are still open to votes by the way).

The Ethics of Human Rights (26): The Repugnant Conclusion and Human Rights

The Repugnant Conclusion is a moral dilemma for utilitarian and consequentialist moral theories. The dilemma was first presented by Derek Parfit in his 1984 book Reasons and Persons. The “repugnancy” in question refers to the consequence of a thought experiment. Imagine a society with a large amount of total utility resulting from a very large number of people all living at near-zero levels of utility. In other words, these people have no more than a marginally worthwhile life – Parfit calls it a life of muzak and potatoes but we can of course define “marginally worthwhile” differently if we want. And yet, because they are so numerous, the total utility of this society is very large.

Utilitarian and consequentialist theories must rank this society higher than other more desirable societies with higher average utility but lower total utility resulting from lower population levels. They must because they state that the best society is the one in which there is the greatest total quantity of utility, and utility is defined as whatever makes life worth living. The muzak and potato people have a life worth living – just barely – and if they are numerous enough they will constitute the best society because the sum of their individual utilities will be higher than any other total utility in any other society.

There is always a muzak and potatoes society that has a higher total quantity of utility or welfare than any other possible society: just add more marginally worthwhile lives and you produce a society that outperforms any other in terms of total welfare. That such a society should be preferable is repugnant. The people in that society have lives only barely worth living and yet it’s a superior society compared to one with fewer people all living a better life. The emphasis on “total” welfare or “total” utility means that any loss in the quality of the lives in a population can be compensated by a sufficiently large gain in the quantity of the population. (Note that the lives added are marginally worthwhile. These lives are worth living. We’re not adding lives of continuous pain for example. That would diminish total utility and that isn’t the purpose of this thought experiment.)

The question here isn’t whether such a society is practically possible or likely, but whether we should indeed prefer it, as utilitarianism posits (implicitly). It doesn’t seem intuitively correct to prefer a society of people living a life that’s barely worthwhile over other highly attractive alternatives, just because the former has a very large population.

To some extent, the thought experiment is convincing because we do believe that every human being is valuable (has some value), however low this value may be (remember we’re not talking about lives that aren’t worth living because of continuous pain for instance). Therefore we do tend to believe that addition of new lives does increase total utility (“we” meaning even the non-utilitarians among us, and that probably includes myself). It would be equally repugnant to try to avoid the repugnant conclusion by claiming that after a certain number of additions the lives added don’t bring any more value.

Given the unacceptability of not counting the lives after a certain number of additions, there’s another possible way of avoiding the repugnant conclusion, namely invoking non-utility values such as justice, dignity, desert etc. But according to Tyler Cowen, non-utility values can always be overwhelmed by total utility:

It might be the case, for instance, that the less populated society has significantly greater amounts of justice, aesthetic beauty, or dignity. If this is true, the Repugnant Conclusion alternative simply needs to make up for this deficiency by having more people to increase its utility total. (source)

Any moral theory must weigh conflicting ends, such as utility and justice. There’s no escape. You don’t have a moral theory if you can’t do that. The non-utility value(s) must receive some “value” or importance. And the same for utility – even non-utilitarians can’t say that utility has no value whatsoever because then you would say that a marginally worthwhile life of muzak and potatoes has no value (and that’s intuitively wrong because then you would be allowed to end such a life). Hence you need to compare the total value of the less populated society with high non-utility values to the total value of the more populated society with very low average utility. Just add more people to the latter and it will always be a better society. And this will always be repugnant.

However, I do think non-utility values show us a way out of the repugnant conclusion. The first thing we can say is that without emphasis on non-utility values there won’t be a way out. If utility is all that counts, if in other words you’re a pure utilitarian then you are a value absolutist, just like a libertarian, a socialist, a hedonist etc. One value, in this case utility, trumps all others. Necessarily you’ll end up accepting the repugnant conclusion.

If, on the other hand, you accept value pluralism, then you reject hierarchical or lexically ordered value system in which one value trumps all others. And then you probably also don’t believe that large losses in one value can be balanced by equally large gains in another value, as happens in the repugnant conclusion. That seems to me to be the error in the Cowen quote above: the muzak and potatoes society can simply compensate for the deficiencies on non-utility values by adding more marginally worthwhile lives. I believe – contra Cowen – that invoking non-utility values can help us to avoid the repugnant conclusion, but not if these non-utility values are simply accorded a certain value (possibly a very high value) and then compared to the value of utility. If we only do that, utility can always overwhelm the other values by just adding more persons, and gains in utility can always compensate losses in other values.

My point here is that there are certain other values for which no losses can be accepted or tolerated, not even with near-infinity gains in utility. That is why these other values – such as freedom, dignity, equality and justice – are protected by human rights, and human rights are unconditional and untradeable. No matter how many people with barely worthwhile lives we add to a society, this will not compensate for violations of human rights. Nothing ever will. You can call that value absolutism if you want, but it’s the absolutism of plurality.

More on the related topic of overpopulation. More posts in this series are here.

Moral Dilemma (12): Greatest Happiness for the Greatest Number

Imagine the discovery of a new type of chair. This chair would produce great happiness and wellbeing to those sitting in it. As we live in a world with limited resources, suppose we would only be able to produce one hundred such chairs. Suppose also that the chair would have to be produced in such a way that sharing the chairs will not work (for example, the production of happiness requires genetically coding the chairs). However, the method of distribution of the chair is undetermined: could be a lottery, could be money, could be only for heads of state etc. That’s not important in the present context. Now, imagine also that a greater total of wellbeing (call it utility if you must) could be produced with the same investment, and by giving each and every individual a very, very small increase in his or her personal wellbeing. For example, we could use the money in order to fit all chairs in the world with a massage function. In total, all these small improvements in wellbeing would produce more total wellbeing than just providing one hundred individuals with great happiness by way of the newly invented happiness chairs.

A similar dilemma was featured here.

More moral dilemmas (which are still open to votes by the way). More on happiness and utilitarianism.

Moral Dilemma (11): The Human Rights of Future Generations and the Future Human Rights of Existing Generations

We know that our actions are bound to affect the wellbeing of future persons, both positively and negatively. For some of our actions we may know or we can more or less confidently predict what the effects will be. In that case, it’s relatively uncontroversial to state that we have a moral obligation to refrain from actions that are likely to harm future persons when we can foresee and avoid such possible harm. Future persons are on a par with existing persons, they are no less valuable and have the same moral status. Their rights aren’t less important than the rights of living persons.

“Future persons” includes persons’ futures. We should also avoid actions that may not harm persons now but may harm them later in their lives.

When we don’t know what will be the likely consequences of our actions on future persons or persons’ futures, we can’t be held morally responsible for these consequences, since we can’t choose other actions (or choose not to perform certain actions) as a way to avoid these consequences.

So far so good, although some of you may already object here. But bear with me, arguendo. What if we must choose between harming a future person and a person’s future? For instance, suppose we have to choose between closing a polluting factory and laying off the workers – thereby making it more likely that they end up in poverty – and protecting the environmental wellbeing of future persons? (And suppose also that there’s no third option that avoids harming anyone).

There’s obviously a large number of morally defensible ways of reacting to such a dilemma. I just mention three:

1. The rights and wellbeing of existing persons always have priority over the rights and wellbeing of future persons (inter alia because something might happen that results in the non-existence of these future persons – e.g. the Apocalypse happens tomorrow – so we run the risk of sacrificing the rights of existing persons for the benefit of nobody).
2. If the future persons affected are more numerous than the existing persons, or if the harm done to future persons if more severe than the harm done to existing persons, then the future persons have priority.
3. The rights and wellbeing of future persons always have priority over the rights and wellbeing of existing persons since the former are by nature more numerous (their number is potentially infinite).

More moral dilemmas (which are still open to votes by the way).

Moral Dilemma (10): The Morality of Targeted Killing of Terrorists

The targeted killing of terrorists, either by special forces or by unmanned drone aircraft (aptly named “Predators” or “Reapers“), raises a number of moral questions. Let’s focus here on the drone attacks (and also exclude the cases where there’s an imminent attack, because those can be considered morally easy cases of self-defense). There’s an interesting documentary here. If you can’t watch it in your country, here’s a quote describing it:

A guy gets in his car and drives to work in an office in Nevada. From his office he controls drones in Afghanistan. Occasionally he kills people (who can’t shoot back at him, since he’s 8000 miles away). When he’s done, he gets in his car and drives home to his wife and kids. You can tell the difference between ordinary farmers and insurgents by the way they move across terrain, apparently. (source)

I can think of a few moral dilemmas coming out of this, and I would like to see how you vote on these. So here they are.

1. I know that one of the advantages of drones is supposed to be their effectiveness: compared to normal, long distance bombing (such as the shock-and-awe attacks on Baghdad from the Persian Gulf), drone attacks are said to be a lot less indiscriminate. After all, that’s why they are called targeted “killings”. However, to the extent we can judge – there’s no public database of drone attacks – it’s not uncommon to hear about drones mistakenly targeting weddings instead of evil terrorist meetings, or killing bystanders together with the terrorists. It seems that the main reason for using drones is that you don’t endanger your own flying crews, and certainly not your ground troops. After all, once you have identified a target, a drone isn’t more precise than a normal bomber plane. So, if that’s the motive, we can ask if the prioritization of the minimization of risk to soldiers on your own side over the minimization of risk to civilians on the enemy side, is morally acceptable in war.

2. To broaden the point somewhat: is it generally fair or rather cowardly to shoot people who can’t shoot back, or to harm people from such a distance that they can’t harm you back, or is it morally praiseworthy to shoot people while minimizing the risk on your side?

3. Is killing people by way of drone attacks an admissible act of war or a war crime, assuming that the people killed are actually combatants or terrorists (and assuming that terrorists can be treated like enemy combatants in a normal war) rather than innocent civilians, and that the technology is therefore effective?

4. If Al Qaida kills the operators mentioned in the quote, is it an admissible act of war or terrorism?

5. If you have checked the first answer in question #3, do you believe it’s logical to check the first answer in question #4 a well? If not, why not?  Add your reasons in the “other” box.

6. The same question as #4, but slightly modified, and assuming you checked the first answer in question #3. If Al Qaida detonates a bomb that wipes out an entire neighborhood, including the operators mentioned in the quote, can they claim their actions are equivalent to targeted killing by the U.S., given the fact that targeted killing isn’t always very precise either? Or are they wrong and are they in this case not engaging in admissible acts of war but in terrorism?

7. Again, a small modification of question #4, and assuming you checked the first answer in question #3: if Al Qaida detonates a bomb that wipes out an entire neighborhood, believing the operators mentioned in the quote were present, but they actually weren’t present, can they claim their actions are equivalent to targeted killing given the fact that drone attacks are known to have targeted places where terrorists were supposed to be but actually weren’t? Or are they wrong and are they not engaging in admissible acts of war but in terrorism?

More on targeted killings. More on the war on terror. More on just war theory. More moral dilemmas (which are still open to votes by the way).

Moral Dilemma (9): Michael Sandel on the Right Thing to Do

Michael Sandel

If you like our blog series on moral dilemmas, you’ll like this video. It’s a bit long but really worth it. Some of the content:

Part 1 – The Moral Side of Murder: If you had to choose between (1) killing one person to save the lives of five others and (2) doing nothing, even though you knew that five people would die right before your eyes if you did nothing—what would you do? What would be the right thing to do? That’s the hypothetical scenario called the Trolley problem Professor Michael Sandel uses to launch his course on moral reasoning. Sandel also discusses the case of forced organ donation.

Part 2 – The Case for Cannibalism: Sandel introduces the principles of utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, with a famous nineteenth century law case involving a shipwrecked crew of four. After nineteen days lost at sea, the captain decides to kill the cabin boy, the weakest amongst them, so they can feed on his blood and body to survive.

Moral Dilemma (8): The Plank Of Carneades

(source)

There are two shipwrecked sailors, A and B. They both see a plank that can only support one of them and both of them swim towards it. Sailor A gets to the plank first. Sailor B, who is going to drown, pushes A off and away from the plank and, thus, ultimately, causes A to drown. Sailor B gets on the plank and is later saved by a rescue team. Can sailor B be tried for murder? Or did B act in self-defense? (source)

More on murder. You can still vote for our previous dilemmas.

Moral Dilemma (7): Saving the Violinist

Imagine a famous violinist falling into a coma. The society of music lovers determines from medical records that you and you alone can save the violinist’s life by being hooked up to him for nine months. The music lovers break into your home while you are asleep and hook the unconscious (and unknowing, hence innocent) violinist to you. You may want to unhook him, but you are then faced with this argument put forward by the music lovers: The violinist is an innocent person with a right to life. Unhooking him will result in his death. Therefore, unhooking him is morally wrong. (source)

More on the right to life. You can still vote for our previous dilemmas.

Moral Dilemma (6): Involuntary Organ Donor

A transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A friend of the doctor has the five different compatible and healthy organs and, for another reason, is terminally ill. However, this friend still hopes that he will survive into old age, notwithstanding 99% medical certainty that he will not make it until next month. And he certainly has no desire to sacrifice his life and organs.

More on the organ donations here and here. You can still vote for our previous dilemmas.

Moral Dilemma (5): What Does Justice Require?

Amartya Sen

(source)

This dilemma – part of this series – comes from Amartya Sen. Three children, Anne, Bob and Carla, are arguing who should receive a flute. The arguments they give for getting the flute are not selfish, partial or arbitrary, but based on different theories of justice. Of course, since they are children, they don’t have a well-developed sense of the theories of justice they each adopt and use as a justification for getting the flute, but it turns out that the three of them present a crude version of three of the most common philosophical theories of justice.

• Anne claims that she should get the flute because she’s the only one of the three children who know how to play it (which is correct). It would, in her view, be unjust to deny the flute to the only one who can make proper use of it.
• Bob claims that the flute should be his because he’s poor and doesn’t have anything to play with (which is correct). He could possibly even learn how to play it given the opportunity. It would be unjust to deprive him of this opportunity and to leave him destitute compared to the other children.
• Carla claims the flute should be hers because she spent a lot of time making it (which is correct). Taking the flute away from her would be unjust.

All three points of view – or theories of justice if you want – sound persuasive, although some will sound more persuasive to some than to others. In fact, if you’re a utilitarian, you’ll be more persuaded by Anne. If you’re a liberal egalitarian, Bob will have your ear. And if you’re a libertarian, Carla will be the obvious choice. A utilitarian will argue that giving the flute to Anne will produce the highest aggregate utility (or happiness or whatever). After all, it’s better to play the flute than just play “with it”, or simply make it. Even the negative utility for Bob and Carla – i.e. not having the flute – would perhaps not outweigh the positive utility for Anne. And even Bob and Carla can get some utility from the fact that Anne has the flute: they may enjoy her playing it.

Libertarians would strongly support the property rights of Carla, rights which for them override utility considerations. Liberal egalitarians would point to the fact that Anne’s ability to play the flute – the reason for utilitarians to give her the flute – is perhaps the result of a privileged social position, as it the fact that Carla was able to make the flute – the reason libertarians put forward for giving her the flute. Giving the flute to Bob would equalize society, and that is what justice is about for them, not property rights or utility.

More on justice. More on Amartya Sen. And you can still vote on our previous moral dilemmas here.

Moral Dilemma (4): Unequal Human Beings

(updated following comments; the initial version of the poll was confusing)

Another post in our blog series on moral dilemmas. Although on some level, we cherish the equality of human beings and their equal worth, in practice we value people and their lives on the basis of their merit and desert.

More on desert. You can still vote on our other dilemmas here.

Moral Dilemma (3): Sacrificing Your Son

Another dilemma in our blog series. You are an inmate in a concentration camp. A sadistic guard is about to hang your son who tried to escape and wants you to pull the chair from underneath him. He says that if you don’t he will not only kill your son but some other innocent inmate as well. If you do, he will refrain from killing another innocent inmate. You don’t have any doubt that he means what he says and that he will keep his side of the bargain, no matter how cruel he is.

More on the holocaust. You can still vote for our previous dilemmas.

Moral Dilemma (2): The Immortality Pill

A new post in this blog series. Imagine that someone invented a pill that prevents aging and death (source). The problem: the pill costs $150,000, and there is no way to produce a large amount of them. Hence, society cannot drain resources away from other, less rewarding investments, and provide the pill to those who cannot afford to pay $150,000. So only a few, namely those who can afford the pill and are fast enough to get hold of one, can live forever without aging. Assuming that we agree that everyone should have an equal right to immortality,

More on equality of opportunity. More on the free market. More on redistribution. More posts in this series.

Moral Dilemma (1): Stopping a Suicide Bomber

A new blog series. The purpose of this series – contrary to many other series of posts on this blog – is not to inform, to entertain, or to argue for our points of view. What we want to do here is learn what you think. Of course, we have the comment sections for that, but here we want to try to guide your opinions in a more structured way. We will present you with certain moral dilemmas, some of which are well-known in philosophy; others not. Then we ask you to answer a few questions (and you can see how other people have answered). In case the straitjacket of the provided possible answers doesn’t suit you, you can of course go to the comment section and elaborate.

First dilemma: Suppose you spot a suicide bomber walking towards a crowd. There’s no doubt about his intentions. You are the only one who has correctly identified the bomber, and you have no other option but to use deadly force to stop him. You can’t warn the crowd, nor can you ask security forces to intervene. Moreover, the only possible way for you to stop him is by using a flamethrower.

More on targeted killing of terrorists. More on the war on terror. More on suicide bombers. More on the ticking bomb argument for torture.