Today is World Philosophy Day, so answer me this….."SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS? (please read the rest of this question below)
Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?
Consider another case: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he’ll release you.)
If in this case you should kill one to save five, why not in the previous, organs case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you’re in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram on to the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram left, killing one to save five.
But then why not kill Bill?
(shamelessly taken from the BBC website, but a cracking question nonetheless)
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beeper_spryte - March 24th, 2009
if the "one" in each case doesn't mind, then sure, fire away. if the "one" minds then nope, shouldn't do it.
Hiheels - March 24th, 2009
Ooh so much easier to answer when you're not actually in the situation.
OK, so, it would be wrong to kill Bill in the first instance – other donors may be available and just because someone is single and without family it doesn't make them "worth" less than anyone else.
In the next two examples, killing one person would be justifiable as it appears that there will be people killed anyway and so the fewer the better.
wumpus - March 25th, 2009
The argument is basically a logic-vs-emotion sort of thing.
On a purely logical level, it would make more sense to let the sick man die and hitch his widow up to the single guy.
The tram situation is easy; it's better to let one person die than five. In any case, the points aren't controlled from inside the tram, so it's out of your hands. If the points were controllable from inside the tram, I'd try to derail it by switching the points once the front wheels are past them, but before the back ones get there.
The hostages one is largely the same, although I wouldn't trust the kidnapper in the first place. I'm unlikely to be persuaded that he's going to release other hostages. I would play along with him to get the gun, then shoot the kidnapper though; that's still killing one person to save others.