A Lifeboat Hypothetical
A lifeboat will hold 5 people without sinking in the next storm (an inevitable one), but 6 are in it. All will die unless one is thrown out.
1. Should law and morals allow one person to voluntarily and unilaterally jump overboard and die?
2. Should they be allowed to agree unanimously to draw straws and use a gun to kill one person? (kill, because after he finds he has the short straw he changes his mind)
3. Suppose we know they would all have agreed, but they don’t actually have the discussion. Instead, one of them, a very honest person, draws a straw for each of them. If he had the short straw, he would have killed himself, but he is lucky and Sam has the short straw. He then shoots Sam with the gun and they thrown Sam overboard. Is that OK?
4. Suppose they have a discussion, and they and we know that everyone *would* agree to the scheme if it was a choice between all 6 drawing straws and all of them dying. Sam, however, says: “I won’t agree. I know that even if I hold out, the other 5 of you will do a 5-straw scheme and one of you will go overboard and the rest of us will be saved. So I’m opting out.” Is it OK to include him in the straw scheme anyway, against his will?
5. Suppose that they have a discussion and Sam sincerely says he is opting out because even if his opting out would sink the boat, he doesn’t want to have any chance of being thrown overboard now instead of dying in 30 minutes when the storm hits. And in fact if he doesn’t agree, the resulting bickering will prevent even a 5-straw scheme. Is it OK to include him in the straw scheme anyway, against his will?
July 12th, 2007 at 10:39 am
All are immoral, since each situation is an example of utilitarianism, or more simply, that the right action is the one that provides the greater good for the greatest number of people.
In each case, the action in question is the univocal decision to take the life of one man with the hopeful outcome that the others are saved.
This ignores the idea of the Natural Law, which makes killing another (outside of reasons of self-defense) immoral.
July 12th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I disagree with Pat. The first decision - “laying down one’s life for one’s friends” is nonutilitarian to the one jumping. Viewed in his calculus, one could not throw oneself on a grenade to save others in a foxhole (to use a classic example) in a situation of the ultimate self-sacrifice. Good, in other words, can come of good.
As to the others:
2) Pragmatically - unless, of course, the person drawn to die is also the one holding the gun. Must one then draw straws to see who holds the gun, and then draw straws (exempting the gunholder, who has won the immunity challenge) and then hope that the gunholder follows through and doesn’t establish himself as a dictator and kill everyone but him / herself? Morally, although one could be excused from punishment (perhaps) considering the situation, one should not participate in this sort of exercise. Good cannot come of evil, in the end.
3) See the comment on good from evil. Also, similarly, the gun issue.
4) Everyone wouldn’t agree, obviously, since Sam does not. See also the comment on good from evil. Also, similarly, the gun issue.
5) The scheme is still not permissible.
Here, I think, is one difficulty. Looking at it from a Rawlsian / Dworkinian standpoint, one might posit that each actor surely would want someone else to give up life voluntarily in order that the actor might survive. (Hence, #1.) Each actor, would not, however, want someone else to force that actor to die in order that the other actor(s) might live. (The difficulties in #2 - #5.)
-j.
July 12th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I address the problem with two premises. One, the intentional killing of oneself or another is morally wrong. Two, the ends do not legitimate the means. Thus, options 2 through 5 are unacceptable, because they all involve intentional killings, either of oneself or another. Option one, however, is acceptable, although not morally incumbent on any of the lifeboat members. Option one is morally licit so long as the person jumping overboard sincerely desires to stay alive; in other words, that his jumping is not coincidental with a desire to kill himself. In short, option one is morally justifiable, assuming the validity of the abovementioned premises, according to the principle of double effect.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:50 am
This is a variant of the “Plank of Carneades” which posited the same question, only with two sailors on a plank. I am no philosopher or expert in this area, but the question has bedeviled moral philosophers for over two thousand years.
The answers over the centuries say alot about the state of moral philosophy and its preoccupations at any given time. For example, Cicero’s answer was that the person who was of least value to the State should be sacrificed. This type of utilitarian solution does not resonate particularly well to the modern ear, especially after the bloody twentieth century.
When first posed, at least my mind automatically tries to discern whether or not there is a “just” solution to this riddle. I think that exclusively framing the question in terms of justice is what makes this question so hard, and what reveals alot about our time and thought.
I believe it was Francisco Suarez, S.J., who suggested that the answer to the question does no lie in the order of justice, but rather in the order of love.
I hate to be trite, but sometimes non-philosophic sources provide the answer to difficult philosophic riddles. Isn’t Suarez’s point very well illustrated by the events at the end of the movie Titanic, and the way in which that very Hollywood production appealed to millions of people across cultures and across the world?
July 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Pat: As commentor Jonathan says, your reasoning says that a soldier jumping on a grenade to save his buddies is acting immorally, because he is taking his own life. That line of reasoning can be taken further: any soldier is acting immorally, since he is purposely putting his life at risk.
Damien Schiff has an answer to that point: if a person is not acting from a desire to commit suicide, but to achieve some good (and wishes he could do it while staying alive) then he is acting morally.
Jonathan says that in case 2, where everybody has agreed to draw straws but then the loser regrets his decision and must be killed by some winner, the shootist winner is acting immorally but perhaps should not be punished, and “good cannot come of evil, in the end”.
I wonder whether if something is really immoral it should not be punished– our desire not to punish is probably a sign it’s not really immoral— but let’s put that aside.
Certainly good can come of evil. I think of Mephistopheles in Faust, who says something like, “I am that spirit who always wishing to do evil does ever good”. If you believe in God’s providence, He is using evil to achieve good. Whether you do or not, a good example is the entrepreneur’s greed which generates innovation.
Getting back to the lifeboat: Suppose Andrew has lost, and Bob reluctantly shoots him on behalf of himself, Carl, and the others. We have a paradox. You say Bob has acted immorally, unlike Carl and Andrew. But hasn’t Bob acted nobly, in taking the guilt upon himself in order to benefit Carl and Andrew?
Kierkegaard discusses something like this in Fear and Trembling. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac is the ultimate sacrifice, not because it is the sacrifice of his son, but because it is the sacrifice of his human morality on behalf of divine command. Here, Bob would be sacrificing his morality on behalf of his fellow man.
This idea applies to Brad’s point too. Bob is doing even better than pouring out his life for others– he is pouring out his morality.
Note, however, that just as the Jumper cannot be jumping from a motivation to die, instead of to help, so Bob must not be shooting from a motivation to kill, instead of to save.
John Czarnetsky says that Cicero would advise that the least valuable person be pushed off the lifeboat and that this does not resonate well to the modern ear. I purposely kept such considerations out of my story, but I think it still makes sense to people. If Andrew is a disgusting criminal with terminal cancer, and Bob is a saintly young scientist who would shortly come up with a cure for cancer, I don’t think many people would want to give them equal chances to stay in the lifeboat.
The Titanic example is a good one. The boy stays in the water and dies so that the girl can stay on some scrapwood and live– case 1 in my story. If there were two boys, each equally capable of saving the other, the situation is more complicated. Then, “the order of love” would, I think, require them to draw straws to decide who may sacrifice himself for the other. We arrive at something like case 2, but with the twist that the “loser” is the boy who must shoot the other one and refuses. Thus, altruism does not get rid of the moral dilemma.
The Plank of Carneades is hard to track down— do Carneades’s writings survive, or is he just quoted by others?— but there exists a 2003 German article on it.
Mike Rappaport’s weblog entry takes pretty much the same positions I would myself. I will repeat what is at the end of it: none of the comments take seriously the problem that unless there is a volunteer to die, whoever would have been killed will die anyway, plus five more people. Avoidance of what evil outweighs the death of five extra people?
July 27th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
What I might have said was: “Human beings may not knowingly engage in moral evil in an attempt to further the good.” Your quote from Mephisto (Satan??) aside, God may bring good out of anything and everything. But to humans is not given the power to attempt such…
-Jonathan
July 27th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
And of course, in reply to your and Mr. Rappaport’s last thoughts:
“None of the comments take seriously the problem that unless there is a volunteer to die, whoever would have been killed will die anyway, plus five more people. Avoidance of what evil outweighs the death of five extra people?”
The evil of murder, unless one posits that self-defense might mitigate. But, the classic formulation of self-defense is fighting off / killing an attacker who / which would otherwise kill. Yet, the attacker in this case is not another person, but hunger itself.
-j.
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