Should You Save the Greatest Number? - Philosophy Tube
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- Опубликовано: 28 май 2015
- When saving lives, should you always save the greatest number? What if you didn’t have to?
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Suggested Reading:
John Taurek, “Should the Numbers Count?” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1977.
Derek Parfit, “Innumerate Ethics,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1978.
Jens Timmerman, “The Individualist Lottery: How People Count, But Not Their Numbers,” in Analysis, 2004.
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I agree that the individualist lottery would be fair, but would that necessarily mean that it is good? I tend to think of "fairness" the same way I think of "bravery" or "intelligence," in that a decision can be brave, smart or fair without necessarily being the right choice.
A little late, but I love your videos. Can't wait for future ones!
When it comes to moral matters, if "fairness" does not determine the right thing to do, then what does? Popularity of the choice? Intuition? What's better than fairness?
The right thing to do would be to make the decision that, in the long run, will reduce the most amount of unnecessary suffering, and then create the greatest amount of happiness. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but the wants of the many do not also outweigh the needs of the few. It's not necessarily a popularity contest, as that implies that a moral decision could be made on the basis of a someone's want overruling another's need.
This seems to be based on the idea that everybody is egostical, but in reality we have often enough people who are willing to sacrifice themselves even for complete strangers.
Drudenfusz but you can’t *ask* for a sacrifice of life from someone, it’s only a thing to be given away, not taken, and especially not something that could be taken without permission or knowledge
Pah man well you could explain the situation and ask them what they want to do
But why can't you "add that loss together?" Obviously no one can lose 5 lives, but to equate the loss of 1 life to the loss of multiple lives just seems preposterous.
+liberal panda I agree with you, but in philosophy you can't just say "but that seems preposterous!", you have to back your position up with arguments.
Batrax I ended up reading Taurek's actual paper and I've changed my mind haha
Preposterous? To who? Lol
@@TheLiberalPanda so by his logic, we can't say that the holocaust was any worse than one murder?
S A V A K but the total amount of suffering is greater with 5 people. Nothing subjective about it.
I would have thought that this was easily solved through utilitarianism. While 5 people suffering is no worse for any of those people than 1 person suffering, it is a greater amount of suffering. I believe we should try and minimise the total amount of suffering and therefore think it is fine to add together different people's suffering.
But how do you quantify suffering? Whose to say that those five people dying would reduce the total suffering more than the one? Perhaps the five who survived fall into a state of depression as result of that one person dying for their sake. Perhaps the one would have lived a very fruitful, happy life after surviving that would outweigh the suffering caused by the five people dying.
Of course, the reverse could also be true but this is only to point out that Death does not inherently equal Suffering.
@@nickkuroshi0 The opening scene established, albeit "in character", that each of the individuals are "identical" and have no obvious qualities that would make you choose one group over the other so we can use that to state that the loss of any one individually would produce the amount of suffering as any other. Even if this wasn't established, we could redefine our question to explicitly state that the loss of any individual produces 'X' amount of suffering. Therefore, the group of five produces 5X suffering and by saving them only 1X suffering is produced.
EDIT: doing so still leaves the question as "which group do you save" and Bryn Walker's logic would say the group of five.
@@corneliaxaos2745 but that misses my main point which is people aren't math equations. Whose to say the survivors don't suffer from survivor's guilt and produce more suffering? Playing the numbers game works in a vacuum but it becomes a lot more gray when you begin to apply real world variables even when everything else about the victims are the same.
@@nickkuroshi0 the point is to "play the numbers game" and put it in a vacuum in order to come to some truth: all things being equal how do you decide?
@@corneliaxaos2745 then the choice is amoral. The person's suffering doesn't matter and neither does their happiness and my choice is irrelevant. The individual does not matter in this scenario and the only thing that benefits from the choice is the system, which would choose the five people based on the potential loss of productivity. It's not the choice I would make but if these people don't matter then you choose the five.
I might possibly value the lives of those 5 people more than my own.
But you probably wouldn't if they lived sufficiently far away. Almost nobody, when in need of life saving surgery, would say: wait, with the money needed for that operation, one can save 5 or more people from starvation in a remote (or even not-so-remote) country, so do that instead. Even though that is quite probably true. I don't mean this as criticism, I would definitely not do that myself either. Just to say that what appears sound and lofty from a philosophical standpoint doesn't always (or at all) match the way people actually behave.
Depends on the people.
@@marcvanleeuwen5986 you have a preference as the outside observer. Humans produce worth simply by living. They could potentially create things provide social security money if they pay taxes, have children that cross into your family line. People have potential abstract worth even if they are identical and uninvolved in your life.
This Taurek guy just sounds like he's trolling
Hah, maybe!
What about Williams' integrity objection?
Probably a bit of both!
it reminds me of the "everything is 50/50, either it happens or it doesn't" meme. there's one life on one side, and there's only ever the loss of one life on the other side because we can't add them up, so it's one life to one life, and so either are equally valid. it's like he's purposely being bad at math for a philosophical reason that isn't well argued (at least in this video, no offense to philosophy tube since i'm sure a full explanation would be super long), which is what that meme is about in essence.
Yeah, WTF Taurek, you can't just change measure of harm to be 'per person affected' - if you could then you'd let all six die and give the drug to a bunch of other people who don't need it, so they suffer mild side effects, and on average everyone involved is doing 'alright'.
I bet Harvey Dent likes the coin flipping idea
+Kevin Chen (Deva Path) Hah!
+Philosophy Tube you should do an episode on Tokyo ghoul. I know it's an anime and you might not be into it but it seems like something you would do an episode on if you watched it.
You did this entire episode without mentioning trolleys?
It seems to me that Taurek is either missing the point of morality, or is opposed to it.
Now, a definition of morality is inherently going to be flawed, but I've always used "An act is moral if it maximizes happiness for humanity." There are some problems with using happiness as the thing to be maximized. *cough* utility monster *cough* However, It should be obvious using this definition that saving the five is the moral thing to do.
So, Taurek's question "but what value does it have to you?" is basically "But why should I act morally if it disadvantages me?", which is a whole other can of worms. However, I would say that Taurek's view that you can save the one if you really want to can be defended if you chuck morality out of the window.
The "fairness" argument seems misguided to me though. We value fairness because it increases happiness. To then say that saving the five is not moral because it's unfair is to me the equivalent of adding salt to a salami because "adding salt is good". No, making something tasty is good, and can often be caused by adding salt. Similarly, in general increasing fairness is a moral thing to do. However, if by increasing fairness, you decrease total happiness, it is not.
On a less serious note: I can't be the only one who though of Neo every time Olly said "the one", can I?
My personal 'workaround' to 'the individualist lottery':
The base scenario is 6 people are dying
if i can bring myself to let one die, i can save 5 (should be possible, hope i never find out)
if i can bring myself to let 5 die, i can save the one. (i probably simply can't do this)
which would make(/justify) my conscience the deciding factor, because in those situations it would be the deciding factor.
The arguments made in the video still all do apply to 'what SHOULD 'my conscience' decide' though.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."
-Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
And the following movie, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, is Kirk's rebuttal, as he dooms his own career and those of his oldest friends to save one old colleague.
Season 1 episode 2 of Star Trek Picard is a rebuttal to that rebuttal, he could call upon the old Enterprise-D crew to help him on his quest to find Dahj's twin sister, but knows that his mission is too personal to risk the careers of his friends -- hence, his rag-tag crew of lost souls with troubled pasts and nowhere else to go.
I’m with Taurek here and it seems like people are misunderstanding him. Or maybe I am idk but it seems like he’s not necessarily saying what you should do but just how it is. He’s saying something only has as much value as you ascribe to it.The 5 people aren’t inherently more valuable than the one because value is subjective. Who’s the arbiter of objective value? How can something have “objective” value? It can’t so all it depends on is what you value personally. If it was 6 total strangers, I’d save the 5 because I place value on human life and all their lives have equal value to me so from that point of view, the lives of the 5 outweigh the one. But if my partner was the one, for example, I’d save him because I place much greater value on his life than the lives of strangers, so the value of his life outweighs the value of theirs to me.
Perhaps it may be a better question to ask if you value "your responsibilities as a doctor" (to save as many as you can) or if you value "your responsibilities / desire as an individual" (save the person(s) you value the most).
Edit: Art and forgery is the topic I vote for you doing next time.
Taurek's argument seems to rely on two assumptions. The first is that moral value is subjective on a personal, individual level. Whatever you believe is valuable is valuable, at least for you. The second is that an individual loss of life cannot in moral terms be numerically compared to a collective loss of life because each life belongs to a separate individual.
The first assumption fails because morality must at the very least be intersubjective. Morality is about answering the question "Ought I do this?" and this can only be done based on the presupposition that there is an answer to the question "Why ought I do this?" which can only be answered by making use of our rational faculties because only our ability to reason can produce reasons. We all have similar rational faculties (indeed, there is only one way to be rational) and we therefore must accept the same justifications for the same actions. We can't make up our own rules. In order for our actions to be moral, they must be justified and in order for them to be justified, they must be rational and in order for them to be rational, they must be impartial.
The second assumption is absurd since to accept it means to deny any moral difference between someone who murders a single individual and someone who murders several. Using Taurek's "logic" of "there was no one who lost five lives, each individual lost only a single life." we can erase any moral distinction, for example, between the holocaust and some obscure single murder. Taurek seems to forget one simple fact, your life doesn't need to belong to someone in order to be valuable. Since we are the source of value, the loss of a human life means the loss of value in the world. Moreover, the value of a human life is a function of their potential to do good rather than whether people (including the individual in question) like and value them or not.
To summarize: Morality implies impartiality and moral value transcend ownership and opinion, thus Taurek is wrong.
just wondering where did you get your information from
like could you cite your information
hellooooo
@@thesoul8613 Is there any specific claim you want a source for?
@@Paradoxarn. its for research, please
@@thesoul8613 I would say that what I wrote was inspired to a large extent by the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, more specifically the work "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals". I also was inspired by Gottfried Leibniz and his notion of the principle of sufficient reason which he writes about in many of his texts, including the "Monadology". Lastly the works of Plato is also an important influence, I could recommend the work "Gorgias"
I love this video! It's a really interesting topic and since I am one of those people who don't intuitively demand to save the five I have had many discussions about this with several people. (It actually surprised me to find out that so many people see this "save the most" as the only right answer). I just don't see how you can add the suffering/death of different people together and then declare that this suffering/death is somehow bigger than the suffering/ death of one person. Makes no sense to me. I could never put it into an argument, though. This video really helped with that.
This may just be my favourite video of yours :-)
Some excellent further readings on value and the good: "Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong," J.L. Mackie; "Natural Goodness," Phillippa Foot; "Principia Ethica," G.E. Moore; and "The Perfectionist Turn," Douglas B. Rasmussen & Den Uyl
Great Video!
Seems to me that the problem with Taurek's argument is that while he considers the value of each person's life from the perspective of each person, the decision must be made by a distinct judge or mechanism. This implies that each person's perspective is equally valid and deserves an equal chance of being honored, which does not seem like a given.
I just discovered this channel and I think it's great; in a future episode you should talk about whether the government has the right to make any psychoactive drug illegal and punish or force into treatment a person who either uses or abuses an illegal drug.
Intro scenario, as well as the one where "I" is the one sick person
solution: save neither, none of these people have anyone caring about them except (maybe)themselves
what if someone else gets sick and needs the same medication
>i know im almost four years late
>yes, i am 100% serious
Maybe I missed something here because I don't understand how the 5 people's deaths being cumulative is ignored.
In one group you have one death one time. But in the second group you have one death five times. That objectively causes harm to a greater number of individuals.
What am I not understanding here?
OwenBruch22 But there's nobody who dies five times. Taurek's point is that each of the five lose no more than the one would if they died, and that it's a mistake to sum the losses.
Philosophy Tube I understand that it effects them the same individually, but some are in a group and one is not.
How is it a mistake to sum the losses?
OwenBruch22 The losses are only a loss to the one that is losing something, as it was said the five had no connection to anyone else. Their deaths are happening to them individually, not cumulatively, as they are not aware of the other four and cannot be said to have connections to them or a want for the other four to survive over or with themselves. The death essentially removes the loss that a person may have experienced, as the value they held to their life is gone. So the individual losses of the five are equal to that which the one would have.
OwenBruch22 You're absolutely right. The loss of multiple people compared to one is worse than the loss of one person compared to many. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, we're talking about human beings here. If Taurek had a family member or someone else he cared about in the group of five, but the person in charge of saving the lives cared deeply about the one person, I guarantee he wouldn't stick to his selfish beliefs. And that's what that is, selfish. You're willing to put multiple others through emotional pain and grieving and waste the lives of people just to save one? Just fucking think about that. ONE? If you honestly believe it's justifiable on the sole purpose of 'I care about that one person', then you are a terrible, disgusting, and worthless human being. I mean fuck, have some fucking empathy for Christ's sake.
Riley But that ignores that we live in societies.
Also the individuals might not be aware of the cumulative effects, but the observer i.e. the person making the destination, is. Is it not their responsibility to recognize that all these people equally value their lives and therefore they should make the choice that saves the most people?
well, that last bit gets a bit of new meaning after your most recent video.. what i was going to say was, as a non-native speaker it took me the longest time to learn the singular of "dice" i always thought dice was both plural and singular.
Stopped at 4:09. I would look at it from this standpoint: We humans are social organisms with numerous interconnections. If I was in the position to save many versus one, it would be in my best interest to save the many EVEN if that one was someone near and dear to me as the many's social network would react extremely negatively towards me if I allowed them to die. Also, by saving the many there would be less grief inflicted by this action. Either way, I would still be the one experiencing the pain of having to make and live with the results of my decision. No matter what, I will be hurt.
I have a problem with the patients scenario, the implication that people WILL be cured if given a certain medication. At best, one can say that any of the patients WILL LIKELY be cured by the medication, unless one is a psychic. If I give all the medication to the one patient, the patient may still die due to unknowns and the others will likely die as well. OTOH, if I give medicine to the five, it is likely that at least one will live. I guess that is my issue with the formulations of these kind of experiments, assuming certainty of an outcome vs the reality being probablistic.
Voidsworn right- I was thinking the same thing. When he switched to the thought experiment of either saving 99 people on a sinking boat, or 1 person in a raft my first thought was "what happens if you fail to get to the 1 in time?"
+Voidsworn You've gotten it all wrong, and are trying to assume a position of thinking to stop yourself actually discussing the real question; it's not like this situation is entirely realistic, and it's not supposed to be. It's about, like +59eye mentioned, whether or not you should save the greatest number of people, given that the possibility of their survival or the one's survival is entirely and justifiably up to YOU.
gerard lewin I guess, to be completely fair, I should flip a coin to determine who to save?
Voidsworn It does sound crass, doesn't it? But only because flipping a coin is something we do to determine lots of little outcomes... At the end of the day though, with all the reasoning in my first comment + that found in the video, it makes perfect sense.
Just a thought about this. A good argument one could make for saving the five as opposed to the one is a societal one. I imagine most people would choose to live in a country/group where the leaders choose to sacrifice one instead of the many. The odds of a person being the one, being much smaller, most people might prefer it as a sense of security. Not sure what you would think about that.
I know this comment is very old, but those were my thoughts exactly! Similar to the whole Kant’s categorical imperative thing I think. It suits you more, in general/on average, to uphold the value that it is better to save the many over the few, because you yourself are more likely to be part of the many.
If I was that one person who needed the whole medicine, I would choose to give it to the 5 others. Even if I dont know them they still have 5 familys and I only have 1. So 5 familys would miss a person each is worse than that my family miss me.
But what you said was pretty clever because it would be hard for a doctor to choose between 2 people where 1 would die and one would live, and the "flip the coin" metod would work great. And if the doctor knew one of these people he would choose the person he value more ^^
Inas Sani The video seem to miss the option that some people are willing to sacrifice themselves for others. Don't get why he operates in the video as if everybody is just an egoist and thinks just about oneself.
Drudenfusz Because he's a hedonist for some bizarre reason.
Inas Sani I think it is perfectly fine and even admirable that people sacrifice themselves for the good of others. However, I don't believe that we should make a moral law dictating someone's sacrifice. People can do it, but they are not obligated. Therefore there needs to be a moral rule which tells us how to decide such a case.
radialwellendichtrin There's literally no point to morality without such a 'moral law', then it would just be a very basic 'rational law'. Of course many would argue that's synonymous but... I hope the point is sufficient.
Torpid DOW
Huh? How can there be "literally no point" to morality if it's not right to demand personal sacrifice of anybody??
I would save the 5 even if I were the one.
I am so against harm that I would give up my own life to mitigate it.
Also, i think if someone were to not choose the lesser harm this might cause contradictions in other areas, like for instance a legal system would be impossible to justify. At least that is what I found, I could be wrong.
You dying is harm to me buddy, I love you
Thanks for this video. I've always had a problem with the idea that we should always prefer the good of he many over the good of the few simply because of a numerical advantage.
I do love that this has such little practical application except maybe in triage. xD Us philosophers do indeed like to spend our time with issues that are rarely a problem.
Late to the party here but that entire outtake was adorable.
Excellent video. This is actually the first video I've watched on your channel. It definitely won't be the last!
Regarding the topic of the video, it seems neither of the viewpoints takes into account the value of a human life as a physical and quantifiable resource. This includes potential remaining lifetime, potential contribution to society, capability of producing new humans, health (or lack of burden on health institutions), and other such properties. My view is thus: if the 1 person is worth more than the 5 as a human resource, I would choose that person. Otherwise it is more beneficial to the local community and perhaps to humanity as a whole to let the 5 live.
Practically speaking, the obvious issue with this approach is how do you reliably quantify the value of a human? Do you look at the past only? What if this event changes the person completely? Do you just "estimate" their worth based on what *you* think they're worth? But from a purely philosophical standpoint, and in an ideal world which allows us to perform such calculations reliably, I think it's a better approach.
That last bit was adorable
im surprised somebody only came up with that idea in 2004, it seems so simple.
+Amber Lib I guess, but only when you know all the steps that led up to it.
I must say the lottery seems a very clever argument. I can't see a way around that being the best way to decide tbh.
Art and forgery for the next one please
And "You are Glob damm rigth", that actually made me laugh a lot. kudos sir! (^^)
In fairness, if we establish the that the rule of society is that we will always save the larger number of people BEFORE anyone gets this disease, then everyone automatically has an equal chance of survival. Once you get the disease, you have a 5/6 chance of getting the cure, but this is because of fate which put you into that group, rather than a willful decision whether to give your group the cure or not.
Isn't the individualist lottery already run on the basis of who it is that is in the position to do the saving? Their preferences (biases/heuristics), their predilections, etc.?
The way the question is phrased whatever decision the owner of the medicine makes is right. His right to property, oddly enough, trumps the other concerns. He isn't killing anyone by not curing them. You didn't identify him as a doctor or a politician or the like, so he has taken on no responsibility to any party. If six people are starving outside a wealthy person's house, the wealthy person still owns his property. He can feed one person or five people or no one. If you tried to take it from him by force, you're a thief. The owner of the medicine can make up his mind however he wants. Also, no matter what he does, he's saving a life that he was never obliged to save in the first place. This isn't like the push a fat man in front of the train question. He's not pushing anybody. These people are dying of a disease he didn't cause and he has no responsibility towards any of them.
Interesting you use that scenario because in the PS4 Spider-man game Peter Parker was placed in that very scenario where he had a cure but had to choose between saving Aunt May or a city full of complete strangers. In the end he chose saving the city over his aunt.
This makes sense in a round-about sort of way, but this topic will be nearly impossible to initiate a conversation with friends. I can't imagine how I could effectively convey this idea to those around me and have them completely understand it. Heck, someone had to recommend this video to me so I would understand. And honestly, I would have to place this in the morally grey area along with many philosophical topics. Ah well, It was interesting while it lasted. I love shows like this. :)
Nice mentioning of the dyce
Okay, maybe no one loses more than 1 loved one, but isn't 5 people (or 5 groups of people) experiencing loss & pain more significant? The collective suffering caused adds 5x as much suffering into the world. And what of the possible contributions 1 person can make to society? We then lose 5x as much potential good, no? Just a thought.
Kyle Kallgren of Brows Held High did an excellent video on Art and Forgery with his review of the movie "F for Fake." Much as it'd be improbable, I'd love to see what a collaboration between the two of you would look like!
I think the verdict on the quandary posed in your video hinges upon whether one considers the existence of objective values to be possible. I think it would be a mistake to reject them out of hand since there are a number of compelling contemporary moral theories available which either make use of them as platonic or abstract objects or derive them from facts of practical rationality. Though, you do mention that you have some reservations concerning abstract objects which you cover in another video. Guess I'll have to check that out next. Thanks again for another thoughtful video.
Matt Philpott Yup, I think you've successfully cut right to the heart of the matter there!
Vision vs 1/2 The life of univierse.
- Steve Rogers “WE DONT TRADE LIVES”
After watching this video I can say with certainty that I'm glad I've never heard of Taurek before the rest of philosophy. Else I've have written off the entire field as moreally reprehensible pedantry.
Interesting thing about this "individualist lottery", though: you must spin the wheel, throw the dice or flip the coin. You can't just assume that "patient number 6's chances are too small (1/6 against everyone else's 5/6 by proxy), so I'll go ahead and save the others just the same" because then you are not giving the patient any chance. His/ her chances become 0...
Have you looked into Taoism at all? I'd LOVE to see you do a video on that!
This debate is the plot of Heaven's Feel
Oooooh I think someone at Sony heard him explain the 5v1 problem using Spider-Man said “hmmmm that might make for a really neat cutscene for our Spider-Man game”
I like to divide morality into three kinds: Personal, Social and Objective. The first two are self-explanatony, the third one, though, understands the basic deterministic universal laws, wherein there is no good or bad, just actions and reactions -- for there's no one to suffer or judge them. In this case, we make the choice based on Social Morality, which choice would be better for society, etc.
Could the individualist lottery be applied to government when it comes to balancing minority and majority interests? I'm not sure I would leave questions of leadership up to the roll of a die. And if I can't even support the individualist lottery in non life or death situations, how can I support it in your analogy?
Then again, maybe the lottery would be an effective form of government. It would be quite cool so seem some organization adopt this method.
you made the case that one person dying is similar to a city of people dying as each person will have a family that will morn thus equal individual suffering. But wouldn't the odd go up that in the case of the city of people dying a family may lose more than one member who their family thus making it un balanced suffering?
shaun Brown Good point, but it's sufficient for Taurek's argument that there are some possible circumstances in which that doesn't happen.
I'm sure there are ton of possible instances where it doesn't happen. But to be sure of that beforehand you would have to research every person that they know. Also with each additional person, on the majority side, the odds fo up, bo matter how minute.
the odds go up, no matter how minute.*
As a Kantian I think that the best wayof makeing moral judgements is by following Kant's categorical imperativ. But I also think that there are some conflicts that cannot be properly resolved with categorical imperativ, for example the coflict we saw on the video. In that situation I think it is the right thing to save the five people, regardless to your preferences. That means we have to be objective. Yes, I believe we can be objective, because soomething is objective in absence of subjectivness. That means that due to the subjective nature of our perception we shouldn't use it for making moral judgements, because they differ from a person to person. In this situation we have to wheigh 5 individuals against 1. There is more lives lost if we choose to save one person and not to mention the families that would have been hurt. If you think 5 is not so much, then think of thousand or billion people.
Although our perception is subjective and we cannot make objective decisions based on our sences, we have the capacity to think abstractly and therefore imagine things objectively.
I would appreciate any comments.
But isn't the second scenario (rolling the dice) more unfair in a way. If we're approaching it with the idea that if one of the members of the 5 group gets picked then we might as well go ahead and give it to the other 4 then it's the same thing as the first scenario except the person that needs all of the medicine goes from 50% to 1/6 (idk percent). And while on paper the members of the 5 group each have 1/6 chance they really have 5/6 since if any of them get picked they all get the medicine.....I think XD or am I missing something?
P.S. I absolutely LOVE your videos. I'm going to major in Phil (start this fall) and feel I got this(although I probably don't) thanks to your vids XD Thanks and keep up the great work :)
The individualist lottery is very clever, but I think it's important to understand how it works in practice. Obviously, doctors are not going to physically spin a wheel with names on it to decide who gets the medicine. As I see it, Timmerman simply gives us a probabilistic reason to err on the side of saving the greatest number, because if we were to conduct such a lottery, valuing everyone equally, it's more likely that it would favor the greatest number.
@PhilosophyTube can we do a video about seperating from a government. I'd like to hear what philosophy says about things like Scotland, Crimea, Veneto, etc. The US separated from Britain, but now is saying Crimea can't? It's a bit confusing
Flipping a coin to save lives just made me think about Ledger's Joker and Harvey Two-face
What happens in this scenario if you roll the die, and get the one, but the one would prefer if you save the five? Do you take into account each agent's life, or each agent's expressed interest?
I think that the individualist lottery is a great solutions, given the conditions you mentioned. Problem is, I can't think of a single real situation where those conditions would be met.
Now, consider this. You have that exact situation where you can save more people but, you don't have any means of generating a random number fairly. In this case, it makes total sense to "bet" that the random number would select saving more people, doesn't it? So, adding this restriction to the scenario justifies saving more people.
2:00 I think we can add that loss together. Since we are a social species we depend on others in everything we do (the clothes we wear, the water we drink, the car we drive, everything has some human element). Through that we WILL suffer if 5.000.000.000 people die (2:06).
(Around 1:00) I don't believe that it's being said that "x is better from the perspective of nobody" but that "x is better from the perspectives of everybody".
It is an interesting idea, even though impractical (especially when several options are available - that would require a lot of coin tosses) - it does however raise the question that if the die dictated something contrary to some particular agents intuition would she act in accordance to that intuition or will she remain consistent with her principle and act as the die decides? Although this is a question for psychology rather than philosophy.
Is that "Lottery" even practical? or even applicable? it seems like you would kill 101 people just setting the whole thing up(given the 100 or 1 option)
GauntuM I get what you're saying- it would be pretty much useless if one needed to make a split second decision.
Would it be good it someone came up with a way to precisely measure and quantify suffering?
The best question in Philosophy.
I usually do not write about philosophy and I am not very read in this field. I am by no means a religious person. But I think that the discussion can also be seen from another perspective. Because, when it's about saving and sacrificing lives, it all comes down to something that I believe to be in each and every single one of us, but something that we as a specie may have somehow forgotten; and that is the unconditional love - the unlimited love for everything (including mankind), for the whole existance. We talked about what will happen if we save one person or if we save the group of people and why each of those two options would be correct or would be incorrect, but what is done out of love is always beyond good and evil. And when you love somebody or something you do whatever you can to protect that person or thing. Therefore we can flip a coin to decide, but this only shows us that we, as a whole, are vulnerable to hazardous decisions. Therefore, we should collectively collaborate in peace and harmony to prevent from happening any dangerous situations which are resolved by the hazard. Untill we won't tolerate, respect and ultimately love each other and start preventing negative things from happening, because of our love, we will be vulnerable to many sorts of events and decisions, including the hazardous one. This does not mean totally controlling the hazard, but preventing negative situations which are solved by hazardous decisions.
If you flip a coin though, how could you make sure you flipped it fairly, and in whose terms would it be considered fair? Would you have to weigh all the individual's opinion's to making it truly fair, and if not would you set some rules in which the coin will be flipped? How do you know those rules are fair? And what do you define as fair, is fair what all people involved consider fair or just the person with the power? (sorry for focusing on the flipping of the coin, but I thought it would be interesting to delve into that)
Also, it seems that if going with the biggest number is valid approach towards making decisions, one can justify any action if it is for the Greater Good.
To save the greater number is better, given that they all value their lives equally much. The amount of life-value not being disregarded would then be greater by saving the highest number. Even though we might prefer to save our selves, which we might have some biological reason for, it is still to ignore the 5 others, to say that ones own life should be given more importance. So my argument is that we should care about how our choices affect other people.
"Flippant" - lol nice pun
I feel like we’re more likely to accept this weird “each person’s perspective” thing because it’s a moral dilemma, but the same argument could be made for murderers as well. The extension of this is “If you murder one person, they can’t experience any more pain if you murder others, therefore mass murder is no more amoral than an individual murder”
Could you do something on Alain badiou?
It's kinda like the example in Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism, where a young man asks for help in deciding whether he should stay and look after his sick mother or go off to join the resistance to fight the Nazis. And I think the answer is the same, namely: there is no answer (at least not definitively, or satisfactorily). 'You are free, therefore you choose-that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world.' You encounter the abyss of your freedom, you must leap, and consequently you must experience the gravity of responsibility. There's no right answer, no wrong answer: there's only an answer you have to live with. Most of the time, attempts to build systems of moral calculus are attempts to escape responsibility and the reality of freedom, to say "It wasn't my fault, my ethical procedure dictated this course of action, therefore I HAD to do it that way, it was my ONLY option."
As systems go, however, I think this individualist lottery thing is way better than any utilitarian obscenity, even if in the end it comes down to "sorry, bro, bad luck." I have some queries though: so we roll our die and it lands on 4, so 4 wins and 2, 3, 5 and 6 win by proxy. Awesome. But then, what if 4 is like "NO, bro, I'm not cool with that. I want 1 to live. I don't want someone's death to be necessary for my continued life. I don't mind dying, I'm totally an Epicurean." What do we do then? Do we say, "Hold up, that's not how it works, we've come to a decision: you five are going to live"? To which 4 might reply, "Wrong, the result was that I get to live - I won - and these others get to tag along; and I say, as the winner, that I should get to decide, and I decide that 1 should live." Okay, so this is a pretty weird situation anyway but what I'm getting at is CONSENT, and from here there are a few places we can go: 1) perhaps we disregard 4 and their being difficult and roll again (but what's the point in repeating a procedure which we originally ignored?). 2) perhaps everyone is in agreement with 4 so we have to decide in who we trust more, our procedure or these people (and if we go with people our procedure becomes pointless again). 3) perhaps only some are in agreement with 4 in which case things get difficult again. 4) perhaps no one is in agreement with 4 and we just tell him to shut up and live, that life is unfair and they needs to get over themselves... and there are way more scenarios, which is what I don't like about these kinds of hypotheticals, because you can always keep adding details that change the parameters of the whole situation and they're just annoying (and personally I don't think they're helpful either, like, goodness forbid, if I'm ever in a situation like this, I won't think back to all these variations of reasoning, I'll just have to decide).
Here's a stupid twist on the situation: Spiderman has to choose between MJ and the rest of the human species; he chooses MJ, this is why: in his later years Spiderman actually became an impassioned ecologist and started to relate to beautiful spiders over ugly humans; seeing that humans are about to cause an ecological catastrophe, the scale of which has not been seen since the extinction of dinosaurs (in fact, that was nothing compared to what's coming), he decides that humans on the whole aren't worth the sacrifice of the rich diversity of other lifeforms on the planet; so it's just Spidey and MJ and a planet whose biosphere has a long, unpolluted, prosperous life ahead of it - in a word, a happy ending.
But to be serious, let's go back to Sartre: 'Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art... No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it's done.'
This question reminds a lot of Life is Strange.
I choose to save Arcadia Bay over Chloe both times I've played, but it was a very sad choice.
Octo-Legged Olly!
I think the question shouldn't be what's the fairest thing to do, but rather what decision provides the most happiness for most people.
If you look at the example you gave with the 5 versus 1 dilemma, then if those 5 people died and 1 person was cured you would make a smaller group of people happy then if you'd cured 5 people.
You can't really measure happiness but you can look at the number of people that would be affected based on your choice and in the case of you letting 5 people die, those 5 people will generally have more social connections and thus a greater amount of people would be upset/unhappy if they were to die.
NICE - the body that governs cost-effectiveness of treatment and thence whether the health service will provide if in the UK - would likely suggest that you'd add more QALY (quality-adjusted life years) by treating the five patients and consequently that's probably the way to go - as all other things are meant to be equal so the people you save will live for the same number of years after this intervention, you're going to add five times the number of QALY's by saving the five people, and thus this should be the way forward.
I would like to see the subject of whether or not a prisoner should get the vote be discussed.
Part of the issue is that we value human life as if it were a resource on its own merit. If we broaden our point of view, and since this is a philosophical hypothetical, what if we omnisciently know that one of these people is essential in feeding millions of people, all of whom would die, due his death. It is not so much the value of one life that we value, but the value that one offers others, while he is alive.
***** _"do you think it's immoral for a parent to go through with giving birth to a child that has a disability?"_
I honestly haven't given it much thought. The following is merely thinking out-loud, subject to revision of better thinking or facts. And it's likely to be long. Sorry.
My first thought is that if a claim to morality could be made, it would likely be that of an appeal to harm. It is likely that two arguments would be made. The first, is harm to the one born with the disability, depending on it's nature. Blindness or a painful disease? The second would be harm to the family or community, in the form of an unfair burden to the caretakers.
"Unfair" and "harm" are of course subject to the value system of these folks. Would a couple who desperately want a list-ditch attempt at children be willing to support a child who is likely to be blind or deaf, for example? We have remediative technologies for such things. But maybe it's a horrible, painful, wasting disease that takes 15 years to tortuously kill.
In my opinion, the latter can only be decided on a case-by-case basis, and that no generalization can be reasonably drawn. That would leave us with the first argument: harm to the unborn child.
Another very relevant question is: legally, do the parents have an obligation to the fetus? External factors constrain intention. If there is no intent to harm, it would be very difficult to apply the label "immoral." The Western world usually classifies the beginning of life somewhere around the 20-ish week mark, I think. Until such time, the neurology is not sufficiently developed to experience pain (or suffering, I don't know which of the two is true.) Until such time, the parents have no obligation, thus no rights are violated, making the call of "immorality" a tough one to make.
After that? They have little choice, based on abortion laws. So, they have a brief period of time to learn of the potential condition, make a decision and act on it. Right there, I'd give them a lot of leeway. It's not an easy decision to make if one has never thought of it.
I personally do not believe that there is one absolute rule that can draw a line in the sand. It's a complex judgment based on many factors.
My _personal_ judgment given all of two minutes of thinking, is that unless the parents are doing so with intentional malice, that it would not be so, under most normal conditions. Worthy of sympathy, perhaps, or maybe a personal response of disgust by the non-involved, but it isn't their life, is it?
It would take a heck of a lot more detail to discuss the matter intelligently so as to arrive to a sound conclusion.
Those were my quick 2 cents.
***** _"As far as I'm aware, people with Down's can be perfectly happy and even healthy, but some people said that my relatives were immoral because having Down Syndrome means that they will still be vulnerable in life, and that they can be prone to certain health issues, like heart problems."_
So the argument is appealing to harm, for the child. Each person's life is their own, and no other can authoritatively judge of another's choices. We can make the judgements, but what does it serve to express them in light of something that cannot be changed? Doing so earns one the label _busy body._
I think there is, in fact, a case for saving the greater number of people, addressing the issue of perspective. The perspective that the five are better to save than the one is NOT "objective", not by a long shot - If it were from the perspective of buzzards who got to eat whoever died, they would probably choose the five to die and the one to live, or even deny the drug to any of the six. What's really going on is that the greater number being saved is addressing the perspective of "the whole of humanity", a collection of all perspectives weighted towards the greater number naturally, by way of there being more of their perspective included in the outcome. In this instance, we aren't talking about all humans, just the ones effected by the decision directly. It's better to save more people because each of those people can make decisions and do things equally, and there are more than them than there are of the one. Certainly, no one would argue that saving five fifths of a person is better than saving one, so long as both groups have the same capacity for agency.
John Taurek forgets about siblings and children. Some people would lose more than one family member, so individual people would lose more if say the whole of new york was killed vs Mary Jane.
To start out, there is a great quote by Mill that talks about how to weigh everyone's preferences, and that is, "A society among equals must exist on the notion that everyone's interests are to be regarded equally." Not valuable by itself, but I thought it was interesting and applicable to this video. You do a great job, by the way, of addressing all the possible opinions on the matter, but I find disagreement once you start with Individualist Lottery ideas, (the first mentioning being the 6-sided die). Now, you start off the discussion of fairness on the notion that instead of merely jumping to the conclusion to save the 5, you must think about the outcomes and how each outcome is to be regarded equally in order to be fair. Yet, right after that you jump back to considering people's preferences, (in terms of only them being the ones saved). It might just be me, but I find this unnecessarily picky about what truly occurs to each individual versus the actual outcomes of 1 or 5 people dying. Whether it merely be by consequence or by the wishes of those involved, if it turns out that the 1 person has a lower likelihood of survival by virtue of being in the minority, it still violates your given definition of fair, (assuming, of course, that you didn't shift the definition to fit each state in the progression of the topic/video). I understand that at least with the Individualist Lottery scenarios, the minority has a chance, but diminishing someone's claim to life because of circumstances outside of his/her control seems rather UNfair, regardless of how much better the decision would be. In closing: I love your videos, and keep up the good work...maybe consider doing a video on Moral Luck also haha
Art and forgery sounds good :)
I think the flaw in that reasoning is the same flaw embodied in Randian "objectivism", Nashian game theory: the automatic assumption that everyone is a selfish, Rational (TM) actor only interested in utterly individualist goals. It's also reminiscent of the imperialist mindset that if I have authority over this decision, it is necessarily natural that I do, and perfectly reasonable that I should make this decision without input from the affected people.
Of course numbers, like in every other aspect of life, do matter in moral decisions, too.
1) Either we consider the loss of one’s life to make a big deal of damage to him intrinsically (e.g. because that deprives him of all the good of his future life), independently of any external factor (like the grief of relatives, social considerations and so on) or we don’t. I personally think it is sensitive to go for the former (and going for the latter would entail very hard-to-defend moral consequences. Just think a bit about it). So let’s assume we accept the former stance for the moment.
2 If letting someone die/killing him is equal to causing a big damage to him, then it’s not clear why causing a certain damage to 5 different people should be equivalent to causing that same damage to one single person. Yes, “better” or “worse” is something that must be related to the point of view of somebody, but there seem to be no explanations why we should neglect the point of view of people we will eventually let die. In other words, just because as an effect of our own choice some would eventually die and some would survive, we don’t have reasons to weigh the point of view of all of the subjects involved in different ways. Note that because of point #1 “letting someone die“ is, for the sake of our moral decision, just an equivalent to “damaging somebody”.
3 Suppose i killed somebody yesterday. And suppose i’m about to choose wether i should go out and kill somebody else right now, or not. Does the murder i committed yesterday magically make today’s decision neutral, or irrelevant? Or less important of any other decision of that kind just because “i’ve done it before”? Now, does damaging two people as a result of two separate acts or as a result of a single act make a relevant difference? The final consequences of my actions would be exactly the same. So to let 5 people die in order to save one, is equivalent to let someone survive by scarifying another one, and at the same time letting 4 people die in change of nothing. Whereas letting one die in order to save 5 people is equivalent to let someone survive by scarifying another, on then saving an additional 4 people with no need to scarify anybody else. Still uncertain whether there’s one choice better than the other?
4 Rolling a dice the very first time to decide who to spare is not really a 1vs1 situation. Since we know in advance that very first roll will determine whether to spare the one and let the five die or vice versa, that is already a 1vs5 decision that we are letting chance to decide for us, all at once. Letting chance decide instead of reasoning ourselves is admitting that every possible consequence is morally equivalent to the others (if not, we would decide our own what’s right to do, using our brain and nothing else).
We cannot hide our moral responsibilites behind random events like the roll of a dice. I think in moral philosophy, when we come up with chance as a source of our choices, we basically surrendered and lost.
For sure there might be cases in which two (or more) decisions are morally equivalent, and therefore tossing a coin would be ok, but this is just not one of them. We can do much better than roll a dice here.
I think what would be more interesting about deciding who lives or dies is if the the other five random people were in relation to that one person. So no matter who dies, any loss would still affect the family. So does this get rid of any preference? Unless you prefer your mum over your nan.. I guess individualistic lottery would have to take place again. OR if five members of the family die would that be a greater loss than one because they would morn over all five rather than one?
The randomness factor seems the most valid for this situation, but if the situation were more instant, that would not work. For example, if five people were trapped on train tracks together and one person was trapped on another set individually, a moral agent would be forced to decide on saving one of the groups. Whatever choice we instinctively decide during the situation seems justified. The value of human lives should not be measured regardless of any factors. If saving a person or group of people requires the death of another person or group of people, saving either group is fine in my view, even if one group consists of one person while the other consists of a thousand people. As long as one is saving someone, and does not have time to make a decision randomly, your decision is sufficient.
taurek actually describes the plot of infinity war here
Missed the opportunity to make a 1d6 chart from D&D! :P I think the Individualist Lottery is just a way to avoid making the decision by letting chance make it for you. To be blunt, I think its cowardly. Save the 5, the 1 will have to understand that this is likely the same choice they'd make. Sure, its not the 1's fault that they're sick, but it isn't the 5's either. I don't think there's a principle-based, Kantian way to answer this problem, so the utilitarian answer is your next best method. Save the 5.
Next week, Art & Forgery!
I often view philosophical problems in practical terms.
If you are trying to build a system around which is the "right" answer, you can't know which person you will be when this problem arises in the system, and you have equal chances of being any of the people.
So even from a selfish perspective it makes sense to set up the system such that it prioritizes the lives of the many over the few.
Sure it will suck if you draw the bad ticket, but ideally the person or people making the system don't know what position they will have within the system and thus will make as fair of a system as possible.
Which is also why most political systems are bullshit: the people shaping the system know where they stand/will stand within it and thus prioritize themselves over everyone else
I wish you had discussed another tactic for resolving this conflict--an auction. For your lottery example, you explicitly assume that each person equally wants the drug so that one individual's preferences cancel out another individual's preferences. What if we weaken that assumption? How could one person credibly communicate that they want the drug more than the rest? In auction, you communicate your preferences through your bids--the higher the bid the more you want the drug.
An auction isn't without its problems, of course. The most obvious is that bids are determined by income (and access to credit) and not just preferences. But I think auctions have another big advantage over a lottery. Namely, auctions allow the doctor to profit from the drug, which will give other doctors incentive to try and make their own competing drug. This will help reduce the problem of resource scarcity that is the source of the conflict.
Ok, so nobody will miss more than one patient, but saving 5 people still gives a higher probability that at least one of them will become someone to negotiate world peace (or sth equally important) in the distant future.
There seems to be a flaw with his argument that nobody loses any one life. Arguably, if the 5 were all children of the 1 (or of an external observer), they would lose far more than one life if the 5 died. It all depends on the person of course, but there will be many people who feel that way.
As the person administering the drug or steering the lifeboat, I think saving more people would actually be better for me. I can either feel sorry for 1 person, or for 5 people. If they are equally important to me, I would feel 5 times worse than saving only 1 person.
When it comes to the one choosing himself over the five being morally acceptable. I don't think anyone could really fault him when most wouldn't sacrifice themselves in the same situation. Yet if they did choose sacrifice, they would be hailed as a hero. Therefore, it seems to me that while choosing the one is morally acceptable, it's not the most moral option.
Even if the five said to the one "we're willing to sacrifice ourselves for you", it still feels selfish for the one to take advantage.
Is bad the same as less good. This is the choice between two goods. It is not about sacrificing the lives of the one(s) you do not choose to sav but rather to save the ones you choose to save. Saving your own life is is also a moral choice but you could also say that saving the others could be said to be more moral.
On the six sided die rolling method, is there any reason to prefer rolling it once instead of rolling it twice or three times? If not, any number of rolls should do, as long as you add up all the results saying "save the five" and all the results saying "save the one." In this case why not calculate the result of the die being rolled an infinite number of times, in which case statistical variability will disappear and we save the five.
Also, I think the way you used moral language here assumed non-cognitivism, and that might be why this seemingly simple issue became problematic.
Okay but it's better for more people if you save the 5
Could I ask: from the utilitarian point of view, would a person be morally obliged to sacrifice themselves to save more than one other person? Also, would a utilitarian consider self harm or suicide to be immoral, since it causes suffering?
I agree completely and that's why I saved Chloe instead of Arcadia Bay.
Xidnaf watched early Philosophy tube OMG!