If you hear about Phillipa Foot at all today it will be in connection with something called the Trolley Problem and you will quite likely end up hating her as a consequence as it is painfully artificial problem that gives rise to all sorts of painfully artificial distinctions and nuances, not a single one of which is any damn use to anybody.
The trolley problem first comes up in the middle of a rather painful essay you can read here. No one reads the essay anymore because the problem is used considered independently of the particular problem Foot wanted to apply it to. Typically, we don't get the problem as she posed it either but a subsequent modification.
Here, for your interest, is the original problem as set up by Phillipa Foot:
... supposed that he is the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed. In the case of the riots the mob has five hostages, so that in both the exchange is supposed to be one man's life for the lives of five.And that's the whole thing. Entire libraries of writing have been produced as result.
Typically, the problem is modified so that the moral actor is not the driver but a bystander. We watch the trolley/tram come running and we see the driver slumped over the controls. Fortunately, there is a switch we can operate but we only have the two choices: we can either allow the train to keep running and kill five men or we can pull the switch and shift it onto another track where it will kill only one.
It's very important to the problem (and largely unimportant to everything else) that not acting will kill five people.
If the person teaching the problem is even halfway honest, they will begin by acknowledging how artificial the problem is. Why, just for starters, can't we just yell at the workers to get out of the way?
The answer to that is because the problem says we can't. When you're taught this in philosophy, you are told that the trolley problem helps us "get at" certain important distinctions.
What sorts of distinctions you ask. Well, here's one based on a modification to the problem raised by Judith Jarvis Thomson. Suppose that you are standing on a bridge overlooking the trolley track. Again, you can't yell but there is a fat man standing near you whom you could push over the edge and stop the trolley. Would it be okay to kill him in order to save five others on the track below? If we compare that problem with the original we can see a difference. In one, we are pulling a lever to save five men and that will have the unfortunate consequence of killing a sixth man whereas in the other we are committing an active act of homicide to save the five.
Big difference? I'm not so sure.
But I never get that far. I get off this particular tram long before. For starters I saw a tram hit a big Mercedes sedan once. Even with the tram driver leaning on the brakes with all his might that tram dragged the Mercedes all the way across the intersection and then some, reducing it to a useless mass of twisted metal in the process. There is no fat man in the world fat enough to stop a trolley.
But even if we allow that this is a wimpy little trolley that can be stopped by throwing a fat man over the edge of the bridge, how are we going to get him there? I suppose the man might be standing in just the right place that that we could come along and tip him over but how likely is that? And he isn't going to go willingly. And he has to be pretty darn fat because he does have to stop a trolley after all. Are we so strong that we can subdue the guy, get him off the ground and over the rail? And you wouldn't want to miss.
And therein lies the most basic fault with the problem: it takes it for granted that we have the expertise required to do the thing required. That is a terribly artificial assumption. Think of the basic level where you are a bystander and there is a switch. Okay, even assuming that the transit authority in this town is so irresponsible that they leave switches open so that any juvenile delinquent can come along and throw them, do you you know how to throw such a switch? I mean, just looking at it can you even tell which track is currently selected? Wouldn't it be awful if you pulled the switch when it was already set to go down the track where only one would be killed and you killed five?
Let's go back to our fat man for a second. Have you ever wrestled a grown man off his feet? I used to be a bouncer and I can tell you I'd hesitate before thinking of such a thing.
And would you even look? I mean, imagine yourself standing on the bridge watching this out of control trolley come hurtling along and seeing the men in the way. Would you even turn away to look for something to throw over to stop the trolley?
I could keep going but I'm sure you get the point: this is just a stupid exercise. Arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin is a deeply practical exercise by comparison.
No one makes decisions on these grounds and even if they did it probably wouldn't be of much use to them because you also need considerable expertise to actually make any of these choices. You would also need the intestinal fortitude to actually do it. If you actually saw this trolley hurtling along your most likely reaction would be to stand there helplessly and watch it happen. (And there is a good argument to be made that standing there and watching it happen is in fact the morally right thing to do.)
Although no one deals with problems this way in real life this is the way a lot of ethical argument was actually carried out in universities and in applied medical ethics and here, I think, we begin to see the terribly useful service Phillipa Foot has performed. She pushed this sort of argument to point where most students come up with a different formulation of the problem: How seriously do I have to take this crap? Or, as the Serpentine One put it back in her university days, If I don't learn this will it prevent me from graduating?"
Foot herself, by the way, ultimately decided that this sort of problem wasn't very important. For Foot, what the trolley problem was meant to highlight was that evaluating moral choices in terms of consequences was just not a satisfactory way to go about things. She thought the way to approach ethics was to look at arguments for why people should want to strive to develop virtues.
As it turned out, none of her arguments for why we should develop virtues was any good. But she got us headed down the right path.
You're right, this is how all ethics were--and probably are still--taught. The "Lifeboat" story was a similar exercise. As I was taught in Ethics classes, the point of both the Trolley and Lifeboat stories was about "social worth." Are the lives of 5 men worth more than the life of one man? Or is the life of the fat man worth less than those whose lives would be saved. I understand that Thompson's theory is that a fat man would have enough body mass to stop the trolley, but the fact that its a "fat" man could appeal to a bias against fat people that seems to have escaped her.
ReplyDeleteWhile these stories are stupid, they are useful in getting people to address the issue of social worth. Is one life worth more than another? This has practical applications in who will be the recipients of organ donations, end of life issues, and also abortion. Since the beginning of organ tranplantation, social worth is a very real consideration in who will receive scarce organs. It is highly unlikely--near impossible--that a chronic alcoholic with other health issues will be chosen to receive the one available liver when there are healthier non-alcoholic candidates in need of a liver. This is SOP, and hospitals have ethical review boards to evaluate and come to a determination about these kinds of cases.
I agree with you that not acting is probably the moral thing to do in the case of the trolley. And I agree that these stories take for granted that we have the expertise required to do the thing required, I was also taught in Ethics classes that "ought to do" assumes "able to do." But, these stories are useful in helping people to frame what is moral or right when the answer is not immediately apparent.
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ReplyDeleteWhoops, I just looked at my comment and realized it needed editing. Here it is again with improvements:
ReplyDelete"I was also taught in Ethics classes that 'ought to do" assumes "able to do.'"
I was taught that too, although some (such as Kant) would argue that the ought holds even if doing is impossible.
Me, I think developing the ability to do is what real morality is about. When my father taught me to clean a fish he very clearly told me that developing this ability was a moral task and I think he was right. Knowing what to do and how to do it is an important part of learning to live as a moral human being.
I guess in this case, that is what really bothers me about the artificiality of the trolley problem. It's an example used by people who know nothing about what trolleys are like and therefore has no real moral import.
That would be true if the issue were really the trolley. Its not. The issue is what is a human life worth, and are some human lives worth more than others, and how do we make those decisions when they need to be made.
ReplyDeleteI also think you're confusing "able to do" as in able to make a good decision, with "able to do" as in "able to perform CPR on the spot with no prior training when someone you're sitting next to goes into cardiac arrest" for example, and then wringing one's hands after the person dies thinking "I should have performed CPR on him." Because one hasn't had training in CPR doesn't mean one is not moral or virtuous. Or thinking I ought to give more money to my church when I earn barely enough to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head. Indeed, it would be irresponsible to give more money to my church if it meant I could not pay my rent or buy food for my children. That's what I meant by "ought assumes is able to."
BTW, today's AoM email on Minimalism is excellent, I've forwarded it to all the young men I know (and some older men too).
ReplyDeleteThis is something I will return to later but the short answer is that I think that making decisions has very little to do with morality. As one of my professors used to joke, if ethics is primarily a matter of solving moral problems then you would expect people who teach ethics at the university level to be better at it than others and they clearly are not.
ReplyDeleteThat is what bothers me about things like the trolley problem: it makes it look like being moral is really about many incredibly complex analytic distinctions when what the situation described would really need in real life is someone who knows how to operate a trolley.
My position is not an original one but I think that almost of morality is not about figuring out what the right thing to do is but actually doing the right thing. Most moral failures don't happen because we don't know what the right thing is but because we lack the moral strength to actually do it. And I think being able to actually do the right things is more like learning CPR than we think. You can read about CPR just as you can read about standing up for the truth but actually doing either is a matter of practicing certain skills.
I haven't checked out the A of M site today but I'll look up that piece on manliness later.
I was typing too fast above and there are lots of mistakes. The key one is that where I typed in the third paragraph "... but I think almost of morality ..." what I meant to say was "i think almost all of morality ..."
ReplyDeleteAnd I do think that almost all of morality is about training yourself to behave in certain ways and virtually none of it is about solving moral problems.
That's right, for most of us as individuals. And I guess we each would have our own criteria for behaving morally as individuals under the circumstances each of us face. Your analogy about learning CPR--like behaving morally-- without practicing it is correct. But my point in using that example was to illustrate that there is no moral culpability for or anything unvirtuous about the person who finds himself in a situation where CPR is required and not knowing how to do it unless there is a moral imperative for everyone to learn CPR, which I don't think there is. So it is foolish to argue that he or she ought to have performed CPR to save the dying man's life unless he or she would be expected or required to have those skills (like a lifeguard) which most people are not. That's what I meant by ought to do assumes can do.
ReplyDeleteI both agree and disagree about your earlier statements about Ethics. For most of us as individuals most of the time acting morally is a skill that can be learned and practiced. But when you get into the area of Distributive Ethics and the allocation of scarce resources-- like donor organs or health care in general--making a moral choice does involve complex analytical distinctions. I think what Ethicists try to do is frame the moral arguments to help people discern what criteria should be used when trying to arrive at a moral decision in those situations. These are not situations where there is an obviously right moral choice and an obviously wrong moral choice. These are situations where more than one moral value are in competition with one another, maybe along with limited resources so that one but not all of them can be fulfilled. The role of the Ethicist, as I see it, is to help people decide which moral value should trump given the realities of the individual circumstances. If the lifeboat can only hold 5 people without sinking, and there are 6 people on board, what moral criteria should be used to decide who should be thrown over? It misses the point to say what they really need is a rescue helicopter to show up. That's like saying in the case of one donor liver and five people who need it that what they really should do is get five livers.
I meant Distributive Justice above, I was typing fast too!
ReplyDeleteRegarding your professor's comment made in jest, I studied Ethics in graduate school because I wanted concrete answers to life's moral questions. What I learned, instead, was how to frame the questions, which is no small task. No reputable Ethicist--except maybe Hauerwas--would claim to have all the answers. A good Ethicist should teach you what questions to ask, because therein will lie the answers.
I think that these hypotheticals like the Trolley and the Lifeboat have value in that they force students of Ethics to confront their belief systems and values, maybe for the first time. This can require assigning priorities to competing values, which they probably never thought about before, but is something we are often required to do in real life. As I recall, the essays and term papers we were required to write for Ethics classes were judged not by the conclusions we reached but how we arrived at those conclusions, and the reasoning we used to say that one moral value would trump another moral value in a given situation. I once took a course called Tragic Choices, which dealt with situations for which there were no good or optimum options only potentially "less bad" options. Its not enough to say that the lay person who practices virtue will know what to do when in that type of situation. No amount of practice can prepare someone when they have to decide if and when to pull the plug on a loved one in a persistent vegetative state, or whether or not to terminate a pregnancy that has no chance of success, or if they will challenge a dying parent's request for a DNR order. These are very complex issues with a host of moral values--often opposing moral values--competing at once. And virtuous people can arrive at completely different conclusions depending on which of their moral values they ultimately decide should take priority. I also think that this methodology can and does apply in non-medical situations throughout life. Not to trivialize the gravity of this discussion, but as someone once said, life is all about trade-offs.
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