THE MORAL SIDE OF MURDER This is a course about justiceand we begin with a story. Suppose you're the driverof a trolley car,and your trolley caris hurtling down the trackat 60 miles an hour.And at the end of the trackyou notice five workersworking on the track.You try to stopbut you can't,your brakes don't work.You feel desperatebecause you knowthat if you crashinto these five workers,they will all die.Let's assumeyou know that for sure.And so you feel helplessuntil you noticethat there is,off to the right,a side track and at the endof that track,there is one workerworking on the track.Your steering wheel works,so you can turn the trolley car,if you want to,onto the side trackkilling the one but sparing the five. Here's our first question:what's the right thing to do?What would you do?Let's take a poll.How many would turnthe trolley caronto the side track?Raise your hands.How many wouldn't?How many would go straight ahead? Keep your hands up those of youwho would go straight ahead.A handful of people would,the vast majority would turn.Let's hear first,now we need to beginto investigate the reasonswhy you thinkit's the right thing to do.Let's begin with those in the majority who would turn to goonto the side track.Why would you do it?What would be your reason?Who's willing to volunteer a reason? Go ahead. Stand up.Because it can't be rightto kill five peoplewhen you can onlykill one person instead.It wouldn't be rightto kill five if you could killone person instead.That's a good reason.That's a good reason.Who else?Does everybody agreewith that reason? Go ahead.Well I was thinking it's the same reason on 9/11 with regardto the people who flew the planeinto the Pennsylvania fieldas heroes because they choseto kill the people on the planeand not kill more peoplein big buildings.So the principle therewas the same on 9/11.It's a tragic circumstancebut better to kill oneso that five can live,is that the reasonmost of you had,those of youwho would turn? Yes?Let's hear nowfrom those in the minority, those who wouldn't turn. Yes. Well, I think that'sthe same type of mentality that justifies genocideand totalitarianism.In order to saveone type of race,you wipe out the other.So what would you doin this case?You would, to avoidthe horrors of genocide,you would crashinto the five and kill them? Presumably, yes.You would?-Yeah.Okay. Who else?That's a brave answer.Thank you.Let's consideranother trolley car caseand see whether those of you in the majoritywant to adhereto the principle"better that one should dieso that five should live."This time you're not the driver of the trolley car,you're an onlooker.You're standing on a bridge overlooking a trolley car track. And down the track comesa trolley car,at the end of the trackare five workers,the brakes don't work,the trolley caris about to careeninto the five and kill them. And now, you're not the driver,you really feel helplessuntil you noticestanding next to you,leaning over the bridgeis a very fat man.And you couldgive him a shove.He would fall over the bridgeonto the track right in the wayof the trolley car.He would diebut he would spare the five.Now, how many would pushthe fat man over the bridge?Raise your hand.How many wouldn't?Most people wouldn't.Here's the obvious question.What became of the principle "better to save five liveseven if it means sacrificing one?" What became of the principlethat almost everyone endorsedin the first case?I need to hear from someonewho was in the majorityin both cases.How do you explainthe difference between the two? Yes. The second one, I guess,involves an active choiceof pushing a person downwhich I guess that person himself would otherwise not have been involved in the situation at all.And so to choose on his behalf,I guess, to involve himin something that heotherwise would have escaped is,I guess, more than whatyou have in the first casewhere the three parties,the driver and the two sets of workers,are already, I guess,in the situation.But the guy working,the one on the trackoff to the side,he didn't chooseto sacrifice his life any morethan the fat man did, did he?That's true, but he wason the tracks and...This guy was on the bridge.Go ahead, you can come backif you want. All right.It's a hard question. You did well.You did very well.It's a hard question.Who else can find a wayof reconciling the reactionof the majorityin these two cases? Yes.Well, I guess in the first casewhere you have the one workerand the five,it's a choice between those twoand you have to makea certain choice and peopleare going to diebecause of the trolley car,not necessarily becauseof your direct actions.The trolley car is a runaway thingand you're making a split second choice. Whereas pushing the fat man overis an actual actof murder on your part.You have control over thatwhereas you may not have controlover the trolley car.So I think it's a slightlydifferent situation.All right, who has a reply?That's good. Who has a way?Who wants to reply?Is that a way out of this? I don't think that'sa very good reasonbecause you choose to-either way you have to choosewho dies because you eitherchoose to turn and kill the person, which is an actof conscious thought to turn,or you choose to pushthe fat man overwhich is also an active,conscious action.So either way,you're making a choice.Do you want to reply?I'm not really surethat that's the case.It just still seemskind of different.The act of actually pushing someone over onto the tracksand killing him,you are actually killing him yourself. You're pushing himwith your own hands.You're pushing himand that's differentthan steering somethingthat is going to causedeath into another.You know, it doesn't really sound right saying it now.No, no. It's good. It's good.What's your name?Andrew.Andrew.Let me ask you this question, Andrew. Yes.Suppose standing on the bridgenext to the fat man,I didn't have to push him,suppose he was standing overa trap door that I could openby turning a steering wheel like that.Would you turn?For some reason,that still just seems more wrong. Right?I mean, maybe if you accidentally like leaned into the steering wheel or something like that.But... Or say thatthe car is hurtlingtowards a switchthat will drop the trap.Then I could agree with that.That's all right. Fair enough.It still seems wrong in a waythat it doesn't seem wrongin the first case to turn, you say. And in another way, I mean,in the first situationyou're involved directlywith the situation.In the second one,you're an onlooker as well.All right. -So you have the choiceof becoming involved or notby pushing the fat man.All right. Let's forget for the moment about this case.That's good.Let's imagine a different case.This time you're a doctorin an emergency roomand six patientscome to you.They've been in a terribletrolley car wreck.Five of themsustain moderate injuries,one is severely injured,you could spend all daycaring for the oneseverely injured victimbut in that time,the five would die.Or you could look after the five, restore them to healthbut during that time,the one severely injured person would die.How many would save the five? Now as the doctor,how many would save the one? Very few people,just a handful of people.Same reason, I assume.One life versus five?Now consider another doctor case. This time, you're a transplant surgeon and you have five patients,each in desperate needof an organ transplantin order to survive.One needs a heart,one a lung, one a kidney,one a liver,and the fifth a pancreas.And you have no organ donors.You are about to see them die.And then it occurs to youthat in the next roomthere's a healthy guywho came in for a check-up.And he's – you like that –and he's taking a nap,you could go in very quietly,yank out the five organs,that person would die,but you could save the five.How many would do it?Anyone? How many?Put your hands upif you would do it.Anyone in the balcony?I would.You would? Be careful,don't lean over too much.How many wouldn't?All right. What do you say?Speak up in the balcony,you who would yank outthe organs. Why?I'd actually like to explore aslightly alternate possibilityof just taking the oneof the five who needs an organwho dies first and usingtheir four healthy organsto save the other four.That's a pretty good idea.That's a great ideaexcept for the factthat you just wreckedthe philosophical point.Let's step back from these storiesand these argumentsto notice a couple of thingsabout the way the argumentshave begun to unfold.Certain moral principleshave already begun to emergefrom the discussions we've had.And let's considerwhat those moral principles look like. The first moral principlethat emerged in the discussionsaid the right thing to do,the moral thing to dodepends on the consequencesthat will result from your action.At the end of the day,better that five should liveeven if one must die.That's an exampleof consequentialist moral reasoning. Consequentialist moral reasoning locates moralityin the consequences of an act,in the state of the worldthat will result from the thing you do. But then we went a little further,we considered those other casesand people weren't so sureabout consequentialist moral reasoning. When people hesitatedto push the fat manover the bridgeor to yank out the organsof the innocent patient,people gestured toward reasons having to do withthe intrinsic qualityof the act itself,consequences be what they may. People were reluctant.People thought it was just wrong, categorically wrong,to kill a person,an innocent person,even for the sakeof saving five lives.At least people thoughtthat in the second versionof each story we considered.So this pointsto a second categorical wayof thinking about moral reasoning. Categorical moral reasoning locates moralityin certain absolutemoral requirements,certain categorical duties and rights, regardless of the consequences. We're going to explorein the days and weeks to comethe contrast between consequentialist and categorical moral principles.The most influential exampleof consequential moral reasoningis utilitarianism,a doctrine inventedby Jeremy Bentham,the 18th centuryEnglish political philosopher.The most important philosopherof categorical moral reasoningis the 18th centuryGerman philosopher Immanuel Kant.So we will lookat those two different modesof moral reasoning,assess them,and also consider others.If you look at the syllabus,you'll notice that we reada number of greatand famous books,books by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stewart Mill, and others.You'll notice toofrom the syllabusthat we don't onlyread these books;we also take up contemporary, political, and legal controversiesthat raise philosophical questions.We will debate equality and inequality, affirmative action, free speech versus hate speech, same sex marriage, military conscription,a range of practical questions. Why? Not just to enliventhese abstract and distant booksbut to make clear,to bring out what's at stakein our everyday lives,including our political lives,for philosophy.And so we will read these booksand we will debate these issues,and we'll see how each informsand illuminates the other.This may sound appealing enough, but here I have to issue a warning. And the warning is this,to read these booksin this way as an exercisein self knowledge,to read them in this waycarries certain risks, risks that are both personaland political,risks that every studentof political philosophy has known. These risks spring from the factthat philosophy teaches usand unsettles usby confronting us withwhat we already know.There's an irony.The difficulty of this courseconsists in the factthat it teacheswhat you already know.It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange.That's how those examples worked, the hypotheticals with which we began, with their mix of playfulnessand sobriety.It's also how thesephilosophical books work. Philosophy estranges usfrom the familiar,not by supplying new informationbut by inviting and provokinga new way of seeing but,and here's the risk,once the familiar turns strange,it's never quite the same again.Self knowledge is like lost innocence, however unsettling you find it;it can never be un-thoughtor un-known.What makes this enterprise difficult but also rivetingis that moral and political philosophy is a story and you don't knowwhere the story will lead.But what you do knowis that the story is about you.Those are the personal risks.Now what of the political risks?One way of introducing a courselike this would be to promise you that by reading these booksand debating these issues,you will become a better,more responsible citizen;you will examine the presuppositions of public policy,you will hone your political judgment, you will become a moreeffective participant in public affairs. But this would be a partialand misleading promise.Political philosophy,for the most part,hasn't worked that way.You have to allow for the possibility that political philosophymay make you a worse citizenrather than a better oneor at least a worse citizenbefore it makes you a better one,and that's becausephilosophy is a distancing,even debilitating, activity.And you see this,going back to Socrates,there's a dialogue,the Gorgias, in whichone of Socrates' friends, Callicles, tries to talk him out of philosophizing.Callicles tells Socrates "Philosophy is a pretty toyif one indulges in itwith moderationat the right time of life. But if one pursues it further than one should,it is absolute ruin.""Take my advice," Callicles says, "abandon argument.Learn the accomplishmentsof active life, take for your modelsnot those people who spendtheir time on these petty quibblesbut those who have a good livelihood and reputation and manyother blessings."So Callicles is really saying to Socrates "Quit philosophizing, get real,go to business school."And Callicles did have a point.He had a point because philosophy distances us from conventions,from established assumptions,and from settled beliefs.Those are the risks,personal and political.And in the faceof these risks,there is a characteristic evasion.The name of the evasionis skepticism, it's the idea –well, it goes something like this –we didn't resolve once and for all either the cases or the principleswe were arguing when we beganand if Aristotle and Lockeand Kant and Millhaven't solved these questionsafter all of these years,who are we to think that we,here in Sanders Theatre,over the course of a semester,can resolve them?And so, maybe it's just a matterof each person having his or her own principles and there's nothing moreto be said about it,no way of reasoning.That's the evasion,the evasion of skepticism,to which I would offerthe following reply.It's true, these questions have beendebated for a very long timebut the very factthat they have recurred and persistedmay suggest that thoughthey're impossible in one sense,they're unavoidable in another.And the reason they're unavoidable,the reason they're inescapableis that we live some answerto these questions every day.So skepticism, just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflectionis no solution.Immanuel Kant described very wellthe problem with skepticismwhen he wrote"Skepticism is a resting placefor human reason,where it can reflect uponits dogmatic wanderings,but it is no dwelling placefor permanent settlement.""Simply to acquiesce in skepticism,"Kant wrote,"can never suffice to overcomethe restlessness of reason."I've tried to suggestthrough these storiesand these argumentssome sense of the risksand temptations,of the perils and the possibilities.I would simply conclude by sayingthat the aim of this courseis to awaken the restlessness of reason and to see where it might lead.Thank you very much.Like, in a situation that desperate,you have to dowhat you have to do to survive.-You have to do what you have to do? You got to dowhat you got to do, pretty much.If you've been going 19 days without any food, you know, someone just hasto take the sacrifice.Someone has to make the sacrifice and people can survive.Alright, that's good.What's your name?Marcus.-Marcus, what do you say to Marcus? Last time,we started out last timewith some stories,with some moral dilemmasabout trolley carsand about doctorsand healthy patientsvulnerable to being victimsof organ transplantation.We noticed two thingsabout the arguments we had,one had to do with the waywe were arguing.We began with our judgmentsin particular cases.We tried to articulate the reasonsor the principles lying behindour judgments.And then confrontedwith a new case,we found ourselvesreexamining those principles, revising eachin the light of the other.And we noticed thebuilt in pressureto try to bring into alignmentour judgmentsabout particular casesand the principleswe would endorseon reflection.We also noticed somethingabout the substanceof the argumentsthat emerged from the discussion.We noticed that sometimeswe were tempted to locatethe morality of an actin the consequences, in the results,in the state of the worldthat it brought about.And we called this consequentialist moral reasoning.But we also noticedthat in some cases,we weren't swayedonly by the result.Sometimes, many of us felt,that not just consequencesbut also the intrinsic qualityor characterof the act matters morally.Some people arguedthat there are certain thingsthat are just categorically wrong even if they bring abouta good result,even if they saved five peopleat the cost of one life.So we contrasted consequentialist moral principles with categorical ones. Today and in the next few days,we will begin to examineone of the most influential versionsof consequentialist moral theory.And that's the philosophyof utilitarianism.Jeremy Bentham,the 18th centuryEnglish political philosophergave first the first clearsystematic expressionto the utilitarian moral theory.And Bentham's idea,his essential idea,is a very simple one.With a lot of morallyintuitive appeal, Bentham's ideais the following,the right thing to do;the just thing to dois to maximize utility.What did he mean by utility?He meant by utilitythe balance of pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering.Here's how he arrivedat the principle of maximizing utility. He started out by observingthat all of us,all human beings are governedby two sovereign masters:pain and pleasure.We human beingslike pleasure and dislike pain.And so we should base morality, whether we're thinking aboutwhat to do in our own livesor whether as legislators or citizens, we're thinking aboutwhat the laws should be.The right thing to do individuallyor collectively is to maximize,act in a way that maximizesthe overall level of happiness. Bentham's utilitarianismis sometimes summed upwith the slogan"The greatest goodfor the greatest number."With this basic principleof utility on hand,let's begin to test itand to examine itby turning to another case,another story, but this time,not a hypothetical story,a real life story,the case of the Queenversus Dudley and Stevens.This was a 19th centuryBritish law casethat's famous and much debatedin law schools.Here's what happened in the case.I'll summarize the storythen I want to hearhow you would rule,imagining that you were the jury.A newspaper account of the time described the background.A sadder story of disasterat sea was never toldthan that of the survivorsof the yacht, Mignonette.The ship flounderedin the South Atlantic,1300 miles from the cape.There were four in the crew, Dudley was the captain,Stevens was the first mate,Brooks was a sailor,all men of excellent characteror so the newspaper account tells us. The fourth crew memberwas the cabin boy,Richard Parker,17 years old.He was an orphan,he had no family,and he was on his firstlong voyage at sea.He went,the news account tells us,rather against the adviceof his friends.He went in the hopefulnessof youthful ambition,thinking the journeywould make a man of him. Sadly, it was not to be.The facts of the casewere not in dispute.A wave hit the shipand the Mignonette went down. The four crew members escaped to a lifeboat.The only food they hadwere two cans ofpreserved turnips,no fresh water.For the first three days,they ate nothing.On the fourth day,they opened oneof the cans of turnipsand ate it.The next daythey caught a turtle. Together with the othercan of turnips,the turtle enabled themto subsist for the next few days. And then for eight days,they had nothing.No food. No water.Imagine yourselfin a situation like that,what would you do?Here's what they did.By now the cabin boy, Parker, is lying at the bottomof the lifeboatin the cornerbecause he had drunk seawater against the advice of the others and he had become illand he appeared to be dying. So on the 19th day,Dudley, the captain, suggested that they should all have a lottery,that they should draw lotsto see who would dieto save the rest.Brooks refused.He didn't like the lottery idea. We don't knowwhether this wasbecause he didn't wantto take the chanceor because he believedin categorical moral principles.But in any case,no lots were drawn.The next daythere was still no ship in sightso Dudley told Brooksto avert his gazeand he motioned to Stevensthat the boy, Parker,had better be killed.Dudley offered a prayer,he told the boy his time had come,and he killed himwith a pen knife,stabbing himin the jugular vein.Brooks emergedfrom his conscientious objectionto sharein the gruesome bounty.For four days,the three of them fedon the body and bloodof the cabin boy.True story.And then they were rescued.Dudley describes their rescuein his diary with staggering euphemism. "On the 24th day,as we were having our breakfast,a ship appeared at last."The three survivorswere picked up by a German ship. They were taken backto Falmouth in Englandwhere they were arrestedand tried.Brooks turned state's witness.Dudley and Stevens went to trial. They didn't dispute the facts.They claimed they had acted out of necessity;that was their defense.They argued in effectbetter that one should dieso that three could survive.The prosecutor wasn't swayedby that argument.He said murder is murder,and so the case went to trial.Now imagine you are the jury.And just to simplify the discussion, put aside the question of law,let's assume that you as the juryare charged with decidingwhether what they didwas morally permissible or not.How many would vote'not guilty',that what they didwas morally permissible?And how manywould vote 'guilty',what they did wasmorally wrong?A pretty sizeable majority.Now let's see what people's reasons are and let me begin with thosewho are in the minority.Let's hear first from the defenseof Dudley and Stevens.Why would you morallyexonerate them?What are your reasons?Yes.I think it is morallyreprehensiblebut I think thatthere is a distinctionbetween what's morally reprehensible and what makes someonelegally accountable.In other words,as the judge said,what's always moralisn't necessarily against the lawand while I don't thinkthat necessity justifies theftor murder or any illegal act,at some point your degreeof necessity does, in fact, exonerate you from any guilt. Okay. Good. Other defenders.Other voices for the defense.Moral justificationsfor what they did. Yes.Thank you.I just feel likein the situation that desperate,you have to dowhat you have to do to survive.You have to dowhat you have to do.Yeah, you've got to dowhat you've got to do.Pretty much.If you've been going19 days without any food, you know, someone just has to take the sacrifice, someone has to make the sacrifice and people can survive.And furthermore from that,let's say they surviveand then they become productive members of societywho go home and startlike a million charity organizations and this and thatand this and that.I mean they benefited everybodyin the end. -Yeah.So, I mean I don't knowwhat they did afterwards,they might have gone and like,I don't know,killed more people, I don't know. Whatever but. -What?Maybe they were assassins.What if they went home and they turned out to be assassins? What if they'd gone homeand turned out to be assassins? Well…You'd want to knowwho they assassinated.That's true too. That's fair.That's fair. I would want to know who they assassinated.All right. That's good.What's your name?Marcus.Marcus. All right.We've heard a defense,a couple of voicesfor the defense.Now we need to hearfrom the prosecution.Most people thinkwhat they did was wrong. Why? Yes. -One of the first thingsthat I was thinking wasthey haven't been eatingfor a really long timemaybe they're mentallylike affected and sothen that could be usedas a defense,a possible argumentthat they weren'tin the proper state of mind,they weren't making decisionsthey might otherwise be making. And if that's an appealing argument that you have to bein an altered mindsetto do something like that,it suggests that peoplewho find that argument convincing do think that they wereacting immorally.But what do you-I want to knowwhat you think.You defend them.。