Another Day, Another Counterexample to Deontology
Deontology delenda est
Suppose that there are 1,000 people who each are unconscious. 80% of them have a disease that will kill them soon, before they wake up. 20% of them have a disease that just knocks them unconscious, but once they wake up, they’ll be fine. You are a doctor, and you have the ability to give them all a medicine. This medicine will kill them if they have the second disease, but it will save them if they have the first disease. You have no way of knowing which of the two diseases they have.
It seems very obvious that you should give them the cure. If you don’t, 200 will die, if you do, 800 will die. If you could ask any of their family members, they’d all endorse you doing it! So, no brainer, right?
Well, deontology holds that it’s wrong to kill 200 even if you save 800. In this case, because giving them the medicine will kill 200 and save 800, it seems on its face wrong, if deontology is true. Thus, deontology is wrong because it wrongly holds that you shouldn’t give them the medicine.
The deontologist could reply by saying the following. Suppose someone would, if given the choice, consent to some act. Then that act is permissible, if it produces great benefit. However, we can get around this. We can suppose that if the person was asked, they would have to be conscious, and one who was conscious would know which of the two conditions they had. Thus, 20% of the people wouldn’t consent.
How is this any different from the organ harvesting case? In the organ harvesting case, everyone would agree to it if they didn’t know whether they’d be the recipient of the organs or the harvester. However, they do, so people say that it’s wrong.
So, it seems that deontology has unacceptable implications in this case. Objections?
Nice post. BTW, I think there is a mistake at the start of the second paragraph: “It seems very obvious that you should give them the *disease*.”
This is an altered trolley problem. There’s no duty to rescue since no one would agree to be forcibly sacrificed to save another, as explained here https://open.substack.com/pub/neonomos/p/what-is-morality?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The consequences of not giving the medicine would be pretty good as well. For a niche disease like that, people would make their preferences known beforehand of whether they would want to take the risk of the medicine. They’d also have more trust in the medical system knowing that their won’t be subject to something akin to an organ harvesting scenario.
Imagine if the numbers were 501 vs 499, would giving the medicine still be obvious?