The switch case seems stronger than the others, here. In the pushing case, I could see many deontologists claiming that you DO in fact have an obligation to rescue the one from the tracks (leaving the five to die) if you were responsible for his being in harm's way in the first place (assuming you weren't similar responsible for the position of the five). Likewise in transplant, if you've taken out the organs but haven't yet delivered them, but could put them back in and magically restore the one to full health, deontologists will surely say that you should: the one has a stronger claim to those organs than anyone else does. But you may not reclaim them after implanting the organs in the five, as removal at that stage would then violate *their* bodily integrity (and you obviously shouldn't "undo" an act in a way that involves committing *further* rights violations!). Much depends on the precise details, for deontologists, so it can be difficult to formulate universal principles that they'll agree with. The best you can do is general principles, with "all else being equal" clauses. But bear in mind that deontologists will often deny that all else is equal.
In the pushing case, it doesn't seem morally different from the following case.
Parachute: You push the guy onto the bridge onto a button which parachutes the five people up to safety.
However, in Parachute, it seems obviously bad to undo. To bear out this intuition, let's imagine there's a time delay. Thus, suppose that you push the guy onto the bridge, and parachute the five people to safety. It will take a full year for train to arrive (maybe these people are in one year comas or something). It seems bizarre to say that a year later you should switch the five people back onto the track merely because you parachuted them to safety a year ago.
In the organ harvesting case, if we hold that it's both wrong to put the organs in the people and also to take the organs out of the people and put them back in the original person, this is a rather puzzling verdict for a few reasons.
For one, the principle that I describe in the article seems to imply this result. And it does have a plausibility to it -- if it's wrong to take someone's organs to place them in five others which would result in the five others living and the one dying, then it seems you should take the organs out.
It also follows from a plausible Pareto principle. Suppose that the Organ switcheroo would slightly raise everyone's utility relative to if it didn't happen, such that if you take out the people's organs, put them in the five, and then take them out of the five and put them back in the one, everyone will be better off. It seems odd to claim that, though everyone is better off, this would be morally worse than the status quo. If something is better for everyone, even the supposed victim, then it doesn't seem wrong.
The final reason to think this is the following. If we think that it's wrong to take out the organs and also to put them back, then let's suppose we keep doing this. We just take them out and put them back 100000000000000000000000000000 times. This seems maybe a little bit wrong, but it seems that if each time you do it it gets worse, then doing it 100000000000000000000000000000 times would be unfathomably wrong -- probably one of the most significant things that's eve happened. They could hold that each time it gets less wrong, but this result is odd -- it would imply that if you previously violated rights a huge numbers of times of someone then doing it again wouldn't be very bad. There's also one more objection to this view relating to memory loss. If we say that, the more times you violate a person's rights the less bad each one becomes, then if you violated their rights an unfathomable amount of times previously but neither of you have any memory of this, then violating their rights wouldn't be very bad. However, this is implausible -- if a genie informs you that you've really done the organ switcheroo 100000000000000000000000000000 times but have no memory of it, that wouldn't reduce your reasons not to the organ switcheroo to near zero.
> you can take the five organs out of the people, killing them, and put it back in the original person, saving him
Deontologists will not be impressed by this last paragraph: it is unintuitive that you could take out five of a man's critical organs without killing him, and then put them back in again later. And a devoted deontologist, I wager, is not the sort of person who thinks through the logical implications of an incredibly far-fetched scenario and then says "oh I guess my moral system is wrong, then" and becomes thenceforce utilitarian.
Better to stick with the clumsy-oaf trolley problem. We've all been there!
> However, there’s a very plausible principle that says that if an action is wrong to do, then if you do it by accident, you should undo it.
Eh. I don't think that's really the case here. You already did the bad act. Trying to make the situation similiar to before you did the bad act doesn't erase the badness of the act. For example, someone who pulled the lever of the trolley and killed a person still did a bad even if that person is subsequently resurrected by an OMNIpotent being.
And of course, this doesn't apply to the organ harvesting case at all. If you intentionally did an act then you bear full responsibility for it.
What you claimed is that Deontologists "have to think that actions are wrong, but you shouldn’t undo them" [even if you 100% can, as in the flip switch example]. And you're correct. Perhaps AnonZ didn't realize that you *meant* to say that the train hasn't reached the fork in the tracks yet, and in fact won't reach it for awhile, so you have some time to consult your deontological rules on whether you should flip the switch back.
Well my point is that undoing the bad act makes little sense. Let’s say that pulling the lever made my pet utility monster experience mild discomfort.
If I flipping the lever didn’t retroactively restore that discomfort, then “undoing” the act would be useless. The same is true for the badness of violating human rights. Undoing the bad action makes little sense.
The switch case seems stronger than the others, here. In the pushing case, I could see many deontologists claiming that you DO in fact have an obligation to rescue the one from the tracks (leaving the five to die) if you were responsible for his being in harm's way in the first place (assuming you weren't similar responsible for the position of the five). Likewise in transplant, if you've taken out the organs but haven't yet delivered them, but could put them back in and magically restore the one to full health, deontologists will surely say that you should: the one has a stronger claim to those organs than anyone else does. But you may not reclaim them after implanting the organs in the five, as removal at that stage would then violate *their* bodily integrity (and you obviously shouldn't "undo" an act in a way that involves committing *further* rights violations!). Much depends on the precise details, for deontologists, so it can be difficult to formulate universal principles that they'll agree with. The best you can do is general principles, with "all else being equal" clauses. But bear in mind that deontologists will often deny that all else is equal.
In the pushing case, it doesn't seem morally different from the following case.
Parachute: You push the guy onto the bridge onto a button which parachutes the five people up to safety.
However, in Parachute, it seems obviously bad to undo. To bear out this intuition, let's imagine there's a time delay. Thus, suppose that you push the guy onto the bridge, and parachute the five people to safety. It will take a full year for train to arrive (maybe these people are in one year comas or something). It seems bizarre to say that a year later you should switch the five people back onto the track merely because you parachuted them to safety a year ago.
In the organ harvesting case, if we hold that it's both wrong to put the organs in the people and also to take the organs out of the people and put them back in the original person, this is a rather puzzling verdict for a few reasons.
For one, the principle that I describe in the article seems to imply this result. And it does have a plausibility to it -- if it's wrong to take someone's organs to place them in five others which would result in the five others living and the one dying, then it seems you should take the organs out.
It also follows from a plausible Pareto principle. Suppose that the Organ switcheroo would slightly raise everyone's utility relative to if it didn't happen, such that if you take out the people's organs, put them in the five, and then take them out of the five and put them back in the one, everyone will be better off. It seems odd to claim that, though everyone is better off, this would be morally worse than the status quo. If something is better for everyone, even the supposed victim, then it doesn't seem wrong.
The final reason to think this is the following. If we think that it's wrong to take out the organs and also to put them back, then let's suppose we keep doing this. We just take them out and put them back 100000000000000000000000000000 times. This seems maybe a little bit wrong, but it seems that if each time you do it it gets worse, then doing it 100000000000000000000000000000 times would be unfathomably wrong -- probably one of the most significant things that's eve happened. They could hold that each time it gets less wrong, but this result is odd -- it would imply that if you previously violated rights a huge numbers of times of someone then doing it again wouldn't be very bad. There's also one more objection to this view relating to memory loss. If we say that, the more times you violate a person's rights the less bad each one becomes, then if you violated their rights an unfathomable amount of times previously but neither of you have any memory of this, then violating their rights wouldn't be very bad. However, this is implausible -- if a genie informs you that you've really done the organ switcheroo 100000000000000000000000000000 times but have no memory of it, that wouldn't reduce your reasons not to the organ switcheroo to near zero.
> you can take the five organs out of the people, killing them, and put it back in the original person, saving him
Deontologists will not be impressed by this last paragraph: it is unintuitive that you could take out five of a man's critical organs without killing him, and then put them back in again later. And a devoted deontologist, I wager, is not the sort of person who thinks through the logical implications of an incredibly far-fetched scenario and then says "oh I guess my moral system is wrong, then" and becomes thenceforce utilitarian.
Better to stick with the clumsy-oaf trolley problem. We've all been there!
Well, I'm trying to address the arguments that should persuade sophisticated deontologists. Remember, lots of good philosophers are deontologists.
Many deontologists will either bite the bullet for the trolley problem or have some justification for not flipping the switch.
> However, there’s a very plausible principle that says that if an action is wrong to do, then if you do it by accident, you should undo it.
Eh. I don't think that's really the case here. You already did the bad act. Trying to make the situation similiar to before you did the bad act doesn't erase the badness of the act. For example, someone who pulled the lever of the trolley and killed a person still did a bad even if that person is subsequently resurrected by an OMNIpotent being.
And of course, this doesn't apply to the organ harvesting case at all. If you intentionally did an act then you bear full responsibility for it.
I didn't claim that undoing it erases it. I'm claiming that you should undo bad acts.
What you claimed is that Deontologists "have to think that actions are wrong, but you shouldn’t undo them" [even if you 100% can, as in the flip switch example]. And you're correct. Perhaps AnonZ didn't realize that you *meant* to say that the train hasn't reached the fork in the tracks yet, and in fact won't reach it for awhile, so you have some time to consult your deontological rules on whether you should flip the switch back.
Well my point is that undoing the bad act makes little sense. Let’s say that pulling the lever made my pet utility monster experience mild discomfort.
If I flipping the lever didn’t retroactively restore that discomfort, then “undoing” the act would be useless. The same is true for the badness of violating human rights. Undoing the bad action makes little sense.
If you flip it back before anyone has been benefitted or harmed, then you have effectively undone the action, in the relevant sense.