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0:05
It’s a great pleasure to see so many of you here today. I hope you're enjoying the open day so far. My name’s Iain Law. I'm the Admissions Tutor for Philosophy Programmes. That’s my name, that’s my email address if you want to ask me questions via email later. This is going to be a taster lecture, a kind of sample of what a lecture at Birmingham is like. I should say it’s a sample of what my lectures are like. So many of my colleagues use PowerPoint and display slides and stuff like that.
0:34
I don't. Also I teach Ethics so I'm going to give you an Ethics lecture. That’s not because it’s the only subject we teach in Philosophy; if one of my colleagues was on today you might have got something completely different. But what I'm going to do is tell you a bit about Ethics, try and get you to have some moral intuitions, hopefully we’ll have a bit of fun, leave you wanting more. So when we think about ethical questions, we could think of them as running along a
1:02
continuum which, at one end goes to the particular, particular ethical questions. And at the other end is more general. Here’s what I mean by that. Suppose you have an opportunity to cheat on a test, someone comes up to you and says ‘hey, I've got the answers to this week’s test, do you want them?!’ and you're thinking is it morally OK for me to take this opportunity. Well you're thinking about a specific action, a particular action. You're not thinking about the ethics of cheating in general.
1:41
Or maybe you’ve got a decision to make about whether it’s time to have your cat put down. Your cat’s old and you're beginning to think is it wrong to delay this. Is it the right thing to take my cat to the vet. You are not thinking about cat euthanasia in general, you're thinking about this specific cat, your cat, right? So you're right down here at the single action very particular kind of ethical question – is it OK for me to do this?
2:11
If we move a bit further along the continuum to somewhere around here, we might think about action types, so we might think about euthanasia in general, not any specific act of euthanasia but is euthanasia morally permissible? Or it might be abortion – is that morally permissible? Capital punishment? It’s always death – have you noticed?! [Laughter] Almost always. So that’s the kind of thing you might find in an applied ethics course or practical ethics course.
2:50
But right down at this end, we wouldn't be thinking about particular action types, we would be thinking about actions in general, we would be thinking what is it that makes the right act the right act? What is it that makes things morally wrong for any action whatsoever. If we could answer that question we would have what we call a moral theory. A moral theory would be an account of what it is for an action to be right or wrong and
3:25
it would be great if we had one because then when new problems arise in our personal lives or new public policy questions arise about practical ethics, we’d be able to deploy our moral theory and get an answer. And new questions come up all the time, right? For instance 20 years ago the ethical question ‘is it permissible for me to download Game of Thrones on BitTorrent’ would not have been a question. Is it OK for me to download Game of Thrones on BitTorrent? Yeah, download it! Please say yes!
4:01
[Laughter] I really want to! Or, you know, gene editing. That wasn’t a thing. but now it is and so there are ethical questions about whether we should edit genes. So new questions down here could be answered if we had a moral theory, something which said the right thing to do in any situation is whichever action something something something. So what I would like to do today is try to general a candidate moral theory.
4:32
We’re going to have some moral intuitions, that’s going to suggest a moral theory and then we will test whether that moral theory stands up against other moral intuitions that we might have. By the way, some people have nicked my open day talk. A former colleague of mine at another university who I won't mention emailed me a few years ago and said ‘Ian, I'm doing your open day talk – hope you don't mind’! [Laughter] I mind! [Laughter] So moral problem featuring you.
5:05
Here’s you looking a bit uncertain. You have gone out for a walk on a lovely autumn day, like today, you have walked up a hill and on this hill there is an old disused railway line, but some people are working on that line hoping to bring it back as one of those preserved railways, a tourist attraction with steam trains and stuff like that. So down at the bottom of this slope, there are five people who are working on this line
5:38
and they're looking down at the track and they're using noisy equipment so they're wearing ear protectors which means that they aren't able to hear or see this. This is called the ‘trolley’ in the literature on this problem. Some of you have encountered this, I can't tell from the grins on your faces. Some of you may even have seen an episode of a TV show which discusses this, The Good Place – do you know The Good Place? Yes. It’s on Netflix.
6:07
If you take nothing else from today, take this, watch The Good Place, it’s fantastic. [Laughter] The word ‘trolley’ has always seemed misleading to me. To me a trolley is something you push around at the supermarket. This thing weighs many tonnes. It’s a railway carriage which was left in the wrong place and in the wrong condition. It’s on a slight slope and when its brakes failed, as they have just done, that means
6:33
it’s going to trundle down this slope picking up speed - hitting these five people unless they happen to look up and jump out of the way – almost certainly killing them all. There’s good news though. There’s a branch line. You walked past it and you saw it on the way up. There’s bad news though. The points here are set to take the trolley down the mainline, not the branch line. But there’s good news. You are standing next to a lever and if you pull that lever you'll switch the points and
7:05
divert the trolley onto the branch line. But there’s bad news. [Laughter] There is a single person on the branch line. So the problem that faces you is this: should you pull the lever thereby diverting the trolley down here and saving these five people but probably killing this one. Or should you not pull the lever. Should you do nothing allowing the trolley to continue on and hit those five people. Let’s do a show of hands. Hands up for ‘Ian, I think the right thing to do is pull the lever’?
7:42
Big show of hands, OK. Hands up for ‘Ian, I think it would be wrong to pull the lever, you should do nothing’? Much, much smaller vote for that. OK. Let’s talk about why most people think the right thing to do is pull the lever. Can anyone without using any philosophical jargon – no ‘isms’, right? Tell me the reason why morality demands that you pull the lever, so someone who voted for pulling the lever tell me why? Lady there?
8:13
Because the likelihood of one person moving out of the way is greater than five people all together. That’s an interesting piece of reasoning. Now you can tell my draftsmanship skills are not very good. This is not drawn to scale. So this length is five times that length so that the chance of him looking up is supposed to be equal to the chance of one of them looking up. Right. So if I say that, does it make a difference or is it still right to pull the lever?
8:48
No, one sacrifice for the sake of many. OK. So you think the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? Not needs. Not needs, it’s just a statistical reference. Well OK. But I think it would be a defensible claim to say that people need to go on living. Hand up right at the back – yes? Your intention is to save the five people, not to kill the one person. True. And we’ll come back to that thought later on.
9:21
Do most of you think the reason why – those of you who voted for pulling the lever – is the reason why you voted for pulling the level just that if you pull the lever there will be one fifth of the bad consequences? [general murmurs of agreement] Potentially yes. Right OK. So most of you think the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. That was a Star Trek quote for those of you keeping up with just how nerdy I'm being! [Laughter] Might as well advertise that at the start!
9:52
People who think it’s wrong to pull the lever – can anyone say why they think that – yes - ? It could be construed as murder. It could be construed as murder. If you do nothing and allow the trolley to come down and kill these people, well you didn’t aim it at them, you didn’t start it off, it could be argued that you are not killing these people, you're just letting them die! [Laughter] And some people do think that’s a really important distinction because when you pull
10:21
the lever, you causily intervene in the sequence of events, you aim that trolley at this person. Now, as you said at the back, you're not intending that this person die but you could, nevertheless, be said to be responsible for killing that person, not just letting them die. Go ahead - ? if you don't pull the lever you could have saved five lives. Indeed you could. Which is in a certain way of looking at no better than murdering them intentionally.
10:53
So some people do think that it doesn't really make a moral difference whether you kill someone or let them die. There’s an example of this offered by a Philosopher called James Rachels. So imagine two people who both stand to inherit large sums of money if a child in their care dies. So somehow this child had inherited their parents’ wealth – if they now die, this person will inherit the wealth. So both these people intend to kill the child by faking a drowning in a bathtub.
11:27
One of them goes upstairs and drowns the child in the bathtub, the other one goes upstairs and discovers it’s his lucky day, the child is already drowning in the bathtub and they just don't save them. They could easily reach in and save the child and they don't. Does anyone think that the second person is less morally culpable than the first? So it seems like when you isolate the factor of are you killing them or re you letting
11:54
them die, if it’s the only difference between the two cases, we tend to think it doesn’t matter. OK, those people who have done some Philosophy before now get their chance to show off. What moral theory is suggested by the intuitions the majority have that the numbers count? OK, lots of hands have gone up – I’ll pick someone who hasn’t spoken before – the man there - ? Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism OK. So utilitarianism is one of these things, a moral theory, a general answer to the question
12:25
what makes right actions right. What do the utilitarians say about that, the right act is whichever act – what - ? Gentleman there - ? The classical utilitarians would have said the greatest happiness of the greatest number. So, yeah, the thought is you look to the consequences of your actions. You look to what will happen as a result of what you do and you try to maximise the good consequences: happiness, welfare, whatever it would be.
12:57
Or perhaps in a situation like this, you try to minimise the bad consequences because you can't bring about good consequences here, you can only mitigate the bad ones. So utilitarianism, in some ways, it’s a rather beautiful theory, right? What is moral action? Well it’s trying to make people happier. It’s looking to the future and trying to benefit other people. There’s something very attractive about that, I think. But we might have some worries about it.
13:28
So here’s a new case, a new moral problem for you. In this situation, you are at work in the future. In the future, you work in a hospital which does lifesaving transplant operations. And in the future, let’s imagine, life saving transplant operations work much better than they do today. So if you get an organ transplant it will certainly work. That’s not the case now but let’s imagine it will be the case in the future.
14:02
Tell me about some lifesaving organ transplants – what organs can you transplant and save someone’s life? Heart. Heart good yes. Anything else? Kidneys. Kidneys. Now how many kidneys do you need? One. One, that’s right. We know this because Homer donated one to Grandpa back before most of you were born! [Laughter] Anything else – heart, kidneys - ? Lungs. Lungs. Now, any medical professionals in the audience? [Silence] Good – I can make this up! Oh there is one! OK.
14:37
I don't think you can take the heart and the lungs from one donor and put them into two separate people. You can do a thing called a domino transplant, where you take the heart and lungs out of one person and whack them into one person and take the healthy heart out of that second person and put it into a third person – isn't that wild?! [Laughter] So I don't think we can have lungs if we’re thinking of a single donor, which we will be, as you'll hear. Anything else - ? Liver. Liver. Yes.
15:06
Anyone know an interesting fact about the liver related to donation? Man at the back - ? Yeah, it regrows. It will grow back. So you can get away with just a portion of your liver except when you're going to university because then you need! [Laughter] Actually, that’s an unfair joke. Young people drink far less than my generation – it’s your parents who are at risk and need their entire livers! [Laughter] OK.
15:36
So at this transplant Centre of Excellence that you work at, five people have been brought together from across the country because of the expertise where you work, but also because they share the same rare blood type and because they have a rare blood type, it means that no donor has been found. One of them needs a new heart, two of them need new kidneys and two of them need a new liver. Elsewhere in your hospital, someone has come in for surgery on their knee which, you know,
16:11
they popped a tendon or something while walking by themselves, because they don't have any friends. But they do have a donor card and they are the same blood type as the five people who need organs – do you see where I'm going with this?! [Laughter] So the question now before us should you turn up the anaesthetic, because die under general anaesthetics all the time [Laughter] You’ve checked your hospital statistics, one more won't cause a suspicious blip – should
16:46
you kill knee surgery man by turning up the anaesthetic in order to save five lives. Hands up for ‘yes, Ian, it’s my moral duty’? Anyone for killing knee surgery – one - ? Just one? There’s always at least one – well done! [Laughter You have really thorough utilitarian intuitions, you stick to your guns, I salute you. hands up for ‘Ian, obviously this is wrong, what kind of ethics are you going to teach my children, this is awful’! [Laughter] Hands up for ‘wrong to kill knee surgery person’? OK.
17:23
So the group I am most interested in isn't the group who voted it was wrong in both cases. You're consistent. And it’s not the one person who thinks you should pull the lever and kill knee surgery man, but it’s the vast majority of you, most of you think it’s right to pull the lever but wrong to kill knee surgery man, even though the numbers work out the same. So in this case, you guys said it’s the numbers that matter.
17:53
It’s because we have five lives saved at the cost of one death and that’s why my intuition is we should pull the lever. But now in this new situation, you don't think that. Why? What’s the difference? The period of time when everybody’s dying. The period of time. Maybe. So obviously this is in motion, right. If anyone had thought oh this is a tricky problem, let me get my ethics textbook out! That would have been tantamount to a vote for letting the trolley kill the people.
18:28
There are versions of this problem which try to take out the time factor. So one of my favourites is let’s imagine this room is very slowly filling with a poisonous gas and we are trapped in it, we can't get out, but we could vent the gas into a room next door in which one fifth as many people are trapped and we've got 48 hours to decide whether to push that button. It seems like people have the same intuitions, it doesn’t generally seem like it’s the time factor that makes the difference.
19:01
Anything else? Do you think it’s a responsive thing? Well, yes, but why do we have this response is the question? Is it because there’s more a thing in a medical thing about euthanasia or knowledge and stuff like that? Well maybe. We could try to develop that into a reason, but we need to articulate it a little bit better though. Someone else had their hand up over here – yeah - ? It’s situational. It depends upon the situation. Right, but the features of the situation seem to be parallel.
19:33
At least to the degree that the people who voted for pulling the lever said ‘the features of this situation that mattered to their decision to pull the lever were just the numbers’. Ah. it’s situational. Good. So if you were a doctor, you might have a professional obligation not to kill your patient, but I never said you were a doctor! [Laughter] I just said you worked at this place. You're a cleaner! [Laughter]
20:08
Do you know the urban myth about the person in the ICU, the one in the bed nearest the door keeps dying mysteriously, because the cleaner comes in and looks for somewhere to plug the. [Laughter] It’s not true, right! That’s not how ICU beds are powered, but it’s a good urban myth. Yes – gentleman in the middle - ? Is it because when you turn thiswhen you pull a handle, it’s very different to what you're doing, you're not going to necessarily watch that person die – Right.
20:37
you're not necessarily fully involved with the killing of that person. Right good. So, yeah, it seems like there might be a psychological difference in doing something which is more remote from the consequences. You pull a lever and later on someone gets squished by a trolley. That feels very different from going up to someone and stabbing them, right? And maybe killing someone with a general anaesthetic is closer to the stabbing than the pulling of the lever with the trolley.
21:04
But it’s not clear that the psychological difference makes a moral difference, right? It’s harder for you to kill in that circumstance but it’s not obvious that it’s worse for you to kill in that circumstance. Several people have their hand up, but you haven't spoken before so I’ll come to you - ? There’s the chance that that person might survive – Good. Right. However, in this scenario, it’s true, these people might live, right, one of them might
21:31
go ‘oh my back’ and straighten up and see it coming and push the others out the way. But it’s possible that a donor will come forward for the five people. Maybe we’ll get an autumn day where it’s sunny in the morning and all the middle aged men like me go out in their overpowered motorbikes and then there’s shower and that’s how we get organs, you know [Laughter] Sorry if this is sad news for you. So it’s always possible that an organ will be found.
21:59
I did forget to mention a detail that time is running out for these five people. They're getting sicker and they needed a donation soon. So there’s not a lot of chance, but what I've tried to do is make it the same chance that these people will look up. Yes, lady there - ? It’s similar to the psychological distance point that in the hospital situation, you see the guy who needs the knee surgery much more as an individual – Right.
22:31
- and we hold values about individuals and about minorities that contradict the kind of statistical – OK, so you might have more information about this person, you might see them as a person, whereas this is just a figure on a hillside distant from you. Again, I think same answer as before, that makes a psychological difference to how easy it is to kill them. It’s not clear that it makes a moral difference.
22:55
I'm aware of time so I'm afraid I'm not going to take more questions at this point because there’s another thing I want your intuitions on. Back in the original case, was anyone contemplating heroic self-sacrifice? [Laughter] Well before you put the lever in I thought it was going to be – Yeah, throwing yourself in front of the trolley? Right, I'm afraid that wouldn't work. Look at you all, you're all far too skinny and svelte! [Laughter]
23:20
And, in any case, in this new scenario that I want to describe to you, you wouldn't have been able to do it because as you run towards the track, there’s somebody in the way. [Groans and laughter from the audience] There’s a big fat bloke in the way. [Laughter] And by the time you go round him, it’s too late. So you can't chuck yourself in front of the trolleybut you could push the fat bloke in front of the trolley! [Laughter]
23:51
And because of his great size, let’s suppose somehow magically you know that this will be sufficient to bring the trolley to a halt. So once again, you can save these five people by sacrificing one. Hands up for ‘push a fat man in front of a train’? [Laughter] Now, here’s an interesting sociological observation. There are always more people voting for pushing the fat man in front of the train than for killing knee surgery guy. And I can only attribute this to prejudice against fat people!
24:27
[Laughter] You monsters! [Laughter] OK. Hands up for ‘it would be wrong to push the fat man in front of the train’? OK, so just like in the knee surgery case, you think that pushing the fat bloke in front of the train is wrong but you think that taking steps that might, or will almost certainly kill this person, is right. And this is a real puzzle. I want to come back to the thought that was mentioned by the lady at the back. Go back to the original scenario.
24:59
OK, so you’ve pulled the lever, the points have changed, the trolley’s trundled down here and now it’s here heading towards this single person. What have you achieved at this point? Anything? You’ve saved the five lives - Yeah, you’ve saved those five people, they're not at risk anymore. Is anyone dead? Right, so what are you doing after you pull the lever, what do you do? Do you just stand there and watch? So you run down the hillside screaming and shouting ‘look out’!
25:38
The single bloke had ear defenders. Yeah, he does, so it’s not going to work, but it’s not crazy for you to try, right? It’s not irrational for you to hope that this person looks up and dodges out of the way. As you said, your intention is not to hit this person. If they did dodge out of the way, you wouldn't be like ‘oh drat’ [Laughter] OK. So you don't intend their death. However, take fat bloke. You're going to push him in front of a train. Is it rational to hope that he survives?
26:14
We’re using the crushing of his limbs and organs as a means to bring the train to a halt. It seems crazy to say that you are also rooting for him. What about knee surgery guy? You're going to turn up the anaesthetic and then take his heart out [Laughter] It would be crazy to say that you don't intend his death. So in the case of knee surgery guy and fat bloke, it seems like we intend them to die. Whereas with this person, it seems like the death is not intended.
26:49
It’s a by product of something we intend. We intend to save the five. This death is not intended. It is merely foreseen. Now, do you buy the distinction between consequences you intend and consequences you foresee but do not intend? Not everyone does. So let’s suppose you want to see the new episode of Dr Who when it airs, but you're running late so you run home. You can foresee that you will be out of breath, tired, sweaty, but you don't intend those
27:26
things because, if by some miracle, you're fitter than you thought you were and you weren't, you wouldn't be disappointed, right? You can test what your intentions are by thinking what if that didn’t come about, would I be going ‘oh bother’, right? Or here’s another example, sometimes when I lecture I foresee that people will get confused, but I never intend to confuse them. I promise. I'm always trying my best.
27:53
Some people think that this distinction between intended and foreseen consequences really matters morally and is the explanation for the difference in your intuitions. Just to finish, I’ll do a kind of real world example of this. It’s another medical one. Suppose you’ve got someone who is dying of a painful illness and they have a low level of consciousness, so they're conscious enough to feel the pain but not conscious enough to have a conversation about their wishes.
28:24
How will you, as a medical professional – this time you are a medical professional – how will you be controlling their pain, keeping your patient comfortable? Morphine. Morphine yeah probably. Morphine has side effects and it can be the case that you need to give bigger and bigger doses of morphine in order to achieve the effect of keeping your patient comfortable. So suppose there comes a day when you foresee that if you give an effective dose, a dose
28:53
high enough to keep your patient comfortable, that will probably kill your patient. And remember, they're not conscious enough for you to have a conversation about what they want. Anyone know what English law says about this, is it permissible, legally permissible for you to give that possibly fatal dose – hands up if you think the answer is yes? Hands up if you think the answer is no? So the majority think the answer is no. The majority this time are wrong.
29:21
English law says ‘so long as the intention is to keep the patient comfortable, even if it’s foreseen that this will bring about the death of the patient, that’s legally OK. So English law recognises this distinction between intention and merely foreseen consequences. Of course if you went home and wrote in your diary ‘ha ha, finally, I have had the opportunity’, that would show that you intended the death and that would be murder. Question in the middle - ? Isn't that the law of double effect?
29:51
That is indeed the principle of double effect. So, again, you’ve done this before, but not everyone has, so I didn’t want to use the technical terms. We’re very nearly out of time. Go ahead - ? I was just going to say, it doesn’t stop the medical professionals being arrested or charged with manslaughter, because if you'reit’s murder we’re talking about – Right – - manslaughter, if they're administering and there’s a likelihood, you’ve got the knowledge
30:14
that if I give this dose it’s going to control their pain but ultimately they're going to die. I don't think that’s – You're being that’s where your subject then to your being reckless – You might certainly get investigated but I think if the facts were as I described, you wouldn't be guilty of any offence under English law. Now of course the utilitarians have more to say, right? If this reasoning is right that most of you seem to think, then utilitarianism must be
30:45
false, it’s the wrong moral theory. Of course the utilitarians have got more to say, of course there’s a lot more to say about all of ethics, but we are out of time. So if you want to do more, you'd better come and study Philosophy at the University of Birmingham [Laughter] It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. [Applause]
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