Subject A is frail, on death’s door, desperately in need of a life-saving organ transplant. As luck would have it, Jenny, a tender-hearted selfless polygamous mormon, is willing to give what’s necessary to keep subject A alive and thriving. Jenny is the only person on the planet with the right compatibility to avert subject A’s demise. When subject A = Amos, I propose kidnapping Jenny, and killing her immediately. When subject A = anyone other than Amos, it is of utmost importance to support Jenny through the surgery and even gift her an extra £4,000 at the end of the emotionally draining process as a reward to allow her to grow her increasingly delightful eraser collection.
Regarding organ harvesting cases, I was always struck by how treating someone as a mere organ bag was so morally terrible, as opposed to, say, social fallout, which isn’t a necessary entailment of the act.
I never understand why people attempt to conduct moral reasoning using their intuitions. I remember first thinking of some of these topics a long time ago and instantly realizing that because if I were in a Nazi society I would likely have different moral intuitions, intuitions obviously cannot be the sole basis of moral truth. And yet it seems every person I read uses appeals to intuitions all over the place, simply assuming they are linked to actual moral correctness. It's even more ironic when I then see these people who use moral intuitions to guide their ethical thinking claim their morality is objective, because that's riddled with so many obvious problems, but that's not really the thing that annoyed me in this article in particular.
"Organ Harvesting: Five people are dying. Each needs a new organ, but none are available. The only way for the surgeon to avert their deaths is to kidnap an unwilling stranger, kill him, harvest his organs, and give them to the ailing five. Assume that this would have no bad consequences beyond the death of the stranger. (He won’t be missed, and no-one will find out.)"
- These hypotheticals always strike me as pretty unrealistic. I don't think it's possible to kill someone and for there to be no "bad consequences" beyond the stranger's death, even if the stranger is not missed by loved ones. Could it not be said that the man who has to do the "necessary" killing is not suffering the consequences of having to kill? That takes a toll out of a man, believe me. It's not small thing to take a life.
I'm a stranger in the land of moral philosophy, however. Correct me if I'm missing something.
Subject A is frail, on death’s door, desperately in need of a life-saving organ transplant. As luck would have it, Jenny, a tender-hearted selfless polygamous mormon, is willing to give what’s necessary to keep subject A alive and thriving. Jenny is the only person on the planet with the right compatibility to avert subject A’s demise. When subject A = Amos, I propose kidnapping Jenny, and killing her immediately. When subject A = anyone other than Amos, it is of utmost importance to support Jenny through the surgery and even gift her an extra £4,000 at the end of the emotionally draining process as a reward to allow her to grow her increasingly delightful eraser collection.
Here, I annihilate Amos' entire worldview. https://benthams.substack.com/p/contra-wollen-on-organ-harvesting
Good article! Soon, however, I will rip it to shreds.
Regarding organ harvesting cases, I was always struck by how treating someone as a mere organ bag was so morally terrible, as opposed to, say, social fallout, which isn’t a necessary entailment of the act.
I never understand why people attempt to conduct moral reasoning using their intuitions. I remember first thinking of some of these topics a long time ago and instantly realizing that because if I were in a Nazi society I would likely have different moral intuitions, intuitions obviously cannot be the sole basis of moral truth. And yet it seems every person I read uses appeals to intuitions all over the place, simply assuming they are linked to actual moral correctness. It's even more ironic when I then see these people who use moral intuitions to guide their ethical thinking claim their morality is objective, because that's riddled with so many obvious problems, but that's not really the thing that annoyed me in this article in particular.
"Organ Harvesting: Five people are dying. Each needs a new organ, but none are available. The only way for the surgeon to avert their deaths is to kidnap an unwilling stranger, kill him, harvest his organs, and give them to the ailing five. Assume that this would have no bad consequences beyond the death of the stranger. (He won’t be missed, and no-one will find out.)"
- These hypotheticals always strike me as pretty unrealistic. I don't think it's possible to kill someone and for there to be no "bad consequences" beyond the stranger's death, even if the stranger is not missed by loved ones. Could it not be said that the man who has to do the "necessary" killing is not suffering the consequences of having to kill? That takes a toll out of a man, believe me. It's not small thing to take a life.
I'm a stranger in the land of moral philosophy, however. Correct me if I'm missing something.