This content introduces a course on justice by presenting classic ethical dilemmas, the trolley problem and its variations, to illustrate the fundamental tension between consequentialist and categorical moral reasoning, and to explore the personal and political risks of engaging with these complex philosophical questions.
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[Music] [Applause]
this is a course about Justice and we
begin with a story suppose you're the
driver of a trolley car and your trolley
car is hurdling down the track at 60 M
an hour and at the end of the track you
notice five workers working on the track
you try to stop but you can't your
brakes don't work you feel desperate
because you know that if you crash into
these five workers they will all die
let's assume you know that for
sure and so you feel helpless until you
notice that there is off to the right a
sid track and at the end of that track
there's one work
working on the track your steering wheel
works so you can turn the trolley car if
you want to onto the Sid
trck killing 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 turn the trolley car
hands how many wouldn't how many would
ahead keep your hands up those of you
ahead a handful of people would the vast
majority would
turn let's hear first now we need to
begin to investigate the reasons why you
think it's the right thing to do let's
begin with those in the majority who
would turn to go onto the
Sidetrack why would you do it what would
be your reason who's willing to
volunteer a
reason go ahead stand up um because it
it can't be right to kill five people
when you can only kill one person
instead it wouldn't be right to kill
five if you could kill one person instead
reason who else does everybody agree
reason go
ahead um well I was thinking as the same
reason on um 9/11 we regard the people
who who flew the plane into the uh
Pennsylvania field as Heroes because
they chose to kill the people in the
plane and not uh kill more people in uh big
big
buildings so the principle there was the
same on 9/11 it's a tragic circumstance
but better to kill one and so that five
can live is that the reason most of you
had those of you who would turn
yes let's hear now from those in the
turn yes well uh I think that's the same
type of mentality that justifies
genocide and totalitarianism in order to
say save one type of race you wipe out the
the
other so what would you do in this case
you would to
avoid the horrors of genocide you would
crash into the five and kill [Applause]
[Applause]
them presumably yes you yeah okay who
else it's a brave answer thank
you let's
consider another
trolley car
case and see
whether those of you in the
majority want to adhere to the
principle better that one should die so
that five should live this time you're
not the driver of the trolley car you're an
an
onlooker you're standing on a bridge
overlooking a trolley car
track and down the track comes a trolley
car at the end of of the track are five
workers the brakes don't work the
trolley car is about to carine into the
five and kill them and now you're not
the driver you really feel helpless
until you notice standing next to
you leaning
man and
you could give him a
shove he would fall over the bridge onto the
the
track right in the way of the trolley
car he would die but he would spare the five
five
now how many would push the fat man over
how many
wouldn't most people
wouldn't here's the obvious question
what became of the
principle better to save five lives even
if it means sacrificing one what became
of the principle that almost everyone
endorsed in the first case I need to
hear from someone who was in the
majority in both cases how do you
explain the difference between the two
yes the um second one I guess involves
an active choice of uh pushing the
person down which um I guess the that
person himself would otherwise uh not
have been involved in this situation at
all and so to uh choose on his behalf I
guess to uh uh involve him in something
that he otherwise would have escaped is
um I guess more than what you have in
the first case where the three parties
the the driver and the the two sets of
workers are um already I guess in the
situation but the guy working the one on
the track off to the side he didn't
choose to sacrifice his life any more
he that's true but he was on the tracks
bridge go ahead you can come back if you
want all right it's a hard question all
right you did well well you did very
well it's a hard question um who else
can find a way of
reconciling the reaction of the majority
in these two cases yes well I guess um
in the first case where you have the one
worker and the
five uh it's it's choice between those
two and you have to make a certain
choice and people are going to die
because of the trolley car not
necessarily because of your direct
actions the trolley car is a Runway
thing and and you're making a split
second choice whereas pushing the fat
man over is an actual Act of murder on
your part you have control over that
whereas you may not have control over
the trolley car so I think it's a
slightly different situation all right
who has a reply is that is no that's
that's good who has a way who wants to
reply is that a way out of
this um I don't think that's a very good
reason because you choose to it's either
way you have to choose who dies because
you either choose to turn and killed a
person which is an active conscious
thought to turn or you choose to push
the fat man over which is also an active
conscious action so either way you're
making a
choice do you want to reply well I'm I'm
not really sure that that's the case it
just still seems kind of different the
act of actually pushing someone over
onto the tracks and killing him you are
actually killing him yourself you're
pushing him with your own hands you're
pushing him and that's different than
steering something that is going to
cause death into another you know it
doesn't really sound right saying it now
I'm up here what's it's good what's your
name Andrew Andrew let me ask you this
question Andrew yes
yes
suppose standing on the bridge next to
the fat man I didn't have to push him
suppose he were standing over a trap
door that I could open by turning a
would you turn for for some reason that
that still just seems more wrong right I
mean maybe if you accidentally like
leaned into the steering wheel or
something like
that but uh or or say that the car is is
hurdling towards a switch that will drop the
the
Trap um then then I could agree with
that fair enough it still
seems wrong in a way that it doesn't
seem wrong in the first case to turn you
and in another way I mean in the first
situation you're involved directly with
the situation in the second one you're
an onlooker as well all right so you
have the choice of becoming involved or
Not by pushing the fat let's let's
forget for the moment about this
case that's good uh let's imagine a
different case this time you're a doctor
in an emergency room and six patients
come to
you uh they've been in a terrible
five of them sustain moderate injuries
one is severely injured you could spend
all day caring for the one severely
injured victim but in that time the five
would die or you could look after the
five restore them to health but during
that time the one severely injured
person would die how many would save the
five now is the doctor how many would
save the
one very few people
just a handful of
people same reason I assume one life versus
versus
five now consider another doctor case
this time you're a transplant surgeon
and you have five patients each in
desperate need of an organ transplant in
order to survive one needs a heart one a
lung one a kidney one a liver and the fifth
fifth a
a
pancreas and you have no organ donors
you are about to see them
die and then it occurs to you that in
the Next Room there's a healthy guy who
he's you like that
nap you could go in very
quietly yank out the five organs that
person would
die but you could save the
anyone how many put your hands up if you
anyone in the
balcony you would be careful don't lean over
over
too what uh how many
wouldn't all right what do you say speak
up in the balcony you who would yank out
the organs why I I'd actually like to
explore a slightly alternate possibility
of just taking the one of the five who
needs an organ who dies first using
their four healthy organs to save the other
idea that's a great
idea except for the fact that you just
wreck the philosophical
Point well let's let's step back from
these stories and these arguments to
notice a couple of things about the way
the arguments have begun to
fold certain moral principles have
already begun to
emerge from the discussions we've had
and let's consider what those moral
principles look like the first moral
principle that emerged in the discussion
said the right thing to do the moral
thing to do depends on the consequences
that will
result from your
action at the end of the day better that
five should live even if one must
die that's an example of
consequentialist moral
reasoning consequentialist moral
reasoning locates Morality In the
consequences of an act in the state of
the world that will result from the
thing you
do but then we went a little further we
considered those other cases and people
weren't so sure about
consequentialist moral
reasoning when people hesitated to push
the fat man over the bridge or to yank
out the organs of the innocent patient
people gestured toward
reasons having to do with the intrinsic
quality of 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
sake of saving five lives at least
people thought that in the second
version of each story We
considered so this points to a second categorical
categorical
way of thinking about moral reasoning
categorical moral reasoning locates
morality in certain absolute moral
requirements certain categorical duties
and rights regardless of the
consequences we're going to explore in
the days and weeks to come the contrast
between consequentialist and categorical moral
moral
principles the most influential example
of consequential moral reasoning is
utilitarianism a Doctrine invented by
Jeremy benam the 18th century English political
political
philosopher the most
important philosopher of categorical
moral reasoning is the 18th century
German philosopher Emanuel Kant so we
will look at those two different modes
of moral reasoning assess them and also
consider others if you look at the
syllabus you'll notice that we read a
number of great and famous books
books by
Aristotle John Lock Emanuel Kant John
Stewart Mill and
others you'll notice too from the
syllabus that we don't only read these
books we also take up contemporary
political and legal controversies that
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 enliven these
abstract and distant books but to make
clear to bring out what's at stake in
our everyday lives including our political
political
lives for
philosophy and so we will read these
books and we will debate these issues
and we'll see how each informs and
illuminates the other
this may sound appealing enough but here
I have to issue a
warning and the warning is
this to read these
books in this
way as an exercise in self- knowledge to
read them in this way carries certain
risks risks that are both personal and
political risks that every student of
political philosophy has
has
known these risks spring from the fact
that philosophy teaches us and unsettles
Us by confronting us with what we already
already
know there's an
irony the difficulty of this course
consists in the fact that it teaches
what you already
know it works by taking what we know
from familiar unquestioned settings
and making it
strange that's how those examples work
worked the hypotheticals with which we
began with their mix of playfulness and
sobriety it's also how these
philosophical books work
philosophy estranges us from the
familiar not by supplying new
information but by inviting and
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
unknown what makes this Enterprise different
different
diffult but also
riveting is that moral and political
philosophy is a
story and you don't know where the story
will lead but what you do know is that
the story is about
you those are the personal
risks now what of the political
risks one way of introducing a course
like this would be to promise you that
by reading these books and 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 more effective participant
in public
affairs but this would be a partial and misleading
misleading
promise political philosophy for the
most part hasn't worked that
way you have to allow for the
possibility thatl iCal philosophy may
make you a worse
citizen rather than a better
one or at least a worse citizen before
it makes you a better
one and that's because philosophy is a
distancing even debilitating
debilitating
activity and you see this going back to
Socrates there's a dialogue the gorgus
in which one of socrates's friends Cal
tries to talk him out of
philosophizing calicles tells Socrates
philosophy is a pretty
toy if one indulges in it with
moderation at the right time of life but
if one pursues it further than one
should it is absolute ruin take my
advice Calle says abandon argument learn
the accomplishments of active life take
for your models not those people who
spend their time on these Petty quibbles
but those who have a good livelihood and
reputation and many other
blessings so calak is really saying to
philos to
Socrates quit
philosophizing get
school and calicles 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 face of these risks
there is a characteristic evasion the
name of the evasion is skepticism it's
the idea let go something like this we
didn't resolve once and for
all either the cases or the principles
we were arguing when we
began and if Aristotle and lock and Kant
and Mill haven't solved these questions
after all all of these years who are we to
to
think that we here in Sanders Theater
over the course of of a semester can resolve
resolve
them and so maybe it's just a matter
of each person having his or her own
principles and there's nothing more to
be said about it no way of
reasoning that's the evasion the evasion
of skepticism to which I would offer the
following reply it's true these
questions have been debated for a very
long time but the very fact that they
have recurred and
persisted may
suggest that though they're impossible
in one sense they're unavoidable in
another and the reason they're
unavoidable the reason they're
inescapable is that we live some answer
to these questions every
day so skepticism just throwing up your
hands and giving up on moral reflection
is no
solution Emanuel Kant described very
well the problem with skepticism when he
wrote skepticism is a resting place for
human reason where it can reflect upon
its dogmatic wanderings but it is no
dwelling place for permanent settlement
simply to acques in skepticism K wrote
can never suffice to overcome the
restlessness of
reason I've tried to suggest through
these stories in these
arguments some sense of the risks and
temptations of the perils and the
possibilities I would simply conclude by
saying that the aim of this course is to
awaken the restlessness of reason and to
see where it might lead thank you very much
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