nach oben

The Journal of Value Inquiry

Erschienen in:

13.01.2015

The Doctrine of Double Effect and the Trolley Problem

verfasst von: Whitley R. P. Kaufman

Erschienen in: The Journal of Value Inquiry | Ausgabe 1/2016

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Excerpt

It is widely held by moral philosophers that J.J. Thomson’s “Loop Variant,” a version of the Trolley Problem first presented by her in 1985, decisively refutes the Doctrine of Double Effect (“DDE”) as the right explanation of our moral intuitions in the various trolley-type cases.¹ The consensus position, as stated most bluntly by psychologist Joshua Greene, is that Thomson’s Loop case is a “showstopper” for Double Effect.² The Loop case is supposed to show that it is permissible to switch the trolley even though to do so would be to use the fat man’s death as a means to save others, thus contradicting the DDE. A few philosophers have suggested possible ways out of this dilemma for the DDE: Liao argues that the Loop case should be dismissed as an anomaly, insufficient to call into question the DDE.³ McMahan and Otsuka have argued that we should use the DDE to override our intuitions, thus making it impermissible to switch the trolley in the Loop case. In this essay, I argue for a different approach to the Loop case, one that shows that our uncertain intuitions in the Loop case in fact match up very well with the Double Effect principle. …

Vorheriger Artikel Truthfulness as Nietzsche’s Highest Virtue

Nächster Artikel Collective Virtue

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

See Bruers and Brackman, “A Review and Systematization of the Trolley Problem,” Philosophia 42:2 (June 2014): 251–269; T. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Peter Singer, “Ethics and Intuitions,” Journal of Ethics 9:314 (2005): 331–352, p. 340; Matthew Liao, “The Loop Case and Kamm’s Doctrine of Triple Effect,” Philosophical Studies 146:2 (2009): 223–231; H. Sauer, “Morally Irrelevant Factors: What’s Left of the Dual Process Model of Moral Cognition?,” Philosophical Psychology 25:6 (2012): 783–811, p. 797. Frances Kamm suggests the DDE can be saved from the objection, but only by radically revising it into a doctrine of “Triple Effect” (Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)); I take it that this position concurs with the consensus that the Loop problem refutes the DDE.

It should be noted that Thomson’s original article on the subject does not actually discuss the DDE, but instead focuses on the Kantian idea that one may not treat people as a means (J.J. Thomson, “The Trolley Problem,” Yale Law Journal 94 (1985): 1395–1415 (reprinted in Rights Restitution and Risk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)). However, the Loop variant raises the same problem for the DDE’s focus on intention, and it has become standard in the literature to treat Thomson’s argument as if it is directed against the DDE (see e.g. Liao 2008). It is my view that the Kantian position is in practice identical to the idea developed in the DDE (a view I defend in Justified Killing: The Paradox of Self-Defense (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2009)).

Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes (New York: Penguin, 2013), p. 230. Though his intended meaning is clear, in fact Greene has confused his metaphors. A “showstopper” is a term from the theater, referring to a musical number so well received that the audience’s wild applause temporarily stops the performance. Thus a showstopper indicates a smashing success, not a failure.

Liao, Wiegmann, Alexander, and Vong, “Putting the Trolley in Order: Experimental Philosophy and the Loop Case,” Philosophical Psychology 25:5 (2012): 661–671.

Jeff McMahan, “Intention, Permissibility, Terrorism, and War,” Philosophical Perspectives 23 (2009): 345–372, p. 345.

Kaufman 2009, op. cit.

This is a highly simplified version of the DDE sufficient for purposes of this essay; a full account of the DDE is provided in Kaufman 2009, op. cit.

Marc Hauser, Moral Minds (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), p. 128. The use of Marc Hauser’s research data of course raises the problem of its reliability given his removal from Harvard in 2011 based on scientific misconduct. However, the alleged misconduct seems to have been limited to Hauser’s studies on monkeys and animal cognition and Hauser’s questionable interpretation of monkey behavior. There is no evidence of which I am aware that it extends to the evidence collected from online surveys of peoples’ responses to the trolley problems, which does not involve similar problems of interpretation. The online Moral Sense Test is still active, being run by other members of the Psychology Department at Harvard. Cf. also Edmonds 2014 p. 200: “there has been no suggestion that there was anything untoward about the published results” in the area of trolley problems.

I assume here an act-utilitarian theory (seemy Honor and Revenge: A Theory of Punishment (New York: Springer, 2012) pp. 81–82 for a discussion of the problems with rule-utilitarian theories).

Hauser, op. cit.

Thomson, op. cit., p. 102.

Singer, op. cit., p. 340.

Scanlon, op. cit., p. 18.

Two new books have recently appeared as accounts of the trolley problem for a popular audience: David Edmonds, Would You Kill the Fat Man?, and Thomas Cathcart, The Trolley Problem: or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge?.

Cass Sunstein, “Moral Heuristics,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (2005): 531–573, p. 541.

Kaufman2009, op.cit.

Otsuka for example notes that, unlike many other examples used in ethics, “looping cases are not modelled on any real-world cases with which we are familiar” (M. Otsuka, “Double Effect, Triple Effect and the Trolley Problem,” Utilitas 20:01 (2008): 92–110, p. 109). Of course, Trolley and Fat Man are also somewhat artificial, even if less so than the Loop case.

Additionally, since Thomson does not say how large this loop is, one might reason that one would have cause to switch the trolley even if the fat man were not present, just because it buys time to try to get the five people off the track. If so, one is not intending the death of the fat man, or so one could argue.

Liao et alia 2012, op. cit., p. 229.

Hauser, op. cit., p. 128. Hauser uses a slightly modified version of the Loop case, but there is no reason to believe that it changes the case in any important respect.

It is not clear who Singer is referring to when he says “most people,” nor does he provide any evidence to back up his assertion. It is notable however that an online poll of philosophers gave very different results from the Hauser poll: 67% of philosophers said that it is permissible to redirect the trolley in the Loop case (though the sample size is small: only 76 participants) (http://ethics-etc.com/2007/08/11/the-loop-case-poll/). Otsuka plausibly suggests that philosophers’ intuitions may be biased by the powerful influence of Thomson’s initial article (op. cit., 2008, p. 109). We might also speculate that the widespread hostility to the DDE may have influenced philosophers into accepting her conclusion in the Loop case.

Op. cit., p. 102.

Note that Thomson actually writes that the extra feet of track can make no “major” moral difference. It is unclear what this qualification is supposed to mean.

Thomson, op. cit., p. 102.

Liao, op. cit.

McMahan, op. cit., p. 359.

He also does not explain the qualification “virtually” indistinguishable.

Otsuka 2008, op. cit., p. 110.

Ibid., pp. 108–109.

Scanlon, op. cit.

Greene 2013, op. cit., p. 231, makes a similar argument.

McMahan raises the question as to whether, once one has switched the trolley, one is morally required to try to get the Fat Man out of the way (op. cit. 2009, p. 359). If one passed up on an easy opportunity to save him, it seems to me that McMahan is correct that one is now acting morally impermissibly. But it does not seem to me that this entails that one is acting impermissibly in the more likely scenario, that there is no easy way to get the Fat Man to move away from the train.

One might see Kamm’s attempt to draw even more subtle distinctions in the nature of intention as another way of suggesting that the case does not clearly fall under either side of the dichotomy, intended versus foreseen (Kamm, op. cit.).

Op. cit., p. 255.

Titel: The Doctrine of Double Effect and the Trolley Problem
verfasst von: Whitley R. P. Kaufman
Publikationsdatum: 13.01.2015
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: The Journal of Value Inquiry / Ausgabe 1/2016
Print ISSN: 0022-5363
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0492
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9479-0

Springer Professional

Excerpt

Bitte loggen Sie sich ein, um Zugang zu Ihrer Lizenz zu erhalten.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 1/2016

Stephen Winter, Transitional Justice in Established Democracies: A Political Theory

Dispositionalism and Moral Nonnaturalism

Gregory E. Kaebnick and Thomas H. Murray, eds., Synthetic Biology and Morality: Artificial Life and the Bounds of Nature

Comments on Badhwar, Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life

Cooperation in the We-Mode and Immigrant Inclusion

Collective Virtue