I'm not sure whether this goes in this part of the forum, but I want it to go somewhere: Two men are drowning, and you have exactly one life jacket to throw them. Whichever man you don't throw it to will die, yada yada, no other way, one must die.

Anyway, you know precisely one fact about each of the two. In the original example, it was that one man had a university-level education, and the other man hadn't. This could be generalised to "One man has a 108 IQ, the other has a 112", or any other factor separating the two, but for the time being, go with the graduate-versus-non-graduate example.

In this hypothetical example, which man do you 'save' - or do you pick randomly - and do you reason on utilitarian grounds, or some innate notion of 'fairness', or some other way of reasoning?

Hi, TraderJoe, Welcome to the Forum of Felicifia, the best and only Utilitarian Community online! I can’t wait to get to know you and learn what you believe in. If you feel you want to, please introduce yourself in ‘Welcome to Felicifia.org’.

To answer your question, “who should be saved?”, I use utilitarian reasoning.

If I save the more educated man, the less educated man will suffer severely for a short time. His friends and family will mourn his death. The world will also be deprived of this man’s impact.

If I save the less educated man, the more educated man and his friends will suffer. I think this part of the equation is pretty independent of education (I assume that through education you don’t gain or lose friends). But if I allow the more educated man to die, not only the man’s life but his education will be lost to the world.

In discussions I've had in the past, I’ve been told numerous times that I have no right to decide that a man like the uneducated man should die and that I should choose randomly. Well I don’t think that education makes a man’s life valuable as an end. I think that the fact that a person is living is important because of how it affects people. It’s true that I don’t know every possible effect of keeping the educated man alive. But even if only 1% of the consequences of my action are foreseeable, it's this knowledge that I have to use to decide what to do. And that means I think I should save the educated man.


Who would you prefer to save?

Hey Joe

You're essentially asking whether having a degree indicates you're more likely to improve the world, right?

The honest answer is 'I don't know, show me some a social study with a plausible methodology and I'll form an opinion.'

I would guess that being at uni tends to reduce your prejudices by exposing you to a greater variety of cultures than everyday life will, so put on the spot I'd probably go with the uni guy. But I'm not on the spot, I'm just contemplating being on it, so I'll stick with the first answer

In the actual example you give though, I almost certainly have more than one fact about each of the men. I can see them and/or hear them (since if you contrive the example so that they're invisible to me then even if I can somehow get a life jacket to them, I won't know which one I'm giving it to). I might be able to pick some useful bit of info - for example, if one of them is telling me to throw it to the other guy, while the first is screaming that he deserves it more, it'll probably bias me to throw it to the guy exhibiting apparent altruism. Or if one is much younger, that would probably dispose me towards him.

Otherwise guesswork and prejudice would probably bias me at least as much as the degree - does one look like he shaves his head? Has discernable gaps in his teeth? Has cliched tattoos? Has a thick redneck/cockney/equivalent accent? Has a threatening note to his voice?

Any such traits would be likely to affect my judgement...

Aargh...I wrote a long reply and lost it by muppetry. Basically, my reasoning is almost identical to Ryan's, so I save the 'desirable' one - whatever the criterion, I go based on that. But to answer your presumed question, you have absolutely no information besides that which I've given you. It's a thought experiment - I can put whatever parameters I want into the question
I could make it a race of space aliens who tell you that behind two doors are two men, one with a degree, and one without. Whichever door you open first will let the man out; the other will be trapped forever. If you open neither, both men die. I actually like the space alien example that my brain has just created, so I'll go with that in the future. It's not exactly elegant, but it is amusing.

Your scenario reminds me of those train-track thought experiments (described below). I suppose you interpret them in the same sort of utilitarian way? For scenario, in particular, do you feel inclined to draw some sort of distinction between action and inaction a(a difference between killing and let die)? What if we transfer the thought experiment to the real world... Would you euthanase a patient who wants to die? Do you accept or reject current law which allows you to cause a patient to die by prescribing fatal doses of pain-killers so long as you are only intending to relieve pain when you prescribe them?

Scenario 1:
You're standing next to a fork in the traintracks, with access to the lever that changes the direction the train will take. The train can not be stopped, and if left as it is, it will run over and kill 5 people standing at the end of the tracks. If, however, you pull the lever the train will change directions, killing the 1 person standing at the end of that fork. What do you do?

Scenario 2:
The situation with the train is the same, however this time you're standing on a bridge over the tracks. There's only one direction the train can go, and at the end there are 5 people that will be killed. You know that the only way to stop the train is by throwing some sort of heavy object in it's path. The only heavy object at your disposal at the moment happens to be the very fat man standing next to you. What do you do?

In the buoy scenario:

The amount of utility I can predict is much smaller than what is at stake, but this is always true. As I type this sentence, I have no idea whether the hurricanes that will form because I made this choice will kill fewer people than the ones that would have formed had I not typed it. If you think you should make choices at random when you only understand a negligible portion of what it will cause, you'd just have a seizure for the rest of your life.

In the train scenarios:

Scenario 2: By man, you mean male human, right? I suppose you might be able to stop a train with a very fat blue whale, though you certainly won't be able to push it onto the track.

Scenario 1 is harder. Trains can't stop quickly. If there's another train coming towards the fork from the other direction, and it's less then two miles away or so, the trains won't be able to stop in time. If the other train is a passenger train, this would be very, very bad. This is all assuming that you can pull the lever all the way. If you end up only pulling it part of the way, the train would probably derail and kill the people you were trying to save anyway.

TraderJoe wrote:Basically, my reasoning is almost identical to Ryan's, so I save the 'desirable' one - whatever the criterion, I go based on that. But to answer your presumed question, you have absolutely no information besides that which I've given you. It's a thought experiment - I can put whatever parameters I want into the question

Sure, I was just observing that the crux of the question, given that you asked it in a forum of utilitarians, isn't really ethical - it's just 'which of this people do you expect to do the most good?'

Given that, the thought experiment is superfluous. You might as well just ask the question above.

In response to DanielC, your responses are interesting. They seem truthful, but maybe they're not int he spirit of the thought experiment and they could be seen as evasive?

Jinksy wrote: I was just observing that the crux of the question, given that you asked it in a forum of utilitarians, isn't really ethical - it's just 'which of this people do you expect to do the most good?'

Given that, the thought experiment is superfluous. You might as well just ask the question above.

I have a few replies to that. The first is pedantic: You do have to include the good done by the person passively: just by existing. It might be the case that the man with the lesser education should not die because we will be mourned by more friends. My second is that I think once a type of utilitarianism is assumed, all ethical questions become empirical questions. For example: should I put down my dog? I should do what will maximise happiness. How do I maximise happiness? Which potential future will be happier? What reasons and evidence do I have to believe that should I not put down my dog it will live a happy life.

RyanCarey wrote: do you feel inclined to draw some sort of distinction between action and inaction a(a difference between killing and let die)?

This and the example you give are all based around Kantian theory - that there is a moral distinction. It goes against utilitarianism for the most part, but I'm prepared to sacrifice utilitarianism in certain circumstances. Specifically, he believed that it is wrong to use a human for a specific end - and that throwing the man over the bridge is deliberately killing him. To use a military metaphor, he's collateral damage in the other example.
I don't have a good answer to this, to be honest. Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought - which I heartily recommend - helped persuade me that there is a real distinction between killing and letting die [it was largely based on the semantics, but that's fine by me] - utilitarianism ignores this. Which isn't unreasonable; I think I'd place some value on the 'rights' of the individual. Even if ten trillion people all gained an immense amount of pleasure by torturing a newborn infant for twenty years, I think I would still reject that as being an acceptable cause of action for a benevolent dictator to mandate [or even permit]

But utilitarianism theory definitely does say that unless there're extra factors [maybe the fat man's wife would feel worse if he had been killed deliberately, or maybe people reading about it would feel horrified at my callousness] then we should ignore the distinction between the two. And it's hard for me to accept this.

Jinksy wrote:Sure, I was just observing that the crux of the question, given that you asked it in a forum of utilitarians, isn't really ethical - it's just 'which of this people do you expect to do the most good?'

Given that, the thought experiment is superfluous. You might as well just ask the question above.

You're right, I guess, but there're many people who would consider themself to be swayed by utilitarianism, yet not accept all of its premises. Including me. In general, I think it's clear that utils must sacrifice the man they expect to do the least good, but it's an unsettling conclusion - most people I've given this to have been horrified by its callousness [as they see it] - even though it's perfectly logically justifiable. This isn't saving "people like me" - I would also save a taller man than a shorter one, although I am 5"8, because they typically have more confidence and earning potential. I also think I would save a practising Jew over a gentile, and various other less savoury conclusions.