4 ms·
It is not analogous to the Trolley problem. In the case of torture, the question is whether pain may be inflicted on a person to extract information, and in re
by danielam 9y ago
It is not analogous to the Trolley problem.
In the case of torture, the question is whether pain may be inflicted on a person to extract information, and in recent public discussion, esp. where known terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) are concerned.
In the Trolley problem, you are put in a situation out of your control and in which you may influence the nature and degree of casualties by flipping a switch. The concerns here are about whether one choice (flip, don't flip) is morally preferable to another, whether one is morally obligated to make one choice over another, etc.
In your nuclear bomb thought experiment, the question is somewhat artificial and vague where potentially relevant distinctions could be made. Are we inflicting pain because we wish to extract information that will enable us to prevent the bomb from going off? Is there some device inside the guilty party that measures pain and disarms the bomb at appropriately high level?
Utilitarians, and broadly consequentialists, like to frame everything in terms of a moral calculus of maximizing good while reducing evils, but it leads to clearly perverse conclusions like the justification of committing morally evil acts so that some other good may come. Whether torture as a method of extracting information from people like KSM is immoral is not a question of whether we can justify torture because the good of the information we may gain exceeds the evil of torture, but whether torture is intrinsically evil, and if not, whether it is ever justifiable as a method of extracting information, esp. from guilty parties.
- kbutler 9y agoI don't see how the questions you raise make the bomb/trolley problems not analogous. You're choosing whether to cause harm to one individual in order to prevent harm to others - the rest are just details/framing. > whether torture is intrinsically evil, and if not, whether it is ever justifiable That is exactly the question. We often make absolute statements ("Killing people is instrinsically evil", "Torture is intrinsically evil") but may find cases where it is justifiable: - shoot the active shooter (most people agree killing is justified) - bone marrow donation (causes excruciating pain, willingly accepted by the individual, to save the life/health of another. Most people find this justified, even though it violates "first, do no harm") - voluntary euthanasia (to involve both torture and killing) - Constant excruciating pain, no hope of a cure. Do you kill the person? Or force them to continue to endure? (People are divided on this one)
- danielam 9y agoThe similarities are only superficial. You have to make careful distinctions. In the trolley example, you aren't choosing to actively cause harm to someone for the sake of the benefit of others. The trolley is going to kill someone. You may, at best, act to reduce the harm done by a process out of your control. Where the torture example is concerned, one choice involves the active, intentional infliction of pain on someone for the purpose of extracting information that can be used to save lives. In general, a fairly important principle in ethics is the principle of double effect. I.e., 1. the action must be in itself good or neutral 2. the action's good effect must be intended, not its evil effect 3. the action's good effect must not be produced by means of the evil effect 4. the action's evil effect must not exceed the good effect in degree
- emmelaich 9y agoAll those exist on a continuum and usually not well known anyway. The Trolley is at one end of an extreme. The point of such a hypothetical is that you can adjust any parameter to find peoples' limits. It could be the case that you don't actually disagree with one another much at all! But if you never address the Trolley problem or similar you will never know.
- kbutler 9y agoSee "the fat villain" variant in the trolley problem wiki page above. Kill the villain by pushing him onto the track in front of the train to save the innocents, or not. It is explicitly asking if you would harm the villain (evil action, evil effect produces good effect).
- danielam 9y agoThe fat man version is indeed similar. Of course, the fat man version is not analogous to the first version of the trolley problem for reasons I gave above.