August 19, 2020
or “Why There Ain’t No Such Thing as Utilitarianism”
The “Trolley Problem” is a basic thought experiment in Ethics/Philosophy. There are different variations. This is one version:
“You’re riding in a self-driving trolley. You look up to see that you are barreling toward five people on the tracks. You try the emergency brakes but the don’t work. You notice a remote-activated switch that will divert the trolley to another track where one person will be killed instantly, but save the other five.
“Doing nothing will result in five deaths, activating the switch will result in one. What do you do?”
GESTAPO AT THE DOOR
Another classic thought experiment goes like this:
“You’ve lived your life believing that lying is a sin that should be avoided at all costs. You are aware of a couple in your neighborhood who are in danger from the current government. You are sympathetic to their beliefs and mistrustful of those in power.
“One day the couple knocks frantically on your door. They tell you they are being pursued by the authorities, who want to torture and maybe kill them. You agree to hide them.
“Soon the State Police knock on the door. They show you a picture of the couple and ask if you know where they are. Realizing the consequences, you go against your nature and lie. The authorities believe you, thank you and leave.
“You were right to lie in this case, of course…
…or so you think.
“A few days later you read in the paper that a terrorist group has unleashed a biological weapon that has killed many thousands of innocent people. The picture of the ringleaders of the group who manufactured and detonated the weapons are of the couple you sheltered.”
The standard version of this thought experiment typically has the couple being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany and the authorities as Nazis. It is usually brought up as an example of when lying is morally correct and/or of the ends justifying the means.
You Kant Make This Stuff Up?
The problem is that this version assumes an omniscience that in my opinion invalidates the thought experiment.
Most people will argue that they’ll know when the bad guys are really bad guys. That’s what the person in both of the above example thought too. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume you do know that for sure. That still leaves open other possibilities…
…the couple, knowing your devotion to honesty, decide to run out the back door, expecting to escape while the Nazis were searching your house. Unfortunately because you didn’t delay them, the Nazis caught the Jews (and probably took you in as well)
…or this couple were really undercover Nazi spies trying to see who could be trusted in the neighborhood and who should be thrown into a concentration camp. You and your family are bundled away.
…or – I’m sure you can think up your own variant.
This concept for this thought experiment originated with the philosopher Emmanuel Kant. There is a more thorough and erudite discussion of the issues it raises here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01507.x
“Hi Trolley, Neighborhood of ‘Make Believe’”
Returning to the Trolley Problem, the Utilitarian solution is to pull the lever and kill one person instead of five.
…unfortunately, it turns out that you’re going so fast that when the trolley hits the turn to divert it, it jumps the tracks and barrels into a crowded marketplace killing scores of people
…or that everything goes as planned but the 5 people you saved were all convicted pedophile serial-killers working on a chain gang, while the single person was a scientist who had just secretly perfected a vaccine for the latest viral outbreak and figured out a simple solution for Global Warming and was rushing to present his ideas to his colleagues
…or the five people were there intentionally as part of a cult that wanted to commit suicide to get to a better world (where they don’t have useless thought experiments).
I saw one argument that if no one in the group of 5 people was cognizant enough to realize they were about to be killed, then they deserved their fate over the innocent person on the side track who thought they were safe.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The problem with these thought experiments is that they assume ‘perfect knowledge’. You may think the authorities are the equivalent of evil Nazis searching for innocent people to persecute, but you cannot ‘know’ that.
Does this mean I would tell the truth in real life in a similar situation? Probably not. But the situation would be much more complicated (how well do I really know these people, am I putting my family in mortal danger, etc.) and I wouldn’t have months or even hours to think about it. That’s not really the point.
All this brings me to Utilitarianism. There are many versions of Utilitarianism, but for purposes of argument I’m going with the one that says that “The greatest good for the greatest number should be the guiding concept”. The opposite is Deontology, which states that an action is right or wrong based on moral rules, regardless of the consequences.
UTILI-TOTALITARIANISM
Utilitarianism has three major problems which invalidate it as a real philosophy, all related to our lack of perfect knowledge.
The first is that the goal is impossible to define. What is this ‘greatest good’? Most often it is assumed to be happiness. But everyone has different ideas of what happiness is, and most of us really don’t know what will make us happy (as is so well pointed out in the books Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert and The Happiness Hypothesis by Johnathan Haidt).
The second major problem with Utilitarianism is not just that we don’t have perfect knowledge, we aren’t even close to having it and probably never will (Is God even sure that he or she is really the highest power?). Compounding that problem is that we think we are much better at predicting the future that we actually are. This year alone we have experienced the Covid-19 virus that unexpectedly dominated the news completely for several months. Then at the end of May, George Floyd was murdered triggering civil unrest and many other repercussions that are still being resolved. As I write this we still have over 4 months left in the year including a major election.
The final problem is defining ‘The Greatest Number’. Does every living person qualify? What about those in a vegetative state? What about those in hospice with terminal illness? What about animals? Most importantly, what about the future generations that haven’t been conceived yet?
Imagine a society where every single person has a happiness level of 70. One day the supreme being comes and tells the people that they can increase their happiness level to 72, but if they are willing to reduce their happiness level to 60, then all future generations will have a happiness level of at least 80.
I don’t believe there is a real definition for Utilitarianism. Therefore, in my opinion, it doesn’t exist.
But even if one accepts an amorphis amorphous ‘definition’, the basic philosophy rests on the idea that the means justify the ends, an ideology not just used to support and rationalize virtually every atrocity/genocide committed in human history, but one that often leads to tragic consequences in our every day lives.
On a pure level, I don’t believe the ends ever justify the means, but that’s a topic for a later post. In the meantime…
…Every day in every situation act as ethically as you are capable of and you’ll be a better and happier person.
Thanks for reading! I plan to update this post every so often. Constructive comments are most welcome, especially pointing out spelling/grammatical errors, readability issues, broken/missing links, etc.
