Do the numbers matter?
Taurekıs eg: using a drug to save one life or five.
Taurekıs first argument:
P1. If the drug belongs to the one person (Y), it would be permissible for him to save himself, because it makes sense for him to think of his life as more important to him than the othersı lives are to him.
P2: What we are permitted to do must be the same as what Y is permitted to do.
Concl: It cannot be true that we ought to save the five people rather than Y.
Parfitıs reply: Yıs permission to save his own life rather than the lives of 5 strangers is agent-relative: The reason heıs permitted to save himself is that itıs his own life. When weıre deciding whether to save one stranger or five, this agent-relative principle does not apply. So P2 is false.
Taurekıs second argument:
P1: The only points of view for the evaluation of outcomes are individual points of view.
P2: There is no coherent sense of better and worse in which it would be a worse situation if the five people die than if the one dies.
Concl: So we cannot properly say that five lives are five times as valuable as one life.
Kammıs first reply:
We can judge that a situation in which two (or more) suffer a certain loss is worse than a situation in which just one person suffers the loss, whilst still remaining importantly tied to individualsı perspectives. We make this judgement from a perspective that gives equal consideration to each personıs partial point of view, and so combines the partial and the impartial points of view.
Kammıs second reply:
If we treat a choice between one life and another in the same way as a choice between two lives and one, then we are failing to treat the extra person in the second case as having any importance.
Each person has an equal claim to be helped.
In a conflict, justice demands that each person on one side should have her interests balanced against those of one person on the opposing side; those that are not balanced out in the larger group help determine that the larger group should be saved. If we treat a choice between tow lives and one in the same way as a choice between one life and another, then we are failing to treat the extra life in the first case as having any importance.
For simplicity, suppose itıs a choice between two people, where you could save either but not both. What are the relevant grounds on which such choices should be made?
Should you save the younger of two people?
The utilitarian argument:
The reason for saving someoneıs life is that it is in his or her interests.
But how good it is for someone to keep on living or, equivalently, how bad it is for them to die now does depend on how hold they are.
A young personıs death truncates the goods in their life more than an older personıs.
So itıs better for a young person to have their life saved than an older person.
So thereıs more reason to save the lives of the young than the old.
(At least, given the same life expectancy in each.)
An objection to the utilitarian argument:
It is based on the claim that there is more reason to save the lives of those who have a higher level of well-being.
This may be incompatible with respect for personıs equal moral status.
Kant: each personıs worth is of unconditional value, and is therefore not dependent on their quality of life.
Should you save the more deserving of two people?
A utilitarian will deny the intrinsic moral relevance of desert.
A Kantian argument:
Kant was completely opposed to ranking lives according to their moral worth; each
personıs dignity is of unconditional and incomparable worth. However, on his theory
this respect is compatible with holding that some people deserve to be punished.
A person may deserve to be punished for the things they have done, but that does
not mean that they deserve to have their interests discounted in life-and-death decisions.
However, consider a case in which there are two people who need to be saved, and one
is responsible for the threat to the otherıs life.
Here, it does seem to make sense to say that he or she deserves to be saved less. A
Kantian might argue that they have fundamentally violated the moral contract in failing
to act in a way to which others could reasonably agree, precisely by showing a callous
disregard for other peopleıs lives.
Is it proper to take into account the benefits that other people will receive from saving one person rather than another?
Some examples to think about:
- a young parent
- a talented cancer / malaria researcher
- Rory Bremner
The case for taking this into account (utilitarian):
The reason for saving life at all is that it is in other peopleıs interests.
So wonıt a concern for other peopleıs interests mean taking into account the interests of all the further people who may be affected by the death of a person?
The case against (Kantian):
This involves too instrumental an attitude towards the value of another personıs life.
Insofar as people value someone with attitudes that are respectful, they are affected by a personıs death because they value that person in herself, rather than as a means to the goods they can derive from her.