#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil
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Summary
In this episode, philosopher David Edmonds joins me to talk about his new book, Death in a Shallow Pond, A Philosopher, A Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need. We talk about Peter Singer's thought experiment, the Trolley problem, and the role of thought experiments in moral philosophy.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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Hi, I'm here with David Edmonds. David, thanks for joining me again.
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So David, you have a new book, which I really enjoyed. It's titled Death in a Shallow Pond,
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A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need. And you've written a kind of a short
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bio of the philosopher Peter Singer, who's also been on the podcast several times, and
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of the effective altruism movement that he has spawned, along with Will McCaskill and
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Toby Ord, who've also been on the podcast several times. But it's also a great history of moral
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philosophy in the analytic tradition. So I just want to track through the book, really, because
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it's, I think the virtues of effective altruism, as well as the concerns surrounding it, are still
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worth talking about. And I think just the core concerns of moral philosophy and how we think
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about doing good in the world are really of eternal interest, because it's not at all clear that we
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think about these things rationally or effectively or normatively in any other way. So, but before we
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jump in, remind people what you do, because you and I have spoken before and you have your own
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podcast, but where can people find your work generally and what are you tending to focus on
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these days? Gosh, well, I had a double life as a BBC journalist and a philosopher. I've given up the
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BBC bit, so it's all philosophy from now on. I've got a podcast called Philosophy Bites, which I make
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with a colleague, a friend called Nigel Warburton. And yeah, I now write philosophy books. And I'm
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linked to a centre in Oxford called the Uhero Institute, which is a centre dedicated to the
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study of practical ethics, applied ethics. So yeah, those are the various strings to my bow.
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So why did you write this book? And why did you take the angle you took here?
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Oh gosh, I mean, there's some prosaic explanations for why I wrote the book. I just written this biography
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of a guy called Derek Parfitt, who, as it happens, Peter Singer says is the only genius
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he ever met. And so I was thinking, I had such fun writing that book, and he was such an extraordinary
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character. I thought maybe I'll have a go at writing another biography. And Peter Singer is probably the
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most famous philosopher alive today. So I wrote to Peter and said, how about I write your biography?
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And he said, no, thank you. So then I thought I'd write a book about the history of consequentialism,
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which interests me. And that would be a book that covered Bentham and Mill and Sidgwick and all the
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way up to Parfitt and Singer. And then I was sort of daunted by the prospect of that. That was an
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enormous task. And then I thought what I'll do is I'll cover those subjects just through one thought
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experiment. I'd written a book about 15 years ago called Would You Kill the Fat Man, which was a very
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similar kind of book. Again, it was a biography of probably the most famous thought experiment in
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moral philosophy, which is the trolley problem. And Peter Singer's thought experiment, which we're
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going to talk about, I hope, is probably the second most famous thought experiment in moral
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philosophy. But I would say much more influential than the trolley problem. So anyway, that's what got
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me into the subject. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we should start with the thought experiment, which
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as I've spoken to Peter and other philosophers on this topic before, it'll be familiar to people.
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But I think we can't assume everyone has heard of it. So we should describe the thought experiment.
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But before we do, perhaps we can discuss thought experiments themselves for a minute or two,
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because even the act of entertaining them is somewhat controversial. What's the argument
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against thought experiments? Give me the for and against what we're about to do here.
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Okay. Well, thought experiments covers an enormous range of subjects. So there are thought experiments
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in every area of philosophy. There are thought experiments in the philosophy of mind. There are
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thought experiments in the philosophy of language. There are thought experiments in epistemology.
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And there are thought experiments in moral philosophy. And the objections to thought experiments tend to
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be directed particularly at thought experiments in the moral realm, I would say. So for example,
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in the area of consciousness, there's a very famous thought experiment called the Chinese room.
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There's another famous thought experiment when people argue about physicalism and whether everything
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is physical. And that's a thought experiment called what Mary knew. And on the whole,
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I mean, they are contentious and they're very heavily debated, but they don't arouse the kind of
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suspicion, I think, that many moral thought experiments arouse. And the reason that moral
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thought experiments arouse suspicion, well, there are many reasons, but one is people just say that our
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moral intuitions are not built for weird and often wacky scenarios. They're built for normal life,
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real life. And the problem with thought experiments is that they are often very strange, very artificial,
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and so we shouldn't trust our intuitions. And I would say that was probably the main objection to
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them. I mean, the response to that is there's a very good reason why they are artificial. The whole
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point about a thought experiment is you're trying to separate all the extraneous circumstances and
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factors that might be getting in the way of our thinking. And you're trying to kind of focus in
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particular on one area of a problem. So you might have a thought experiment where there are two
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scenarios which are different, except for the fact that one has a particular factor that the other
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doesn't have. And the point is to try and work out whether that factor is making a difference or not.
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And often you can only do that if you create a very artificial world, because the real world is
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not like that. The real world is just full of music and noise and complications. And so the thought
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experiment is designed to simplify and clarify and try and get at the nub of a problem.
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Yeah. I mean, it's a kind of conceptual and even emotional surgery that's being performed. I mean,
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you change specific variables and you look at the difference in response. And again, as you said,
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this is often, it can often seem highly artificial or unlikely because you're looking for the pure
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case. You're looking for the corner condition that really does elucidate the moral terrain.
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I think we should describe both thought experiments here. I think because I think there's an analogy
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between a common response to the trolley problem and what's happening in the shallow pond as well.
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So before we dive into the shallow pond, I guess pun intended, describe the trolley problem case and
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how it's used. Well, the main trolley problem case goes like this. You are to imagine that there is a
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runaway train. It's careering down the track. There are five people tied to the track. And in the simple
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case, you are on the side of the track and there's a switch and you can flick the switch and you can
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divert the train down a spur. And unfortunately, on that spur, one person is tied to the track. So
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the question is, should you turn the switch and divert the train away from the five to kill the one?
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And that was invented by a woman called Philippa Foote in 1967. She was writing about abortion at the
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time and it was in an article about abortion. And then 20 years later, an American philosopher called
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Judith Jarvis Thompson comes up with another example. So this one goes like this. You ought to
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imagine that the train is, again, it's out of control. It's heading down the track. There are
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five people who once again are tied to the track. This time, there's a different way of saving them.
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You are standing on a footbridge. You're standing next to, in the original article, it was a fat man.
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Now for modern sensibilities, it's a man with a heavy rucksack. So you're standing next to a man
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with a heavy rucksack. You can push the man with a heavy rucksack over the footbridge. And because
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that rucksack is so heavy, or in the original case, because the man is so fat, he will stop the train
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and so save the five people. And he would be killed in the process. And the puzzle that Judith
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Jarvis Thompson asks us to grapple with is that she seems to think that in the first case, you should
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turn the train to save the five and kill the one. But in the second case, you shouldn't push the fat
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man or you shouldn't push the man with a heavy rucksack to save the five at the cost of the one.
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And that was her intuition. And it's been tested all around the world. It's been tested on men.
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It's been tested on women. It's been tested on the highly educated, on the less educated. It's
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been tested in different countries. And on the whole, almost everybody thinks that in the first
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case, it is right to turn the train. And in the second case, it's wrong to push the fat man or the
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man with a heavy rucksack. And so the puzzle in this thought experiment is to explain why. Because in
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both cases, you are saving five lives at the cost of one.
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Yeah. And to be clear, the dissociation here is really extreme. It's something like 95%
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for and against in both cases. But the groups flip, right? So in the case where you just have
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to flip a switch, which is this kind of anodyne gesture of you're touching something mechanical
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that diverts the train onto the other track, killing the one and saving the five, 95% of people
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think you should do that. And when you're pushing the man from the footbridge, fat or otherwise,
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something like 95% think you shouldn't do that because that would be a murder. And I often have
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thought that there's a kind of a lack of homology between these two cases because at least in my
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imagination, people are burning some fuel trying to work out whether pushing the fat man really will
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stop the train, right? There's kind of an intuitive physics that seems implausible there. But leaving
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that aside, I think the big difference, which accounts for the difference in behavioral or
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experimental result, is that when people imagine pushing a person to his death, there's this up
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close and personal, very affect driving image of actually touching the person and being the true
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proximate cause of his death. Whereas in the case of flipping the switch, there's this mechanical
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intermediary and you're not, you're not having to get close to the person who's going to die,
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much less touch him. And that seems to be an enormous difference. And this is often put forward
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as a kind of an embarrassment to consequentialism because, you know, the consequences on the surface
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seem the same. We're just talking about body count. There's a net four lives that are saved.
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So they should be on a consequentialist analysis, the same case. But I've always felt that this,
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and I'm sure we'll cycle back to this topic a few times because I think it's important to get this
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right. I've always felt that this is just a specious version or at least an incomplete and
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unimaginative version of consequentialism or what consequentialism could be and should be,
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which is to have a fuller accounting of all the consequences. So if in fact, it is just
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fundamentally different experientially for a person to push someone to his death and to
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flip a switch. And if it's different to live in a society where people behave that way versus the
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other, well, then that's part of the set of consequences that we have to add to the balance.
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And I think it is, I mean, I think it is obviously different and that's what's being teased out in the
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experiment. So I now recognize that we should probably define consequentialism in order to continue
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to this conversation. So anyway, I just lob that back to you and perhaps respond, but also give us
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a presi on consequentialism. Well, consequentialism is the theory that what matters purely are the
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consequences. So in these two trolley cases, as you say, the consequences of flipping the switch and
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pushing the man with the heavy rucksack are the same. If you accept the hypothetical example,
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which is that one person dies and five people are saved. So if you're a pure consequentialist,
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it looks like there's no difference between these two cases. So there are dozens of these
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trolley cases in philosophy. There were dozens of scenarios which involve runaway trains. There
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are tractors. There are all sorts of things going on in these trolley cases. And it's been given a jokey
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title, which is trolleyology. The study of these trolley cases is trolleyology. And they've studied
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precisely the thing that you bring up. So the question is, is really the difference just a sort
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of emotional difference about pushing the fat man as opposed to turning the switch? So they've tested
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that and they've come up with a very ingenious way of testing it. So what they do is they ask people
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the following scenario. Imagine that the man with the heavy rucksack is on the footbridge, but this time
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you're standing next to a switch. And if you turn the switch, the man with the heavy rucksack will
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fall through a trap door and will plummet to the ground. And once again, we'll stop the runaway train
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from killing the five people. Now, if you are totally right about this, what you should get.
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I see where this is going. I'd forgotten all these iterations here. And I think that it definitely
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dissects out the up close and personal touchy feel part of it. But what it doesn't change is
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the fact that the man himself is being manipulated, right? So you're not manipulating the train,
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you're manipulating the man. And the man is becoming the instrument. His murder is the instrument
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rather than the effect of the flipping the switch. I think that does seem somehow a crucial difference.
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Right. So, but that's not a consequentialist difference, right? So what it is, I would just
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say it is if in fact, I mean, just imagine being these two, in one universe, you flip the switch
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as 95% of people think you should. And you feel while it was not, not pleasant to do,
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your conscience is totally clear. In another universe, you flip the switch to the trap door
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and watch this man fall to his death and stop the train. And you've, you can scarcely live with
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yourself because of the, you know, the psychological toxicity of having had that experience. That's
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part, for whatever the, I mean, we can talk more about the reasons why there is a difference there.
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And I'm, I'm happy to hear all your thoughts on that matter. But if there just is in fact a
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difference, you know, albeit maybe only in 95% of people, that's part of the consequences. And you
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can imagine the ripples of those consequences spreading to any society that would make policy of a sort that
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would, you know, enshrine one behavior as normative versus the other. Right. So I mean,
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this is what, I mean, there are all kinds of strange examples that are hurled at consequentialism
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at that seem to be defeaters of it, which always seem to me to be specious. I mean, one, one you
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actually deal with in the book, which is perhaps the most common one, which is the doctor who
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recognizes he's got five patients who need organ donations, and he's got a perfectly healthy person
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in his waiting room, just waiting for a checkup. And he decides to euthanize this person and
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distribute his organs to the waiting five, saving a net four lives. That seems on, you know, on this
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narrow focus on body count to be acceptable on a consequentialist analysis. But of course it's not
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because you have to look at the consequences of what it would be like to live in a society where
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trust has so totally eroded because we know at any time, even by the doctor who purports to
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have our wellbeing at heart, we could be casually murdered for the benefit of others. I mean,
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no one would want to live in that society. It'd be a society of just continuous terror and for good
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reason. So anyway, that's just my pitch that I've yet to hear, I mean, perhaps you can produce one in
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this conversation, but I've yet to hear a real argument against consequentialism that takes all
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consequences, all things considered into account. Right. So in your hospital case where somebody's
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bopped on the head and their two kidneys and their two lungs and their heart are used to save
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five patients. So you're obviously right that if that, as it were, got out, then that would be
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terrifying for everybody. You would never go and visit Auntie Doris in the hospital because you'd
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think, well, there's a risk that when I go and visit Auntie Doris, the same thing is going to happen
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to me. Of course, what the philosopher does is they then create a hypothetical example that
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just a one-off case. Yeah, it's a one-off and nobody finds out about it. And the person has
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got no friends and blah, blah, blah. But again, the response to that is, well, we can't really
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imagine that, you know, our intuitions aren't really coping with that really kind of cocooned example.
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We're imagining that this news is going to leak out. In the trolley case, I think it's much more
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complicated. It is true that people would find it more difficult to live with themselves by pushing
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the fat man or by dropping the fat man through the trap door. But the question is why? And I think the
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explanation is that people have one very powerful non-consequentialist intuition. And it goes
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something like this, although they don't articulate it and they're very puzzled by this
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thought experiment. If you put the following to them, they think, yes, this explains my intuition.
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So imagine that you push the large man from the footbridge and the large man is wearing a rubber
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suit. And instead of dying, he bounces off the track and he runs away. So what's your reaction to
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that case? Your reaction to that case is that's not good because the whole point of pushing him over
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was that so he got in the way of the train so that he would save five lives. Now imagine that in the
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first case, the train is going along and it's going to kill the five people and you flick the switch and
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it goes down the spur. Now imagine the person on the spur is able to extricate themselves from their
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ropes and able to run away. How would you feel about that? Well, you'd feel absolutely delighted.
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And why do you feel delighted? Because you haven't killed the five and you haven't had to kill the one.
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So the difference between the two cases, and this comes back to the doctrine of double effect that
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goes all the way back to Thomas Aquinas, is as you hinted at earlier, in the fat man case,
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you are using the fat man as a means to an end. And that's not the case with the spur case. Another
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way of putting that is you intend to kill the fat man when you push him over the foot. You want to
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kill him. Well, you need him to get in the way. You don't intend to kill the person on the spur.
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Hmm. Well, yeah, it's interesting. Well, it's, um, I'm not sure I totally buy that. That all turns
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on there being an important difference between acting in a way where it seems there's a hundred
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percent chance of killing a person, but still there being, it being true to say that you don't intend
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to kill the person. I think it's the key distinction is the distinction between intending
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and merely foreseeing. So it's the distinction in the Geneva Convention between attacking a
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munitions factory. It's a collateral damage issue, right? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So
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attacking the munitions factory, knowing that a hundred civilians will die, but this munitions
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factory is so important to the enemy's war effort that the attack on the munitions factory is justified,
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even though you know that a hundred people, a hundred civilians will die. It's the difference
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between that and intentionally targeting those 100 civilians. So, yeah, I think I, I misspoke
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a moment ago. I do clearly see that distinction. I guess it's the, um, let me see what's, what's
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bothering me about this. Well, perhaps it'll come out just in further discussion here around, uh, the
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other thought experiments. Well, let's talk about the shallow pond and kind of fill in more of this
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picture. And, uh, I think we'll, we'll cycle back on whether consequentialism has any real retort
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because I, because you said a moment ago that this is a, this was a non-consequentialist, uh, intuition
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and, um, my deep bias here, I'm, I'll be happy to be, um, disabused of it, but my deep bias is that
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when you drill down on, on any strongly held intuition that pushes our morality around and we
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can't shake it, it is either at bottom, some intuition about consequences, about, you know,
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what it would mean to live in a world where this kind of rule was repeated. So it's kind of a rule
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consequentialism rather than an, an act consequentialism per se, or we just have to bite the
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bullet and admit that, okay, this is a, an illusion. It's some kind of moral illusion, right? So, um,
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I mean, there, there's so many things that we could care about as we're about to see and, and,
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and magically don't care about. And it's, um, it is inscrutable that we, even when they're pointed
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out, we don't feel differently. I mean, the one that always comes to mind for me is, you know,
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if we just changed our driving laws just slightly, I mean, just to slightly inconvenience ourselves,
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I mean, that we made the speed limit 10 miles an hour lower on every street in the nation. I mean,
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so just speaking of, of America here, where we have 40,000 traffic deaths a year reliably, uh, and I
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don't know how many people are maimed, but you know, 40,000 people are killed outright based on
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how badly we drive. If we just reduce the speed limit by, you know, let's say 10 miles an hour,
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we would save thousands of lives. I think there's no question of that. And it's just the real,
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the only real consequence. I mean, I'm sure you could, maybe a few people would be inconvenienced
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in a way that might prove fatal, but it certainly wouldn't, it would be massively offset by the number
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of lives saved. The real consequence would be that it would be less fun to drive, right? Or,
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or we could actually, I mean, even to make it more, um, inscrutable still, we could put governors
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on all of our cars that, you know, so for whatever car, you know, from a Ferrari on down could never
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exceed the speed limit, right? You could drive however you wanted, but you could just never
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drive faster than the speed limit. That's technologically feasible. No one would want
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that no matter how many lives it would save because it would be less fun to drive. Uh, somehow we want to,
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we want to somehow carve out the possibility of driving faster than the speed limit. Uh, at least
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sometimes. And yet when you talk about that body count, nobody moves from that point to the obvious
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conclusion that we're all moral monsters for so callously imperiling the lives of everyone,
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including our own, really. I mean, we, there's no identifiable victim in advance. That's part of the
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problem, I think. But I mean, there's thousands of people, 40,000 people are guaranteed to die this
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year in America based on the status quo. How is this acceptable and how are, how are we not
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monstrously unethical for accepting it? Uh, and somehow the, the sense that there's even a moral
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problem here evaporates before I even get, can get to the end of the sentence. Yeah. So 40,000 is a lot
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of people. I think there were 58,000 killed in the whole of the Vietnam war, right? So that's,
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that's, that's a big figure. And oddly in London, in much of London now, they've reduced the speed
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