[Anon] [Text]

[crouching_sin]

Here's a question for you all. It's something that I read a while back, and I'm interested in your answers. Anonymous is fine, if you want.

There are five patients in a hospital. All of them are dying due to complications with various organs. All of them will die within the next day or so if they don't get an organ transplant. Magic won't save any of them, incidentally, if you were hoping to use that.

A young backpacker comes into the hospital or a checkup. He has no relatives, and he is in excellent health. As it happens, you, the surgeon on duty, notice that he is a perfect match for all five of the patients.

Assuming the backpacker does not give consent, is it morally permissible to cut him up and transfer the organs to the other patients? These are not organs that the backpacker can live without, so he'll die if you do.

I'm interested to hear what you think.

Comments

[explosivecombat]

You would have done better with the original version of the trolley problem, you know.

[crouching_sin]

This one is more fun, though. People give more interesting reactions. I like playing devil's advocate.

[explosivecombat]

Really? I have yet to see you actually do so.

Let's hear your argument, then, if you're so fond.

[crouching_sin]

Provided that no one would know, and that the people are people that you would actually want to keep alive and not, say, someone you hate - then I don't find a real ethical problem within my own internal ethics. If the goal is to maximize potential happiness and minimize suffering, then wouldn't keeping more people alive be the more ideal outcome? Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, even if neither side really knows what's best for them.

[explosivecombat]

Of course you don't have a problem with your own internal ethics in that regard; what you just described by your own admission is personal investment in people you have reason to be invested in, whatever that reason may be. Ask anyone if they would hypothetically do anything for the people they care about and you'll marvel at how quickly their sense of morality flies right out the window.

You can't pretend, in the circumstances you've provided, that keeping more people alive or satisfying the needs of the many has anything to do with it, and as such your claim to arguing devil's advocate is still neither valid nor accurate.

It was a nice try, though.

[crouching_sin]

You asked about my argument, and I was under the impression that you wanted to hear my opinion. If I didn't care about any of them, then of course the risks outweigh the benefits. It's an example of utilitarianism at its most basic form, which has problems as we've discussed. It's an introductory example.

[explosivecombat]

And yet by your own admission, posing this problem has nothing to do with debating utilitarianism and everything to do with trying to seem edgy and getting a rise out of people.

[crouching_sin]

People are interesting when you can get a rise out of them. Sometimes they change into things that you never thought that they would... though most just shout amusing insults at you.