mean the death of the obese homeless person. The switchman wants your OK to push the homeless man over the bridge. What do you say?
Analysis
This case has two sorts of interpretation: before and after the nuance addition. In the first instance, one is faced with a simple question: should you kill four people or 39? The major moral theories give different answers to this question. First, there is the point of view of utilitarianism. It would suggest that killing four causes less pain than killing 39. Thus, one should tell the switchman to move you to the siding.
There is the fact that when the car was stuck on the siding, the driver probably viewed his risk as different from being stuck on the main line. Thus, by making that choice you are altering that expectation: versus the bus driver who has to know that he is in imminent danger of death. Rule utilitarians might think that moving away from normal procedures requires a positive alternative. Killing four people may not qualify as a positive alternative (because it involves breaking a rule about willful killing of innocents). Thus, the utilitarian option may be more complicated than first envisioned.
Rule utilitarianism would also find it problematic to throw the homeless person over the bridge for the same reason; though the act utilitarian (the variety outlined above) might view the situation as killing one versus four or 39. However, there is the reality that one is committing an act of murder to save others. This would be disallowed by the rule utilitarian. If the act utilitarian were to consider the long-term social consequences in sometimes allowing murder, he would agree with the rule utilitarian. However, without the long-term time frame, the act utilitarian would be committed to throwing the homeless person over the bridge.
The deontologist would be constrained by a negative duty not to kill. It would be equally wrong from a moral viewpoint to kill anyone. There is no moral reason to choose between the car and the bus. Both are impermissible. However, there is no avoidance alternative. You will kill a group of people unless the homeless person is thrown over the bridge. But throwing the homeless person over the bridge is murder. Murder is impermissible. Thus, the deontologist cannot allow the homeless person to be killed—even if it saved four or 39 lives. Because of this, the deontologist would use other normative factors, such as aesthetics, to choose whether to kill four or 39 (probably choosing to kill four on aesthetic grounds).
The virtue ethics person or the ethical intuitionist would equally reply that the engineer should act from the appropriate virtue, say justice, and do what a person with a just character would do. But this does not really answer the question. One could construct various scenarios about it being more just to run into the school bus rather than the car when the occupants of the car might be very important to society: generals, key political leaders, great physicists, etc. In the same way, the intuitionists will choose what moral maxim they wish to apply at that particular time and place. The end result will be a rather subjectivist decision-making process.
Finally, non-cognitivism and contractarianism are constrained to issues such as: “What does the legal manual for engineers tell them to do in situations like this?” If the manual is silent on this sort of situation, then the response is: What is the recommended action for situations similar to this in some relevant way? This is much like the decision-making process in the law where stare decisis et non quieta movere (support the decisions and do not disturb what is not changed). In other words, one must act based upon a cultural–legal framework that provides the only relevant context for critical decisions.
In any event, the reader can see that the way one reasons about the best outcome of a very difficult situation changes when one adds ethics to the decision-making machinery. I invite readers to go through several calculations on their own for class discussion. Pick one or more moral theory and set it out along with prudential calculations such that morality is the senior partner in the transaction. One may have to return to one’s personal worldview (critically understood, as per above), and balance it with the practical considerations and their embeddedness to make this call.
Case 2: Environmental Ethics
You are the head of the McDowell County Commission in West Virginia. Your county has been hit hard by poverty over the past few decades due to the decrease in coal production. ABC Coal Company that still operates a large mine has applied for a permit to construct a large coal-generated power plant. The plant will mean 1000 jobs and the taxes it will generate will allow the county to revive many social services that have been lost in recent years. The sort of plant that will be built is a conventional 500 megawatt plant that will consume 1.4 million tons of coal a year (from ABC’s own mine). The problem is a new clean air and water act passed by Congress that will come into effect in 14 months. The new law sets limits on soot, smog, acid rain, toxic air emissions, and metal trailing, including arsenic, mercury, chromium, and cadmium. The tree huggers contend that these metals cause cancer and that the resulting air pollution will cause respiratory ailments and lead to global warming. The new plant as designed will not meet the new Federal guidelines.
ABC wants the environmental impact study fast tracked with a board of sympathetic scientists. ABC has even provided you with a confidential list of these scientists. They will produce a report in 3 months that will allow the permit to be issued in 6 months and ground breaking in 9 months. Any ongoing permit-approved projects have been grandfathered out of the new clean air and water act. The plant could be operational in 18 months. Your next election is in 22 months. There is one county commissioner who is against the project. He says that jobs are important, but so is the health of the environment. Your own father died of black lung disease at the age of 59. You are sensitive to the concerns for clean air and water, but people need to live. How could you turn down ABC and look your poverty-torn constituents in the eyes?
Analysis
The prudential perspective from the head commissioner’s vantage point has several elements. His or her job is in jeopardy if the power plant is not built. Being the head commissioner is crucial to this individual’s worldview perspective. This slant of the prudential viewpoint would be to get the ball rolling as soon as possible. The clock is ticking in order to achieve the “grandfathered status.” You must have a permit in hand and in the process of construction to get this. Thus, you should act immediately.
If we expand the prudential slightly there are more angles to consider. For one, the air quality in the county would become lower. This might hurt your slightly asthmatic daughter. It might also lower your own and your family’s life expectancy. However, though your father died early, your grandfather (who did not work underground) lived to be 80! Black lung is a miner’s hazard. Topside, the air is so much cleaner than down below (especially before they had the modern ventilation systems) that you are inclined to discount this risk as theoretical, but not practical. This would include your thoughts about other county residents.
If we look from the perspective of ethical non-cognitivism, we have to isolate the culture of coal mining in West Virginia. This is an arena of people with a strong sense of individualism. They want to be able have a decent job so that they can take care of their families. The current economy has eroded these possibilities while not replacing them with others. Under this shared community worldview the most important outcome is jobs. The new plant promises jobs. The new plant should be built.
Virtue ethics (here interpreted as anti-realist) would suggest that the key character trait fortitude is most important here. Generations of West Virginians have had to surmount incredible odds in order to put food on the table and raise their families. Men in the mines have had to endure great pain, and so have their spouses who have had to struggle with little in order to keep life moving forward. When faced with the downside of a little air pollution that (even if the science is right) will shorten life only by a few years, the historic character of the people in the region is strongly in favor of building the power plant. After all, the downside is minimal compared with life underground. You will not get black lung from the light pollution of the power plant.
Contractarianism would center on what sort of laws and societal social contracts exist. In individually oriented West Virginia the scale is slanted toward each person in the