What's wrong with killing the healthy patient?

[CIN]

You all know the setup: a surgeon has one healthy patient and five terminally ill patients; he can save the lives of the ill patients, but only by harvesting organs from the healthy patient, who will die in the process. Should he or shouldn't he?

The utilitarian would say he should, because you get five presumed pleasant lives instead of one, and since pleasure is the only good, this is better.

I'm going to say he shouldn't, because killing the healthy patient is wrong.

Why is it wrong? Because it implies a category error, and since this is a moral context, that is a moral error, i.e. morally wrong.

The error is to treat the healthy patient as if he were an object that cannot have moral standing, like an inanimate object. It's not just that he's treating him as if he had zero moral standing, which could at some stage change to positive moral standing; by ending his life, he is treating him as if this were forever a total impossibility, which could only be the case if the healthy patient was not the kind of object that could have moral standing at all. And he isn't that kind of object.

The utilitarian might object to this, saying, 'I'm not treating the healthy patient like an inanimate object, because I factor him into my calculation when I'm considering what to do, which I wouldn't do with an inanimate object.' This seems to me an inadequate reply. The utilitarian's factoring the healthy patient in at the point of consideration doesn't alter the fact that, at the point of action, he treats him the same as he would an inanimate object. Since it is the action, not the consideration, that has an effect on the patient, it is surely what happens at the point of action that matters.

This, I think, is what Kant meant when he said that we should treat people as ends, not just as means. I don't agree with much of Kant's ethics, but I do agree with him on this (though, being a sentientist, I disagree with his view that only humans can count as ends).

So what do we do if we are faced with an action which would spread enormous amounts of pleasure and/or save enormous amounts of pain, but involves the killing of just one sentient being (say, a mouse)? Do we do a very good thing which is wrong, or do right but allow a lot of badness to go on unchecked? I don't know the answer to this. I doubt if there is an answer, because it would seem to require a common feature of both goodness and rightness, or badness and wrongness, which would allow us to rate them against one another. I don't know of any such feature, and I doubt if there is one, so I suspect that the best we can do is make a judgment based on our subjective idea of the relative enormity of wrongness and badness. It may seem odd and even nonsensical that there can be objective good and objective right and yet they could conflict, but as Neil deGrasse Tyson once observed, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. (And in fact it is not nonsense, because right and good are different concepts, so there is no contradiction in claiming that something can be good but not right.) All I can suggest is that since killing is wrong, we should not just try to spread more pleasure and reduce the amount of pain, we should also try to reduce the amount of killing in the world.

[attofishpi]

You all know the setup: a surgeon has one healthy patient and five terminally ill patients; he can save the lives of the ill patients, but only by harvesting organs from the healthy patient, who will die in the process. Should he or shouldn't he?

The utilitarian would say he should, because you get five presumed pleasant lives instead of one, and since pleasure is the only good, this is better.

I'm going to say he shouldn't, because killing the healthy patient is wrong.

Why is it wrong? Because it implies a category error, and since this is a moral context, that is a moral error, i.e. morally wrong.

The error is to treat the healthy patient as if he were an object that cannot have moral standing, like an inanimate object. It's not just that he's treating him as if he had zero moral standing, which could at some stage change to positive moral standing; by ending his life, he is treating him as if this were forever a total impossibility, which could only be the case if the healthy patient was not the kind of object that could have moral standing at all. And he isn't that kind of object.

The utilitarian might object to this, saying, 'I'm not treating the healthy patient like an inanimate object, because I factor him into my calculation when I'm considering what to do, which I wouldn't do with an inanimate object.' This seems to me an inadequate reply. The utilitarian's factoring the healthy patient in at the point of consideration doesn't alter the fact that, at the point of action, he treats him the same as he would an inanimate object. Since it is the action, not the consideration, that has an effect on the patient, it is surely what happens at the point of action that matters.

This, I think, is what Kant meant when he said that we should treat people as ends, not just as means. I don't agree with much of Kant's ethics, but I do agree with him on this (though, being a sentientist, I disagree with his view that only humans can count as ends).

So what do we do if we are faced with an action which would spread enormous amounts of pleasure and/or save enormous amounts of pain, but involves the killing of just one sentient being (say, a mouse)? Do we do a very good thing which is wrong, or do right but allow a lot of badness to go on unchecked? I don't know the answer to this. I doubt if there is an answer, because it would seem to require a common feature of both goodness and rightness, or badness and wrongness, which would allow us to rate them against one another. I don't know of any such feature, and I doubt if there is one, so I suspect that the best we can do is make a judgment based on our subjective idea of the relative enormity of wrongness and badness. It may seem odd and even nonsensical that there can be objective good and objective right and yet they could conflict, but as Neil deGrasse Tyson once observed, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. (And in fact it is not nonsense, because right and good are different concepts, so there is no contradiction in claiming that something can be good but not right.) All I can suggest is that since killing is wrong, we should not just try to spread more pleasure and reduce the amount of pain, we should also try to reduce the amount of killing in the world.

I've had this consideration for some time. (and apparently mental 'illness' is not afforded the easy exit of DEATH)

Yes, what if I again returned to eat of the Tree of Know_Ledge of good & evil. AND THEN - c below...

The Tree of KnowLedge


..what if then, I decide that I want to die, rather than even put up with another 3 months of HELL of GOD's wrath?

Imagine, if I have a certificate to designate me as "schizophrenic" ---- DO I GET TO CHOSE THE MEDICAL INDUCED EXIT?...rather than having to continue to put up with REALITY?

[Impenitent]

who needs justification?

murder is murder

but it will bring world peace if these individuals die

round 'em up...

-Imp

[attofishpi]

who needs justification?

murder is murder

-Imp

What problem do you have with 'murder'?

Personally - apart from the reason the dude got murdered (which very often is reasonable within the parameters that GOD formed our REALITY. the dude might be a twat) - apart from that - the victim's mother etc... is all that needs to be considered. To an extent, they are the innocents.

[Impenitent]

they live on land "we" want - kill 'em

they have food and "we" are hungry - kill 'em

they worship a god that "we" do not - kill 'em

history never repeats

-Imp

[henry quirk]

A person's life is his own. He's not a commodity. He ought not be treated as such, no matter the potential benefit to others.

[LuckyR]

Hippocrates solved this a long time ago: "primum non nocere".

[Veritas Aequitas]

I have argued, Morality based on Rightness and Wrongness is not Morality-Proper
viewtopic.php?t=40331

I argue, morality = Rightness or Wrongness is WRONG and false and do not effectively represent what Morality essentially and truly is within human nature.
The basis of morality = rightness and wrongness is highly ridiculous, not practical nor effective, because in this case, every person must assess every of their intended action is regarded as right or wrong.

This is taken to the extreme of resorting to 'morality calculus' [supposedly the most right] to decide on what is the proper action to take.

• Another example is the felicific calculus formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to cause. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it produced. The felicific calculus could, in principle at least, determine the moral status of any considered act.
  -WIKI

Another approach is to practice on Casuistry Problems [e.g. the Trolley Problem] so that if such a situation actually happens, one can make the most moral decision that is right. This is not practically especially these are such stressful situations and can be very subjective.

Thus Morality = Rightness or Wrongness is WRONG and not effective in facilitating moral progress of humanity towards the future.

The above Casuistry Dilemma of "a surgeon has one healthy patient and five terminally ill patients" is NOT an effective approach to deal with morality as there can be endless infinite scenarios context where either way is right or wrong.
For example, if there is a reduction in population constraint it would be positive to kill one to save 4 [if 2 pairs of male-females capable of reproduction] so they can contribute to increase the population.

Kant general Categorical Imperative is this:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time Will that it should become a universal law."

As such, in relation to killing;
The Maxim 'no humans ought to kill humans' must be universal and without compromise as a categorical imperative.
However, this categorical imperative is only to be used as a guide and not to be enforceable as law on any individual.

Killing of humans is allowed in a hypothetical situation as a hypothetical imperative, but once allowed, the categorical imperative must be brought to awareness that whatever killing is allowed, it should not happen in the future or humanity must find ways to ensure it does not happen in the future.
If just wars are allowed at present, humanity must research on the root cause and prevent future wars to align with the categorical imperative.

In the case of the "a surgeon has one healthy patient and five terminally ill patients" actions will be carried out whatever is deemed to be the optimal solution without too much fuss at the present, but there should steps be taken to ensure humans do not end up with terminal diseases in the future in striving towards the ideal of the categorical maxim, i.e. take pro-active root cause preventive approach rather than resorting to fire-fighting morality.
Morality is not about being caught with moral dilemmas of what is right or wrong, but the focus is on striving and improving towards the ideals of the moral facts as maxims and guides.