Deontological Dilemma

From guest blogger, Liam.

How would someone with a deontological view of morality approach the "Fat Man/ Trolley" problem? Everyone involved (you, the fat man and the people tied to the trolley tracks) is rational and autonomous and therefore apart of the moral community. As you see the trolley coming to kill the people who are tied down you are faced with the question of whether or not to "simply use" the fat man in order to save the "ends" of the helpless, potential victim(s).

By choosing to push the fat man you are disrespecting his "ends" in order to save the "ends" of one (or more) person. But by not pushing the fat man you would be willingly allowing the "ends" of another person(s) to literally end.

So what should you do? In my opinion, the best approach would be to hurriedly explain the situation to the fat man himself and allow him to make the decision because he is the one who would be making the sacrifice. If he chooses to jump and save the others then he would be willing pursuing his goals and would most likely be a hero, but if he didn't jump then he may feel extremely guilty about his somewhat selfish decision and because of this he may not be able to fully cultivate his best-self.

If I did not have time to explain the situation to the fat man and the decision rested solely on my shoulders then it would come down to how many people were on the tracks (but that's a consequentialist viewpoint... I think?)

In the end I believe that Kant would feel strongly against pushing the fat man without his permission. Is there some way to use the categorical imperative to figure this one out? Let me know what you think.

Is Happiness Hard to Calculate?

We talked about Utilitarianism in class yesterday and I thought it'd be worth continuing the discussion of one of the main objections leveled against it. Utilitarianism is a moral theory set out by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. You can check Mill's seminal work, Utilitarianism, here. The theory is that what one ought to do is determined by the amount of happiness or pleasure that one can bring about. More precisely, the right action is the the one that maximizes total aggregate happiness.

The most common objection from my students had to do with a claimed impossibility of measuring happiness. In a similar vein, some students claimed that we cannot predict how much happiness or pain an action will produce.

As I said in class, these don't strike me as a devastating criticisms. It seems to me that the Utilitarian could admit that we may sometimes be "in the dark" about whether a given action will result in making people happy/sad. In addition, she could admit that we often don't know the extent to which our actions will make people happy/sad. As we discussed, the Utilitarian might simply respond by insisting that we should do the best we can when it comes to calculating/predicting overall happiness. In addition, it seems to me that we're really not that bad at anticipating consequences. We often know which actions will result in overall positive consequences and which will result in overall negative consequences; and we're fairly good at predicting how much pleasure or pain a given action is likely to produce.

What would be helpful are examples that shed some light on this supposed problem. 

My wife's birthday is a few months away and (being the obsessive-planner that I am) I'm thinking of a gift or something nice to do for her. I can't predict with absolute certainty what will make her most happy. Further, I can't predict what gift will result in the highest total aggregate happiness. But I have a good sense of what she likes and doesn't like; and what sorts of things are apt to produce greater aggregate happiness. I know that taking her on a trip to Vegas would not make her very happy. She'd prefer that we spend that kind of money on something else... indeed, just about anything else. I've thought of at least ten things that she'll probably really appreciate and which will bring her joy; and these things would also produce a great deal of happiness in others. 

Now my task is to decide which of these should be my gift. Here's where the objection to Utilitarianism seems to raise its head. I have no way of determining the exact amount of happiness each of these options will produce and so I supposedly have no way of weighing my options. But is this correct? Not quite. First, I can rule out various possible gifts (e.g., the trip to Vegas). Second, I can predict which of the various options are most likely to result in the a great deal of overall happiness. Third, once I have a list of "good options," I might randomly pick from the ones at the top of the list (supposing that they're indistinguishable with respect to likely consequences). This reply strikes me as fairly plausible. It's probably what I'll end up doing. Note that I'm not paralyzed by the various options before me and, more importantly, what I end up getting for her birthday will very probably end up being a good gift if I follow this procedure. So I do have a clue about what would be best. What I ought to do is do as well as I can in choosing the gift which is most likely to produce the best consequences.

You might object that the case of a birthday gift is not a moral decision, but is rather a practical decision. But this is beside the point of the present post. All I'm saying is that we are often relatively good at predicting overall consequences if we are careful and fair-minded. Of course, this is not to say that we can always predict how much happiness will result from an action or that our predictions will necessarily be correct. We are ignorant of quite a bit. But, so the line goes, what we ought to do is try to do the best we can at making such predictions. Finally, it's worth stressing that a Utilitarian could say the same sorts of things about cases that involve more obviously moral decisions.

There are a multitude of other objections to Utilitarianism (some of which I find especially troubling). But, as you can tell, I'm not at all persuaded by this one. I wonder what readers of this blog make of all of this. Am I missing something? Are there examples that make a stronger case for the impossibility of calculating/comparing happiness?

Duty to Save Lives

I started my summer Contemporary Moral Issues class today. We discussed a bunch of interesting issues and, as usual in a course like this, we had to brush quite a bit under the rug. One thing that came up that I thought was worth writing about was whether one is morally obligated to try to save another person from peril. Although we were careful to distinguish legal from moral responsibility, we did briefly mention that there are some legal systems where a person is held legally responsible for helping others in peril. For example, in some countries, parents or guardians are legally responsible for rescuing minors in their care from peril, and so-called "common carriers" (such as airlines or cruise ships) have a legal responsibility to rescue their patrons if they are able to save them. But, of course, this doesn't show that we bear a moral obligation to save those in danger. The oft-reviled-in-academia Wikipedia has a nice summary of reasons for thinking that people have a moral duty to save others (and not simply legally in some places).

Ethical justifications

Legal requirements for a duty to rescue do not pertain in all nations, states, or localities. However, a moral or ethical duty to rescue may exist even where there is no legal duty to rescue. There are a number of potential justifications for such a duty.

One sort of justification is general and applies regardless of role-related relationships (doctor to patient; firefighter to citizen, etc.). Under this general justification, persons have a duty to rescue other persons in distress by virtue of their common humanity, regardless of the specific skills of the rescuer or the nature of the victim's distress.

These would justify cases of rescue and in fact make such rescue a duty even between strangers. They explain why philosopher Peter Singer suggests that if one saw a child drowning and could intervene to save him, they should do so, if the cost is moderate to themselves. Damage to their clothing or shoes or how late it might make them for a meeting would be insufficient excuse to avoid assistance. Singer goes on to say that one should also attempt to rescue distant strangers, not just nearby children, because globalization has made it possible to do so.^[39] Such general arguments for a duty to rescue also explain why after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Haitians were digging family members, friends, and strangers out of the rubble with their bare hands and carrying injured persons to whatever medical care was available.^[40] They also explain why, while covering that same earthquake, journalist and physician Sanjay Gupta and a number of other MD-journalists began acting as physicians to treat injuries rather than remaining uninvolved in their journalistic roles. Similarly, they justify journalist Anderson Cooper's attempt to shepherd an injured young boy away from some "toughs" nearby in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.^[41]

Specific arguments for such a duty to rescue include, but are not limited to:

• The Golden Rule: treat others as one would wish to be treated. This assumes that all persons would wish to be rescued if they were in distress, and so they should in turn rescue those in distress to the best of their abilities. What counts as distress requiring rescue may, of course, differ from person to person, but being trapped or at risk of drowning are emergency situations which this position assumes all humans would wish to be rescued from.
• Utilitarianism: utilitarianism posits that those actions are right which best maximize happiness and reduce suffering ("maximize the good").^[42] Utilitarian reasoning generally supports acts of rescue which contribute to overall happiness and reduced suffering. Rule utilitarianism would look not just at whether individual acts of rescue maximize the good, but whether certain types of acts do so. It then becomes one's duty to perform those types of actions. Generally, having strangers rescue those in distress maximizes good so long as the rescue attempt does not make things worse, so one has a duty to rescue to the best of her or his ability as long as doing so will not make things worse.
• Humanity: the rules of humanity advise that the essence of morality and right behavior is tending to human relationships. Therefore, virtues (desirable character traits) such as compassion, sympathy, honesty, and fidelity are to be admired and developed.^[43] Acting out of compassion and sympathy will often require rescue where someone is in need. Indeed, it would not be compassionate to ignore someone's need, though the way one fulfills that need may vary. In cases of emergency, rescue would be the most compassionate act compared with allowing a person to remain trapped in rubble.

There are also ethical justifications for role-specific or skill-specific duties of rescue such as those described above under the discussion of U.S. Common Law. Generally, these justifications are rooted in the idea that the best rescues, the most effective rescues, are done by those with special skills. Such persons, when available to rescue, are thus even more required to do so ethically than regular persons who might simply make things worse (for a utilitarian, rescue by a skilled professional in a relevant field would maximize the good even better than rescue by a regular stranger). This particular ethical argument makes sense when considering the ability firefighters to get both themselves and victims safely out of a burning building, or of health care personnel such as physicians, nurses, physician's assistants, and EMTs to provide medical rescue.^[44]

These are some of the ethical justifications for a duty to rescue, and they may hold true for both regular citizens and skilled professionals even in the absence of legal requirements to render aid.

So it seems we might have some good reasons, after all, for thinking that we morally ought to help people in peril. I'm curious what arguments opponents to this position might give. What objections might be (a) raised against the arguments for thinking that we have such a moral obligation (at least sometimes) and what arguments can be given to show that (b) we don't bear such an obligation (ever)?

Hindu Reincarnation

From guest blogger, Maham. 

The reincarnation believes of the Hindu religion entails that every being is given seven lifetimes, and each subsequent birth would be determined by how well or not the previous lifetime was spent. Such a view is less problematic in my eyes when the souls are simply made eternal and and continue living infinite lifetimes until whatever end determined by a deity is brought upon the universe. The selection of the number seven seems extremely arbitrary to me, and we are still left with the worry of where the soul came from before the first lifetime, and where it goes after the seventh one.


Additionally, this belief presupposes that all the living creatures in the world contain within them the same kind of soul. The raven on my balcony and the chicken in a yard all have human souls inside of them, or do we have animal souls inside of us? Perhaps it is simply a generic version of a soul. Does the chicken and raven remember that they are indeed a human soul? If they do, then human rights gain a whole other meaning in the world that we live in and so does the sentience they may be capable of. We would not be allowed to eat them or cause any inadvertent harm to them in favor of humans if they are just as sentient. If they are not aware of having a human soul inside of them, then how is it constituted as a punishment? It ceases being a punishment if one is not aware of it.

Time and Being

From guest blogger, Shao.

What is the definition of timelessness? How can something be out of time? It seems that when we talk about God, we assume that God is out of time because God always has to exist and seems not under the influence of time. But Abrahamic religion seems to suggest that God was also in time. 

I think in order to determine if God is in time or outside of time, we need to understand what is time. Is time a matter? A property? Truly we understand the temporal relationship between things. Like I did my homework yesterday and I go to school today, and I will do certain things tomorrow. But when I really  think about time it seems that time is not a particular thing, although it influences everything in the physical world. 

The only way that we know that time exists, is that we developed a way to measure it. We look at clocks and recognize that time is moving forward, and such deduction is based on days and nights on earth. Also, we can see that things grow old and die or break and become something else and we deduce that there are temporal relationship between things. However, are we right about that? I mean first of all, if all matters are never created or destroyed, but simply become something else, then how can we say that because a creature is getting old, it is because of time? Or how can we say that because there are days and nights on earth, then we have experienced time? Could it be the case that time is simply the measure of change in the universe? In other words, we develop the concept of time because we observe changes, and we use time to measure the sequences of such changes. And besides that, there is actually no such thing as time. So for God, because he does not change at all, he is not measurable by time. 

Also, people may argue that we can certainly understand that there are past and present and future. And we cannot go back to ancient Greece because it was in the past. However, as we might also know that time is not absolute in the universe, that if things travel fast enough, as close to light speed, time becomes slower. Could there be a case that when an entity travels fast enough, maybe millions or billions time faster than light, then time becomes infinitely slow and eventually such entity is out of time? So a thousand years for such entity is less than a billionth of a second. And if this could be the case, time seems does not matter to such entity. Whether is future, or present or past, no matter how long the time is, it is shrink to the point that the variation of time just does not matter. If that is the case, then it seems that God could be such an entity. 

Overall, I think that maybe time is purely a delusion of human beings that we only understand it because we can see such representation from natural world without actually see what is "time". And if under the scope of universe or even beyond, time is not as absolute as we think it is on earth. And it might be the case that an entity arrives at a point that time just does not apply to it. 

Life After Death

From guest blogger, Maham. 

One worry I encountered after reading Davis’s paper on death ending it all is one I have frequently on the subject of an afterlife. I am not denying the weight of the philosophical arguments made against a life after death, however I am merely questioning how those of us who are alive can be so sure of a state we have never experienced.


If we were asked to describe the state of what we were or what was (or even wasn’t) before we were born, all accounts would be rejected on the basis that we simply can not know. We did not exist; science proves that better and above anyone else. And so we will cease to exist after dying as well and will never know of it just we did not know of the period before our birth. But how can alive and mortal beings truly and irrevocably know of states that we have yet to experience and know of no mortal being who has experienced such a thing that can be shared with us.


Isn’t much of the debate as to God’s existence inspired by a lack of empirical evidence for his existence and the fact that no one has truly experienced God. No mortal and alive being around
us at least. Why can the time after death not possibly be given the same treatment where we simply are ill equipped to empirically define something that it outside the grasp of mortal human beings, since the prerequisite for it is death and we can not speak beyond death.

Petitionary Prayer

From guest blogger, Maham.

What is used as an argument against the effectiveness of petitionary prayer is that God just isn’t listening to them, if he was then why aren’t all our prayers being answered? Such an argument is not too different from the one about there being less evil in the world. We seem to demand about acquiescence of God and from God, or we believe him to be either in effective or simply uninterested in mortal life and its woes.


We refuse to consider that God may be accepting prayers based on the balance of natural and moral evil that he must keep with the good in the world. Most prayer is against the existence of some kind of evil and the misery it causes, is it not? Thus the same arguments that apply and argue for the existence of evil would apply here as well. It is not that prayer is ineffective, God isn’t listening or a few unanswered prayers are a reason to reject the premise of prayer. We have to allow that sometimes many prayers will be rejected in lieu of a greater utilitarian good that God can view for the world but we simply cannot.

How Pascal Continues to Lead Us Wrong

From guest blogger, Maham. 

The largest worry we usually associate with Pascal’s wager is one of cynical faith. It seems unlikely and presumptuous to think God is simply playing a numbers game where he wants us all on a subscription list for the free reward associated with signing on. It is much more plausible that God instead is looking for genuine faith in his existence, and everything associated with it. This genuine faith then also calls in order to follow God’s set of doctrine and rules, to live life as he deems it fit for us, thus not ending the story at simply giving a stamp of agreement to his existence as Pascal would have us believe. In such a scenario, we’re much more likely to have lost even more than Pascal would predict. We lose the pleasure of living life through our own set of rules, and we also end up garnering God’s displeasure (if he ends up existing) for a false belief in him that buys us an eternity in hell.

These are worries commonly addressed in response to Pascal’s wager. What I want here is to draw attention to another moral worry that we, as responsible philosophers especially, should hold in high regard as well.


As philosophers and researchers, we have an epistemological responsibility towards fostering ideas, choices, knowledge and beliefs founded in reason, logic and the very least a justification based on truth. What Pascal is asking of us is to compromise our intellect, when he asks us to disregard a lack of evidence or genuine belief in lieu of pragmatic reasons for believing in God’s existence. How can we look ourselves in the eye and still call ourselves responsible philosophers and researchers if we abandon our believes simply on the basis of a wager that promises us a respite from suffering in hell IF god exists? I for one would find it very troubling to wager on my intellect and my identity as a epistemologically responsible philosopher.

God and Time

From guest blogger, Adam.

Would God lose his perfection if he was under the constraint of time? If God could not control time then it seems that God is not all powerful. However, if God is outside of time then he could not actively help humans, because to do so would require one to be within time. Some suggest that God has the ability to be both in and out of time at the same time? This is something that simply cannot be explained. I would argue that it would be more powerful of God if he were able to act in this universe and affect things within time. If God were not in time then he could not act or perceive humans in time which would make him less powerful. By being outside of time God would not be able to talk to Moses in the desert because time is passing during their conversation and if time passes, God could not be a part of it if he was not in time. Can God then travel throughout time? It seems that a metaphysical all powerful being would be able to move freely throughout time but I am unable to describe how this would be possible. If God were able to go to the past he would be able to change the future. If he were able to constantly change the future then it would be impossible for the future to exist. Paradoxes plague the arguments of time. It is difficult to describe what God would be able to do and even more difficult if not impossible to describe how God would be able to do it. One stance that may work is that of an absolutist that says God can do anything even the logically inconsistent. If one agrees with this view than it would be nearly impossible to argue what God cannot do. If one believes God can do anything logically consistent, then this is when paradoxes of time arise.