More on the Survival Lottery

**This is from guest blogger, Erik V.**

In The Survival Lottery, Harris presents a system in which a computer program randomly chooses numbers assigned to healthy people in order to have their organs harvested to save those who need them. It’s an attempt to put two of utilitarianism more contested points under the magnifying glass: impartiality and supererogatory nature of utilitarian decision making.

When a normative theory is examined with a good counterexample that goes against moral intuitions, as Harris has given, those who believe in said theory have two options: bite bullets or explain away why the counterexample doesn’t work. I like to think I’m a (lazy) utilitarian and I will attempt to explain away what I think is wrong with this lottery system (I say lazy because I think intentions matter to an extent and I’m sort of shaky on the impartiality bit).

Harris makes a big assumption when explaining the survival lottery, that assumption being that the two lives of Y and Z will generate more overall utility than that of the sacrificed life, A. In other words, Harris is assuming all lives are equal in utility they generate. I don’t buy this, because I, and probably you, know people in real life who are just generally happier and do more things for more people to make others happier as well. Say I have a friend, Ned, who has a wife and kids, volunteers at soup kitchens, runs a successful business at the mall, is always kind to his neighbors, and is always looking at the bright side of things. I have another friend, Moe, who runs a local tavern, is single, stuck in the past, and just generally depressed and dissatisfied with his life. Now say Y and Z have the same personality and tendencies that exist right between Moe and Ned. If the lottery system was enacted and Ned was sacrificed, would it not make sense to say there was no net increase in utility? The math would look something like this:

Utility = ½ Ned/Moe + ½ Ned/Moe – 1 Ned, so net 0 Ned, +1 Moe

There’s no increase. However, I will admit, interestingly enough, that if Moe were sacrificed, there would be an overall net increase in utility because:

Utility= ½ Ned/Moe + ½ Ned/Moe – 1 Moe, so net 0 Moe, +1 Ned

In order for this system to work, there would also need to be some system in which happiness (or misery) of people would need to be taken into account. However, this would then create subclasses of people who would then be more likely to be picked in the lottery, which is something Harris rejected in the paper itself (He says Y can’t be sacrificed to Z because then the lottery would be favoring those who had the misfortune of being diseased. In a similar sense, those who are always down on their luck or suffer depression would then be more likely to be picked. It’s towards the end, sorry, my book isn’t on me write now). At this point, I feel like the whole thought experiment has so many “ifs”, “ands”, and “buts” that it’s too convoluted to even consider seriously. So what do you all think?

Harris and the Survival Lottery

**This is from guest blogger, Larry D.**

John Harris presents an odd case, which he calls ‘the survival lottery.’ He lays out the case in which two people are dying but could be saved through organ transplants. There are, however, no organs available, although both could be saved if a third person were to be killed and their organs used to save the first two. Harris equates killing to letting die, and thus killing the one person to save two would be preferably to killing the two (by letting die) to save the one. In order to decide who should be the one person to die, a lottery is made in which all suitable donors are given a number, and in the absence of any organs provided through natural death, can be called upon to give their life.

I think Harris misses a couple of important objections here. The first has to do with a person’s right to life. Even if we agree that killing and letting die are equivalent, that does not in any way lead to his conclusion that the lottery should thus be adopted. While each person has a right to their own life, they do not have any right or claim on the rights of others. An analogy here might be useful; say that each person has a right to their own property. Now, person A and person B each buy a car, and immediately after purchase the company goes out of business and no new parts for repair are produced for the vehicle. If their cars both break down (one’s transmission goes out and the other’s engine block cracks, and only parts from the same car can replace them, no other car’s parts will fit), I think we would agree that they do not have any right to go and gut person C’s car for spare parts. Perhaps it would be saintly and noble for person C to donate those parts, thus saving two cars at the cost of one, but it is in no way person A’s or B’s right to have them. I think it is the same with lives; it doesn’t matter if a hundred people could be saved by the blood of one, they have no claim or right to his life to save theirs.

A second objection is that this system would have to bind people to stay within the country. If people have the right to leave, I think most of them would opt to do so rather than die, thus defeating the lottery. To require people to stay within the country would mean contractually binding them without giving them any choice in the matter, which is a massive infringement on freedom. People might think we are contractually bound today to the laws of our country, but we always have the option of leaving and going somewhere else.
 

I think either of these objections works against his argument for the survival lottery, and neither hinges on defining the difference between killing and letting die. For these reasons we should reject the survival lottery.