The Great Train Dilemma In the story the “train switch dilemma” a single train car is rushing toward a group of five unknowing workers who cannot hear the train approaching. Another train worker, who we will call Alex is working at his summer job, he sees the train headed for the five unknowing workers. Alex notices a rail switch lever which if pulled will divert the train unto a different track, however, if Alex pulls the rail switch lever he sees that it will divert the train to a track with one lone worker surly killing the one standing alone. The rail switch lever presents the following dilemma, do nothing and the train continues on its path towards the five, or pull the rail switch lever and send the train towards the one person. In this essay I will show why Alex should not pull the rail switch lever and doing so would be morally wrong. Making a choice that results in the intentional killing of someone and ignoring his or her value would be …show more content…
If we applied this moral principle of Peter Singer’s to the train dilemma we could look at it from a different view. Pulling the rail switch lever and saving five lives would be preventing something bad from happening. However, in doing so, we would be intentionally killing the lone worker on the tracks, which would be sacrificing something (someone) of equal moral importance, an innocent life. How do we determine equal moral importance? Are five lives more important than one, just because there is a greater number of lives? Are all lives equal and the decision to pull or not pull the rail switch lever needs additional factors to decide? I know some would say that five lives are not equal to one life, that they are actually more
The phrase “history repeats itself is quite evident in this film. Currently, China’s economy is in a massive industrial revolution, similar to the American industrial revolution of the early 19th century. After three years of following the Zhang family, first time director Lixin Fan released The Last Train Home, attempting to raise awareness to the down side of China’s powerful economy. While the film The Last Train Home seems to just depict the lives of factory workers, it is also making a political statement about how western capitalism exploits factory workers to produce cheap goods. The film makes this exploitation evident by depicting the fracturing of the Zhang family and the harsh working conditions they must endure.
"Ethical utilitarianism can most generally be described as the principle that states that the rightness or wrongness of action is determined by the goodness and badness of their consequences." (Utilitarianism EOP 9: 603.) Following this guide line the morally right decision to make is to rescue the group with five ...
Everybody lives one life, but some they live many lives. Vivian Daly, in The Orphan Train by Christina Kline, has lived in numerous homes, had 3 different names, and countless life changing experiences in her many years. Niamh Power, Dorothy Nielsen, and lastly Vivian Daly these different characters vary everything from appearance to religious views. These different names make her who she is in life. Everyone of the names is more than just some letters, the changing of names is the changing of her life, the girl she used to be no longer exists when ever that name no longer exists. Nothing in her life stayed the same so why should her name?
In Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Singer makes three claims about moral duty; that avoidable suffering is bad, that it is our moral obligation to help others in need, and that we should help those in suffering regardless of their distance to us or if others are in the same position as we are to help. First, I will elaborate on Singer’s arguments for each of these positions. Next, I will discuss two objections to Singer’s position, one that he debates in his writings and another that I examine on my own, and Singer’s responses to those objections. Then I will examine why Singer’s rebuttals to the objections were successful.
The Underground Railroad was an extremely complex organization whose mission was to free slaves from southern states in the mid-19th century. It was a collaborative organization comprised of white homeowners, freed blacks, captive slaves, or anyone else who would help. This vast network was fragile because it was entirely dependent on the absolute discretion of everyone involved. A slave was the legal property of his owner, so attempting escape or aiding a fugitive slave was illegal and dangerous, for both the slave and the abolitionist. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass understands that he can only reveal so many details about his escape from servitude, saying, “I deeply regret the necessity that impels
However, in order for her thesis to be correct, the Bystander at the Switch case must always be morally permissible. There should be no situation in which it is morally impermissible to kill the one and save the five. If there were such a situation, where both parts of Thomson’s thesis remained true but it would still be morally impermissible to kill the one because of some outside factor, then Thomson’s thesis would no longer be the complete answer.
moral decisions, we will be analyzing why this scenario poses a dilemma, possible actions that
This paper explores Peter Singer’s argument, in Famine, Affluence, and Morality, that we have morally required obligations to those in need. The explanation of his argument and conclusion, if accepted, would dictate changes to our lifestyle as well as our conceptions of duty and charity, and would be particularly demanding of the affluent. In response to the central case presented by Singer, John Kekes offers his version, which he labels the and points out some objections. Revisions of the principle provide some response to the objections, but raise additional problems. Yet, in the end, the revisions provide support for Singer’s basic argument that, in some way, we ought to help those in need.
In life, situations arrive that force us to make tough choices. Sometimes those choices are not what we feel are compassionate or morally right. We make these decisions to save ourselves. These are decisions of self-preservation, and they override compassion. Tadeusz Borowski depicts these choices in his book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. He shows that when people are put in the choice of doing what’s right or preserving their life, one is preferred over the other. Would they rather save their selves or just watch others be sent to their death. In the novel, the narrator wrestles with his decisions and like Borowski suffers from them.
Richard Miller finds Singer’s conclusion unrealistically demanding. He approaches the problem differently and claims that we should instead accept the Principle of Sympathy. According to Miller’s Principle, what morality directly demands is a sufficiently strong concern towards neediness. One’s disposition to help the needy is “sufficiently strong” if expressing greater concern would “impose a significant risk of worsening one’s life” . The Principle of Sympathy differs from Singer’s Principle of Sacrifice mainly in two ways. First, the Principle of Sympathy is a moral code that concerns more with an agent’s disposition to give rather than the amount of money he end...
To begin the lecture, Professor Michael Sandel gave the students a scenario. The scenario was as follows: there is a trolley car that has no breaks and is heading down track. At the end of this track are five workingmen and all would be killed if the trolley car ran into them. However, there is another track going off one side where there is only one worker that would also die if the trolley car hit him or her. So, he asked his students which option would be the better one, continue toward the five workers and kill them all, or spare their lives and turn the trolley car down the other track and kill the one worker. He took a poll by raised hands to see what option most of the students would chose. The majority of the students chose to turn the trolley car and kill the one worker rather than keep the trolley going straight and kill the five workers. Some students shared their thought processes in why they made that decision before the speaker moved on to the next scenario (The Moral Side of Murder”).
Peter Singer practices utilitarianism, he believes the consequence of an action matters more than the reason behind the action. Singer is trying to convince his audience to donate their money to end world poverty. He believes it is moral to give as much money as the person can give, allowing them to purchase just enough for them to live on, and this will be the right action to take. Singer is aiming toward the United States to contribute more to charity. Singer does not consider specific aspects that do not support his argument and causes his argument to not list specific aspects of his belief. Singer’s argument is not a good argument because he does not consider the ramifications of people donating their surplus of money would do to the economy; is it our duty to feed the poor; and that our moral intuitions are not consequentialist at all when it concerns what our rescue duties entail.
Act-consequentialism is a moral theory that maintains what is right is whatever brings about the best consequences impartially considering. The main and most renowned form of act-consequentialism is act utilitarianism which advocates agents choosing the moral path that creates the greatest good for the greatest number, this being the most widely known form of act-consequentialism is the moral theory that I shall be concentrating on though out my discussion. Impartiality is the notion that everybody should count for one and nobody more than one, which is often considered to be a “double-edged sword” (Jollimore, 2017) meaning there is debate as to whether impartiality is a strength or weakness of the theory. Throughout my essay I attempt to point out an important misunderstanding made by theories that uphold impartiality as a weakness of act-consequentialism and how this could lead to the view that impartiality is in fact a strength of both act utilitarianism and act consequentialism.
Singer takes on many assumptions, inferring that if one can agree with each assumption they will also agree with the conclusion. He observes that in a general sense, suffering and death due to a shortage on food, shelter and medicine is bad. The next is that if it is within our power to do something without something else bad happening and without ceding anything of equal moral consequence then we are therefore responsible to do it. This requires us only to keep out the bad and not necessarily to promote the good. Though the idea seems relatively uncontroversial, it is ambiguous. The principle does not take into account the space between those in need and the potential help or if there is only one person or a whole host of people with the ability to help....
Whether to kill one person to save a hundred worthwhile lives is all about looking at the consequences. This can be looked at in three ways, which include the utilitarian, ethical-egoist, and the egoist-altruism view. Ethical egoism theory states that the correct act in any given situation is that which maximizes the self-interest of a person. It is