Thought Experiments in the Ethics of Killing

Thought Experiments in the Ethics of Killing The role of these thought experiments is to identify the true implications of some particular principle regarding the ethics of killing. The importance of such experiments can be explained as follows. We intuitively hold that some judgements are true and others false. For example, it seems clearly false to say that torturing babies for fun is permissible. So, any principle that implies that torturing babies for fun is permissible couldn’t be the correct principle to follow. In this way, the implications of the principles we look for, provide us with grounds to accept or reject them. These thought experiments intend to draw out the implications of principles that might be at odds with our consideration judgements and are otherwise hard to assess. Such convictions are our starting points in thinking about ethics. Often you will find that you have no strong judgements about particular cases, this is fine. You may also find that your judgements conflict with those of others, whom you respect, this is fine too. You will certainly find that no single principle can provide us with wholly satisfying guidance in all thought experiments. In the parlance of philosophical ethics, you will have to bite some of these bullets. The overall aim is to find a principle that you can offer persuasive arguments and examples in favour of, showing that those who reject your view or accept alternatives must swallow bigger bullets than you must. You may think that some or all of these thought experiments are fanciful and irrelevant to the question of what we ought to do since cases like these never or rarely arise in real life. However, the principles we search for in ethics are supposed to pick out fundamental and general features of an action that make it prohibited, obligatory or neither (permissible). In ethics we are not trying to pick out the features that merely tend to make the actions that we commonly encounter prohibited obligatory or neither. Why, we might ask, should we do the first thing if we can do the second thing instead? Couldn’t we get by perfectly well without knowing the fundamental and general features if we knew the main features to look out for? There are a number of different things we can say in response to this. The first is that philosophical ethics isn’t directly concerned with getting it right most often or being pragmatic. It is concerned with the truth of the matter. It is concerned with the features that make an action right or wrong, in fact. As such, if a principle gives what is obviously the wrong answer in some case, it still tells against the principle. This is true even if it gets (what seems to be) the right answer in most other cases. If the principles gets it obviously wrong in some case it cannot be picking out the feature that makes things prohibited/obligatory/permissible. The second is that whether we have good general rules of thumb or not turns on the correct answer to the deeper question of what the right answer is. We cannot, in general, know we have the system that gets the right answer most often without knowing what the right answers look like. The idea of a workable everyday system of identifying right and wrong actions without interrogating deep philosophical issues is premised on the truth of some claims about those deep philosophical issues e.g. “killing innocents is a wrong-making feature of an action”. The third and final thing to say is that, even for those of us not tempted to study moral philosophy, our intuitions about what to do in actual real cases can be much less clear than in hypothetical examples. These thought experiments offer a way for us to see the various features of actions in isolation and to assess their moral relevance more clearly. Thus, having a good imagination is actually a key part of being good at this kind of philosophy. Of course, one could just say that we already know what right and wrong is so there is no need to engage in moral philosophy. While I doubt that anyone really feels like this, the person who does should still be able to give good reasons to other people for acting as she does, and moral philosophy is a good way of learning about how to explain what right and wrong action is. The below experiments are asking whether you are permitted, obliged or else prohibited from taking one course of action in the cases described. You may wish to identify the cases about which you have the strongest intuitions: the cases that you feel are clearly cases where you are permitted, obliged or prohibited from acting in one way. These will be your starting points in the search for the truth about the ethics of killing but you may find that you want or need to change them later on. Examples are categorised by topic but some examples will be useful for topics other than those they are categorised as. DOING AND ALLOWING Rescue I: we can save either five people in danger of drowning at one place or a single person in danger of drowning somewhere else. We cannot save all six. Quinn, Warren S. "Actions, intentions, and consequences: The doctrine of doing and allowing." The Philosophical Review (1989): 287-312 Rescue II: we can save the five only by driving over and thereby killing someone who (for an unspecified reason) is trapped on the road. IBID Rescue III: We are off by special train to save five who are in imminent danger of death. Every second counts. You have just taken over from the driver who has left the locomotive to attend to something. Since the train is on automatic control you need do nothing to keep it going. But you can stop it by putting on the brakes. You suddenly see someone trapped ahead on the track. Unless you act he will be killed. But if you do stop, and then free the man, the rescue mission will be aborted. IBID Rescue IV: Suppose you are on a train on which there has just been an explosion. You can stop the train, but that is a complicated business that would take time. So you set it on automatic forward and rush back to the five badly wounded passengers. While attending to them, you learnt that a man is trapped far ahead on the track. You must decide whether to return to the cabin to save him or stay with the passengers and save them. IBID Henry: If Henry does nothing, just stays where he is, dust will settle and close a tiny electric circuit which will cause something bad – for example, an explosion that will kill Bill. IBID Neighbour: Suppose I have always fired up my aged neighbour’s furnace before it runs out of fuel. I haven’t promised to, but I have always done it and intend to continue. Now suppose an emergency arises involving five other equally close and needy friends who live far away, and that I can save them only by going off immediately and allowing my neighbour to freeze. IBID (Quinn I) Trolley Driver: You are the driver of a trolley which is speeding towards 5 workmen down the track. You can avoid hitting and killing those workmen only by steering the trolley down a side track and killing one workman. Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘The Trolley Problem,’ in Rights, Restitution, and Risk, pp. 94-116. Bystander at the Switch: You see the trolley out of control and the driver faints. There is a switch you can throw to save the five but kill the one. IBID The Loop Variant: The track is in a loop with five grouped together at one part of the loop and a single workman on another part of the loop. The trolley is heading clockwise. If it goes clockwise it will kill all five in the group but will be stopped after the five and will not reach the one, who will live. However, you can switch the trolley clockwise and if you do so it will hit the one first and, since he is so fat, it will stop with him. The five will live. IBID Transplant: A truly great surgeon has five patients who need organs, otherwise they will die. A young man has just come in for a check-up and has exactly the right blood type and tissue type. He has exactly the organs required to save all five, though he will be unable to survive without all those organs, but he will not give his consent to such a procedure. IBID Hospital: Five patients are in a hospital whose lives could be saved by the manufacture of a certain gas, but this will inevitably release lethal fumes into the room of another patient whom we are unable to move. IBID Fat Man: You stand on a footbridge over the trolley track. You can see a trolley hurtling down the track, out of control. It is heading towards and will kill 5 workmen unless you do something. A man fat enough to stop the trolley is standing near you and you can push him off the bridge and save the 5 workmen. IBID (JJT I) The Foot: In the park outside your office window, there sits a nice man peacefully reading the sports pages. Living in homes bordering the park there are twelve innocent neighbours who, just because they were bitten by certain rats, and through no fault of their own, have contracted a fatal disease, Now, if you do nothing about the situation, your first option, then, in a couple of days, the twelve neighbours will die from their disease. So, on this first option, you will let the twelve die. Regarding their plight, you have precisely one other option: Because he has a certain very rare body chemistry, a life-saving antidote can be made out of only a foot’s worth of the reader in the park. So, on this other option, you push a button and, with your trusty laser knife, you slice off one of this man’s feet, say, his left foot, doing so in a manner that will ensure the man’s safely healing. Then, after liquefying this free foot, you inject a twelfth of the resulting antidote into each of the neighbours. So, on your second option, you will save twelve people's lives, but, as well, you'll make the sports fan have only one foot for the rest of his own long life. Quickly enough thinking the whole matter over, you choose the more active option, you behave accordingly, and the twelve are prevented from dying. Peter Unger, ‘Causing and Preventing Serious Harm,’ Philosophical Studies 65 (1992): 227-255. DOUBLE EFFECT Strategic Bomber: A pilot bombs an enemy factory in order to destroy its productive capacity. But in doing this he foresees that he will kill innocent civilians who live nearby. Warren Quinn, ‘Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 18 (1989), pp. 334-51 Terror Bomber: A terror bomber deliberately kills innocent civilians in order to demoralize the enemy. IBID Direction of Resources: There is a shortage of resources to investigate a new life-threatening disease. Doctors decide to cope by selectively treating only those who can be cured most easily, leaving the more stubborn cases untreated. IBID Guinea Pig: Doctors decide on a crash experimental program, in which they deliberately leave the stubborn cases untreated in order to learn more about the nature of the disease. By this strategy they reasonably expect to do as much long-term medical good as they would in Direction of Resources. IBID Craniotomy Case: A woman will die unless the head of the fetus she is trying to deliver is crushed. But the fetus may be safely removed if the mother is allowed to die. IBID Hysterectomy Case: a pregnant mother’s uterus is cancerous and must be removed if she is to be saved. This will, given the limits of available medical technology, kill the fetus. But if no operation is performed the mother will eventually die after giving birth to a healthy infant. IBID (Quinn II) Potholers: a party of potholers have imprudently allowed the fat man to lead them as they make their way out of the cave, and he gets stuck, trapping the others behind him. Obviously the right thing to do is to sit down and wait until the fat man grows thin; but philosophers have arranged that flood waters should be rising within the cave. Luckily the trapped party have with them a stick of dynamite with which they can blast the fat man out of the mouth of the cave. Either they use the dynamite or they die. In one version, the fat man, whose head is in the cave, will drown with them; in the other he will be rescued in due course. Problem: may they use the dynamite or not? Philippa Foot, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect,’ in her Virtues and Vices, Rioters: Suppose that a judge or magistrate is faced with rioters demanding that a culprit be found for a certain crime and threatening otherwise to take their own bloody revenge on a particular section of the community. The real culprit being unknown, the judge sees himself as able to prevent the bloodshed only by framing some innocent person and having him executed. IBID Pilot: Beside this example is placed another in which a pilot whose aeroplane is about to crash is deciding whether to steer from a more to a less inhabited area. To make the parallel as close as possible it may be supposed that he is the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed. In the case of the riots the mob have five hostages, so that in both the exchange is supposed to be one man’s life for the lives of five. IBID Tyrant: Suppose for example that some tyrant should threaten to torture five men if we ourselves would not torture one. Would it be our duty to do so, supposing we believed him, because this would be no different from choosing to rescue five men from his torturers rather than one? IBID (Foot) INTENSION (and many of the above) Drug Shortage: There are five people in room B, and one person in room A, all of whom have the same disease and all of whom will die if not treated soon. There is enough medicine on hand to treat all five in room B, but since the person in room A has a more advanced case, it would take all of the supply of medicine to save just him. T.M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, pp. 8-36, (Scanlon) LIABILITY TO DEFENSIVE KILLING Delia’s risky behaviour: Delia wants to get a closer look at what is going on behind a construction site wall. There are large signs saying, “Do Not Enter: dangerous work being done – unauthorized entry may endanger the construction workers within.” Delia sees the sign but decides to ignore its warning because she is overcome by curiosity and really wants to know what is going on inside. She enters the site and triggers a rockslide that threatens to seriously harm several workers below. Quong, Jonathan. "Liability to defensive harm." Philosophy & Public Affairs 40.1 (2012): 45-77. Eric’s risky behaviour: Eric is out for a walk, absorbed in his own thoughts. He knows there is a construction site nearby with large signs saying, “Do not enter: dangerous work being done – unauthorized entry may endanger the construction workers within,” but he negligently fails to pay attention to where he is walking and enters the site. His entry triggers a rockslide that now threatens to seriously harm several workers below. IBID Justified Bomber: Bomber acting in a just war is about to drop a bomb on an enemy target. The bombing is fully justified according to the correct principles of jus in bello, but it will kill a certain (proportionate) number of innocent civilians. The civilians have an anti-aircraft gun which they could use to shoot down and kill Bomber before he is able to drop the bomb. IBID Accidentally Permissible Killing: Frank intends to kill Greta because he falsely believes Greta is culpably threatening his life: as a matter of fact Greta poses no threat to Frank. Moreover, Frank’s beliefs about Greta’s threat are not justified given the evidence, and so his action is evidence-relative impermissible (though it is belief-relative permissible). Frank points his gun and prepares to fire at Greta in “Self-Defense” but unbeknownst to Frank, killing Greta is the only way to save five thousand innocent others from being killed (Greta is about to unwittingly and non-culpably release a lethal toxin that will kill the five thousand). Frank’s killing Greta is thus, the fact-relative sense, morally permitted: it is an instance of an all-things-considered permissible killing of an innocent person to avert great harm (though there is no way for either Frank or Greta to be aware of this fact). Just as Frank is about to shoot, Greta sees that Frank is about to shoot her (for no reason as far as she can see), and she has the chance to shoot Frank in self-defense. IBID Mistaken Bomber: Bomber acting in a just war is about to drop a bomb on an enemy target. According to the best evidence available to Bomber, the bombing is morally permissible: the enemy target is important to the war effort, and only a proportionate number of innocent civilians (ten) will be killed as a foreseen but unintended consequence of the bombing. Unfortunately, bomber’s beliefs, although justified, are mistaken. The bomb will actually kill two hundred civilians, though this fact is utterly unforeseeable for Bomber. The bombing is thus not fact-relative proportionate according to the correct principles of jus in bello. The civilians have an anti-aircraft gun which they could use to shoot down and kill Bomber before he is able to drop the bomb. IBID KILLING THE INNOCENT Violinist: You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you – we would never have permitted it if we have known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘A Defense of Abortion,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1 (1971): 47-66. House: Suppose you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child- you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you’ll be crushed to death. The child on the other hand won’t be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him from growing he’ll be hurt, but in the end he’ll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man. IBID People seeds: People-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery. You don’t want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective. IBID Modified Violinist: Suppose you learn that what the violinist needs is not nine years of your life, but only one hour: all you need do to save his life is to spend one hour in that bed with him. Suppose also that letting him use your kidneys for that one hour would not affect your health in the slightest. IBID Villainous Aggressor: You are standing in a meadow, innocently minding your own business, and a truck suddenly heads toward you. You try to sidestep the truck, but it turns as you turn. Now you can see the driver: he is a man you know has long hated you. What to do? You cannot outrun the truck. Fortunately, this is not pure nightmare: you just happen to have an anti-tank gun with you, and can blow up the truck. Of course, if you do this you will kill the driver, but that does not matter: it is morally permissible for you to blow up the truck, driver and all, in defense of your life. Thomson, Judith Jarvis. "Self-defense." Philosophy & Public Affairs (1991): 283-310. Innocent Aggressor: As above, but the truck driver is not the villain. The truck driver is a man who has been injected with a drug, by villain, which makes him go temporarily crazy. It is not his fault that he is going to kill you if you do not blow up the truck, he is not villainously aggressing against you, but he is aggressing against you. IBID Innocent Threat: You are lying in the sun on your deck. Up in the cliff-top far above your house, a fat man is sitting on a bench, eating a picnic lunch. A villain now pushes the fat man off the cliff down toward you. If you do nothing, the fat man will fall on you, and be safe. But he is very fat, so if he falls on you, he will squash you flat and thereby kill you. What alternative do you have? Well, you only have time to shift the position of your awning; if you do this, the fat man will be deflected away from you. But deflecting him away from you will be deflecting him past the edge of the deck down onto the road below. Does morality permit you to shift the awning? IBID Starvation: Some villains throw you in a dungeon, and leave you there, without food, for several weeks. Not surprisingly, you are by now very hungry. To tempt you, and thereby increase your misery, the villains now introduce a plump baby into the dungeon. They remove the baby periodically, so that it is at no risk of starvation. But you are. May you eat the baby? IBID Riding-Roughshod-over-a-bystander cases: A villain is shooting at you, and your only path to safety lies across a bridge that will hold only one person, and there is already a man on it; if you rush onto the bridge he will be topped off it into the valley below. In this case too it is plain that you may not proceed. IBID Subway: Suppose you are a subway track workman. A subway is headed toward you. There is a small alcove in the wall near you, but there is another workman already in it. You can pull him out into the path of the subway and get into the alcove yourself. This is a substitution-of-a-bystander case. There is a small alcove in the wall bear you, but there is another workman already in it. You can force your way into the alcove thereby crushing him to death. This is a riding rough-shod over a bystander case. There is no alcove, but there is another workman with you on the track. You can shove him into the path of the subway, which will stop it. This is a use of a bystander case. IBID Poison: Here is Alfred, whose wife is dying, and whose death he wishes to hasten. He buys a certain stuff, thinking it a poison and intending to give it to his wife to hasten her death. Unbeknownst to him, that stuff is the only existing cure for what ails his wife. Is it permissible for Alfred to give it to her? IBID Trolley Pre-Emption: In this case, you cannot deflect the trolley at all, you can only fire your anti-tank gun at it. But there is a bystander standing next to the trolley track, and if you fire your antitank gun, you will blow up the bystander along with the trolley. IBID Third Party Villainous Aggressor: Let us suppose that you have no antitank gun in Villainous Aggressor, but a third party does; then what we have is a Third-Party case, and our question is whether the third party may use his antitank gun to save your life, and if so, why. IBID Third Party Villainous Aggressor Many: Let us imagine that in Villainous Aggressor is driving toward five, not one, and that none of the five has an anti-tank gun. Is it permissible for a third party to use his antitank gun to save the five? IBID Falling Threat: Imagine such a case in which a falling Threat will, by landing on you, cause the violation of your right not to be killed, and that she will cause such a rights violation because a villain has pushed her out of a tall building in order to kill you. Might this Threat lose her right not to be killed because, and just in case, she will otherwise cause your right not to be killed to be violated? Otsuka, Michael. "Killing the innocent in self‐defense." Philosophy & public affairs 23.1 (1994): 74-94. Trolley 1: First imagine that an innocent person is lying alongside the path of a runaway trolley car. Unless you hurl at that trolley a bomb that you know will also kill the innocent person, the trolley will run you over. IBID Trolley 2: Now imagine a second case in which the same person is trapped inside a runaway trolley car. Unless you hurl a bomb that will destroy the trolley, and hence also the innocent person, the trolley will run over before coming to a gentle stop. IBID Flag Poll: Imagine that you are holding a flagpole upright out of patriotism for your country. You come to realize that if and only if you do nothing but continue to hold this flagpole, a falling Threat will be impaled on the pole, but you will be unharmed. If you drop the flagpole, then the Threat will land on you, killing you but surviving the fall herself. May you continue to hold the flagpole? IBID In-Law: Consider for example, a related case in which you are benignly driving your car down a country road. You spot a hated in-law lying unconscious on the road ahead of you. IBID Man on the Track: There is a runaway trolley whose brakes have failed headed down a track where your child is trapped and will be killed by the trolley. Fortunately there is a side track onto which the trolley can be diverted, but there is one man trapped on this side track, and he will be killed if you divert the trolley. Jonathan Quong, ‘Killing in Self-Defense,’ Ethics 119 (2009): 507-537. Man on the Overpass: There is a runaway trolley whose brakes have failed headed down a track where your child is trapped and will be killed by the trolley. Fortunately you are standing on an overpass under which the trolley must pass before it reaches your child. Next to you stands a large man. This large man’s weight (but not your own) would be sufficient to stop the trolley. If you pushed him off the overpass, he would land on the tracks and stop the trolley before it reaches your child, though he will be killed if you do so. IBID Sleep Walking: You are sleepwalking, and are about to unwittingly trample on your good friend’s prize-winning ant colony. The only way your friend can stop you is by pinching you hard on the arm which will cause you to wake up and stop walking (you will suffer temporary pain, but no lasting damage from the pinch). IBID Meteor: A small meteor is falling toward you and will kill you if it lands on you. The only safe place where you can avoid the meteor is your very tiny one-person car. But there is already someone in your car-this person was placed there without their consent by some third party. You could, however, pull them out of the car thereby ensuring they will die, so you can get inside to safety. IBIBD Modified Meteor: Suppose the car is on the edge of a cliff and the only way to remove them from the car is to throw them out the door and off the edge of the cliff. IBID SAVING THE GREATER NUMBER Rock 1: Suppose that you are out for a ride on your boat, and you see that there is someone in a rising tide who is stranded on a rock. Now consider that there are two people stranded on two different rocks, and there is not enough time to save them both. Michael Otsuka, ‘Saving Lives, Moral Theory, and the Claims of Individuals,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 34 (2006): 109-135. Rock 2: Now let us consider a case in which there are three people stranded on three different rocks and once again there is not enough time to save more than one. IBID Rock 3: Let us now consider a different three-rock case. Unlike the previous case, in this one it is possible to save both the person on the second rock and the person on the third rock. We might imagine that this third rock is adjacent to and just behind the second rock. So let us call this the adjacent third-rock case to distinguish it from the other three-rock case in which the rocks are so far apart that it is not possible to save more than one person. IBID Rock 4: Suppose that we consider a variation of the adjacent third-rock case in which you know that if you pick up the third person on the adjacent rock, you will simply spare him the inconvenience of having to expend the effort to swim ashore, as he is an excellent swimmer who is in no danger of drowning as a result of the rising tide. As in the original adjacent third-rock case, however each of the first and second persons will drown if not taken on board. IBID NON-IDENTITY Energy Choice: Imagine a society choosing between heavy investment in either solar energy systems or nuclear fission power plants in order to meet its projected energy needs over the next few centuries. Monetary investment costs per unit of output will be slightly lower if the nuclear option is pursued. However, there is no storage or disposal system for nuclear waste that is expected to contain them safely for more than a few generations. Hence, if the nuclear plan is pursued, there would very likely be radioactive leakage that would cause the deaths of thousands of people in future generations. Gregory Kavka, ‘The Paradox of Future Individuals,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 11 (1982): 93-112. Pill: A parallel example on a smaller scale envisions a pill that, when taken just before sexual relations, has two effects. It heightens the pilltaker’s sexual pleasure a tiny bit and insures that any child conceived would be mildly handicapped. As pausing to take the pill would change who is conceived, and as existence with a mild handicap is not bad on the whole, no one would be rendered worse off if a prospective parents not using contraceptive devices were to take the pill before sex. IBID Slavery: In a society in which slavery is legal, a couple that is planning to have no children is offered $50,000 by a slaveholder to produce a child to be a slave to him. They want the money to buy a yacht. Should they sign the agreement, accept the money, and produce the child? IBID Drought: First, imagine a member of a drought stricken tribe who, purely by luck, discovers a substantial underground source of water. Keeping its location a secret, he trades buckets of water at a very high price to those and only those who can afford to pay with useful goods. He grows enormously rich, while many die who would have lived had he disclosed the water source or sold his water at a reasonable price. IBID Freezing: A second case concerns a future society that has developed a technique for freezing peoples’ bodies immediately after death and rejuvenating some of them later. In this society, a new fatal disease begins to strike down people in the prime of life. The government allows victims of the disease to opt for being frozen immediately after death, and it plans to resuscitate them when a cure is found. A “rejuvenation trust,” consisting of an initial grant of government funds together with whatever money each victim contributes, is established for each victim who wishes to be frozen. Trustees are appointed to manage these trusts and to use the accumulated funds to pay for the revitalization and cure the frozen bodies when a cure of the disease is found. No cure is found for many years, and scientists warn that, owing to gradual deterioration of the frozen corpses, they will soon be unable to bring them back to life. Then, while going over the scientific notes of his late uncle, a young man discovers a formula for a drug to cure the disease. He is able to produce the drug, and he enriches himself by selling doses of it only to those very few rejuvenation trustees able to pay his monopolistic price. IBID Conditional Slavery: Finally, consider a future slaveholding society in which many individual sperm and egg cells from married couples are isolated. Fertilization is allowed if and only if the couple agrees to it and to having the zygote implanted in the mother’s womb. For reasons that need not concern us, the society appoints guardians to advance and protect – by legal means – the (potential) interests of some individual potential persons represented by particular sperm-egg pairs. A couple that has produced one such sperm-egg pair forces its guardian to approve their selling the potential child to a slaveholder for $50,000 as a condition of their allowing and facilitating the production of the child. IBID Radioactive Waste Policy: we are trying to decide whether to adopt a permissive radioactive waste policy. This policy would be less inconvenient to us than our existing practice. If we enact the newly-proposed policy, then we will cause there to be radioactive pollution that will cause illness and suffering. However, the policy will have such significant effects on public policy and industry functioning, that different people will exist in the future depending on whether we enact the policy. Elizabeth Harman, ‘Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?’ Philosophical Perspectives 18 (2004): 89-113. Surgery: A doctor cuts a hole in my abdomen in order to remove my swollen appendix. Cutting open my abdomen causes me pain (as I recover); but if the operation had not been performed, I would have suffered worse pain and died very soon. IBID Teenage Mother: A 14-year-old girl decides to conceive now and raise the child. Because she is so young, she gives her child a bad start in life: her child suffers inadequate parental stability and support. If she had not conceived now, she would have waited and had a different child later, to whom she would have given a good start in life. IBID Temporary condition: Tammy has a temporary condition that will cause any baby she conceives now to be born deaf. She conceives now. If she had not conceived now, her condition would have cleared up in two months and she would have conceived a different baby who would not have been disabled. IBID Happy Child: a couple could have conceived, given birth to, and raised a child who would have had a happy life. They did not. IBID Permanent condition: Patty has a permanent condition such that if she ever conceives a child, the child will be deaf. She conceives. IBID Super-Conservation: We have a choice whether to adopt a Super-Conservation policy. If we do not adopt the policy, we will continue with our reasonably good conservation policies, which will ensure that future generations enjoy a high level of well-being, and which allow our own level of well-being to rise steadily. If we do adopt the policy, our own level of wellbeing will still rise but slightly more slowly; future generations will enjoy a vastly higher level of wellbeing than they would otherwise have. Implementation for the policy would have such widespread effects that different people will exist in the future depending on whether we adopt it. The benefits to future generations are much greater than the costs to us. IBID Depletion: As a community we must choose whether to deplete or conserve certain kinds of resources. If we choose Depletion, the quality of life over the next two centuries would be slightly higher than it would have been if we had chosen conservation. This would be because, at the start of this period, people would have to find alternatives for the resources that we had depleted. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, ch. 16 The Medical Programmes: There are two rare conditions, J and K, which cannot be detected without special tests. If a pregnant woman has condition J, this will cause the child she is carrying to have a certain handicap. A simple treatment would prevent this effect. If a woman has condition K when she conceives a child, this will cause this child to have the same particular handicap. Condition K cannot be treated but always disappears within two months. Suppose next that we have planned two medical programmes, but there are funds for only one; so one must be cancelled. In the first programme, millions of women would be tested during pregnancy. Those found to have condition J would be treated. In the second programme, millions of women would be tested when they intend to try to become pregnant. Those found to have Condition K would be warned to postpone conception for at least two months, after which this incurable condition will have disappeared. Suppose finally that we can predict that these two programmes would achieve results in as many cases. If there is Pregnancy Testing, 1,000 children a year will be born normal rather than handicapped. If there is Preconception testing, there will each be born 1,000 normal children rather than 1,000, different, handicapped children. IBID Jane’s Choice: Jane has a congenital disease, that will kill her painlessly at about the age of 40. This disease has no effects before it kills. Jane knows that, if she has a child, it will have this same disease. Suppose that she can also assume the following. Like herself, her child would have a life that is worth living. There are no children who need to be but have not been adopted. Given the size of the world’s population when this case occurs (perhaps in some future century), if Jane has a child, this will not be worse for other people. And, if she does not have this child, she will be unable to raise a child. She cannot persuade someone else to have an extra child, whom she would raise. (These assumptions give us the relevant questions.) Knowing these facts, Jane chooses to have a child. IBID Ruth Choice: Ruth’s situation is just like Jane’s, with one exception. Her congenital disease, unlike Jane’s, kills only males. If Ruth pays for the new technique of in vitro fertilization, she would be certain to have a daughter whom this disease would not kill. She decides to save this expense and takes a risk. Unluckily she has a son, whose inherited disease will kill him at about the age of 40. IBID The Risky Cure for Infertility: Ann cannot have a child unless she takes a certain treatment. If she takes this treatment, she will have a son, who will be healthy. But there is a risk that this treatment will give her a rare disease. This disease has the following features. It is undetectable, and does not harm women, but it can infect one’s closest relatives. The following is therefore true. If Ann takes this treatment and has a healthy son, there is a chance of one in two that she will later infect her son in a way that will kill him when he is about forty. Ann chooses to take this treatment, and she does later infect her son with this fatal disease. IBID Transmitter Room: Suppose that Jones has suffered an accident in the transmitter room of a television station. Electrical equipment has fallen on his arm, and we cannot rescue him without turning off the transmitter for fifteen minutes. A World Cup match is in progress, watched by many people, and it will not be over for an hour. Jones’ injury will not get any worse if we wait, but his hand has been mashed is he is receiving extremely painful electrical shocks. Should we rescue him now or wait until the match is over? IBID