Bentham's Selfie

Episode 61 - Bentham’s Selfie

Official transcript: https://www.cheynemusic.com/transcripts

Jim takes on philosophy’s “Trolley Problem,” discusses Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant, Bentham’s utilitarianism and Kant’s categorical imperative, and learns of Bentham’s rather unique idea of how he might be useful even after death.

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Transcript

[Music]

JIM: Welcome to Making Our Way. The four of us, Jan, Rob, Dee, and I, have been talking about animals and our changing attitudes about what constitutes their ethical treatment. What is the foundation on which we build our moral and ethical perspectives? We, the four of us, we ought to plan an episode or two to address that. So while we wait, I’ve come across a recommendation of a website that offers puzzles and quizzes which will help us do just that. The site is called Philosophy Experiments.

Philosophy Experiments says, quoting here, “Explore philosophical questions and dilemmas with interactive experiments and puzzles. Find out what you believe and how you think about morality, logic, religion, and more.” Okay, I’m presented with a list of things I can do. Each one is in hyperlink, blue, and underscored. Our choices. The first one is called, “Should you kill the fat man?” What else do we have here? There’s one called, “Valid or Invalid?” “Battleground God.” Not today, thank you. “Philosophical health test.” That sounds promising. Here’s another one called, “Should you kill the fat man?” Another one. They’ve got that twice. Could be a typo or maybe they really want to know if we would kill the fat man.

Okay, clicking on that brings up an ad, which I will click out of. Quoting here, “Should you kill the fat man? Preliminary questions. This activity is a treatment of some of the issues thrown up by the thought experiment called the Trolley Problem, which was first outlined by the philosopher Philippa Foote.” “FILL -i-pah,” right? “fill-EE-pah”? FILL -i-pah.” I think it’s “FILL -i-pah.” “And then developed by Judith Jarvis Thompson and others. But before we start properly, we need to ask you four preliminary questions so we get a sense of the way you think about morality. There are no right or wrong answers. Just select the option that most corresponds to your view.” Now, I’m already hitting this with some caution because I have a feeling that these four questions are going to paint me into a corner, and then some gotchas are going to come along the way.

First question, “Torture, as a matter of principle, is always morally wrong.” Yes, I believe torture is morally wrong. I’m not sure what they gain by saying “torture, as a matter of principle, is always morally wrong.” Anyway, last night, D and I watched the movie "The Mauritanian," a movie about one of Gitmo’s detainees, and clearly saw the morally and legally bankrupt practice of torture. I’m going to go with YES, torture as a matter of principle is always morally wrong. Preliminary question number two, “The morality of an action is determined by whether, compared to the other available options, it maximizes the sum total of happiness of all the people affected by it.” They’re trying to tease out the utilitarians among us. This goes back to Jeremy Bentham. Bentham is regarded as the father of utilitarianism, which I’m going to try and summarize this way. An act is considered to be moral if it causes more happiness than unhappiness - more well-being - among the majority of the stakeholders in that act. That’s a bit clumsy, but evaluates an act based on the consequences of the act. So it is part of consequentialism. Is killing someone wrong? According to consequentialism, it depends on the circumstances and the outcome for the most people. And then on the other side of things, against Bentham, if we want to judge morality, not on the consequences, but on the merits of the act itself, we could turn to Immanuel Kant. Kant created what’s called the categorical imperative, which judges acts as moral or immoral on their own merits, irrespective of who might benefit from the outcome. People should act in such a way that they would wish their actions were a universal law that everyone should follow. So question two says, “The morality of an action is determined by whether, compared to the other available options, it maximizes the sum total of happiness of all the people affected by it.” I’m going with Kant on this one and saying that morality is absolute and not subject to the happiness of the majority. So that’s a NO from me.

Question number three> “It is always and everywhere wrong to cause another person’s death, assuming they wish to stay alive, if this outcome is avoidable.” And this is going to be one of those time machines. If you could go back in time, would you kill baby Hitler things, isn’t it? Take, um, New Year’s Day, New Orleans. A guy drives a pickup down Bourbon Street running over as many people as he can. Clearly immoral. But what if you could have been there at the start? If you could have prevented what he did by killing him at the outset, would you be moral or immoral to do so? That’s roughly the same question they’re asking here. Bentham would say, “Yes, that’s a moral act.” Kant, on the other hand, would insist that killing is always wrong even if the result is not what we might want. I believe that killing is wrong, but I also believe that I have a moral obligation to others that might override that first consideration.

When I was a teacher, I was charged with the care of 600 students in my school - not only their education, but their safety and well-being. And all teachers have had to work through the possibility not only of exposing themselves to danger to protect students, to shield children from an attacker, but also of actively preventing any harm. And that clarifies it for me. No, I don’t think it’s always wrong to cause the death of another person, however regrettable.

Question four. “If you can save the lives of innocent people without reducing the sum total of human happiness and without putting your own life at risk, you are morally obliged to do so.” I can see both Bentham and Kant saying yes to this one. I’m thinking of those Good Samaritan laws, like the ones you had at the last episode of Seinfeld, where you’re required to intervene to help somebody. So YES to this one, hit and submit.

And then the site says, “Good, that’s the preliminary set of questions completed. To date, 221,391 people have completed this activity.” And then they present four charts so I can compare my answers to all those. On the torture one, I’m with a 64/36 majority that says torture is wrong. Morality means maximizing the happiness of the most people. This one’s pretty close. It’s 48%, yes, 52%, no, and I was with the 52% no. Causing the death of someone is always morally wrong. I said no, and I’m with 42%, 58% said yes. And are you obliged to save innocent life? 76% said yes, 24% no, and I’m with the 76%. Okay, that’s done. Moving on.

[Music]

So there’s an interesting and rather bizarre story about Jeremy Bentham. And if there’s time, I’ll tag it on at the end.

“Should you kill the fat man? The scenarios. You will now be presented with four different scenarios to test your moral intuitions against the answers you gave to the first four questions. Here’s one called the runaway train.

The brakes of the train that Casey Jones is driving have just failed. There are five people on the track ahead of the train. There is no way that they can get off the track before the train hits them. The track has a siding leading off to the right, and Casey can hit a button to direct the train onto it. Unfortunately, there is one person stuck on the siding. Casey can turn the train killing one person, or he can allow the train to continue onwards, killing five people. Should he turn the train for one dead, or should he allow it to keep going for five?” Yeah, but it isn’t just simple math. Sacrifice one to save five. It’s more complicated because there’s a difference between allowing something to happen and causing it to happen. Kant would say that rerouting the train is an action that Casey is taking, and even if we don’t like the result of letting the train continue, it would be immoral not to do that. And I can see his point, but I think Casey has had thrust on him, the responsibility in either case. Choosing the lesser evil, I’ll choose, YES, Casey should turn the train. And then I hope that the five people whose lives he spared can afford the psychological care Casey’s going to need for what he’s done.

Oh, it gives me a response. It says, “Interesting. You do not believe there is any general moral requirement to maximize the happiness of the greater number of people, yet you think that Casey Jones ought to divert the train. There’s no contradiction here, but it would be interesting to know what thoughts motivated your decision. For now, though, let’s see what you make of the scenario below.”

Okay, scenario number two. “The fat man on the bridge.” Oh, is this the guy we’re going to kill? “Marty Bakerman is on a footbridge above the train tracks. He can see that the train approaching the bridge is out of control and that it is going to hit five people who are stuck on the track just past the bridge. The only way to stop the train is to drop a heavy weight into its path. The only available heavy enough weight is a very fat man who is also watching the train from the footbridge. Marty can push the fat man onto the track into the path of the train, which will kill him, but save the five people already on the track. Or he can allow the train to continue on its way, which will mean that the five will die. Should he push the fat man onto the track, one dead, or allow the train to continue, five dead.” Heavens, who thinks of these things? The numbers are the same, the outcomes the same, but the emotional investment in pushing an innocent person, I mean, are you kidding? All right, let’s think. I’m going to take cover under the notion that this is hypothetical. There’s just - they’ve just set an emotional trap here, and since it’s hypothetical, I’m going to say that this is nearly equivalent to the last scenario. I don’t see either Bentham or Kant changing their answers, so I’m going to stay with mine too. YES, push the poor soul onto the tracks.

But why a fat man? What’s up with that? What are they after? Maybe it’s because he’s heavy, I suppose, and also assuming that I’m not fat, my body would not stop the train so that it - that removes from this narrow any chance that I could sacrifice myself for the five. It’s really me acting on someone else in a very unpleasant, hypothetical way.

And their response to my choice is, “That’s an interesting response. Previous research has indicated that most people disagree with you, that it would be right to push the fat man off the bridge into the path of the train. However, your response is certainly consistent with your claim that Casey Jones should divert the runaway train so that it ikills - only kills one person rather than five.” Now, there’s a bunch of other stuff here that I’m not going to read through right now. We’ll just skip through that.

On to scenario three out of four, the saboteur. “Okay, this scenario is identical to the preceding scenario, but with one crucial difference. This time, Marty Bakerman knows with absolute certainty that the fat man on the bridge is responsible for the failure the brakes - for the failure the train’s brakes,” of the train’s brakes, it should say, “Upset by train fare increases, he sabotaged the brakes with the intention of causing an accident. As before, the only way to stop the train and save the lives of the five people already on the track is to push the fat saboteur off the bridge into the path of the train. Should Marty push the fat saboteur onto the track, one dead, or allow the train to continue, five dead.” Okay, they’ve removed the man’s innocence, making it less traumatic for Marty Bakerman to save five by sacrificing one. So I’ll choose that one, and then let them tell me why I’m wrong.

And their response. “Your belief that the right thing to do is to throw the saboteur off the bridge is not surprising, given your previous response that it would be right to throw an innocent man, fat man, off the bridge if it had the effect of saving five people.” Yada, yada, yada, a lot of material. Let’s not read through all of this. Let’s get to the next one.

Okay, here comes the final one, and things could get rough here. This is called “The Fat Man and the Ticking Bomb.” It says, “The fat man, having avoided being thrown in front of the runaway train, has been arrested and is now in police custody. He states that he has hidden a nuclear device in a major urban center, which has been primed to explode in 24 hours time. The following things are true. One, the bomb will explode in 24 hours time. Two, it will kill a million people if it explodes. Three, if bomb disposal experts get to the bomb before it explodes, there is a chance it could be diffused.” A chance; all right. “Four, the fat man cannot be tricked into revealing the location of the bomb, nor is it possible to appeal to his better nature, nor is it possible to persuade him that he was wrong to plant the bomb in the first place. Five, if the fat man is tortured, then it is estimated there is a 75% chance that he will give up the bomb’s location. Six, if the fat man does not reveal the location, the bomb will explode and a million people will die. There is no other way of finding out where the bomb is located. Should the fat man be tortured in the hope that he will reveal the location of the nuclear device?” So they’ve given us two choices. Yes, the fat man should be tortured, and no, the fat man should not be tortured. And since this is hypothetical and this question is really uncomfortable, I’m going to add a third option, phone a friend, and let’s call Kiefer Sutherland and he will have that bomb located and diffused in 24 hours, guaranteed.

What if we did a Donald Rumsfeld here and called it an enhanced interrogation technique? Would that make it easier? Of course it would, which is why it happened that way. Just out of defiance, and again having just watched the Mauritanian, I’m going against torture here and passing the blame for the one million hypothetical casualties on the authors of this scenario.

All right, anyway, their response. “Your response that the fat man should not be tortured is consistent with your earlier claim that torture is always wrong. However, this blanket opposition to torture doesn’t sit easily with some of the other responses you have given.” And other stuff I’ll skip through for now. They now ask for some demographic information. “Male or female.” Right. “Nationality.” Only a few options there. And “Age.” My group is way down at the bottom. Submit.

And here’s a section called “a matter of consistency.” And it says, “The first thing to note is that your consistency score is 100 percent. This is higher than the average score for this test, where higher is better, which is 74 percent. It is often thought to be a good thing if one’s moral choices are governed by a small number of consistently applied moral principles. If this is not the case, then there is the worry that moral choices are essentially arbitrary, just a matter of intuition or making it up as you go along.” Okay, I’m going to skip over some things here to find the next part of it. “You’ve done better than average in this test, but now is not the time to rest on your laurels because, let’s face it, most people don’t think very clearly about morality. However, before you embark on any further study, we suggest you check out the next page of analysis.” Okay, analysis will follow. But I’m just on that note of consistency. I’m not sure that consistency is the virtue to beat all virtues. Some truly immoral people and movements score very high on the consistency scale.

It occurs to me there’s another way through this trolley problem. Take the first scenario, redirecting the train to kill one instead of five. Bentham would have said the benefit to the five outweighs the death of the one and would turn the train. Kant, if I understand him, would have said intentional killing is wrong and turning the train is an intentional act, so it is not a moral option. But Kant proposed another maxim that could help us here. He said that we should regard other people as ends in themselves and not merely as means to an end. If people should not be treated merely as a means to an end, how does that help us with our trolley problem?

We could imagine Kant saying turning the train is wrong because it involves an intentional act that causes a death. Yes. However, one could also argue that in not directing the train, Kant is necessarily also using others, and by others I’m looking at those five poor souls on the track - Kant is using those others merely as a means to his end, as a means to fulfilling his moral convictions. And I say merely because those five people clearly did not consent to his decision. That’s the question I would ask Kant, if I could. Is it ethical to impose on others the consequences of one’s own ethical choices? I think that’s a valid question.

Anyway, the website offers some stats they’ve collected from hundreds of thousands of people who have completed the exercise. And, by the way, thanks to the website owners who did not ask for a credit card or any personal information before they showed me the analysis of my responses. That is good. That is a moral act.

Here are their collective results. Scenario one, should Casey turn the trolley? 84% said yes. 16% said no. I was in the majority. Scenario two, should Marty push the fat man off the bridge? 41% said yes. 59% said no. And I was in the minority there. Scenario three, should Marty push the saboteur off the bridge? 77% say yes. 23% said no. And I’m with the majority. And scenario four, torture one man to possibly save one million. And I know where this is going to go. 81% said yes. 19% said no. And I still think we should call Kiefer Sutherland.

So when we finally produce our episodes on the ethical treatment of animals, or on our ethical foundations in general, we’ll keep one eye on Bentham’s utilitarianism, another eye on Kant’s categorical imperative, and see how these mesh with our current moral foundation.

Okay, the story about Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham, ever looking for the utility of a thing, and known for his sense of humor, thought about what would become of his body once he died. He thought his body should be put to some practical use. So he directed in his will that his body was to be dissected, and then his remains should be put on display. Here’s what happened. His body was dissected as directed. His skeleton was then dressed in his clothes, which were stuffed with straw. And it was seated in one of Bentham’s favorite chairs. And it now resides in a glass case at University College London’s Student Center. It’s referred to as Jeremy Bentham’s auto icon. But I like to think of it as the ultimate selfie.

Now, Bentham had hoped his body would include his head, and in his later years, he would carry in his suit pocket the pair of glass eyes that would go in it. But the preservation process did not take very well, and so a wax head was made to place on top of the skeleton, which is what you see today. Still, the glass eyes were put in the original head anyway, and for a number of years the head was displayed on the floor between Bentham’s feet. And later that head was placed in a locked cabinet out of view to avoid tempting undergraduate mischief. It is said that Bentham’s auto icon was once moved into the university’s council chambers for a meeting, where the attendance sheet notes that Bentham was present, but not voting.

[Music begins]

So I hope you enjoyed that excursion into philosophy and ethics and morals. And I hope the four of us will get back together to create yet another podcast in our soon to end season two, as the summer is upon us.

Thank you for your company, and until next time.

[Music ends]

Link to Philosophy Experiments: <https://www.philosophyexperiments.com>