Morality and Justice

First Paper Topics

Please write a paper (4 or 5 pages typed, double-spaced) on one of the following topics (i.e., #1, #2, or #3). The paper is due at the beginning of recitation section on Friday, October 16. (See syllabus for late paper policy.) Please start early, perhaps going over an outline early on with your TA or with me, to be sure things are on the right track; that's generally more useful than doing a whole draft before talking with us. Philosophy papers written a night or two before the deadline are rarely successful. Please also make use of the writing guidelines and sample paper (linked through the syllabus) to help you with the paper. In particular, be sure to avoid wasting space on unnecessary introductions and redundant conclusions: just get right into it and answer the questions directly, clearly and thoroughly. And please remember that, as always in philosophy, the emphasis is on rational argumentation, and appeals to religious authority, for example, are to be avoided.

NOTE: It is a violation of the university's honor code to use written material from any source in your paper without proper attribution and use of quotation marks where relevant. This applies especially to copying and pasting material from websites, which is plagiarism. Even if a source is only paraphrased, it must be cited in your paper: if you use a source and paraphrase it, changing some words, and do not cite it, that counts as plagiarism and will be handled accordingly (i.e., sent directly to the Honor Court). And even if you do cite it, you should still avoid mere paraphrasing of sources: the point is to explain the relevant points yourself, and for our purposes it is mostly best just to avoid outside sources and do your own analysis. You should definitely not be consulting sources such as Wikipedia or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in order to explain the philosophical material, though outside sources may sometimes be useful in connection with background issues that come into the discussion.

1. Foot claims that negative rights and duties are more stringent than positive rights and duties (i.e., it is harder to legitimately override the former than the latter), and she uses this claim to try to explain why the killing/letting die distinction sometimes makes a moral difference, as in the two rescue cases she discusses in the article you read. Answer all of a, b, and c:

(a) Explain carefully how Foot's thesis about negative and positive rights would apply to the following case, and what her moral conclusion about it would be (and be sure to discuss which rights the various innocent people in question have, whom they have these rights against in each case, and why, which will help with your answer):

Judge: A mob is demanding justice for a recent crime, and has taken 5 innocent hostages, which they are threatening to kill if the culprit of the crime is not swiftly found and hanged. The judge has no good evidence in the crime case, but realizes that he could successfully frame an innocent person for it and have him hanged, which would appease the mob and secure the release of the 5 hostages, so only 1 innocent person would ultimately die instead of 5. What should the judge do and why?

(b) Now suppose that the judge has decided to go ahead and frame and hang the one innocent person in order to rescue the five innocent people from the mob. But you realize that you are able quickly to act to rescue that one person from the judge. (Assume you are not in a position to save the five from the mob. Your choice is simply between doing nothing, allowing the judge to kill the one to save the five, or acting to prevent the judge from killing the one.) Do you think you should rescue the one from the judge, thus thwarting the judge's effort to rescue the 5 (since your preventing the judge from framing and hanging the one means that the mob will now go ahead and kill the five hostages)? Explain the relevant moral considerations here in defending your answer.

Again, be sure to discuss which rights the various innocent people in question have, whom they have these rights against in each case, and why, which will help with your answer. Note that this is trickier than in the Judge case in part a above; you'll have to think carefully about your rationale for assigning or not assigning certain rights in this case. It might help you in thinking about this case to compare and contrast it with the case of interfering in a lifeguard's attempt to rescue five drowning people, e.g., by tripping him as he is running to save them. Is your interfering in the judge's plan to rescue the five similar to your interfering with a lifeguard's rescuing of five drowning people, or is it different in relevant ways? How?

(c) Finally, consider the following case:

Large Man: There is an out-of-control trolley heading toward 5 people who cannot get out of the way. Unlike in Foot's trolley example, however, there is no side track onto which you can steer the trolley. But there is a very large man standing on a bridge over the tracks, and if you pushed him down onto the tracks in front of the trolley, his bulk and weight would stop it before it reached the five, saving them, though in the process the trolley would fatally crush him.

Is this permissible, like the original Trolley case where you just turn the trolley so that it runs over fewer people (note that the numbers are the same)? What would Foot say, and why? What do you say? Defend your answer.

2. Consider the following imaginary dialogue between Peter Singer and Ned-the-Rich-Televangelist:

Singer: "Hello, Ned. Nice Mercedes. Where are you headed?"

Ned: "Hi Pete. We're going to spend a week at the beach in Florida: $2,000 for the rental (ouch!), but it's a great spot. Five star restaurants, and shopping just down the street for my wife. But it's not all fun and relaxation: I'll be working hard on some position papers for an anti-stem-cell-research lobbying group I work with."

Singer: "Oh? What's wrong with stem cell research?"

Ned: "What's wrong with it? It violates the sanctity of human life, Peter. I believe in a culture of life."

Singer: "But it's all for the sake of saving and improving human lives, Ned, through developing cures and treatments for all sorts of diseases and injuries."

Ned: "Well, that's all well and good, but blastocysts are destroyed when embryonic stem cells are cultivated from the inner cell mass, and that violates the sanctity of life. Why don't you join me this week and learn something about morality? There's another rental open just next door to mine."

Singer: "Sorry, but I couldn't possibly spend $2000 on that."

Ned: "Why not? Don't they pay you well at Princeton?"

Singer: "Yes, but if I had $2000 to spend on things like fancy vacations and restaurants, I'd send it to Oxfam or UNICEF instead."

Ned: "Well, that's noble and it is indeed very sad what's happening in the world. But you can't solve all the world's problems."

Singer: "True, I can't. But I can make a significant dent in them. Wouldn't even one human life saved be a significant dent in the problem, especially to that person? And my $2,000 would actually save many lives. This very day 30,000 people, mostly innocent children, will die of largely preventable causes through no fault of their own. I can't save them all, but I can save quite a few by living a very modest lifestyle myself. If human life is sacred, doesn't that include all these actual children who are already born, and, unlike blastocysts, are also suffering?

Singer is obviously raising a question about the consistency of Ned's values in a couple of different ways. Write an essay exploring this carefully, and sort out the challenges and issues it raises. You will need to explain, among other things, what exactly you think is meant by Ned's appeal to the "sanctity of human life," why Ned thinks it creates a problem for embryonic stem cell research, and whether this is in tension with Ned's other values, such as the priority he places on his own consumption as an affluent American. What changes do you think should be made to Ned's and/or Singer's views to arrive at a consistent and plausible moral outlook concerning these issues, and why?

3. (a) Explain carefully why Rawls thinks that the way to understand socioeconomic justice is to think about the principles rational agents would choose in the 'original position', behind a 'veil of ignorance'. (In other words, why does he think that these hypothetical facts tell us about what justice is? What does he mean by rational agents, and why is the stuff about the original position important here?) (b) What two principles does he think they would choose, and why? Be sure to explain what the principles mean. (c) Discuss some ways in which our current society succeeds in meeting those conditions, and some ways in which it fails to do so. Do you agree with Rawls that our failures in these respects constitute a moral problem for our society? Why or why not?