Lecture 1
The Runaway Trolley
questions:
1.turn to a side track to save 5 lives,killing the 1
2.push a heavy man from the bridge to stop the train
3.as a doctor: save 5 people using a healthy guy's organs
Moral Reasoning
what is it
- a way of persuading others
- a way of sorting out our own moral convictions, figuring out what we believe and why
classification
- Consequentialist
- locates morality in the consequences of an act
- Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism
- Categorical
- locates morality in certain duties
- Immanuel Kant
Reading from Chapter 1 - Doing the Right Thing
Methodology
moral reflection:a way of conceiving moral argument
- started form the dialogues of Socrates and the moral philosophy of Aristotle
- not a solitary pursuit but a public endeavor which requires an interlocutor
- has its extension in political area
steps
1.start with an opinion, or a conviction, about the right thing to do
“Turn the trolleyonto the side track.”
2.reflect on the reason for our conviction , seek out the principle on which it is based
“Better to sacrifice onelife to avoid the death of many.”
- confronted with a situation that confounds the principle, we are pitched into confusion
“I thought it was always right to save as many lives as possible, and yet it seems wrong to push the man o! the bridge (or to kill the auarmed goatherds).”
4.Facing confusion, we may revise our judgment about the right thing to do, or rethink the principle we initially espoused
5.As we encounter new situations, we move back and forth between our
judgments and our principles, revising each in light of the other.
