4 Comments
Aug 8, 2022Liked by Richard Y Chappell

Nice post.

I think that you might not necessarily prefer a world where you exercise more, but a world where you are physically fit and in good shape. Of course, in reality, that requires exercising. Often times, people have a weakness of will which prevents them from pursuing their goals. But it's also sometimes the case that people formulate goals that they would not want if they knew everything that it entails.

Some deontologists are really committed and are willing to forego more salient interests in some cases. Take for example the person who says you shouldn't break into a cabin in the woods in order to survive because it's a property rights violation. Most people find that sort of thing intuitively wrong.

Expand full comment
Aug 9, 2022·edited Aug 9, 2022

One way of looking at the trolley problem is, what would happen if the fat man and the 5 hostages tied to the rails went behind the veil of ignorance and voted on which strategy to take? Obviously, in the problem as stipulated, they would unanimously choose for someone to push the fat man onto the rails. Deontologists are preferring a higher chance of getting killed to a lower one. Duh!

But this takes the situation as stipulated, which makes unrealistic assumptions about the certainty of our knowledge at the moment of choice. If the probability of success of the strategy of pushing the fat man is zero instead of one, the vote will go unanimously in the other direction. The question then becomes, are we certain enough of success to make the risk pay off? Deontologists would say that we have a word for those cases: “emergency.” Obey the speed limit, except when getting to the hospital one minute sooner might save a life.

People are pretty terrible at making such calculations with plenty of preparation time, even more so on the fly. The real trolley problem is, how on earth did anyone ever get into such a scenario? Why is trolley safety so lacking that unprepared random persons must make life and death decisions? If anyone is ever in a situation truly analogous to the trolley problem, someone has already made serious errors in judgement. Once encountered, a decision indeed must be made. But in the ideal we would never encounter them.

Or would we? Hospital administrators effectively make life and death decisions when they allocate their budgets. Unfortunate children might be saved if they spent the whole budget on super advanced pediatric facilities. They don’t have to personally murder any geriatric patients.

The problem with both Rawls and the trolley problem is that they imply that the calculus would be unambiguous if only we shed our biases and partiality. Just do the math. But that assumes that we have some shared value or commitment that should dominate, and it is only selfishness that prevents us from reaching consensus. Why should the lives of five captives matter to the abstract being behind the veil of ignorance? Once it has shed its biases and partialities, does it retain its will to live? Probably. (That's one thing we all have in common, with the exception of failed suicides.) We don’t just desire to live, we desire to live in a way that is worthwhile, surrounded by those we care about, who are also living in a way that is worthwhile. But does that suffice to give us terms for our calculations? Or must we use rules and heuristics to overcome our ignorance, refining them as our knowledge changes? Is there still room for rational disagreement behind the veil?

Expand full comment

Good post! I also think deontologists are like small children who do not eat their vegetables!

Expand full comment