To start things out...

Here is a classic series of questions that I have wrestled with other students and colleagues for many years. It is a thought experiment designed to tap into our intuitions over these matters and to then search for consistency and metatheory behind our "moral instincts".

In the following scenario imagine you are in some weird situation wherein you can only save one of the the two options given in each question. There is no possible way to save both, nor would sacrificing yourself help in any way towards saving them and they will both die. If you do nothing, they will both die (and, I suppose, that is an option). You know that when you save one of them, the other will most certainly die (or be destroyed). Assume there is no other relevant information than what is given for each question (i.e., in the child or adult question, assume they have the same status otherwise in all ways that may affect your decision, the only difference being that one is a child and one is an adult).

You can only rescue one of each of the following, which do you save?

a) A child or an adult
b) A stranger or your dog
c) Your entire family or the entire canine species
d) A bottle with the cure for cancer or your brother
e) Lassie or A Convicted Murderer/Rapist
f) Your spouse or a Nobel Laureate
g) A petry dish with 15 fertilized human eggs or 1 small child
h) A dog or a fish
i) A dog or a rat
j) A dog or a human being on life support who has been declared "brain dead"
k) Your spouse or the greatest artist of all time
l) A child or a 95-year old adult
m) A stranger or the greatest piece of art ever created by human hands
n) A dog or a human being on life support in a perpetual coma (with no chance of ever coming out of the coma, although they are not brain dead).
o) Lassie or Hitler

Perhaps we can give two answers to each (if they are different):
1) what do you think you would actually do and
2) what do you think should or ought to do.


Now, after you've answered a) through o) can you provide some kind of principles or basis upon which you are guiding your decision making? Are the decisions consistent with one another? Are the principles consistent?

Welcome to On the Point

I hope you all enjoy using this blog as a tool to interact over a variety of ethical issues and questions. This is a public blog and so I will invite outside voices as well as those from UCONN to engage with us on the blog.