So the ship has gone down, and there you are in the stormy sea in a lifeboat, with more passengers aboard than the safe limit for the boat, and more are out in the water clinging to the boat, trying to pull themselves in, and on the verge of capsizing it, and you can’t swim.
When do you grab an oar and start hitting people in the water to keep them from capsizing the boat?
Illegal? No. You have the right to save your life, even it means killing another. This is recognized in both domestic and international law.
Immoral? Unclear. Even though there are moral philosophies that would say no, let everybody drown rather than saving yourself, I don’t think most people would call it immoral as long as it was absolutely necessary to stay alive.
So why bring it up?
First, I don’t know if my assertion that most people wouldn’t find it immoral under life and death circumstances is correct.
Second, I find this to be the base point of the abortion issue. I cannot in anyway understand the idea of a total ban on abortions that would cause the loss of both a pregnant woman and her unborn child (or whatever you want to call it). I personally find such a position unreasonable in all respects. That same woman could give birth and then legally kill her child later if the child posed an imminent threat to her life.
So what’s the dope?
Yeah, I know this will go off into the wild untamed abortion debate eventually, but maybe it could focus on this point for a little while.
It would depend on a lot of factors, but me personally I’d probably start doing that when it looked like the people in the water were endangering to capsize the boat and basically kill everyone. A lot would depend on whether or not my family was with me or if I was alone as to what actions I’d take. It would also depend on who else was in the boat. If it’s a bunch of women and children my response would be different than if it’s a bunch of convicted convicts and nuns.
Assuming that my perception was that the people in the boat were worth saving and that they were able to pull together in some sort of coherent way I’d probably try and protect the boat, possibly to the point of fighting off the panic ridden folks in the water, or at least to try and get the boat away from immediate danger.
Saving myself might or might not be my top priority though…again, it would depend on the situation. And there might be many ways to save myself depending on the situation. Possibly the best way to save myself is to grab an oar or life jacket and jump out of the boat, for instance, leaving the people in the lifeboat to their fates if they want to try and save everyone and doom everyone by doing so.
I can think of situations where saving myself would be the right thing to do, and others where it might not be my top priority…the same as I can see situations where hitting or even killing people in the water OR people in the boat might be the right thing to do, and other times where it might not be or that I might not be able to bring myself to do it.
For a while, in the 70’s (anyway) this was dealt with as a “thought experiment” (not a practical one!) in high schools, at least in some school districts in the U.S. A scenario was constructed, and the students were asked to explore the moral questions involved. Should someone be sacrificed to save the rest? Or was that unsupportable?
Then…the religious right heard of it, and got the very exploration of the question banned from schools! The very existence of “situation ethics” was, to their mind, so taboo as to be disallowed for school discussion!
I’d say there is no “right answer.” There are different ways of assessing the “wrong answers” in hopes of finding one which is “least wrong.” But since we don’t all put the same value on life, our assessments differ. For my part, I would not throw someone out of the overloaded lifeboat – but I would sacrifice myself to save the others. (I’m thinking of Lawrence Oates walking into the snow and ice in hopes – forlorn, alas – of saving Robert Scott and the others in the doomed South Polar expedition of 1911-12.)
(Or…maybe I wouldn’t…but my personal moral view is that I should. In reality, maybe I’d cry like a baby and fight like a lunatic to stay alive, thus rocking the boat and dooming everyone. Who can know?)
I think the line is fuzzy for some people because it’s at the boundary of rational thought and emotional will/instinct to survive. Using the words of the former just don’t apply to the descent into the latter. The reverse is true too–you can use words to describe the emotion, but those don’t do well for supporting an ethical system.
Clearly there are lots of people who don’t consider the distinction. “I’d bash skulls the first moment I calmly realized the ship was in danger.” Sure. But those people would make boring movies.
That’s a case about murder and cannabilism. A man was selected and killed by others instead of waiting for him to die, in order to “better preserve his blood”. The victim was no threat to the murderers. The ‘necessity’ defense was used at trial. I was referring to necessary actions to prevent imminent death caused by others. For instance, if the victim in your case had killed his attackers.
What more detail do you want about faith in God? The anti-abortion people would say that you never start swatting those people in the water because everyone’s life is in God’s hands.
And when you call this the “base point” on the abortion issue when abortions to save the life of the mother are a tiny, tiny fraction of all abortion performed is, to put it mildly, puzzling.
One of the things that never seems to get brought up in these discussions is the relative positions of the people involved. So let me make it plain:
“The people in the lifeboat have no greater inherent right to live than the people in the water.”
The debate always seems to be ‘We’re in the lifeboat. What am I justified in doing to restrict access?’ when an equally valid debate could be ‘I am not in the lifeboat. What am I justified in doing to gain access?’
No one seems to ever view it that way. In the end this is barely an ethical debate. It boils down to nothing more than ‘He’s dead and I’m alive and that’s the way I wanted it.’ as established from a position of power.
So ask the reverse if you must as the first. Or better yet make this your postulate:
There are 100 people in the water.
There is one lifeboat, currently empty, capable of carrying 20 people.
What ethical considerations are in play that control who gets those 20 seats?
That’s a far better question than starting with the assumption of a power imbalance.
One way to solve this is that you divide the group into 5 subgroups of 20. Each subgroup gets “x” number of hours in the lifeboat, then rotates into the water. Good luck getting people out of the boat and back into the water, though.
Better to ask for volunteers to stay in the water. A husband may choose to stay in the water if his wife gets to go in the boat. Or a parent my opt water to get his/her child into the boat.
This is exactly right. If you have a moral right to bash in the head of anyone who tries to get into the lifeboat, then surely a guy in the water has a moral right to bash in your head if you try to stop him from getting into the lifeboat. You’re bashing him in the head because you want to live, and in order for you to live he must die. He’s bashing you in the head because he wants to live, and in order for him to live you must die. So where does that put us?
In this boat-like thread. But the ethics of reasonable people in the same situation are interesting also. How do reasonable people decide who gets to be in the boat? Does physical ability make a difference? How about women and children? How about the only guy who knows anything about boats?
Children I’m willing to grant* – and what’s more a boat that can safely hold 20 adults may hold 40 or more kids – but women have been arguing (quite reasonably) for equal rights for many years. Equal rights implies equal right to the lifeboat seats too.
*If it’s only children that end up in the boat and all the adults perish and the rescue isn’t swift there’ll probably just end up a lot of dead kids too.
