In applied ethics there is a dilemma known as The Trolley Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem). It runs like this:
A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?
I would suggest revising the scenario so that the people have not been tied to the tracks by a mad philosopher, but just happen to be on it. Otherwise we might be able to resolve the problem by ultimately blaming the philosopher.
The problem becomes interesting when we compare it to other scenarios. For instance, from the wikipedia source:
As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
The interesting thing is that many people's intuitions about the first trolley case are that it is OK to pull the switch, saving the five people, but resulting in the death of the single person. However, many people's intuitive response to the fat man revised version of the scenario is not to push the fat man. The dilemma comes in explaining the difference, identifying the relavent moral distinctions in the scenarios.
A third scenario is this:
A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor.
Again, the popular intuition is that it would be wrong to take the organs of the unsuspecting traveller. But why? Each of these cases seem to involve saving five lives at the expense of one, but the intution seems to favour saving the five at the expense of one in the original trolley problem, but not in the later scenarios.
One popular suggestion is that our intutions in these cases lend support to the doctrine of double effect. The doctrine of double effect says that a foreseen harmful effect of an action is permissable under the following conditions:
the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral;
the intention is for the good effect and not the bad;
the good effect outweighs the bad effect in a situation sufficiently grave to merit the risk of yielding the bad effect (e.g., risking a patient's death to stop intolerable pain);
the good effect (relieving pain) does not go through the bad effect (e.g., death).
So, for instance, one significant difference between the original trolley example and the fat man trolley example is that in the original trolley example, the death of the single person is a foreseen but unintended effect of saving the five people; whilst pushing the fat man is not unintended, though it is foreseen. Likewise, the five people in the first example are not saved by killing the single one - killing the single person is not a means to saving them, or part of our plan to do so.
Likewise, killing the unsuspecting traveler to harvest his organs for five other people is intended, and part of the plan. Saving the five people tied to the tracks by diverting the trolley onto the track with one person tied to it will result in the death of the one, but that death, though foreseen, was unintended, and the one was not killed as a means to save the five. Meanwhile, in the organ havesting scenario the single traveller's death is intended, and is a means for saving the five.
The doctrine of double effect, then, may answer the question of why, intuitively, pulling the switch is OK in the first trolley case, but pushing the fat man or butchering the traveller is not.
The trouble is that libertarians, like Rothbard, oppose the doctrine of double effect. In the Libertarian Forum (June-July, '84) Rothbard wrote,
a Randian "mocking smile" rather than a sigh of regret.
The innocent bystander is the case most relevant to the question of war and the State. Except that we must postulate a mass of innocent bystanders or shields instead of just one. Ponder this: A is being threatened by B, a sniper, hiding in a crowd of hundreds of innocent people. For various reasons he can't simply leave and he also can't warn the crowd. A must either be shot or else he throws a bomb into the crowd, killing hundreds of bystanders along with the sniper. Is A's action, is mass slaughter of innocents, justified because A's life is at stake? It is hard to believe that any civilized person, much less any libertarian, would justify such an action-not simply because it would be profoundly immoral, but because it commits what for libertarians is the ultimate crime: mass murder. In this case, the Lone Ranger would be happy to pop A before he commits mass-murder, and even do it with
An adherent of the doctrine of double effect may not disagree with Rothbard's conclussion here, because the bad effect of throwing the bomb (killing tens of people in the crowd) is not proportionate to the good effect (A saving his own life). However, one can revise the scenario such that B has an even bigger bomb that would kill far more people in the crowd if he threw it at A. In this case, the doctrine of double effect seems to justify A throwing his bomb at B. A does not intend to kill anybody in the crowd: His intention is to kill B, not the bystanders. Killing a few to save many might make the bad effect proportionate to the good, too. And A would not be killing the crowd members as a means to kill B, the good effect of his action is not accomplished by killing the crowd members.
However, this seems to violate rights. If, then, we may never violate rights, then how would a libertarian solve the trolley problem?