What's the Right Think to Do?

funding for this program is provided by additional funding provided by this is a course about justice and we begin with a story suppose you're the driver of a trolley car and your trolley car is hurtling down the track at sixty miles an hour and at the end of the track you notice five workers working on the track you try to stop but you can't your brakes don't work you feel desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers they will all die let's assume you know that for sure and so you feel helpless until you notice that there is off to the right a side track and at the end of that track there's one worker working on the track your steering wheel works so you can turn the trolley car if you want to onto the side track killing the one but sparing the five here's our first question what's the right thing to do what would you do let's take a poll how many would turn the trolley car onto the side track raise your hands how many wouldn't how many would go straight ahead keep your hands up those of you who would go straight ahead a handful of people would the vast majority would turn let's hear first now we need to begin to investigate the reasons why you think it's the right thing to do let's begin with those in the majority who would turn to go onto the side track why would you do it what would be your reason who's willing to volunteer for a reason go ahead stand up because it can't be right to kill five people when you can only kill one person instead it wouldn't be right to kill five if you could kill one person instead that's a good reason that's a good reason who else does everybody agree with that reason go ahead well I was thinking it was the same reason on 9-11 we regard the people who who flew the plane into the Pennsylvania field as heroes because they chose to kill the people in the plane and not kill more people in big buildings so the principle there was the same on 9-11 to tragic circumstance but better to kill one so that five can live is that the reason most of you had those of you who would turn? let's hear now from those in the minority those who wouldn't turn well I think that's the same type of mentality that justifies genocide and totalitarianism in order to save one type of race you wipe out the other so what would you do in this case you would to avoid the horrors of genocide you would crash into the five and kill them? presumably yes okay who else that's a brave answer thank you let's consider another trolley car case and see whether those of you in the majority want to adhere to the principle better that one should die so that five should live this time you're not the driver of the trolley car you're an onlooker you're standing on a bridge overlooking a trolley car track and down the track comes a trolley car at the end of the track are five workers the brakes don't work the trolley car is about to careen into the five and kill them and now you're not the driver you really feel helpless until you notice standing next to you leaning over the bridge is a very fat man you could give him a shove he would fall over the bridge onto the track right in the way of the trolley car he would die but he would spare the five how many would push the fat man over the bridge raise your hand how many wouldn't most people wouldn't here's the obvious question what became of the principle better to save five lives even if it means sacrificing one what became of the principle that almost everyone endorsed in the first case i need to hear from someone who was in the majority in both cases how do you explain the difference between the two? the second one i guess involves an active choice of pushing the person down which i guess that person himself would otherwise not have been involved in the situation at all and so to choose on his behalf i guess to involve him in something that he otherwise would have escaped is i guess more than what you have in the first case where the three parties that the driver and the two sets of workers are already i guess in the situation but the guy working the one on the track off to the side he didn't choose to sacrifice his life anymore than the fat man did, did he? that's true but he was on the tracks this guy was on the bridge go ahead you can come back if you want all right it's a hard question you did well, you did very well it's a hard question who else can find a way of reconciling the reaction of the majority in these two cases? well i guess in the first case where you have the one worker and the five it's choice between those two and you have to make a certain choice and people are going to die because of the trolley car not necessarily because of your direct actions the trolley car is a runway you're hanging in and you're making a split second choice whereas pushing the fat man over is an actual act of murder on your part you have control over that whereas you may not have control over the trolley car so i think it's a slightly different situation all right who has a reply is that is no that's good who has a way who wants to reply is that a way out of this? i don't think that's a very good reason because you choose to either way you have to choose who dies because you either choose to turn and kill the person which is an act of conscious thought to turn or you choose to push the fat man over which is also an active conscious action so either way you're making a choice do you want to reply? well i'm not really sure that's the case it just still seems kind of different the act of actually pushing someone over onto the tracks and killing him you are actually killing him yourself you're pushing him with your own hands you're pushing him and that's different than steering something that is going to cause death into another you know it doesn't really sound right saying it now it's good what's your name? Andrew let me ask you this question Andrew suppose standing on the bridge next to the fat man i didn't have to push him suppose he were standing over a trap door that i could open by turning a steering wheel like that would you turn? for some reason that still just seems more wrong maybe if you accidentally like leaned into the steering wheel or something like that but uh... or say that the car is hurtling towards a switch that will drop the trap um... then i could agree with that. fair enough it still seems wrong in a way that it doesn't seem wrong in the first case to turn and in another way i mean in the first situation you're involved directly with the situation in the second one you're an onlooker as well so you have the choice of becoming involved or not by pushing the fat man let's forget for the moment about this case that's good let's imagine a different case this time you're a doctor in an emergency room and six patients come to you they've been in a terrible trolley car wreck five of them sustained moderate injuries one is severely injured you could spend all day caring for the one severely injured victim but in that time the five would die or you could look after the five restore them to health but during that time the one severely injured person would die how many would save the five? now is the doctor how many would save the one? very few people just a handful of people same reason I assume one life versus five now consider another doctor case this time you're a transplant surgeon and you have five patients each in desperate need of an organ transplant in order to survive one needs a heart, one a lung one a kidney one a liver and the fifth a pancreas you have no organ donors you are about to see them die and then it occurs to you that in the next room there's a healthy guy who came in for a checkup and he's you like that? he's taking a nap you could go in very quietly yank out the five organs that person would die but you could save the five how many would do it? how many? put your hands up if you would do it anyone in the balcony? you would? be careful, don't lean over too much how many wouldn't? what do you say? speak up in the balcony, you who would yank out the organs I'd actually like to explore a slightly alternate idea of just taking the one of the five who needs an organ who dies first and using their four healthy organs to save the other four that's a pretty good idea that's a great idea except for the fact that you just wrecked the philosophical point let's step back from these stories and these arguments to notice a couple of things about the way the arguments have begun to unfold certain moral principles have already begun to emerge from the discussions we've had and let's consider what those moral principles look like the first moral principle that emerged in the discussion said, the right thing to do, the moral thing to do is to base on the consequences that will result from your action at the end of the day better that five should live even if one must die that's an example of consequentialist moral reasoning consequentialist moral reasoning locates morality in the consequences of an act, in the state of the world that will result from the thing you do then we went a little further we considered those other cases and people weren't so sure about consequentialist moral reasoning when people hesitated to push the fat man over the bridge or to yank out the organs of the innocent patient people gestured toward reasons having to do with the intrinsic quality of the act itself the consequences be what they may people were reluctant people thought it was just wrong categorically wrong to kill a person an innocent person even for the sake of saving five lives at least people thought that in the second version of each story we considered so this points to a second way of thinking about moral reasoning categorical moral reasoning locates morality in certain absolute moral requirements, certain categorical duties and rights regardless of the consequences we're going to explore in the days and weeks to come the contrast between consequentialist and categorical moral principles the most influential example of consequential moral reasoning is utilitarianism, a doctrine invented by Jeremy Bentham, the eighteenth century english political philosopher the most important philosopher of categorical moral reasoning is the eighteenth century german philosopher Immanuel Kant so we will look at those two different modes of moral reasoning assess them and also consider others if you look at the syllabus you'll notice that we read a number of great and famous books books by Aristotle John Locke Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and others you'll notice too from the syllabus that we don't only read these books we also take up contemporary political and legal controversies that raise philosophical questions we will debate equality and inequality affirmative action free speech versus hate speech same-sex marriage, military conscription a range of practical questions why? not just to enliven these abstract and distant books but to make clear, to bring out what's at stake in our everyday lives including our political lives for philosophy and so we will read these books and we will debate these issues and we'll see how each informs and illuminates the other this may sound appealing enough but here I have to issue a warning and the warning is this to read these books in this way as an exercise in self-knowledge to read them in this way carries certain risks risks that are both personal and political risks that every student of political philosophy has known these risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know there's an irony the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know it works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange that's how those examples worked the hypotheticals with which we began with their mix of playfulness and sobriety it's also how these philosophical books work philosophy estranges us from the familiar not by supplying new information but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing but, and here's the risk once the familiar turns strange it's never quite the same again self-knowledge is like lost innocence however unsettling you find it it can never be un-thought or unknown what makes this enterprise difficult but also riveting is that moral and political philosophy is a story and you don't know where the story will lead but what you do know is that the story is about you those are the personal risks now what of the political risks one way of introducing a course like this would be to promise you that by reading these books and debating these issues you will become a better more responsible citizen you will examine the presuppositions of public policy, you will hone your political judgment you will become a more effective participant in public affairs but this would be a partial and misleading promise political philosophy for the most part hasn't worked that way you have to allow for the possibility that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one and that's because philosophy is a distancing even debilitating activity and you see this going back to Socrates there's a dialogue, the Gorgias in which one of Socrates' friends Callicles tries to talk him out of philosophizing Callicles tells Socrates philosophy is a pretty toy if one indulges in it with moderation at the right time of life but if one pursues it further than one should it is absolute ruin take my advice, Callicles says abandon argument learn the accomplishments of active life look for your models not those people who spend their time on these petty quibbles but those who have a good livelihood and reputation and many other blessings so Callicles is really saying to Socrates quit philosophizing get real go to business school and Callicles did have a point he had a point because philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions and from settled beliefs those are the risks personal and political and in the face of these risks there is a characteristic evasion the name of the evasion is skepticism, it's the idea let go something like this we didn't resolve once and for all either the cases or the principles we were arguing when we began and if Aristotle and Locke and Kant and Mill haven't solved these questions after all of these years who are we to think that we here in Sanders Theater over the course of a semester can resolve them and so maybe it's just a matter of each person having his or her own principles and there's nothing more to be said about it no way of reasoning that's the evasion the evasion of skepticism to which I would offer the following reply it's true these questions have been debated for a very long time but the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they're impossible in one sense they're unavoidable in another and the reason they're unavoidable the reason they're inescapable is that we live some answer to these questions every day so skepticism, just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflection is no solution Immanuel Kant described very well the problem with skepticism when he wrote skepticism is a resting place for human reason where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement simply to acquiesce in skepticism, Kant wrote can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason I've tried to suggest through these stories and these arguments some sense of the risks and temptations of the perils and the possibilities. I would simply conclude by saying that the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason and to see where it might lead thank you very much in a situation that desperate you have to do what you have to do to survive you have to do what you have to do you gotta do what you gotta do pretty much if you've been going nineteen days without any food you know someone just has to take the sacrifice, someone has to make the sacrifice and people can survive alright that's good, what's your name? Marcus what do you say to Marcus? we started out last time with some stories with some moral dilemmas about trolley cars and about doctors and healthy patients vulnerable to being victims of organ transplantation we noticed two things about the arguments we had one had to do with the way we were arguing we began with our judgments in particular cases we tried to articulate the reasons or the principles lying behind our judgments and then confronted with a new case we found ourselves re-examining those principles revising each in the light of the other and we noticed the built-in pressure to try to bring into alignment our judgments about particular cases and the principles we would endorse on reflection we also noticed something about the substance of the arguments that emerged from the discussion we noticed that sometimes we were tempted to locate the morality of an act and the consequences in the results in the state of the world that it brought about and we call this consequentialist moral reasoning but we also noticed that in some cases we weren't swayed only by the result sometimes many of us felt that not just consequences but also the intrinsic quality or character of the act matters morally some people argued that there are certain things that are just categorically wrong even if they bring about a good result even if they save five people at the cost of one life so we contrasted consequentialist moral principles with categorical ones today and in the next few days we will begin to examine one of the most influential versions of consequentialist moral theory and that's the philosophy of utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham the eighteenth century English political philosopher gave first clear systematic expression to the utilitarian moral theory and Bentham's idea his essential idea is a very simple one with a lot of it morally intuitive Bentham's idea is the following the right thing to do the just thing to do is to maximize utility. What did he mean by utility? he meant by utility the balance of pleasure over pain happiness over suffering here's how he arrived at the principle of maximizing utility he started out by observing that all of us all human beings are governed by two sovereign masters pain and pleasure we human beings like pleasure and dislike pain and so we should base morality whether we're thinking about what to do in our own lives or whether as legislators or citizens we're thinking about what the laws should be the right thing to do individually or collectively is to maximize, act in a way that maximizes the overall level of happiness Bentham's utilitarianism is sometimes summed up with the slogan the greatest good for the greatest number with this basic principle of utility on hand let's begin to test it and to examine it by turning to another case another story but this time not a hypothetical story a real life story a case of the Queen versus Dudley and Stephens this was a nineteenth century British law case that's famous and much debated in law schools here's what happened in the case I'll summarize the story then I want to hear how you would rule imagining that you're the jury a newspaper account of the time described the background the first story of disaster at sea was never told than that of the survivors of the yacht Minunet the ship foundered in the south atlantic thirteen hundred miles from the Cape there were four in the crew Dudley was the captain Stephens was the first mate Brooks was a sailor all men of excellent character or so the newspaper account tells us the fourth crew member was the cabin boy Steve Parker seventeen years old he was an orphan he had no family and he was on his first long voyage at sea he went the news account tells us rather against the advice of his friends he went in the hopefulness of youthful ambition thinking the journey would make a man of him sadly it was not to be the facts of the case were not in dispute Steve hit the ship and the Minunet went down the four crew members escaped to a lifeboat the only food they had were two cans of preserved turnips no fresh water for the first three days they ate nothing on the fourth day they opened one of the cans of turnips and ate it the next day they caught a turtle together with the other can of turnips the turtle enabled them to subsist for the next few days and then for eight days they had nothing no food no water imagine yourself in a situation like that what would you do? here's what they did by now the cabin boy Parker is lying at the bottom of the lifeboat in the corner because he had drunk sea water against the advice of the others and he had become ill and he appeared to be dying so on the nineteenth day Dudley the captain suggested that they should all have a lottery that they should draw lots to see who would die to save the rest Brooks refused he didn't like the lottery idea we don't know whether this was because he didn't want to take the chance or because he believed in categorical moral principles but in any case no lots were drawn the next day there was still no ship in sight so Dudley told Brooks to avert his gaze and he motioned to Stevens that the boy Parker had better be killed Dudley offered a prayer he told the boy his time had come and he killed him with a pen knife stabbing him in the jugular vein Brooks emerged from his conscientious objection to share in the gruesome bounty for four days the three of them fed on the body and blood of the cabin boy true story and then they were rescued Dudley describes their rescue in his diary with staggering euphemism on the twenty-fourth day as we were having our breakfast a ship appeared at last the three survivors were picked up by a German ship they were taken back to Falmouth in England where they were arrested and tried Brooks turned states witness Dudley and Stevens went to trial they didn't dispute the facts they claimed they had acted out of necessity that was their defense they argued in effect better that one should die so that three could survive the prosecutor wasn't swayed by that argument he said murder is murder and so the case went to trial now imagine you are the jury and just to simplify the discussion put aside the question of law let's assume that you as the jury are charged with deciding whether what they did was morally permissible or not how many would vote not guilty that what they did was morally permissible and how many would vote guilty what they did was morally wrong a pretty sizable majority now let's see what people's reasons are and let me begin with those who are in the minority let's hear first from the defense of Dudley and Stevens why would you morally exonerate them what are your reasons i think it's i think it is morally reprehensible but i think that there's a distinction between what's morally reprehensible and what makes someone legally accountable in other words you know as the judge said what's what's always moral isn't necessarily against the law and while i don't think that necessity justifies theft or murder or any illegal act at some point your degree of necessity does in fact exonerate you from any guilt other defenders other voices for the defense moral justifications for what they did thank you i just feel like in a situation that desperate you have to do what you have to do to survive you have to do what you have to do you have to do what you have to do pretty much if you've been going nineteen days without any food you know someone just has to take the sacrifice, someone has to make the sacrifice so that people can survive and furthermore from that let's say they survive and then they become productive members of society who go home and start like a million charity organizations and this and that and this and that i mean they benefit everybody in the end i mean i don't know what they did afterwards they might have gone and like kill more people whatever but what if they went home and they turned out to be assassins what if they went home and turned out to be assassins? you'd want to know who they assassinated that's fair i don't want to know who they assassinated alright that's good, what's your name? marcus we've heard a defense couple of voices for the defense now we need to hear from the prosecution most people think what they did was wrong one of the first things that i was thinking was, oh if they haven't been eating for a really long time maybe they they're mentally affected and so then that could be used as a defense, a possible argument that they weren't in the proper state of mind, they weren't making decisions they might otherwise be making and if that's an appealing argument that you have to be in an altered mindset to do something like that it suggests that people who find that argument convincing do think that they were acting immorally you defend them, i'm sorry, you vote to convict, right? yeah, i don't think that they acted in a morally appropriate way and why not? what do you say here's marcus he just defended them he said you heard what he said that you've got to do what you've got to do in a case like that what do you say to marcus? that there's no situation that would allow human beings to take the idea of fate or that the other people's lives in their own hands that we don't have that kind of power thank you, and what's your name? ritt who else? what do you say? stand up i'm wondering if dudley and steven had asked for richard parker's consent in dying if that would would that exonerate them from an act of murder and if so is that still morally justifiable that's interesting, all right, consent, wait wait hang on, what's your name? kathleen kathleen says suppose they had asked, what would that scenario look like? so in the story dudley is there, penknife in hand but instead of the prayer or before the prayer he says parker would you mind we're desperately hungry as marcus empathizes with we're desperately hungry you're not gonna last long anyhow you can be a martyr would you be a martyr? how about it, parker? then then what do you think, would it be morally justified then? suppose parker in his semi stupor says okay i don't think it would be morally justifiable but i'm wondering even then it wouldn't be you don't think that even with consent it would be morally justified are there people who think who want to take up kathleen's consent idea and who think that that would make it morally justified raise your hand if it would if you think it would that's very interesting why would consent make a moral difference why would it? well i just think that if he was making his own original idea and it was his idea to start with then that would be the only situation in which i would see it being appropriate in any way because that way you couldn't make the argument that he was pressured you know it's three to one or whatever the ratio was and i think that if he was making a decision to give his life then he took on the agency to sacrifice himself which some people might see as admirable and other people might disagree with that decision so if he came up with the idea that's the only kind of consent we could have confidence in morally then it would be okay otherwise it would be kind of coerced consent under the circumstances you think is there anyone who thinks that even the consent of parker would not justify the killing him who thinks that? yes tell us why stand up i think that parker would be killed with the hope that the other crew members would be rescued so there's no definite reason that he should be killed because you don't know who when they're going to get rescued so if you kill him it's killing him in vain do you keep killing the crew member until you're rescued and then you're left with no one because someone's going to die eventually well the moral logic of the situation seems to be that that they would keep on picking off the weakest maybe one by one until they were rescued and in this case luckily they were rescued when three at least were still alive now if if parker did give his consent would it be all right do you think or not? no it still wouldn't be right tell us why it wouldn't be all right first of all cannibalism i believe is morally incorrect so you shouldn't be eating a human anyway so cannibalism is morally objectionable so then even on the scenario of waiting until someone died still it would be objectionable yes to me personally i feel like it all depends on one's personal morals and like we can't sit here and just like this is just my opinion of course other people are going to disagree well we'll see let's see what their disagreements are and then we'll see if they have reasons that can persuade you or not let's try that all right let's um now is there someone who can explain those of you who are tempted by consent can you explain why consent makes such a moral difference what about the lottery idea does that count as consent remember at the beginning Dudley proposed a lottery suppose that they had agreed to a lottery then how many would then say it was all right suppose there were a lottery cabin boy lost and the rest of the story unfolded then how many people would say it was morally permissible so the numbers are rising if we had a lottery let's hear from one of you for whom the lottery would make a moral difference why would it I think the essential element in my mind that makes it a crime is the idea that they decided at some point that their lives were more important than his and that I mean that's kind of the basis for really any crime it's like my needs my desires are more important than yours and mine take precedent and if they had done a lottery where everyone consented that someone should die it's sort of like they're all sacrificing themselves to save the rest then it would be all right a little grotesque but but morally permissible and what's your name so Matt for you what bothers you is not the cannibalism but the lack of due process I guess you could say that can someone who agrees with Matt say a little bit more about why a lottery would make it in your view morally permissible the way I understood it originally was that that was the whole issue is that the cabin boy was never consulted about whether or not something was going to happen to him even with the original lottery whether or not he would be a part of that it was just decided that he was the one that was going to die right that's what happened in the actual case but if there were a lottery and they had all agreed to the procedure you think that would be okay right because then everyone knows that there's going to be a death whereas you know the cabin boy didn't know that this discussion was even happening there was no you know forewarning for him to know that hey I may be the one that's dying all right now suppose everyone agrees to the lottery they have the lottery the cabin boy loses and he changes his mind you've already decided it's like a verbal contract you can't go back on that you've decided the decision was made you know if you know that you're dying for the you know the reason for others to live you would if someone else had died you know that you would consume them so right but then he could say I know but I lost I just think that that's the whole moral issue is that there was no consulting of the cabin boy and that that's what makes it the most horrible is that he had no idea what was even going on that had he known what was going on it would be a bit more understandable now I want to hear so there are some who think it's morally permissible but only about twenty percent led by Marcus then there are some who say the real problem here is the lack of consent either the lack of consent to a lottery to a fair procedure or Kathleen's idea lack of consent at the moment of death and if we add consent then more people are willing to consider the sacrifice morally justified I want to hear now finally from those of you who think even with consent even with a lottery even with a final murmur of consent by Parker at the very last moment it would still be wrong and why would it be wrong that's what I want to hear well the whole time I've been leaning all towards the categorical moral reasoning and I think that there's a possibility I'd be okay with the idea of a lottery and then the loser taking into their own hands to kill themselves so there wouldn't be an active murder but I still think that even that way it's coerced and also I don't think that there's any remorse like in Dudley's diary we're eating our breakfast it seems as though he's just sort of like you know the whole idea of not valuing someone else's life so that makes me feel like I have to take the category. You want to throw the book at him and he lacks remorse or a sense of having done anything wrong so alright, good. Other, any other defenders of a who say it's just categorically wrong with or without consent? Yes, stand up. Why? I think undoubtedly the way our society shape murder is murder murder is murder in every way and our society looks at murder down on it in the same light and I don't think it's any different in any case. Good, let me ask you a question there were three lives at stake against one. Okay. The one, the cabin boy, he had no family, he had no dependents these other three had families back home in England, they had dependents they had wives and children think back to Bentham Bentham says we have to consider the welfare, the utility, the happiness of everybody. We have to add it all up so it's not just numbers three against one there's also all of those people at home in fact the London newspaper at the time and popular opinion sympathized with them Dudley and Stephens and the paper said if they weren't motivated by affection and concern for their loved ones at home and their dependents surely they wouldn't have done this. Yeah, and how is that any different from people on the corner trying to have the same desire to feed their family? I don't think it's any different. I think in any case if I'm murdering you to advance my status as murder and I think that we should look at that on the same light instead of criminalizing certain activities and making certain things seem more violent and savage when in the same case it's all the same, it's all the same act and mentality that goes into murder, the necessity to feed your family Suppose it weren't three, suppose it were thirty three hundred one life to save three hundred we're in wartime, three thousand suppose the stakes are even bigger suppose the stakes are even bigger I think it's still the same deal Do you think Bentham is wrong to say the right thing to do is to add up the collective happiness? Do you think he's wrong about that? I don't think he's wrong but I think murder is murder in any case. Well then Bentham has to be wrong. If you're right he's wrong. Okay, he's wrong. Alright, thank you. Well done. Alright, let's step back from this discussion and How many objections have we heard to what they did? We heard some defenses of what they did the defenses had to do with necessity, their dire circumstance, and implicitly at least the idea that numbers matter and not only numbers matter but the wider effects matter their families back home, their dependents Parker was an orphan no one would miss him so if you add up if you try to calculate the balance of happiness and suffering you might have a case for saying what they did was the right thing then we heard at least three different types of objections we heard an objection that said what they did was categorically wrong Mike here at the end categorically wrong murder is murder is always wrong even if it increases the overall happiness of society a categorical objection but we still need to investigate why murder is categorically wrong is it because even cabin boys have certain fundamental rights and if that's the reason where do those rights come from if not from some idea of the larger welfare or utility or happiness question number one Matt said a lottery would make a difference a fair procedure Matt said and some people were swayed by that that's not a categorical objection exactly it's saying everybody has to be counted as an equal even though at the end of the day one can be sacrificed for the general welfare that leaves us with another question to investigate why does agreement to a certain procedure even a fair procedure justify whatever result flows from the operation of that procedure question number two and question number three the basic idea of consent Kathleen got us onto this if the cabin boy had agreed himself and not under duress as was added then it would be all right to take his life to save the rest even more people signed onto that idea but that raises a third philosophical question what is the moral work that consent does why does an act of consent make such a moral difference that an act that would be wrong taking a life without consent is morally permissible with consent to investigate those three questions we're going to have to read some philosophers and starting next time we're going to read Bentham and John Stuart Mill, utilitarian philosophers don't miss the chance to interact online with other viewers of Justice join the conversation, take a pop quiz watch lectures you've missed and learn a lot more visit justiceharvard.org it's the right thing to do funding for this program is provided by additional funding provided by