Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 01 "THE MORAL SIDE OF MURDER"

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

1) Moral dilemmas about choosing between lives (trolley-car cases)

Scenario 1: Driver chooses a track

• A runaway trolley is headed toward five workers.
• Brakes fail; the driver can steer to a side track where one worker will die instead.
• Core question: Is it morally right to divert the trolley to kill one to save five?

Student/poll reactions

• Majority: Divert to kill one rather than five.
• Minority: Rejects the “kill one to save five” framing, arguing it resembles justification for atrocities like genocide/totalitarianism (treating “one group” as expendable).

Representative majority reasoning

• It’s not right to kill five when you can kill one.
• A comparison is made to 9/11, arguing the principle is similar: choose a tragedy that results in fewer deaths.

Second question: Test whether the principle generalizes

• The classic dilemma is altered so the person who can act is not the driver.

Scenario 2: Bridge spectator can push a “fat man”

• Again, the trolley is about to kill five.
• An onlooker can push a “fat man” off a bridge, killing him to save the five.
• Core question: Does the moral principle from Scenario 1 carry over?

Observed reactions

• Most people refuse to push.

Discussion: why the difference?

• One view: Scenario 1 is a choice between outcomes under urgency and limited direct control, while Scenario 2 is an active act of murder with direct bodily involvement.
• Another view disputes that: steering and pushing are both conscious choices, so the difference may not remove moral responsibility.
• A reconciliation attempt: in Scenario 2, one is an onlooker who becomes “involved” by pushing; pushing creates more moral “wrongness” than redirecting machinery in time.

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2) Moral dilemmas about medical triage and organ theft (doctor cases)

Scenario A: Doctor in the emergency room

• Six patients: five moderately injured, one severely injured.
• The doctor can either:
  • Spend time saving the one (the five die), or
  • Save the five (the one dies).
• Most choose to save the five, again using the “one vs five” consequential framing.

Scenario B: Transplant surgeon with no donors

• Five patients need different organs; no donors are available.
• A healthy person is nearby.
• The surgeon could quietly kill one healthy person to harvest organs and save the five.
• Responses include hesitation and debate about whether this is categorically wrong.

Noted complication

• Someone proposes an alternative: waiting for one of the five to die and reallocating organs.
• The instructor says this “wrecks the philosophical point,” implying the focus is on killing an innocent (the healthy person).

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3) Two styles of moral reasoning emerge: consequentialist vs categorical

Consequentialist moral reasoning

• Core idea: An act is morally right if it produces the best overall outcome.
• Example principle: It’s better that five live even if one must die.
• Morality is located in the consequences—“the state of the world that will result.”

Categorical moral reasoning

• Core idea: Some actions are intrinsically wrong or violate absolute duties/rights, regardless of outcomes.
• The instructor summarizes that many resist sacrificing an innocent even to save five.
• Morality is located in categorical constraints: certain acts (like killing an innocent) remain wrong “consequences be what they may.”

Key philosophers introduced

• Utilitarianism (major consequentialist view), linked to Jeremy Bentham.
• Kant’s approach (major categorical approach), linked to Immanuel Kant.

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4) Course framing: reading philosophy as “self-knowledge” and its risks

Course structure

• Read classic philosophers (examples: Aristotle, Locke, Kant, John Stuart Mill).
• Debate contemporary political/legal issues (examples: equality/inequality, affirmative action, free speech vs hate speech, same-sex marriage, military conscription).

Warning about philosophy

• Philosophy unsettles what you “already know” by making the familiar strange.
• Personal risk: self-knowledge can’t be undone (“lost innocence” analogy).
• Political risk: philosophy may make you a worse citizen before it makes you better.
• An evasion called skepticism: giving up because nothing is resolved once and for all.
• Response to skepticism: moral questions keep returning because we live with unresolved answers; skepticism isn’t a stable settlement (citing Kant).

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Methodology / structure of moral argument presented (step-by-step)

A) How the class tests moral principles using hypotheticals

1. Present a scenario with a forced choice.
2. Take judgments (poll / hands raised) to identify majority vs minority intuitions.
3. Ask for reasons
   • Majority: articulate the principle behind the judgment.
   • Minority: offer alternative principles or objections.

4. Modify the scenario to test whether the original principle still fits Examples:

   • Switch the person who acts (driver vs spectator).
   • Change the nature of the act (steering machinery vs physically pushing).
   • Change the kind of moral “target” (innocent person who didn’t choose vs person involved in the situation). 5. Reconcile or challenge the principle
   • Check what the differences reveal: consequentialist vs categorical logic; active vs passive involvement; consent/procedure issues; intrinsic wrongness vs outcome maximization.

B) How utilitarianism is introduced conceptually (Bentham’s approach)

• Claim: The right act maximizes utility.
• Meaning of utility (as stated):
  • Balance of pleasure over pain; happiness over suffering.
• Practical rule: Base morality—personally and politically—on maximizing overall happiness.
• Common slogan: “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
• Then test it with a real legal/moral case: Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, posed as a jury moral-permissibility question.

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Detailed discussion: Queen v. Dudley and Stephens (real case test of utilitarianism)

1) Case facts (as summarized)

• Shipwreck: yacht Mignonette sank; 4 crew (captain, first mate, sailor, cabin boy).
• Food/water scarcity:
  • Only two cans of turnips; no fresh water for days.
• Cabin boy’s condition:
  • Richard Parker (17) becomes ill and is “appearing to be dying.”
• Decision process:
  • Dudley proposes a lottery to decide who dies.
  • Brooks refuses; no lottery occurs.
• Killing:
  • Dudley kills Parker with a pen knife in the jugular vein.
  • Brooks does not stab but participates in consuming Parker’s body.
• Aftermath:
  • Survivors rescued after about 24 days.
  • Arrested and tried; defense claims necessity.

2) Classroom moral question (put aside strict legal guilt)

• Ask whether the act was morally permissible (not guilty) or morally wrong (guilty), as if deciding morality independent of law.

3) Defense-style reasons offered

• Necessity / degree of necessity
  • Even if morally reprehensible, necessity can affect moral-legal accountability.
  • Necessity “exonerates you from any guilt” beyond a threshold (as discussed).
• Desperation / survival
  • In extreme conditions, you must “do what you have to do” to survive and keep others alive.
  • A consequential-sounding add-on: later benefits to society (charity, productivity) support the overall benefit argument.

4) Prosecution-style objections offered

• Mental state / decision capacity concern
  • Long starvation may impair judgment; they may not be acting with a “proper state of mind.”
• Non-acceptability of taking others’ lives
  • Claim that there is no situation allowing people to take fate/others’ lives into their own hands.
  • Emphasizes a categorical prohibition.

5) Consent-based proposals (and debates)

• Hypothesis: If the cabin boy consented to be killed, would it become morally permissible?
• Consent scenario discussed
  • Dudley asks Parker explicitly if he would “be a martyr.”
• Mixed outcomes from participants
  • Some argue consent could matter if it reflects Parker’s own agency (not coercion).
  • Others argue consent doesn’t solve the moral problem because:
    • Rescue timing remains uncertain (killing might be “in vain”).
    • Consent under pressure would be unreliable or coerced.
    • Cannibalism remains morally objectionable even with consent.

6) Lottery / fair procedure proposal

• Question: If a lottery is used and everyone consents to the procedure, would that make the act morally permissible?
• Pro-lottery reasoning
  • Parker was never consulted; a lottery offers procedural fairness and equal counting.
  • If everyone agreed in advance that one would die, it resembles mutual sacrifice.
• Skeptical view
  • Even with procedural fairness, some still see the action as fundamentally wrong (e.g., coerced consent, lack of remorse, categorical condemnation).

7) Categorical objections (even with consent/lottery)

• Some participants argue the act remains categorically wrong (“murder is murder”).
• Even if utilitarian outcomes might support survival, categorical constraints override.
• Lack of remorse in Dudley’s diary is used as evidence of an immoral mindset (supporting the categorical stance).

8) The “three lives vs one” utilitarian critique (explicitly raised)

• The discussion challenges whether utilitarianism implies permissibility.
• Pushback: even if Bentham is right about aggregating welfare, if the act is still murder, utilitarianism must conflict with categorical moral truth (participants conclude Bentham would have to be wrong if “murder is murder” is correct).

9) Three follow-up philosophical questions explicitly identified

1. Why is murder categorically wrong?
   • Are rights involved? Where do rights come from if not from welfare/utility?
2. Why would procedural agreement (a fair lottery) justify the outcome?
3. What moral work does consent do?
   • Why does consenting to death change whether killing is morally permissible?

10) What the course says it will do next

• Next time, they will read philosophers relevant to utilitarianism:
  • Bentham
  • John Stuart Mill

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Speakers / sources featured (as named in the subtitles)

Speakers / on-camera instructor and participants

• Instructor / lecturer (unnamed; provides narration and conceptual framework)
• Calicles (historical figure referenced)
• Socrates (referenced)
• Emanuel Kant (referenced)
• Jeremy Bentham (referenced)
• Andrew (student participant)
• Marcus (student participant; multiple times)
• Matthew / Matt (student participant)
• Britt (student participant)
• Kathleen (student participant)

Additional sources and references

• 9/11 (reference to the Pennsylvania field plane crash)
• Queen v. Dudley and Stephens (case)
• Aristotle (referenced; in syllabus)
• John Locke (referenced; in syllabus)
• John Stuart Mill (referenced; in syllabus)
• Gorgias (Socrates’ dialogue referenced via Calicles)
• www.justiceharvard.org (mentioned as the course site)