Imagine that you are in a scenario such that you can either save a group of five people, or you can save one individual. Call him David. You cannot save David and the five. This is because they each require a life-saving drug. However, David needs all of the drug if he is to survive, while the other five need only a fifth each.
People have argued as if there was a choice to be made: either numbers matter, in which case you should save the greater number, or numbers don’t matter, but rather there is moral value in giving each person an equal chance of survival, and therefore you should toss a coin.
Can you falsify the premise that because you know and like David, you’re justified in saving him over the five?
Well, the author of the scenario is John Taurek. It’s called “Do the numbers count?”.While most might claim that the best thing to do is save the greater number of people, Taurek believes that this is not the case. He argues that if he knows and likes David, he is justified in choosing to save him over the other five. He then states that simply knowing and liking someone cannot override any real moral concern, and therefore declares that the numbers are not a real moral concern. This is a valid, deductive argument, but I do not believe that it is a sound one.In my opinion, Taurek does not present a good argument, because all of his premises are not necessarily true. The second premise, which states that knowing and liking someone cannot override a real moral concern, is true in most cases. My issue lies with the first premise, which says that knowing and liking somebody can override the numbers.
are you using justice in the sense of ‘have reasons’ or in the sense of a matter of justice?
I ask because the scenario doesnt demand a ruling on justice; its not an issue of justice but of preference. to do either option would be compatible with justice, and also, neither action would be unjust.
Presuming that I actually legitimately own the drug, either decision is permissible on libertarian grounds, and I can use any decision criteria for disposing of my property, the drug, that I see fit. Further, I’m not obligated to give the drug to anybody, unless I already have a prior contractual relation with any of the six regarding the matter. I can let all six croak, if I wish, so this is really a false dilemma, since there is obviously at least a third option for me to take. And this move wouldn’t necessarily be an instance of irrational spite: I might decide to store the drug for later use, in case a hypothetical seventh person gets this fatal condition. Number Seven might even be me.
Under most conceptions of libertarianism, this is not a question of justice, morality, etc. It’s just a matter of preference - there is no positive “right to life.”
A more interesting question for libertarians might be, “Would it be unlibertarian to kill one innocent if you knew it would save the lives of everyone on the planet? Or, to make it more realistic, if you knew it would save five other lives?”
Well, Taurek’s support for this assumption is that if the drug belonged to David, he would be perfectly justified in saving himself. “What could there be about these strangers that might induce David to think it worth giving up his life so that they might continue to live theirs?” Taurek asks. It is implied that he has the same concern for David that David has for himself, and therefore is justified in saving David if he knows and likes him. But, while I believe that David may be justified in saving himself if the drug were his, I do not think that Taurek could possibly have all of the same concerns for David that David would have for himself. In general, a person’s relationship to himself or herself goes far beyond simply knowing and liking. David’s reasons for saving himself likely encompass much more than just knowing and liking himself. He may be thinking about the burden his death would place upon his family, worry that he has not accomplished all of his life goals, or a myriad of other examples. I do not believe it is possible for somebody to have the exact same concern for David that David has for himself unless he is, in fact, David.
Taurek doesn’t even provide enough information about the nature of his friendship with David. David could be one of his closest friends or simply somebody he met once and thought seemed like a nice guy. If the latter were true, there is no possible way that Taurek would have the same concern for him that David would have for himself. He would likely not know enough about David for this to be true. Taurek’s vagueness about the nature of his relationship to David contributes to the falsity of his premise that knowing and liking someone justifies saving that person over five strangers. His argument is not sound. His premise that he is justified in saving David over the other five people simply because he knows and likes him is not accurate in all cases, so the conclusion that the numbers are not a real moral concern cannot be determined to be true.