Jim, a member of the Peace Corp, is traveling to various traditional Indian villages scattered throughout Central and South America. During his travels, Jim comes to a very isolated village high in the mountains. When Jim arrives, the village is in turmoil. The small village is being destroyed by an extremist group who plan to kill all the remaining villagers. Jim runs into the havoc and screams for an end to the violence. The leader of the extremist group, Pablo, offers Jim a choice—Jim can either, pick any one villager and shoot them, having the sworn oath of Pablo and his men to spare the remaining nineteen villagers, or Jim can choose not shoot one villager and leave them to be mercilessly killed by the extremist group. The three positions are that, Jim is obligated to shoot one of the villagers, Jim is not obligated to shoot any of the villagers, or Jim is neither obligated either to shoot or not to shoot. It is my argument that the position in which Jim is neither obligated to shoot or not to shoot. This is the most moral position. Jim is not obligated to either shooting or not shooting for various reasons. These reasons are ultimately dependent on the circumstances surrounding Jim’s final decision of whether or not to shoot, and can find that either choice can be morally acceptable thereby making neither choice obligatory.
The first reason as to why shooting is morally acceptable would be that Jim would end one life but save nineteen lives. Many people believe that whenever one person must die you should try to save as many lives as possible, so it is morally acceptable to save the nineteen lives at the cost of the one, on the grounds that you should try to save as many lives as possible.1 This view sees that all life is equal, therefore making the worth of the nineteen lives greater than the worth of one life is a morally acceptable premise.
The second reason why Jim would shoot is that the happiness of the nineteen villagers remaining alive and one dying would outweigh the sadness of the death all twenty villagers. This reason takes the point that you should do what would bring about the greatest amount of happiness in any situation.3 Making it okay to kill because if you didn’t kill one, then none would remain alive and that would be the situation with the least happiness. Based on these two reasons Jim would be morally justified to shoot one of the villagers. Jim would also be morally justified to not shoot, in that every person has their right to life, and that it is not morally right to take away one person’s right to life without consent, even if it would be to save another nineteen lives. This belief shows that the value of each life is immeasurable so you can’t compare the life of one to the life of many. Making Jim unable to make a decision of which person to shoot in order to save the others because each life is immeasurable and therefore he could not kill any without considering the loss of all the villagers any less than the loss of one villager.
[1] http://debatepedia.idebate.org
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#HumFor
[3] Class Discussions
[1] http://debatepedia.idebate.org
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#HumFor
[3] Class Discussions
A second account on why it is morally acceptable for Jim not shoot is that he would be using a person’s life as a means to an end, and it can be considered immoral for Jim to do this.2 With this premise Jim himself would also be being used as a means to end the violence by making him have to decide which villagers lived and which villagers died. With these reasons in mind Jim could not shoot and still be acting morally.
By there being more than one moral action for Jim to take it is impossible to consider either one choice obligatory. Ultimately making the position of it is not obligatory to shoot or not to shoot the most morally correct and sensible position to base his decision on.
The easiest objection to make to this stance is the beliefs that either of the two options Jim can make is in fact not moral. One can argue that the specific reasoning behind each choice being moral contradicts the reasoning of the other choice.
In this same circumstance, if all the villagers said that they valued their own lives rather than the lives of nineteen of their fellow villagers, Jim could not shoot any because none of the villagers believe that the nineteen’s lives aren’t worth the life of one individual. Also one could say that if all died there would be neither happiness nor sadness, whereas if one died the remaining nineteen would suffer the loss of that one (and possibly any other villagers that were killed before Jim arrived), and ultimately have greater sadness than if all had died. This argument although interesting, seems too farfetched to look at it as a plausible argument to letting all the villagers die.
Ultimately I believe that Jim is not morally obligated one way or another and could make the decision based on the individual situation of the villagers and the villagers own preferences because either shooting or not shooting can be morally justified. This does make me question more though not the morality of killing one to save many but rather what conditions need to be met to make the shooting or not shooting morally acceptable.