I was watching a Harvard lecture about justice this morning. (Sorry Boss, I hope you are not reading my blog. ) The title of this lecture is: Putting a price tag on life.
At the beginning, the professor propose several scenarios:
1. A train is going to hit 5 ppl. You can switch the track to save them, but it will hit one ppl on the other track. Should he do it?
2. A train is going to hit 5 ppl. You can push one other big guy to the track to stop the train. That will kill the big guy but save 5 lives. Will you do it?
3. In the hospital, there are 5 ppl slightly injured and 1 ppl seriously injured. You can spend all your time take care of the seriously injured one, but the 5 ppl will die. Or you can take care of the 5 ppl, but the seriously injured one will die. What would you do?
4. In the hospital, there are 5 ppl, each of them need a different organ. You have one healthy guy napping in the next room. You can kill this guy, use his organ and save the 5 ppl, will you do it?
Even though the result are all sacrificing one person to save five, we can see that the proportion of students that agree on sacrificing one to save five is very different in different scenarios.
At least, the professor told one other scenario, which was a true story: 4 men were on a boat in the sea for 8 days. They are hungry, with no food nor water. So 3 of them decided to kill the fourth person and eat him to save their lives. Are these 3 ppl guilty?
The professor also told one theory from a philosopher (whose name I can’t remember): maximize overall level of happiness. Is this theory right?
I have a strong feeling that this theory is wrong. Imagine that in a country 1% ppl work hard and become very wealthy. 99% ppl are very lazy so they are suffering from hunger. Should these 99% ppl kill the 1% ppl, divide their wealth, and achieve their own happiness?
Yet I can’t tell why I have the strong feeling that killing one person to save three is wrong. If that one person doesn’t have to die at all, like the scenarios the professor proposed before, I can say that sacrificing one life to save more is wrong because no one life can be said to be less valuable than any other life in the world. Just like one comment says: “No, because we have to assume that every single life is worth an infinite amount. Adding up infinities doesn’t result in more than infinity. Therefore, the life of the cabin boy has to be assumed to be equal to those of the others combined.”
However, if that life will die any way, is it ok to sacrifice it? Any life will die anyway. If I say ok to it, I am almost saying ok to all other scenarios. So, how should we define justice?
Now I have one thought: Under any circumstance, murder is murder. When ppl are sacrificing one life to save themselves, they decide that it is worth to commit murder to save themselves. They should have been prepared to pay the price of accused of murder. The difference is under such a circumstance, the crime is not as serious as deliberately committing a murder, and should be charged less than that.
This lecture tells me that justice is not something that can be judged by common sense. There can be lots of debates and may not come to an agreement. And it is worth to think more about it before saying it.
