Is it always right to place the many as more important than the one? Many philosophers have pondered the concept of whether or not Act Utilitarianism can withstand the criticism of puzzles which seem to present asymmetrical results. In this paper, I examine one such puzzle.
The fat man and the organ harvest present such a puzzle. In the first situation, "the fat man is stuck in the mouth of a cave on the coast. He was leading a group of people out of the cave when he got stuck in the mouth of the cave and in a very short time high tide will be upon them, and unless he is promptly unstuck, they all will be drowned except the fat man, whose head is out of the cave. But, fortunately or unfortunately, someone has with him a stick of dynamite. The short of the matter is, either they use the dynamite and blast the poor innocent fat man out of the mouth of the cave or everyone else drowns. Either one life or many lives. (194)(Ref. Kai Neilsen, "Against Moral Conservatism," in Ethical Theory (ed.) Louis P. Pojman (Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995).)
In the second scenario, "David is a great transplant surgeon. Five of his patients need new parts-one needs a heart, the others need respectively, liver, stomach, spleen, and spinal cord-but all are of the same relatively rare, blood type. By chance, David learns of a healthy specimen with that very blood type. David can take the healthy specimen's parts, killing him, and install them in his patients, saving them. Or he can refrain from taking the healthy specimen's parts, letting his patients die." (Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem," The Monist (1976).)
J.S. Mill proposes the following definition of utility: "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and privation of pleasure." (487)("Utilitarianism," in Introduction to Philosophy (ed.) John Perry and Michael Bratman (Oxford Press, 1999).)
This can be further translated into a working definition of utility: an act is right if and only if there is no other act the agent could have done instead that has a higher hedonic utility than it has. This definition clears utilitarianism from problems such as degrees of rightness, or maintaining validity in cases of acts causing both pain and pleasure.
It does not, however, account for the asymmetry in the cases of the fat man and the organ harvest, as we shall see. Both of these scenarios can be shown as arguments of the same basic structure:
(1) If Hedonic Act Utilitarianism is true, the group should blow up the fat man.
(2) It is false that fat man should be killed.
(3) Therefore, HAU is false.
(1) If HAU is true, David should kill the healthy patient and transplant his organs.
(2) It is false that David ought to kill the healthy patient and transplant his organs.
(3) Therefore, HAU is false.
The rationales for these arguments are exactly the same. Line one, in both cases, maximizes utility. The greatest number of people are saved, bringing more happiness, with the least amount of pain produced. Line two is based upon the fact that both the fat man and the organ "donor" are perfectly innocent, and that is absurd to kill an innocent person. Line three follows from the inconsistency of lines one and two.
It is agreed, intuitively, that fat man should be killed, while the organ "donor" should not be. What causes such asymmetry? Do not the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, in both cases; is that not the higher utility? Neilsen, Pojman, Thomson, and others whom have proposed these puzzles have done so to imply that Hedonic Act Utilitarianism is not a viable theory. In truth, as shown above, it isn't.
However, that is not to say that Utilitarianism altogether fails. It takes a more sophisticated appeal to Act Utilitarianism to solve this puzzle, and more specifically, the role of desert in calculating utility.
Utility can then be redefined as follows: an act is right if and only if there is no other act the agent could have done instead that has a higher utility than it has. This must also account for desert, meaning that an act resulting in a agent that deserves pleasure receiving pleasure has a higher utility than one that causes that agent to receive pleasure if that agent deserves pain. (Alternatively, an act causing a agent whom deserves pain to receive pain has a higher utility than one causing that agent to receive pain if he deserves pleasure.)
In the case of the organ harvest, it can easily be agreed upon that the five sick patients all deserve to live. They deserve the organs they require in order to survive. However, it is absurd to translate that into their deserving the organs of the sixth, healthy patient. That patient does not deserve to die. It can then be said that, if desert is part of utility, that killing the organ "donor" has a lower utility than allowing the ill patients to die.
In the case of the fat man, it is less clear whether he deserves to live. The case can be altered so that the man is not fat, nor is he the leader of the group; thus eliminating any social stigma or "captain going down with the ship" mentality. However, this does not free the man from his decision to be the first person leaving the cave. The people inside the cave deserve to live, and it is "fat man's" decision alone that will end their lives. It can then be said that, because it was the direct decision of the "fat man," he deserves to die. Allowing the others to die has a lower utility than killing him. In this sense, it is not only permissible… it is obligatory.
Thus Act Utilitarianism is saved from the such criticisms as put forth by Neilsen, Pojman, Thomson, and others. When a sophisticated approach, one that incorporates desert in the calculation of utility, is taken, the inconsistencies that critics of Act Utilitarianism put forth do not hold. Instead, Sophisticated Act Utilitarianism upholds the asymmetry between these cases.