I wonder if most of the responses to JJT’s thought experiment consider the least convenient possible world. (Recall Yvain’s insightful discussion about Pascal’s wager?)
Most of the responses that I have read try to argue that if the act of killing a healthy person to steal his organs for organ-missing people were generalized, this would make things worse.
But suppose this act were not to be repeated in the following (candidate?) least convenient possible world. Suppose a group of ethics students killed a healthy human to distribute his organs to organ missing people. They did this very secretly and only once to increase the total utility/happiness/quantifiable measure of goodness and they have no intention to repeat the act—precisely to parry the sorts of objections people have been voicing. And they have succeeded in increasing utility as the killed person was an ex-convict homeless guy with no family or friends. The saved individuals were cherished entrepreneurs and aging prevention scientists.
Now the question is, was their act of killing an ethical one? In a world where Eliezer Yudkowsky is the president and Less Wrongers are law-makers, should these people be jailed?
That said, I don’t think objections such as these are knock-off arguments against consequentialism, the way they may look so. I will explain why later.
I wonder if most of the responses to JJT’s thought experiment consider the least convenient possible world. (Recall Yvain’s insightful discussion about Pascal’s wager?)
Most of the responses that I have read try to argue that if the act of killing a healthy person to steal his organs for organ-missing people were generalized, this would make things worse.
By the way, this worry about generalizing one’s individual act feels so close to thoughts of Kant—oh the irony! - whose “first formulation of the CI states that you are to ‘act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.’”. (Does this sound like this “What happens in general if everyone at least as smart as me deduces that I would do X whenever I’m in situation Y”″)?
But suppose this act were not to be repeated in the following (candidate?) least convenient possible world. Suppose a group of ethics students killed a healthy human to distribute his organs to organ missing people. They did this very secretly and only once to increase the total utility/happiness/quantifiable measure of goodness and they have no intention to repeat the act—precisely to parry the sorts of objections people have been voicing. And they have succeeded in increasing utility as the killed person was an ex-convict homeless guy with no family or friends. The saved individuals were cherished entrepreneurs and aging prevention scientists.
Now the question is, was their act of killing an ethical one? In a world where Eliezer Yudkowsky is the president and Less Wrongers are law-makers, should these people be jailed?
That said, I don’t think objections such as these are knock-off arguments against consequentialism, the way they may look so. I will explain why later.