A kind of trolley problem

[Gary Childress]

All other things equal, if a mentally ill 56-year-old male who was institutionalized for having repeated psychoses and an otherwise healthy 56-year-old male who was a mechanic were both in the process of drowning and there was but one life preserver to throw, and that life preserver was able to save only one of them. Who ought to be thrown the life preserver? Is there a moral imperative to choose one over the other? And if so, which one? And why?

My guess is that the mechanic would be the right choice to save, just because s/he is in a better position to do more good in the world.

Other thoughts?

[phyllo]

Is this a way to beat yourself up?

[Gary Childress]

Is this a way to beat yourself up?

Probably. Someone has to do it, I suppose. It's the way of the world.

[phyllo]

Nobody has to do it. Nobody has to do anything.

[Gary Childress]

Nobody has to do it. Nobody has to do anything.

Some seem perfectly prepared to kill and destroy. Much better people than I have died and been killed in war. It seems like it would be unjust to let me go unscathed.

[phyllo]

Unjust according to who?

What is justice in this situation?

[Gary Childress]

Unjust according to who?

What is justice in this situation?

I suppose, it's unjust in the sense that for better people to perish at a young age and someone like me to survive seems like it would be less beneficial for the general welfare of the world. But for the care of my mother, I would probably be institutionalized. EDIT: Either that or on the street homeless.

[phyllo]

Unjust according to who?

What is justice in this situation?

I suppose, it's unjust in the sense that for better people to perish at a young age and someone like me to survive seems like it would be less beneficial for the general welfare of the world. But for the care of my mother, I would probably be institutionalized. EDIT: Either that or on the street homeless.

If "better people" perish, what does that have to do with you?

If some wonderful person dies, you don't have to die in return.

It's good that your mother is looking out for you.

[Gary Childress]

Unjust according to who?

What is justice in this situation?

I suppose, it's unjust in the sense that for better people to perish at a young age and someone like me to survive seems like it would be less beneficial for the general welfare of the world. But for the care of my mother, I would probably be institutionalized. EDIT: Either that or on the street homeless.

If "better people" perish, what does that have to do with you?

If some wonderful person dies, you don't have to die in return.

It's good that your mother is looking out for you.

Well, one of my philosophical heroes is Simone Weil. She supposedly died while on hunger strike in Britain during WW2 after the occupation of France and in response to rationing imposed on the people of France, her people, by the Germans. She had a good heart and paid a steep price for it.

[Gary Childress]

And I've always wanted to contribute somehow to the betterment of humanity. It seems like a noble purpose. However, there are so few ways for an ordinary person to do that, especially a mentally incompetent one. Perhaps beating myself up and enlisting the help of others in the forum is the right thing to do. It feels like it might be.

[phyllo]

Well, one of my philosophical heroes is Simone Weil. She supposedly died while on hunger strike in Britain during WW2 after the occupation of France and in response to rationing imposed on the people of France, her people, by the Germans. She had a good heart and paid a steep price for it.

Maybe she died because she was frail and sickly.

[phyllo]

And I've always wanted to contribute somehow to the betterment of humanity. It seems like a noble purpose. However, there are so few ways for an ordinary person to do that, especially a mentally incompetent one. Perhaps beating myself up and enlisting the help of others in the forum is the right thing to do. It feels like it might be.

One contributes by acting ethically and to ones best ability.

[Gary Childress]

Well, one of my philosophical heroes is Simone Weil. She supposedly died while on hunger strike in Britain during WW2 after the occupation of France and in response to rationing imposed on the people of France, her people, by the Germans. She had a good heart and paid a steep price for it.

Maybe she died because she was frail and sickly.

Indeed, she did. She was on hunger strike. It makes a person frail and sick to be on hunger strike.

[phyllo]

Well, one of my philosophical heroes is Simone Weil. She supposedly died while on hunger strike in Britain during WW2 after the occupation of France and in response to rationing imposed on the people of France, her people, by the Germans. She had a good heart and paid a steep price for it.

Maybe she died because she was frail and sickly.

Indeed, she did. She was on hunger strike. It makes a person frail and sick to be on hunger strike.

Or it's a bad idea to go on a hunger strike if one is frail and sickly.

It's even questionable if she was on a hunger strike.

But all that is beside the point.

[Gary Childress]

Maybe she died because she was frail and sickly.

Indeed, she did. She was on hunger strike. It makes a person frail and sick to be on hunger strike.

Or it's a bad idea to go on a hunger strike if one is frail and sickly.

It's even questionable if she was on a hunger strike.

But all that is beside the point.

Well, maybe not "hunger" strike but she seems to have died of complications from the meal regimen she put herself on as a result of her conscience.

Weil died Tuesday, 24 August 1943. Three days later, the coroner pronounced her death a suicide—cardiac failure from self-starvation and tuberculosis. The accounts provided by her biographers tell a more complex story: Weil was aware that her fellow country-men and women in the occupied territory had to live on minimal food rations at this time, and she had insisted on the same for herself, which exacerbated her physical illness to the point of death (Von der Ruhr 2006: 18). On 30 August she was buried at Ashford’s New Cemetery between the Jewish and the Catholic sections. Her grave was originally anonymous. For fifteen years Ashford residents thought it was a pauper’s.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simo ... berculosis.