Guest Post: Famine, Affluence, and the Bystander at the Switch

[Guest post by BGSU's Bradley Gabbard...]

I would like to thank Richard for a chance to share a brief summation of one chapter of my dissertation.

In the classic Bystander at the Switch Case, roughly 90% of us have the intuition that it is morally permissible to divert a runaway trolley to save five innocent lives although it means that we will kill one innocent victim. Call the intuition that it is morally permissible to divert the trolley in the Bystander at the Switch Case the Trolley Intuition. I argue that the Trolley Intuition paired with three highly plausible moral principles justifies compulsory aid to innocent victims of famine and preventable disease across the globe.

Here are the three plausible moral principles that are needed:

The Principle of Moral Integrity - If we can force another to sacrifice some portion of their interests in the service of some good, then, all else being equal, others can force us to sacrifice some portion of our interests to achieve the same good were we in relevantly similar circumstances.

The Principle of Sacrifice – If we can justly deprive someone of something of moral importance to achieve some end then we can deprive the same someone of something of less moral importance to achieve the same end in relevantly similar circumstances.

The Principle of Redistribution – If it is permissible to destroy some object in order to achieve some good then it is morally permissible to redistribute that object in order to achieve the same good in relevantly similar circumstances.

The argument begins with the claim that if it is permissible for me to pull the switch to divert the trolley, killing one innocent victim (call him Bob) then, if the situations were reversed, it would be permissible for Bob to divert the trolley, killing me, to save the five innocent individuals. This follows by the Principle of Moral Integrity.

Next, if it is morally permissible for Bob to kill me in order to save five innocent lives then it is permissible for Bob to divert the trolley onto some subset of my possessions, destroying them, in order to save five innocent lives. I assume that most subsets of our goods are of less moral worth than our very lives so, by the Principle of Sacrifice, if it permissible for Bob to kill me to save five lives then it is permissible for Bob to destroy a subset of my goods in the name of saving five innocent lives.

Then, by the Principle of Redistribution, since it is permissible for Bob to destroy my possessions in order to save five innocent lives then it is also permissible for Bob to redistribute my possessions in order to save five innocent lives in relevantly similar circumstances. So, in cases relevantly similar to the Bystander at the Switch Case, it is permissible for Bob to redistribute my goods in order to save five innocent lives.

Finally, I argue that the situation confronting each of us towards the world’s worst off is relevantly similar to the Bystander at the Switch Case. It is not possible to give a detailed defense of this crucial step here, but the basic idea is that the relatively affluent are constantly in the position to choose between redistributing goods to aid the world’s worst off or allowing innocents to die. This analogy is used by both Peter Singer and Peter Unger (both invoke the famous Bob and the Bugatti case at various points), so it is not unfamiliar in the literature.

So, if the analogy is defensible, then a compulsory aid policy would also be justifiable on the above argument. Since it is permissible for Bob to redistribute my goods in the name of saving five innocent lives in the Trolley Case and the real world case of famine and preventable deaths is relevantly similar to the Trolley Case, then it would be permissible for Bob to redistribute my goods in order to save innocent lives dying needlessly around the world.

This result would be new ground for the Singer/Unger style argument concerning the obligations of the world’s affluent towards the world’s worst off since this style of argument has not yet argued that a compulsory aid policy would be morally justifiable. Now, it does not follow that we should implement such a policy since there are many considerations needed to decide if such a policy is wise, but the fact that such a policy could be justified is an important result.

Any thoughts and comments are of course welcome and I thank you for reading.

- Bradley Gabbard