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    On the patient-centered libertarian deontological view, s... — Carmelics
    Home/Consequentialism
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    On the patient-centered libertarian deontological view, switching the trolley to save five workers at the cost of one is permissible even if the agent intends to kill the one worker.

    Consequentialism
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The patient-centered theory evaluates permissibility by whether the victim's body, labor, or talents are used as the means by which the justifying results are produced.
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    • 2.In the trolley case, switching the trolley is causally sufficient to save the five workers independently of whether the one worker exists, escapes, or is present.
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    • 3.Therefore, the one worker's body, labor, or talents are not the means by which the five are saved.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.An agent's intention partially constitutes the moral character of an act, not merely its causal structure (Anscombe, 'Modern Moral Philosophy', 1958).
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    • 2.If intending a worker's death is morally equivalent to intending their survival as a foreseen side-effect, the doctrine of double effect collapses into pure consequentialism.
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    • 3.A theory that renders lethal intent morally immaterial cannot coherently ground agent-relative constraints, which are the defining feature of deontology.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The causal independence test in P2 conflates causal sufficiency with moral use: the one worker's presence on the track is a necessary enabling condition for the redirected threat.
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    • 2.Foot's originating distinction between doing and allowing requires that redirecting a threat toward a person treats that person's vulnerability as an instrument, regardless of causal independence from the five saved.
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    Topics

    Consequentialism

    Key Terms

    Deontological(as used in moral philosophy)
    An approach to ethics that focuses on whether actions follow rules and duties, rather than on whether they produce good outcomes.
    Intends to kill(in moral philosophy, distinguishing between intention and consequence)
    Deliberately chooses to end someone's life as part of your plan, rather than merely foreseeing it as a side effect.
    Libertarian (in philosophy)(in metaphysics and free will debates)
    Not about politics—this refers to philosophers who believe humans have free will that is NOT determined by prior causes, and that this free will is genuinely real.
    Patient-centered(in ethics)
    Focused on the person who is directly affected by an action, rather than on broader consequences or the person making the decision.
    The trolley problem(as a classic ethical scenario)
    A famous thought experiment in ethics: a runaway trolley is heading toward five workers on the track, but you can pull a lever to switch it to a track with one worker instead; the question is whether it's morally okay to do this.
    agent(Economics terminology applied to medical ethics)
    The party in a principal-agent relationship who is instructed to produce the good or service on the principal's behalf — in the medical context, the doctor

    Related

    A theory that renders lethal intent morally immaterial cannot coherently ground ...An agent's intention partially constitutes the moral character of an act, not me...Foot's originating distinction between doing and allowing requires that redirect...If an act is morally justifiable by its balance of good and bad consequences and...
    +5 moreShow less
    If intending a worker's death is morally equivalent to intending their survival ...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: ethics-deontological
    View source passageHide passage
    Notice, too, that this patient-centered libertarian version of deontology handles Trolley, Transplant et al. differently from how they are handled by agent-centered versions. The latter focus on the agent’s mental state or on whether the agent acted or caused the victim’s harm. The patient-centered theory focuses instead on whether the victim’s body, labor, or talents were the means by which the justifying results were produced. So one who realizes that by switching the trolley he can save five
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    In the trolley case, switching the trolley is causally sufficient to save the fi...
    The causal independence test in P2 conflates causal sufficiency with moral use: ...
    The patient-centered theory evaluates permissibility by whether the victim's bod...
    Therefore, the one worker's body, labor, or talents are not the means by which t...

    Similar

    In the trolley case, switching the trolley is causally sufficient to s...84%Commonsense moral intuitions hold that the doctor should not kill one ...74%The patient-centered view and agent-centered views differ in their tre...71%You should save the five people instead of the one person69%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit