This reminded me of a similar concept that I heard of a while back. Say that someone is going to kill 5 people, most would say it is justifiable to kill that person before they can get away with it (assume that killing them is the only way to stop them for the sake of this example). Saving 5 lives is worth the death of another. However, if 5 people were sick in a hospital, and all of them could be saved by various organ transplants, would it not be just as justifiable to kill a healthy person to save those 5 lives by distributing the donatable organs? Most would say no. But why is that?
I don't mean to sound cold here but those two scenarios don't strike me as an ethical grey area. In the first instance, the man is threatening the lives of five others by his own choices and actions. Killing him is arguably justifiable because he brought that situation on himself. In the second instance, since there's no qualifiers on the second man, he is presumably innocent. He did nothing to deserve a premature death. If you really want to go down the dark path of philosophy and ethics, you could also bring up the social value of saving five invalids vs. five viable and healthy human beings.
You might be interested in watching this lecture on the subject : http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/03/episode-01/#watch Overview : Episode 01 Part 1 – The Moral Side of Murder
If you had to choose between (1) killing one person to save the lives of five others and (2) doing nothing, even though you knew that five people would die right before your eyes if you did nothing—what would you do? What would be the right thing to do? That’s the hypothetical scenario Professor Michael Sandel uses to launch his course on moral reasoning. Part 2 – The Case for Cannibalism
Sandel introduces the principles of utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, with a famous nineteenth century law case involving a shipwrecked crew of four. After nineteen days lost at sea, the captain decides to kill the cabin boy, the weakest amongst them, so they can feed on his blood and body to survive. I watched all of the 12 lectures and it's one of the most interesting online course that I found. Worth the time.
Wow. Very interesting point. Here's how I'm thinking about it: The death to any of the 5 individuals is equal to the death of the 1 innocent man. Here's where I like to think of the concept of justice. For me, justice isn't some inherent set of rules written in the stars that's objectively true. Justice is a series of rules that, if followed, happiness is maximized generally speaking. Therefore, following a just action is necessary to commit a "good" action when our value here is happiness. That being said, justice is being violated in this case: the right to life is being "stolen" or taken away which is a violation of justice. With this in mind, the concept of justice can act as a "tie breaker" here in favor of preserving the innocent. Did that make any sense? What do you think?
It's an interesting question. Makes me wonder, should we be keeping and harvesting organs from death row inmates? -that sounds like a dystopian fiction novel.
You're not far off at all, tng - just instead of inmates this series focuses on teenagers. Which if we are honest, I think a lot of teenagers feel like they are imprisoned - not on death row though one hopes, even in the most throeingest throes of adolescent hormone-driven barely-grasping-life confusion strum und drang. disclaimer: i haven't read this series I just read about it on Wikipedia because god damn, read that plot line and tell me that's not both fascinating and quickly ridiculous.