Harvard Justice Video

Comments

     I believe that it was not morally permissible to kill the cabin boy because its not the cabin boys fault that the rest of the men on the ship weren't responsible enough to bring food if they did end up lost at sea. It is also the cabin boys right to a long and happy life and its his right to live even if that means for a short period of time and no one has the right to take that away from him. If anything I feel like maybe the oldest guy on the boat should give himself for the rest of the group to eat because he has lived the longest and has experienced more things than everyone else on the boat.

     I feel as though consent would have made it okay because the cabin boy would have been signing his life away to them and that would have made it morally permissible because he is actually agreeing to it rather than them just taking his right of living away from him. And if those men have that consent then they can prove that the cabin boy agreed to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

     I feel like if they had a lottery it would also make it morally permissible because all four men had an equal opportunity to win and to defy the odds and not to lose. No one knows who would have won so it all depends on the odds.

     Utilitarianism is a controversial topic because in certain situations yes utilitarianism is right like for instance in the pervious case with the train or trolley and the workers yes it was okay to kill that one worker than the rest of the workers because its better to kill one than all. Like no one could live with themselves knowing they killed all those workers rather than just that one worker. But for instance in that other case where you could push the fat man that's leaning over the bridge looking at the crash that's about to happen utilitarianism wouldn't work in this case because that guys just an onlooker and didn't sign up to work where those workers work so they know the danger of working there. Whereas the onlooker doesn't because he didn't sign up for that so it wouldn't be right to kill him because he's in the wrong place at the wrong time.