Esclarecimento de dúvidas

20 Novembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates

Sessão de preparação para o segundo teste na sexta-feira

Thought experiments concerning the morality of abortion

15 Novembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates

In the Friday class, we considered the drowning child, the violinist and the people seeds. Key questions that arose:

• Is it permissible to allow the drowning child to die? Most people respond that it is not, even thought saving them will cost us 100€.
• Is it permissible not to donate 100€ to save a starving child in Africa? Most people respond that it is, but then what is the difference between this case and that of the drowning child?

The rest of the class was about the conditions under which abortion is morally permissible. The violinist case is supposed to show that  at least in certain circumstances, abortion is permissible. This is true, according to Judith Jarvis Thompson, even if we allow that the foetus is a human being with the right to life. The violinist is also a human being with the right to life, so if you do not have a moral obligation to stay plugged into the machine that is saving his life, then a pregnant mother (at least in analogous circumstances) is not morally obliged to carry the baby to term. But what are the circumstances?

• It depends on the details of the thought experiment! The nice thing about the violinist case is that these details can be varied to investigate how small changes in the scenario alter our moral intuitions. 
• In the original violinist case, you are kidnapped and connected to the machine against your will. This seems to be analogous to cases of rape, in which case the thought experiment seems to show that abortion is permitted at least in those cases. But are there other circumstances in which it is permissible?
• The people seeds case seems to be analogous to accidental pregnancy during consensual and protected sex. If you are not obliged to let the people-plant grow in your house, then once again a pregnant mother is not obliged to carry the baby to term if the pregnancy results from a failure of the contraceptive used.
• We can also vary the original case (Simão Valentim and João Cabecinha suggested this variation in class). Suppose that instead of being kidnapped, you go to an amazing party completely paid for by the music lovers' society. You eat lobster, drink Barca Velha, etc. The only condition is that there is a 5% chance you will be taken from your bed that night to a hospital, where you will be attached to a violinist for 9 months. You will still have the option of disconnecting, but you are informed in advance that this will cause the death of the violinist. This case seems to be analogous to pregnancy by consensual unprotected sex.
• What are your intuitions about this final case, and what (if anything) do they show us about the permissibility of abortion?

Here is an article by Pedro Galvão, in Portuguese, with discussion of the violinist case that we talked about in the Friday class: https://compendioemlinha.letras.ulisboa.pt/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/aborto.pdf. Section 3 of this article contains a list of possible responses to the violinist case, including those we discussed in the lecture (see end of lecture slides).

The Trolley Problem and other thought experiments in practical ethics

13 Novembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates

This weeks' topics are some very influential thought experiments from the domain of practical ethics, including:

• The Trolley Problem
• The Transplant Case
• The Drowning Child
• The Violinist
• The People Seeds

The trolley problem is a thought experiment that raises an ethical dilemma: should you allow 5 people to die, or pull the lever and change the direction of the train, saving the 5 people but causing one person to die on the other track? The main questions we need to ask in this case are:

1. Do we have a moral obligation to pull the lever?
2. Is it permissible to do nothing at all, allowingh the 5 people to die?

These questions seem to be, in a sense, equivalent: if we have a moral obligation to pull the lever, then it is not permissible to do nothing; conversely, if it is permissible to do nothing, then there cannot be a moral obligataion to pull the lever. However, it is also possible that the trolley problem represents an ethical dilemma, in which we have a genuine moral obligation to pull the lever, despite the fact that it is not morally wrong to do nothing.

Many people respond to the trolley problem by saying there is no obligation to pull the lever, but that it is permissible to do so. This, if true, has some profound consequences:

• It entails that some versions of utilitarianism are false. Suppose the greatest happiness is secured by pulling the lever. We can imagine that the 5 people all have young families whereas the 1 person does not; that hte one person is very unhappy and leads a life which, as far as they are concerned, has no purpose, whereas the 5 are happy and fulfilled; and so on. If morally good actions are defined as those that bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number, then iaccording to utilitarianism, we do have a moral obligation  to pull the lever. The trolley problem may then be seen as an experiment that shows that utilitarianism is false.
• It raises the distinction betwen killing and letting die. If it is permissible to allow the 5 to die, then letting people die must be distinguished from killing them, which is not generally permissible.
• But then what is it we do to the one person, if we do pull the lever? If it is permissible to pull the lever, then it seems it must be permissible to kill one person to save 5. But the transplant case seems to show that this is not the case! Why is it permissible to cause the death of the 1 person on the track but not to harvest the organs of 1 person to save 5?
• Related to the above point: why does it not seem permissible to push the fat man onto the track, causing his death in order to save the 5, whereas it does seem permissible to pull the lever? What is the difference?

In the fat man and transplant cases, there are at least two things that seem different:

1. In both cases, if we act to save the 5, it involves treating the 1 person whose death we cause as a means rather than an end in themselves. If Kant is correct that it is never permissible to treat persons purely as means, then that would explain why we judge these situations differently to pulling the lever to save the 5. When we pull the lever, we do not treat the 1 person whose death we cause as a means to save the 5, even though we know that our action will cause their death.
2. In both cases, our intention is to kill the person whose death we cause. In the fat man case, we deliberately push him onto the track, knowing that his death is needed to save the 5; in the transplant case, we deliberately kill the organ donor in order to save the 5. The lever case seems to be different: in that case, we deliberately pull the lever to divert the train. The death of the 1 person on the other track is an unintended (but foreseen) consequence of our action.

What this seems to show is that we cannot always be held morally responsible for consequences of our actions, even if those conseqences are completely predictable from our point of view. What matters is not the consequences, but the intention with which we perform the action. This once again seems to lead us towards a Kantian ethical theory known as the deontological approach. So it seems that trolley problems and their variations may be able to teach us quite a lot about ethics!

Seminar discussion on Mind Uploading, Functionalism and Group Minds

8 Novembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates

In this class we covered again the main points of the debate between Searle and Chalmers on whether "fading qualia" are possible. We then disucssed in more detail the possibility of mind uploading, and whether the subject would lose consciousness during the processs.We explained the relevance of the thought experiments to our personal and moral standpoint on mind uploading and brain replacement situations.

Brain Replacement and Mind Uploading

6 Novembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates

This week we will discuss some further thought experiments relating to the nature of consciosuness. Last week's thought experiments (Mary's Room and Nagel's Bat) are designed to show that conscious experience is not physical. They attempt this by first trying to show that facts of conscious experience (what it is like from a first-person point of view to be in certain conscious states) are not physical facts. We will begin by refreshing our memory of these thought experiments and examining the arguments they support.

We will then move on to consider three further thought experiments:

• Brain Repacement (Searle)
• Chalmers' "Absent Qualia, Dancing Qualia, Fading Qualia" response to Searle
• Block's Chinese Nation

These thought experiments are more specific than the others, as they explore the relationship between consciousness and information processing, computation and brain function. Here is the crucial question to consider:

• Is consciousness produced in the brain by information processing / brain function?

If consciousness is determined / caused / constituted by information processing, then it is a fairly abstract phenomenon: abstract enough that you could in principle upload your mind into a computer without losing your consciousness. But if consciousness is a primarily biological phenomenon (or perhaps, even deeper than that, a quantum physical phenomenon) then the uploading process will not preserve your conscious experience.

The strange thing about such thought experiments is that they seem to show that it is possible for there to be a zombie version of you: if the brain replacement or uploading process duplicates all of the information processing properties of the neurons in your brain, then it should produce a copy of you that has all the same abilities, dispositions, causal powers, etc. In other words, it will produce a copy of you that says all the same things you say, including talking about its own conscious states. If it does not have any conscious states, then it is a zombie copy of you!

David Chalmers' version of the brain replacement thought experiment is designed to show that in fact, a zombie functional copy of you is impossible at our world. Your consciousness, in his view, would be duplicated if you were uploaded. This is a very important philosophical question with lots of potential impact for future societies. Brain implants and uploading may become reality in the next 50-100 years.

All the thought experiments for this week can be found, in brief form, in the book. I am also going to upload some of the original articles for those who wish to read further. If you want to read about David Chalmers' views, in particular why he rejects Searle's "Fading Qualia" possibility (the idea that your consciousness would gradually disappear as your biological neurons were replaced with silicon neurons), you can read about it here: https://consc.net/papers/qualia.html

One thing we did not get time to cover in class was the possibility of group or hive minds. We will discuss that on Friday, but in the meantime you can read the entry on Block's Chinese Nation in the book on thought experiments.