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Thank you for your inspiring questions. We have been discussing about some specific situations and what is morally correct, and the situation you mentioned in your first question is similar to the dilemma in organ transplant. Under the perspective of DDA, violating negative duty is worse than positive duty, where it is problematic to kill the bad guy to save others from getting killed by him, and that it is impermissible for the doctor to kill the healthy man for the sake of saving the five patients. What is interesting in your question shall be the point that the man is a murder, implying that his claim for not being harmed is less justifiable than the healthy man, and it is an interesting topic to be discussed.

About you second question, we guess that your comparison is on foreseeable harm at the moment and foreseeable harm in the future? However it is difficult for us to imagine how we can use a person’s future chance of getting depression for the aim of saving one person from killing himself, and that we have the ability to perceive that the person would have depression and kill himself in the future. We could only say that we have the moral responsibility to act in stopping a person to suicide, and if another person may suicide in the future, and we know that it would happen,  we are obliged to do something to prevent it from happening but not turning a blind eye. Despite that, we think that if both options violate positive duty, for example there is a person drowning on one side of the river and another one drowning on the other side, then it is permissible for the person to save either one since the consequence is the same for both actions.

28/10/2016

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Thank you for your comment and concerns. When we were discussing about the problem about organ transplant, we had the same idea at first, that it is a greatly upheld value that no one should do any harm or murder other people, so that it is unjustified for the doctor to kill the healthy patient for the sake of saving the five patients who needed the organs, because harming negative right is less justifiable than harming positive rights. However, when we put that in the trolley problem, it implies that we should let the train kill the five people, which we think are not a justifiable solution. Although it should be never justifiable to harm a person, it is also incorrect to allow something bad to be happened to a person, especially under the circumstance that you have the ability which enables you to do so. What we are thinking is that, in the trolley problem, the other person on the side track is not used as a tool as much as that in the transplant case, which in this case makes the violation of negative rights (direct cause) can perhaps be more permissible than the violation of positive rights (indirect cause) in particular situations, like the trolley case. What do you think?

28/10/2016

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I do agree with group 5. DDA really can be used to determine some situation moral or not, However, I think that we can't just considered an action which is moral only by the positive or negative consequence. I think that it is more important to think about people's intention. Sometimes people may want to help a people with a positive intention but he may cause a negative consequence finally. Then we can't only judge that he is not moral even he bring out a opposite effect because his positive intention should be better than those would not give any help in that issue. Also, I agree that it is morally impermissible to harm someone even when the action can cause a greater good in society because we should not just think the benefits of the large population group then sacrifice the living right of the minority even they can really provide help to them. It is not a fair action to their living right to save people. Who can judge that it is worth to save people by sacrificing?
26/10/2016

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I agree with group 5. DDA theory can be explained some situation whether they are moral. For example , in some case just like group 5 mentioning can be used negative and positive response to explain. However, I do not think the Trolley case can be explained by DDA. In my opinion, no matter what the bystander does, he need to take the responsibility for people died. Even if he do nothing, he also be guilty to let people die. His action is directly connected with the survival of these people. If we apply this theory in this case, it is impossible for him to be moral.
26/10/2016

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I think the 'causality chain' form Hay is considerable for us to discuss. The consequence sometimes are hard to measure when it related to subjective feelings. For example in Hay's suicide case, the feeling of the patient could be hardly evaluate and we may not be able to determine whether the death bring him relieve or pain.

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I found the explanation of the differences of trolley case and transplant case from the forum chair is interesting. The doctor in the transplant case carries the role of 'savior' so he should only saving people and not to harm others with intrinsic intention. However, I also think of whether the role should be the factor when considering is the action permissible. As I think maybe we should assume everyone should not do harm and killing people, is this assumption causing any problem?

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I do agree that the intrinsic intention of the action or inaction is far more important than whether harm or killing is performed. Just like when someone accidentally hurt a patient when he is trying to save him from a car accident. However, it is hard to say whether is there still any problem. If the patient in that action get greater harm than from the car accident, although the intention is wanting to provide some assistance, the patient may not be able to forgive his action as the serious consequences are caused. I found this a bit confusing, hope we could have further discussion to get more insights.

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I think, DDA is sort of constrained to some multi-causal chain, where it chains with more than one causality. For instance, you would not save a bad guy who would do more harm than not to save him, but from both perspective of Doing and Allowing, and that "life is the most precious thing in life". Also, how if you are to decide whether to let some bad people to do bad things than to stop them by killing them, and things is only to be stopped if you kill the bad guys, would you kill them?
Or if you are facing a suiciding person, you know how to stop him from doing that, but it would cause depression on another person, which may later on cause suicide, so either you do and cause harm to another one, than you simply allow this person to suicide, how should you decide?
I'm not good with making analogy, but this is where is get puzzled with DDA, tell me if I'm wrong.

Hay

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What a detailed description. I think that the idea of DDA provides us with a concept that sometimes allowing is more permissible than doing. I think, by the terms of law, that your doing should be the decisive part of act that you are responsible or not, whereas, modern society is well adapted to the idea of Doing and Allowing, which is enforced by law.
From some of my friends that, by law, you are allowed and have the right to do any thing, provided your action didn't interfere with others' freedom. For instance, committing suicide is legal by means of law. It is true in a sense that you didn't interrupt with others' freedom. In such sense, DDA is well established. However, Doing to cause interfere to others, is not allowed by law, whilst in DDA, you should also take responsibility for "doing" something.
However, I think that there is also a counter part of law which covers aspects of live outside law, that is the rule of ethics, which guides your action and encourage you to do what is "right". For this right, I suppose is everything that contributes to the merge of individuals, as it is always the theme from the ancient past to nowadays, and probably even in the future. I might say even conquering is a process of merging individuals too.

Hay

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1. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA), generally from Philippa Foot’s early explanation, is a significant moral difference between doing harm and merely allowing harm to happen. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing seen by her is not about action and inaction but the two different relations between an agent and the agent’s involvement in the sequence of events that lead to harm.  To initiate a harmful sequence or to sustain an existing one, is a violation of negative rights, the negative duty to not harm others. On the other hand, to allow a harmful sequence to complete itself is a violation of positive rights, and the positive duty to act on behalf of others. In comparison, according to Foot, negative rights are more significant than positive rights. In consequence, morally speaking, doing harm is harder to justify than allowing harm.

The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is seen slightly different by Warren Quinn , whom puts DDA in another way as demonstrated in the article. Instead of saying harming is generally worse than failing to save someone from harm, the focus shall be on how these two different kinds of choices come up against different rights. There are existing differences in Quinn’s definition of these rights compared to that of Philippa Foot’s. Before talking about the different rights, the difference between the positive agency and negative agency, in which they are associated with different kinds of agency in relation to the violation of different rights, shall first be defined. Intentions are significant in categorizing if an agency is upholding positive or negative right. Hence, both foreseeably harmful actions and inactions are positive agency because the intrinsic intention is to harm. While on the other hand, foreseeably harmful actions or inactions that could not or need not be avoided is negative agency because the intrinsic intention is not to harm. Accordingly, claimed rights against harmful intervention from harmful positive agency are negative rights, while the claimed rights violated from harmful negative agency are positive rights. Since the voluntariness in harmful positive agency is higher than harmful negative agency, harmful positive agency can hardly be justified, and thus negative rights are more significant than positive rights. On this ground, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is that intending to harm (which is a harmful positive agency violating negative right) is less justifiable than not able to save others from harm or benefit others (which is a harmful negative agency violating positive rights) here.

2. Quinn thinks that the act of harming (to kill or torture) someone in order to achieve greater good to society is morally impermissible:

“A very strong thesis of precedence, on the other hand, would rule out any infringement of certain very important negative rights (for example the right not to be killed or the right not to be tortured) no matter what positive rights protecting more important goods-would permit us,to knock one person down to save another from injury. But it would not permit us, for example to kill or torture one to save any number of others even from death and torture. (p.307)

This is because he believes that negative right are a lot more significant than positive rights, as he mentioned, ‘if there is going to be precedence, it is clearly has to be precedence of negative rights’ (p.308).

He thinks that the idea consequentialists’ idea of a person as belong to human community but not to oneself,therefore one shall be sacrificed for the good of a larger population under the reason that that one person’s loss is fewer than the gain of others, is morally incorrect.

Firstly, he believes that the value of a  person shall not be altered by his gain or loss to others because other part of aspects of a person is neglected. Firstly, the humanity side of a person, which is constituted by his body and mind is ignored. The person has have primary say over what may done to them by other beings, not because this is the best way to promote human welfare, but because any harm done to him without his consent violate his dignity as a person and his authority to be ends of his own. And this would picture the person not as a being but as merely a unit from a collective whole.

Secondly, he thinks that life is important in a way that there are individuality in different persons, and it shall be protected by negative right, in which to decide for how their life should be lived but not controlled by other beings.

To Quinn, a society that ignore the dignity of mankind and their negative rights, so as to allow killing or harm will less likely able to maximize the overall good because people are treated as objects other than “Citizen” (human member), being eliminated of value or respect.

3. Taking Philippa Foot’s definition of Doctrine of Doing and Allowing to trolley problem where bystander has to alter the switch so as to save the five people who are trapped on the track, while it kills the one on the other track, to kill one is the violation of negative right and the action is a harmful positive agency. As for killing five, it is the violation of positive right (the right to be saved), thus it is a harmful negative agency. Therefore it is seen to be more morally permissible to let the five die as to save one.

However, we think that there is a counter example presented in the trolley problem, that if we do not switch the track, it is foreseeable that the five people must be killed, therefore it is a harmful positive agency.

In view of this perspective, we are more in favor of Quinn’s definition of Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, that letting the five people die and killing the one are both harmful positive agency, so both decisions are violating the negative rights.

Theoretically, when weighing five negative rights and one negative right, it seems to be more permissible to harm one negative right. Thus, in this sense it is more permissible for the bystander to alter the switch.

However, when valuing the transplant problem with the trolley problem, to kill the one man on the sidetrack seems to be permissible, but not in the case of killing one healthy man and use his organs to save the five patients. Plainly from the perspective of gain and loss, the costs and benefits are the same in both cases, which shows that DDA has loopholes in adapting to all circumstances. What is lacked from this discussion may be the respect for humanity and the rights and responsibility given to different individuals who act different roles.
In our view, the internal elements (value standard to a medical professional and a normal citizen) among the two cases are not completely identical. In the following, differences between the two cases will be discussed.

The main difference is the responsibilities of different individuals. In the transplant case, the doctor is seen as the harmful positive agent. The fundamentally and ultimate mission of a doctor is to save lives, in which the roles of doctors are mainly determined by social standard, which saving lives is the intrinsic value that a doctor should uphold. Thus, in the transplant case, the doctor has to ‘murder’ a person, that is to kill someone on purpose, which indeed violates the responsibilities of a doctor which are accepted and emphasized by the society.

At the same time, although the bystander undertakes the similar action by killing one to save five people, the bystander carries less responsibilities in saving life. When we put the two (doctor and bystander) on the same ground, the doctor is less permissible to kill one in the case of transplant in order to save five.

17/10/2016