The following thought experiment by Tim Scanlon is also a relevant example (quote from Edmonds’s Parfit):
Suppose that Jones has suffered an accident in the transmitter room of a television station. Electrical equipment has fallen on his arm, and we cannot rescue him without turning off the transmitter for fifteen minutes. A World Cup match is in progress, watched by many people, and it will not be over for an hour. Jones’s injury will not get any worse if we wait, but his hand has been mashed and he is receiving extremely painful electrical shocks. Should we rescue him now or wait until the match is over?
FYI, I’d be in favor of offering him something on the order of tens of thousands of dollars to lie there and take the shocks so the world can continue watching the match. (Or, if communicating with him is impossible, then just doing it that way and compensating him after the fact—probably with a higher amount.) I’m not sure how many is “many people” and how painful is “extremely painful”, but it seems likely that there’s an amount of money that makes this a win-win.
Who is doing the offering, and whose money is being offered? (If the answer is something like “the TV station owner; he offers his own personal money”, then this would seem to distribute incentives improperly. If the answer is something like “the TV station owner; he offers the station’s funds, and means to make it up later by selling more advertising time”, then the next question is whether the audience would consent to this trade if they knew about it, and whether they have a right to know about it. If the answer is something else… well, the next question depends on what that something else is.)
Suppose that Jones agrees to take the money. Later, he sues the TV station, claiming emotional trauma, the need for years of therapy, etc.; to the defendants’ protest that Jones agreed to take the money, he (or his lawyer) replies that agreements made while under the extreme stress of being electrically shocked while your hand is being crushed cannot be considered binding. The judge agrees, and awards seven-figure damages. Given that this outcome is foreseeable, does this change your suggestion at all?
I was thinking “the TV station owner offers the station’s funds”. If the audience knew about it, probably some portion would approve and some portion would be horrified, perhaps some of the latter performatively so. (I think there’s a general hypocrisy in which many people routinely use goods and services that, if you ask them, they intellectually know are probably made in working conditions they consider horrific, and if you tell them about a particular instance, they say they’re outraged, but if you don’t, then they’re not motivated to look into it or think about it and just happily use the thing.) I don’t think the audience particularly has a right to be told about it, any more than Apple has an obligation to tell customers about employee conditions at Foxconn. I suppose this event could become a media scandal, in which case realpolitik suggests the option of offering Jones more money to sign an NDA.
I was considering the morals of the situation and not the implementation with today’s legal system. You may be right. Though I could imagine various remedies: (a) Jones’s contract may have clauses covering this already; (b) the station people might come up with other reasons they didn’t extricate Jones (“Of course we wanted to get him out, but we were trying to root-cause the problem / looking for other things that were broken / worried that messing with it might cause a power surge, and that took an hour”), reasons which it might be impossible to prove in court that they didn’t believe.
An important part of the scenario that seems unrealistic is that people could know in advance that Jones will be electrically shocked for an hour in a way that will cause extreme pain, but not cause heart attacks or permanent nerve damage. (I guess they could be monitoring him for the former.)
Relatedly, I think that similar thought experiments could be constructed against negative utilitarianism. For example the infamous torture vs dust specks.
The following thought experiment by Tim Scanlon is also a relevant example (quote from Edmonds’s Parfit):
FYI, I’d be in favor of offering him something on the order of tens of thousands of dollars to lie there and take the shocks so the world can continue watching the match. (Or, if communicating with him is impossible, then just doing it that way and compensating him after the fact—probably with a higher amount.) I’m not sure how many is “many people” and how painful is “extremely painful”, but it seems likely that there’s an amount of money that makes this a win-win.
Some questions come to mind:
Who is doing the offering, and whose money is being offered? (If the answer is something like “the TV station owner; he offers his own personal money”, then this would seem to distribute incentives improperly. If the answer is something like “the TV station owner; he offers the station’s funds, and means to make it up later by selling more advertising time”, then the next question is whether the audience would consent to this trade if they knew about it, and whether they have a right to know about it. If the answer is something else… well, the next question depends on what that something else is.)
Suppose that Jones agrees to take the money. Later, he sues the TV station, claiming emotional trauma, the need for years of therapy, etc.; to the defendants’ protest that Jones agreed to take the money, he (or his lawyer) replies that agreements made while under the extreme stress of being electrically shocked while your hand is being crushed cannot be considered binding. The judge agrees, and awards seven-figure damages. Given that this outcome is foreseeable, does this change your suggestion at all?
I was thinking “the TV station owner offers the station’s funds”. If the audience knew about it, probably some portion would approve and some portion would be horrified, perhaps some of the latter performatively so. (I think there’s a general hypocrisy in which many people routinely use goods and services that, if you ask them, they intellectually know are probably made in working conditions they consider horrific, and if you tell them about a particular instance, they say they’re outraged, but if you don’t, then they’re not motivated to look into it or think about it and just happily use the thing.) I don’t think the audience particularly has a right to be told about it, any more than Apple has an obligation to tell customers about employee conditions at Foxconn. I suppose this event could become a media scandal, in which case realpolitik suggests the option of offering Jones more money to sign an NDA.
I was considering the morals of the situation and not the implementation with today’s legal system. You may be right. Though I could imagine various remedies: (a) Jones’s contract may have clauses covering this already; (b) the station people might come up with other reasons they didn’t extricate Jones (“Of course we wanted to get him out, but we were trying to root-cause the problem / looking for other things that were broken / worried that messing with it might cause a power surge, and that took an hour”), reasons which it might be impossible to prove in court that they didn’t believe.
An important part of the scenario that seems unrealistic is that people could know in advance that Jones will be electrically shocked for an hour in a way that will cause extreme pain, but not cause heart attacks or permanent nerve damage. (I guess they could be monitoring him for the former.)
Ah yes, that is a good one. Much better than my examples!
Relatedly, I think that similar thought experiments could be constructed against negative utilitarianism. For example the infamous torture vs dust specks.