Human Kindness and the Smell of Warm Croissants

An Introduction to Ethics

Ruwen Ogien, Martin Thom

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231539241
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Human Kindness and the Smell of Warm Croissants makes philosophy fun, tactile, and popular. Moral thinking is simple, Ruwen Ogien argues, and as inherent as the senses. In our daily experiences, in the situations we confront and in the scenes we witness, we develop an understanding of right and wrong as sophisticated as the moral outlook of the world's most gifted philosophers. By drawing on this knowledge to navigate life's most perplexing problems, ethics becomes second nature.

Ogien explores, through experimental philosophy and other methods, the responses nineteen real-world conundrums provoke. Is a short, mediocre life better than no life at all? Is it acceptable to kill a healthy person so his organs can save five others? Would you swap a "natural" life filled with frustration, disappointment, and partial success for a world in which all of your needs are met, but through artificial and mechanical means? Ogien doesn't seek to show how difficult it is to determine right from wrong or how easy it is for humans to become monsters or react like saints. Helping us tap into the wisdom and feeling we already possess in our ethical "toolboxes," Ogien instead encourages readers to question moral presuppositions and rules; embrace an intuitive sense of dignity, virtue, and justice; and pursue a pluralist ethics suited to the principles of human kindness.

PART I

PROBLEMS, DILEMMAS, AND PARADOXES

Nineteen Moral Puzzles

THE PROGRAM

Thought Experiments

I begin by presenting five thought experiments that have attracted a great deal of comment: Emergencies; The Child Who Is Drowning in a Pond; A Transplant Gone Mad; Confronting a Furious Crowd; The Killer Trolley.

They have been devised in order to try to discover to what extent our moral intuitions, that is, our spontaneous judgments as to what is good or bad, just or unjust, tally with deontological or, conversely, with consequentialist conceptions of ethics.

Are we deontological and therefore obsessed by the notion of manifesting unconditional respect for certain moral rules such as “do not lie” and “never treat a human person simply as a means”?

Or are we consequentialist, and therefore concerned to act in such a way that there is the most good and the least evil possible in this world, even if it entails not always respecting certain rules?

These thought experiments also demonstrate the importance, in our moral judgments, of elementary rules of moral reasoning such as “like cases must be treated alike”

Next I have recalled the case of Incest in All Innocence, which enables us to pose a question that seems to me to be central to morality. Why do we have a tendency to see morality everywhere, that is to say, to invent all manner of “victimless moral crimes,” such as incest between consenting adults? In order to clarify this question, and to try to furnish the rudiments of an answer to it, I employ two experimental sources: psychological research into the moral development of children, and comparative anthropological researches into moral systems.

The Amoralist is a thought experiment devised in order to get us to reflect upon the two arguments moral philosophers use in order to obstruct the character who undermines their claims by saying “what if everyone did the same thing?” or “how would you like it if the same thing were done to you?”

The Experience Machine, Is a Short and Mediocre Life Preferable to No Life at All?, and I Would Have Preferred Never to Have Been Born all relate to the most traditional moral questions: “How are we to live?” “What is a life worth living?” Although I should say right from the outset that they do not provide an answer.

There then follows a discussion about animal rights, which takes into account the results of the previous case studies regarding lives worth living. Its point of departure is a series of fairly famous experiments known as the “Life Raft,” the purpose of which is to make us reflect on our tendency to consistently favor the members of our own species.

The Utility Monster concludes this discussion by pushing the utilitarian argument further, to the point of absurdity.

A Violinist Has Been Plugged Into Your Back particularly interests me because it demonstrates the importance of thought experiments in moral debate. More specifically, it modifies the terms of the philosophical discussion surrounding abortion. Philosophers who contest the right to abort rely upon the idea that fetuses are persons, whose right to life is beyond dispute. This imaginary case, which derives more from science fiction than from a news item, allows us to envisage the possibility that, even if fetuses were persons, the voluntary interruption of pregnancy would still be legitimate. We could view it as an act of self-defense against aggression threatening existence itself or the quality of life. The whole question would then be that of knowing the conditions under which self-defense would be legitimate.

I have assembled under the title Frankenstein, Minister of Health a series of hypotheses concerning the future of human nature, were certain scientific projects to be implemented (reproductive human cloning, the genetic enhancement of human physical and mental capabilities, the freezing of ova, and so on)

The aim here is to assess the merits of the argument that says that we must not “tamper with nature” or “take ourselves for God.”

The reactions to these thought experiments also enable us to assess our propensity to employ the slippery slope argument in this domain.

Who Am I Without My Organs? addresses the question of personal identity from the ethical perspective. What are the implications for our ways of conceiving of human “responsibility” and “dignity,” the relations we establish between our persons, our bodies, and the organs or particles of which they are composed?

In order not to break completely with my earlier philosophical preoccupations, I present one thought experiment on sexuality. It aims to challenge our tendency to hierarchize the reasons we might invoke for having a sexual relationship, whereby love is placed at the top of the scale.

Finally, I propose two thoughts titled respectively It Is Harder to Do Good Intentionally Than It Is to Do Evil and We Are Free, Even If Everything Is Written in Advance, which are designed to tease out our intentions concerning the reality of our liberty and the moral importance of the idea of intention. I use them to draw certain conclusions regarding the difference between metaphysical and ethical thought experiments.

Experiments on Behaviors

In moral philosophy, experiments on behaviors have but one purpose, namely, to evaluate virtue ethics, an ancient notion revived with loud fanfare in contemporary moral debate. According to an ethics of this kind, there are exemplary moral “personalities,” which remain such irrespective of the context. Yet experiments on behaviors seem to show that such personalities do not exist. There is thus no such “hard kernel” of the personality, something stable, unified, and unvarying from one situation to the next.

The idea that there could be “monsters” or “saints” anywhere else but in fairy tales or legends is therefore illusory.

Trivial or insignificant factors could alter our conduct in a “moral” sense (as with behavior whereby assistance is given, which is altruistic, helpful, generous, and so on) or else in an “immoral” one (as with destructive behaviors, which are violent, cruel, or humiliating).

The experiment I have chosen to represent destructive behaviors is famous. Devised by Stanley Milgram, this experiment is supposed to reveal the mechanisms underlying submission to authority. Though one of the earliest thought experiments, it remains authoritative (which is the very least you would expect).

Another experiment, conducted in the same spirit, is due to Philip Zimbardo. Here volunteers play the part of prison warders, the aim being to see how far, and how rapidly, they come to behave as badly as those whose roles they have assumed.¹ The experiment is not a cause for optimism. It did not take certain volunteers very long to become sadistic little executioners. All “reality TV” seems to take its inspiration from this same experiment.

I have set Zimbardo’s experiment to one side, not because it is unduly depressing, but because the one devised by Milgram seems to me to suffice.

For helping behaviors, I present a number of small experiments. The least known, but not the least interesting, studies the influence of the smell of warm croissants on human happiness.

Because it seems to me unjust that this experiment has attracted so little comment, I took it as the title of the original, French edition of the present book.

To what extent do these experiments affect virtue ethics? This is the question that everyone—among those concerned with such matters—asks themselves.

One final observation, of an aesthetic rather than a conceptual order. My case studies vary markedly in length, a fact that may offend those who cherish balance and harmony. Some are very long, others very short, and still others somewhere in between. It is easier to justify length than brevity.

Thus, the case of The Killer Trolley has generated a staggering quantity of sometimes utterly baroque variants. It has sparked a huge number of studies and debates (with millions of hits on the World Wide Web), sometimes so sophisticated that only a few initiates are still able to follow them. We have got to the point that we can say ironically, although with a modicum of truth nonetheless, that a new scientific discipline—trolleyology—has been born.² The number of pages I devote to scrutinizing this case reflects the success of this “discipline.”

Alongside these lengthy expositions, I give some very short case studies accompanied by equally short questions. This does not necessarily mean that the debate surrounding the case in question is any less rich.

I have simply sought to use such cases in order to introduce or to conclude succinctly a series of cases. For example, The Utility Monster serves to round off a sequence of reflections on utilitarianism, while Emergencies serves to introduce a set of questions on the opposition between killing and letting die.

1

EMERGENCIES

Is it acceptable to kill an imprudent pedestrian in order to avoid letting five severely injured people, whom you are rushing to the hospital, die?

SCENARIO 1: FAILURE TO RENDER ASSISTANCE TO A PERSON IN DANGER

You are dashing to hospital with, in your car, five people who have been seriously injured in an explosion. Every second counts! If you waste too much time, they will die.

All of a sudden, you see by the roadside the victim of a terrible accident, who is bleeding profusely.

You could save this person too, if you were to load her into your vehicle. If you fail to do this, the victim of this accident will certainly die. But if you do stop, you will waste time, and the five persons being rushed to hospital will die.

Should you stop even so?

SCENARIO 2: KILLING THE PEDESTRIAN

You are dashing to hospital with, in your car, five persons who have been severely injured in an explosion. Every second counts! If you waste too much time, they will die. But all of a sudden, you see in the middle of the road a pedestrian crossing in an imprudent fashion. If you brake you will skid and waste time, and the five persons being rushed to hospital will die. If you do not brake, you will kill the pedestrian. Should you brake even so?¹

The hypothesis of the philosophers who invented or commented upon this experiment is that the majority of people will reckon that these two cases are not morally equivalent.

They will be more indulgent toward the driver who leaves a wounded person by the roadside to die than toward the one who kills a pedestrian, even though the consequences are exactly the same.

Is this difference in moral approach justified?

The philosophical debate surrounding the distinction between killing and letting die provides us with a few pointers for our attempt to answer this question.²

KILLING AND LETTING DIE

For some consequentialists, there is not a profound moral difference between killing and letting die. The outcome is the same in either case, since the victim dies.

Aretists (the friends of virtue ethics) and deontologists (the friends of Kant, among others) are not in agreement. For the aretist, you have to be a horrible individual to kill with your own hands (or with your own steering wheel), whereas anyone, or nearly anyone, can let a person die by way of calculation or through negligence without their being particularly morally repugnant.³ Hence the harsh reaction toward someone who kills and the relative indulgence shown to someone who lets a person die.

But this explanation turns the moral distinction between killing and letting die into a psychological difference, which may pose a problem for those who take the two to be radically opposed.

It is on the basis of the criterion of intention that the deontologist distinguishes between killing and letting die. According to the deontologist, we cannot settle for evaluating an action in terms of its consequences without taking intentions into account. If we could do so, we would no longer be able to distinguish between killing someone by cutting him or her in half with a chainsaw, with the intention of punishing him or her (because he or she has not paid their debts, for example), and fleeing the scene of this horrible crime without attempting to bring succor to the victim, with the intention of saving one’s own life.

Intention possessing a central moral value for the deontologist, he will naturally ascribe such an importance to the distinction between killing and letting die, and reject the consequentialist’s skepticism regarding the question.

Yet there are cases in which we can readily see the difference between kill...