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📝 TL;DR

• A philosophy course on justice begins with the "trolley problem," a moral dilemma where most people choose to sacrifice one life to save five.
• Further variations reveal that people often reject purely consequentialist reasoning when it requires direct, personal harm to an innocent person.
• The lecture introduces two core moral frameworks: consequentialism (focusing on outcomes) and categorical reasoning (focusing on intrinsic duties), setting the stage for studying philosophers like Bentham and Kant.

🎯 Key Takeaways

• The Trolley Problem Tests Moral Intuitions
  • Scenario 1: As a driver, most would turn the trolley, killing one worker to save five.
  • Scenario 2: As an onlooker, most would not push a fat man off a bridge to stop the trolley, despite the same numeric outcome.
  • This inconsistency challenges simple consequentialist principles.
• Medical Dilemmas Deepen the Conflict
  • Emergency Room: Most would save five moderately injured patients over one severely injured.
  • Transplant Surgeon: Almost no one would kill a healthy patient for organs to save five others.
  • These cases highlight a distinction between allowing deaths and actively causing a death.
• The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens
  • Four shipwrecked sailors; after 20 days, the captain and mate kill and eat the dying cabin boy to survive.
  • Three objections: categorical wrongness of murder, lack of fair procedure (lottery), and lack of consent.
• Philosophy is Risky
  • It confronts us with what we already know, making the familiar strange.
  • Skepticism is rejected as an evasion — we "live some answer to these questions every day."

🧠 Frameworks

• Consequentialist Moral Reasoning: Judges morality based on outcomes or consequences (e.g., maximizing overall happiness). Associated with Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism.
• Categorical Moral Reasoning: Judges morality based on intrinsic duties, rights, or the quality of the act itself, regardless of consequences. Associated with Immanuel Kant.

✅ Actionable Next Steps

• Read utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill to explore consequentialist reasoning.
• Examine how classic philosophical texts pair with contemporary controversies (e.g., affirmative action, same-sex marriage).
• Engage with course material online at justiceharvard.org for quizzes, discussions, and additional lectures.

💬 Notable Quotes

"Skepticism is a resting place for human reason where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement." — Immanuel Kant

"The aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason and to see where it might lead."

📖 Glossary

• Consequentialism: A moral theory that locates the morality of an act in the consequences or state of the world it brings about.
• Categorical Reasoning: A moral theory that locates morality in absolute duties and rights, independent of an act's consequences.
• Utilitarianism: A consequentialist doctrine, associated with Jeremy Bentham, that the right action maximizes utility (the balance of pleasure over pain).

🎴 Flashcards