I asked my philosophy professor today what type of philosophical argument could be used to "answer" which boat to blow up. For those unfamiliar (but who hasn't seen TDK at this point) the joker plants explosives on two ferries, one carrying civilians and one carrying prisoners. I am unsure of how many prisoners/people are on the prisoner boat but guessing by the vote seen there are 536 civilians on the other boat. The only reason I bring this number up is for the utilitarian argument of greatest number of people. Or do we look at the social contract and say the convicts violated the "contract" and are of less value to the society than the civilians and we should sacrifice the boat with the prisoners? Any thoughts on how the philosophically answer the jokers puzzle?
many philosophical theories would suggest blowing up the prisoners boat...even if there are more people on it...however, pondering this dilemma lead me to a more philosophically interesting question... if we assume in this situation that all prisoners deserve to be there, and all civilians have lead morally good lives, then the civilians might be unable to blow up the prisoners despite any philosophical reasoning. i think this is actually what the joker was going for - either kill a bunch of innocent people or force innocent people to give up their ethics and moral to save their own life. the question then, would we give up our ethical beliefs in this situation? (think of the man who is all for blowing up the prisoners, but cannot actually bring himself to do it) personally, i think forcing innocent people to give up their morals is an very joker worthy endeavor (think two-face) another interesting dilemma, the joker has forced the civilians into a position where they have lost their autonomy, and to exert their autonomy would be to choose a morally corrupt path (see joseph raz on autonomy, chapter 14 of the morality of freedom for an explanation of why choosing the morally good path is not an autonomous choice)
Whether the civilian or prisoner, the boat that chooses to blow up the other is (according to the traditional morality Joker was fighting) the boat that actually deserves to be blown up more. Either one dies and doesn't deserve it or one lives and deserves to die.
The problem is rather interesting to a Kantian like Batman, a character who views all acts as either "Good/Just" or "Evil/Unjust", it's one where a Kantian has major trouble coming to a conclusion of what would be the right thing to do. Let the civilians die by his hand, or let the civilians do something he would view as highly evil, and therefor making criminals out of all of them, leaving them to be his next/future targets. And while I'm currently unsure of how a Utilitarian would try to rationalize the situation, I am likewise to agree that, they would have a really hard time giving up their ethics.
The Kantian response is to not push the button. Both boats were Kantian. The right thing to do we know is to not push the button because killing the people on the other boat isn't right. That's why you are talking about suspending ethics to make the decision. If you die because of this, at least you died living a moral life.
True, Kantian ethics revolves around the intrinsic values of the action itself not the predicted outcome therefore it would be wrong for either boat to blow up the other boat so that they would survive themselves.
Usually I think Kant is a bit stupid but in this case I would follow this because you can't accurately predict the consequences. You were saying how if the civilians blew up the boat they would become sinners, its possible that the joker would blow up their boat as a punishment. Jokers crazy enough.
If you are worried about the consequences then you aren't following kantian principles.
I don't think a utilitarian would be giving up their ethics in this situation.
finally a thoughtful answer
Don't play. You don't negotiate with terrorists.
haha ok Dwight!
I was actually thinking of Tom cruise in tropic thunder
I think to make it accurate to the Joker's problem you have to assume you are on one of the boats, rather than an outside observer who can choose between blowing up one boat or the other. I think it's obvious that the civilians are more justified in blowing up the prisoners' boat, but the real (and most difficult and interesting) question is: are the civilians justified in blowing up the boat of prisoners?
I'd argue that the rules, as stated by Joker and taken at face value, would justify the civilians blowing up the prisoner boat because the alternative is either innocents (probably more value or rights, depending on your working theory) or everyone being killed. If it nears midnight, even the prisoners (or innocent guards) would be justified in blowing up the civilian boat because there are still persons of some value (or rights) on the prisoner boat and there is no use letting both blow up.
There is of course the caveat to the Joker's stated rules that Batman might save both boats, but we might also include the caveat that the Joker earlier rigged two places to explode and then lied about which was which. We have no proof the detonators didn't belong to each boat's own bomb.
This exactly, one must be on the boat.
On top of this I want to discuss looking at it from the perspective the the person pushing the button. If someone were to say that blowing up the prisoners boat were more justified because they are all "guilty", what does this say about the man who is responsible for killing 500+ humans.
People aren't inherently evil, meaning many of those prisoners could have lead entirely different lives given different circumstances and upbringing. The only thing they are guilty of is breaking US law but in this situation it shouldn't even matter. I am a strong believer that each human life should be valued equally no matter what has happened in the past.
I might be straying a bit, but it reminds me of a Jorge Borges short story that says essentially Judas was the true savior of mankind because Jesus only sacrificed his body whereas Judas made the greater sacrifice of his soul. The person on the boat willing to bear hundreds of deaths on his conscience to save his own boat instead of allowing both to be destroyed––is he the worst person on the boats or the best?
I just love paradoxes today.
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Assuming you didn't see the other boat explode, where would that assumption come from? No one pushed a button yet, so there's no new information.
Do you have a link for the story, sounds very interesting.
Of course the answer to the paradox all depends on perspective. I would label him the worst, but that's also because I am not on that boat.
Here you go.
No human goes through life valuing all humans the same. In the eyes of the law we should be treated the same, but when we are talking a situation of survival it would be irrational and wrong not to try to be objective.
That is true, but as a Buddhist it is part of my life outlook to push past my animal instincts to see that all humans should be valued the same. Yes I would do whatever it takes to save my life if attacked by another human being, but in this case noone is being attacked by another human being. For me to say that those on the other boat were attacking me, I would have to assume that I was also attacking them because I have been afforded the same opportunity. To me this means that in this situation I am no better than them and they are no better than me, I can only trust that they will make a good natured decision.
I think it goes beyond animal instincts though. It is through our rationality that we decide our values and from them who best fits those values. Here, you make the decision to reduce the choice to only the immediate context and eliminate past action from the equation, however we are the sum of our experiences to present and our genes, these play a major role on how we think and perceive the world, one cannot escape the criminality of those on the boat nor the assumptive innocence of those on the other boat. Here, you have knowledge and it is wrong not to use it. Someone must die in this situation assuming we do not include the Batman, and therefore the choices are; 1. Convicts and guards die 2. Free citizens die or 3. Everyone dies. Therefore the rational decision is choice two. To not choose is a resumption to death and a possible mutual death sentence. How is it more moral for 1000 to die than 500?
There may be civilians on the boat who had done terrible things and just not been caught, or they could have served their jail time previously.
Some of the prisoners may have been wrongly convicted. Others may have had mitigating circumstances, such as mental illness or drug addiction; most crime is driven by poverty.
This is almost certainly true, but on the whole it's extremely unlikely that the civilian boat contains a larger portion of morally corrupt persons. Unless we have more information the assumption has to be that the prisoner boat carries more guilt and less innocence. And whatever the motivation for crime, from a utilitarian point of view the future of a convict is almost always going to have less value than the future of a person with no serious criminal record.
If crime is motivated by poverty, and the civilians are generally not in poverty, then is it a certainty that the prisoners are more morally corrupt when they are the only ones who had been exposed to the situations in which that was decided?
We don't know that the civilians wouldn't have made the same choices that the prisoners did, given the same circumstances. Indeed, if the civilians choose to blow up the prisoners' boat, they will have killed when put under the same him-or-me pressure that the murderer prisoners may have been motivated by.
Yes, but isn't the ultimate problem that the Joker's rules are illusory? That he will tell the civilans, if they murder the prisoners, that they didn't really have to blow them up? Won't that destroy the consciences of civilians? After the fact, they find that they've committed a crime under the auspices of an illusory necessity. Isn't this why petty thieves and gang members rob and kill? Out of the illusion of necessity? The civilians trust the Joker, a psychopath, and his truths. That's a damning comment about conscience of the crowd. The real problem is that if the civilians commit the crime out of the illusion of necessity, they have become criminal by their own standards on the word of a psychopath and prove themselves and the city worthy of the Joker's game.
Luck does not play a role in ethics. If you made the right decision with the information available, then you made the right decision. If more information is revealed later, then that doesn't change the previous situation. If you're playing poker, the right decision of whether to fold now given the information available does not change when your opponent reveals their hand later.
He's the guy in charge of the situation. It makes more sense that there would be a bomb than that there wouldn't be, especially if he's the Joker. The only question is whether they have the detonator for their own bomb or the other ship's bomb.
And it's not about trust. It's about whether you believe him. If some guy captures you and tells you about some sick game, then that's your only source of information about what's going on and you essentially have to believe it.
But surely there was always the option to believe the Joker was...joking. They collectively simply never acknowledge that possibility. So, then, do the citizens, who never realized this prospect, act "rightly" because they were too ignorant collectively to recognize this possibility?
Do you think that thieves and murderers who act out of a strong framework of incentives to commit such acts are not criminals or are, at least, committing "right" actions? For example, a top gang thug orders a foot-soldier, a dirt poor high school drop out who's just completed time in prison for grand theft, and suspected traitor to the gang to murder a civilian family to prove his loyalty to the gang. If he doesn't, the powerful gang lord will find him guilty of treason and order him dead, which he assures the foot-soldier is inevitable. If he commits murder, he lives, no questions asked. These are the terms of the murderous gang lord. The foot soldier murders the family. After he's arrested, the foot-soldier is informed by the police that there was a third way, that he simply hadn't seen it. Later that night, he finds himself on a boat floating in the middle of a lake in Gotham with the Joker's voice booming his terms over the intercom. Did the foot soldier make the "right" decision?
The Joker has devised a test to show that regular civilians are no better than criminals when barely pushed to act as such. They're simply "innocent" or out of prison because their bourgeois lifestyles allow them to evade the dark pressures always looming in highly impoverished urban neighborhoods that are rife with gang activity and crime.
According to your understanding, the boat full of civilians acted "wrongly" even though their decision ends up saving a boat full of prisoners. Seems counter-intuitive.
I guess. Then the right decision is Probability[Joker is Lying](right decision given the Joker is lying) + Probability[Joker is telling the truth](right decision given the Joker is telling the truth), abusing notation a little.
I don't understand the question.
He should not have, because one footsoldier dying is better than a whole family dying. There's the issue of whether someone else would have done it after the footsoldier was killed, but if that's a concern the footsoldier should go to the police.
If the third way was unknowable to him before, then it doesn't count as a real option. If a guy has to type in a secret thirty character password he doesn't know in order to diffuse a nuclear bomb in a major city, then it is not morally wrong of him not to miraculously correctly guess the password. But if there was a way for the footsoldier to know the third option, or for the bomb-diffuser to know the password, and they simply didn't take the effort to figure it out, then it DOES count as an option, and that IS morally wrong.
I believe that was what he was attempting, yes.
It WAS wrong. With the information they had available, it was very likely that their actions would lead to the deaths of everyone on both ships. It is only counter-intuitive to me when I don't look at all of the available information.
The situation is complicated by a lot of external factors -- Batman may stop the Joker, hence saving both boats, for instance. Or, pushing the button may cause your own boat to explode or blow up both boats (because the Joker's a dick).
However, if we assume for the purposes of the thought experiment that the Joker happened to be telling the truth and that Batman's on holiday and won't be saving the day, then the "conundrum" isn't really much of one at all. You want to hit that button as fast as you can, since being on the boat that hits the button first is the only way to survive. Otherwise, you either get blown up by the other boat or die at midnight when both boats blow up. The only correct boat in that situation is "the one you happen to be on."
This situation seems to boil down to smaller proportions, and up to larger ones. What would you do if the Joker had you and another man naked in a cage and gave you this ultimatum: the one that kills the other gets to live. If neither of you kill each other in 15 minutes, then you both die. You would kill the other man in the cage, right?
What if the Joker hijacked a bunch of nukes on the moon and ordered California and Texas to go to war with each other, and if one did not completely wipe out the other in 5 years he would blow them both up? What about the entire U.S.A. and China over 15 years?
Through all of these scenarios you have a common theme: death looming closer to now and the solution that it might be delayed by killing someone else. And in some ways it can be; it's the way of all nature: to consume another life to extend your own. However, all future civilization requires that we refrain from exercising this tendency.
Another common theme: trusting the words of a madman, known to want only destruction. Even if you did what he said, why would he not kill you anyway? Unless you joined him... and his ultimate goal? It would seem that he does not believe that human beings deserve life, on any level. Where does that leave you?
Barring the thousands of possibilities present in any real-world counterpart of this scenario, the answer is the same: sit down, play some cards, drink a beer, and say to the Joker, "Go fuck yourself".
If it is the way of all nature, then there's no help for it and you're contradicting yourself. In any event, I'd say not that future civilization requires it, but that civilization renders it unnecessary. That is, we don't give up killing for the sake of civilization, we create civilization so that we can give up killing.
I stated in my original comment that the Joker probably couldn't be trusted, and you're right that in any sort of real situation, that alone would change any moral calculus considerably. However, we were considering the situation in light of the assumption that, for the thought experiment, we could take the Joker at his word.
We don't need (explicit) philosophy, ethics or morals to follow our base nature.
Intelligent life can do better. And we need to do better if we want to avoid having our choices dictated to us by bullies and madmen.
No, I am not contradicting myself. If you have not noticed, humanity has been beating the shit out of nature for the last 10,000 years, sometimes to humanity's own detriment. In this case, however, it is not detrimental to diverge from the way of nature, and is, in fact, the "new evolution".
As for how civilization came about and what relation it has (and presently has) to killing, you should probably not make such causal determinations about history. I said that future civilization requires it because if we get into any real hot-and-heavy war with each other nowadays, we're going to kill ourselves. This was not the case in the past. I would heartily doubt that "we create civilization so that we can give up killing". For one, we still kill people. A lot. And previous "civilizations" did not miss a wink of sleep when burning an entire village to the ground.
Whether or not people kill each other is not a prior condition for civilization, and it's not necessarily (though it could be) a "goal" for our society. Rather, a good measure of how civilized a society is can be based on the prevalence of people killing each other. It's not a cause, nor a goal; it's part of the definition.
You seem to be thinking of humanity as somehow outside of nature. However, we're not. Everything we do is natural. Skyscrapers, computers, iphones, etc. are all perfectly natural. Like most living creatures, we affect our environment in various ways. Sometimes, we may affect the environment in ways that are harmful to ourselves, but this is hardly unique to us or somehow unnatural. Nature is not good, or balanced, or correct. It's blind and stupid and cruel. As part of nature, those adjectives sometimes apply to us as well.
But we kill people a lot less than we did before civilization. Primitive peoples living a tribal lifestyle tended to kill each other a lot more. Rates of individual violence (crime) and societal violence (war) have both dropped dramatically as civilization has advanced. This is sometimes hidden in modern society by the existence of the media, which ensures we all know a lot more about the violence that is left than we ever would have before.
It is certainly desirably and possibly even necessary to avoid all out thermonuclear war. However, that is a far cry from saying we have to avoid killing altogether.
This is a conceit of our particular civilization. It certainly isn't an inherent part of the definition.
As to your first comment: If you want to call all of existence "natural", go ahead, but when you limit your vocabulary, you limit your thinking. Listen: all of existence is "natural" EXCEPT: spheres of higher thought, like mathematics, and all practical creations influenced by those spheres.
The second: reread my previous comment. It is a progression. And I am quite aware that the world is more peaceful every successive day.
The third: sure.
The fourth: Hmm... that's an odd thing to say. Why do you say that? And how do you know? Do you consider the Aztecs equal in "civilization" to (if I can presume your locale) the European-American West? And why is peace not, in at least some small regard, a measure of it? Do you ever think things through? Or do you stop when it sounds cool and edgy and iconoclastic?
im asking about how to evaluate from the oustide. not being on a boat but being asked to choose
I think evaluating the issue from the outside defeats the purpose of the experiment. The purpose was to see if "vicious" criminals would kill others first, or if "innocent" civilians would judge themselves more fit to survive and kill the criminals. From the outside the conflicting emotions don't rise, it's a simple case of whether "good" or "bad" people should live. The real philosophical conundrum only emerges if the person doing the judging is on one of the boats.
I think it is pretty clear that there would be more people on the prisoner boat who have shown that they value themselves more highly than others such that they would sink to lower extremes to further their own ends, and therefore more that would have no hesitation in blowing up the other boat. Of course vicious criminals would kill others first.
So you'd think, but might civilians judge criminals harshly and be quick to condemn them to death? I think self preservation would kick in quickly, and the civilians would justify the murder with the explanation that the inmates are guilty and deserve to die. Frankly I think that both groups would be quick to pull the trigger, and which boat blows up first is more a matter of luck than anything else.
Yes, when I watched the dark knight I had decided to pull the trigger befor the joker finished explaining what was going on.
Except the prisoners are just that -- prisoners. The people making the decision would presumably be the guards and crew, since they are the ones with the weapons and in possession of the trigger.
This is exactly what all the civilians on the boat would think. Except, some of them would think - well what if we do manage to blow the other boat up first? Doesn't that prove that WE were quicker to kill? And by this point, they realise they aren't dead yet, and they start to think well if the criminals haven't got us yet, then maybe they aren't so bad.
I thought this was the whole point of the scene - the Joker is humanising the criminals (not sure why - to humanise himself? To point out that he is in fact different, a true monster? Just for kicks?). I have no idea what the reasoning of the prisoners would be (it's hard to put myself in the mindset of a convicted criminal).
I think the Joker was expecting some group to die. He was gleeful about it in fact. I remember his very shock when no one pressed the button. I think he preferred the citizen boat blow up the criminals to prove to Batman that we are all bad on the inside. The point in the movie is that we are not.
Not all killings are equal. This is arguably self-defense. Killing is not always unethical. If it were, the answer would be obvious.
This is where you misunderstand the point of the thought experiment being presented. The whole POINT is from the perspective of being on one of the boats.
If there was no Batman, then the obvious rational course of action is to press the button, destroying the other boat. There would be zero probability of the Joker's plan being foiled wholesale, as he represents the "unstoppable force" in the equation. The significance of Batman is his presence gives otherwise rational participants on the boat a reason to not just press the button- as the possibility of both boats surviving is significant.
From the outside we'd obviously rather the boatload of innocent civilians survives rather than the boatload of vicious criminals.
but what about the guards or crew members on the ferry, not everyone on the boat deserves to die. killing one innocent on the ferry makes you just as culpable as the convicts in the first place
You're essentially minimizing the loss of innocent life. More innocents on the civilian boat, so that's the one you save. Obviously you'd prefer to save both, but if that's impossible for some reason, then the choice is fairly straightforward.
Should we even be attempting to minimise the loss of innocent life? Is the life of a person who has been convicted of a crime and is being held in jail (or indeed the life of someone who has not been convicted but is being held in jail prior to a trial or the life of someone who has been wrongly convicted or the life of someone convicted of a victimless crime); worth less than the life of a person who has not been convicted of a crime, or a person who has been convicted of a crime but is not currently in jail (whether they have served their time, or never went to jail or whatever).
(Granted this might be an easier question to answer if you live in a country that has the death penalty for criminals, or if you don't hold the view that everyone has an equal right to life).
innocents? what are they innocent of? I'm sure there are plenty of people on that boat guilty of something or other. whether that something or other has been deemed immoral or not by the justice system is another story entirely. similarly, we already know that America's prison system is overflowing with non-violent offenders that just enjoy drugs and were in the wrong place at the wrong time, having to answer to the governmental forces that be.
the question is waaaay more complicated than simply "prisoners are immoral miscreants and civilians can be assumed to be innocent of all immoral acts".
This presumes a utilitarian view. Why do we even discuss what is moral if the whole situation is merely a matter of arithmetic? The reason the question is interesting (presumably) is because it's challenging for a lot of viewers. As with the other pop subject of Sophie's Choice, there's the temptation to transfer moral responsibility from the architect onto the victim. It's possible that making any decision about 'who to kill' is itself the greatest moral failing.
It is only if you're arguing from a utilitarian perspective. From all other perspectives it's not very straightforward at all.
The guards took a conscious risk being in that certain line of profession in the first place. Sad they die but a boatload of innocents gets saved.
I don't think that's quite so obvious. I don't value the life of a prisoner less than that of someone else. I don't think if I were given the choice of which boat to blow up I'd think of the prisoner boat as the obvious choice.
All being on the prisoners' boat means is that they got caught.
The problem with that reasoning is that is that assumes surviving is a win, but you don't win when you blow up the other boat, you still lose (just a little less), while the Joker wins. What you want to do is have the Joker actually lose the game and the only way aside from Batman to accomplish that is not pressing the button, as that will produce an outcome that the Joker didn't want (i.e. if he wanted to blow up both, he would already have done so and not given you choice). You might of course still lose your live that way, but you could stop the Joker from repeating that game again when he realizes it's not fun to play.
I completely agree. By playing the game, you automatically lose. You kill a group of people.
The correct way to approach this is to simply not play the game.
Presuming the person holding the remote on the other boat will die instantly and won't have a chance to exact revenge.
Then it doesn't much matter what you do, since everyone dies no matter what.
Killing someone else is the greater evil compared to allowing yourself and another to be killed.
I don't think that this is the case. What reasons do you have to support this statement? This seems to violate rules of symmetry that are inherent in almost any ethical system.
Harm principle?
Isn't it roughly implicit that the civilian count and the prisoner count are about the same?
To the actual question, the situation is complicated but I would value the non prisoner boat greater by a non trivial amount.
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One of the prisoners did.
Just like only some of the prisoners actually deserve to be in prison.
A number greater than one, surely.
Whether people deserve to be in prison for certain crimes is a debate all in itself.
Given that our justice system is bad but still much better than in the distant past, I would say probably more than one of the prisoners was rightfully convicted. But even then that doesn't answer the question of whether they deserve prison (let alone death).
If we're generalising, lets generalise correctly; Most prisoners are bad. Most civilians are good (on a relative scale of almost any moral philosophy you care to name).
It works out the same in terms of value and worth. Kill the prisoners.
The distinction should be between prisoners and non-prisoners as prisoners are still civilians. In addition, not all criminals are convicted criminals, and of convicted criminals, not all of them are prisoners (even in a country like the US which has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far and the largest total amount of prisoners comprising 25% of all the world's prisoners).
Edit: In addition, many prisoners are not convicted criminals (people often get denied bail and held in jail for months before their trial, or simply held in custody by the police without charge). Although it's probably safe to assume all those on the boat were convicted of crimes and are from a maximum security jail.
You start with the false premise of most prisoners are bad.
Are we assuming ignorance about the boats except for one being full of prisoners and one full of "normal" people? I accept that my decision could change based on more complete knowledge; but I'm willing to say the "average" prisoner is less of a loss then the "average" person.
Because the alternative would have made for a poorer film. In reality... boom.
lol that was scripted acting. It has no bearing on how prisoners would actually act in that situation.
Utilitarianism cannot answer the Ferry question for the same reason that Utilitarianism cannot answer any question: An omnipresent and overwhelming inability to predict the long term results of actions. Since Utilitarian attempts to increase overall utility, or the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number, it must take into account not only the happiness of individuals directly involved at the time, but also but everyone, including those who do not yet exist. There is simply no way to calculate this.
How do we know that the convicts are the ones who violated the social contract? Even if we assume that they did what they were convicted of, that is not enough information. Does a drug dealer who does not murder, steal or defraud, but simply engages in honest business violate the social contract? Could be argued that citizens who support a system that would violate his freedom to conduct peaceful business have violated it?
I would suggest that Natural Rights Theory, informed by Self Ownership and the Non-Aggression Principle, along with negative homesteading could answer the question. In short, it is never justifiable to take innocent life. Following this rule, neither the convicts or the non-convicts would take action they believed would kill others.
thoughts?
A simple modification of utilitarianism can handle this situation. "You should always maximize the expected universal happiness given the information available." (Maybe this is implied by utilitarianism. I don't know.)
You cannot reasonably be judged based on events beyond your own control, or based on information you do not have.
How much information would be considered enough? Does this modification have a means for determining negligence?
You should have to process the available information with an appropriate degree of effort.
It's quite similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma- which, from a mathematical perspective, the smartest option is to sell the other lot down the river. But from a philosophical perspective it obviously depends on which ethical framework you're working with.
The difference between this and the Prisoner's Dilemma is that, here, both sides are actually worse off if they collaborate.
Yeah, I wasn't saying it is another iteration of the Prisoner's Dilemma - more just pointing OP towards a similar construction which they might find interesting.
Well, the Stoic would sit there and wait to be blown up. I'd agree. (Not because I'm a Stoic, though.)
this is the scene ,for those who are unfamiliar with it.
There is too much to look at in this question, I'd argue that we should instead look at the four possible outcomes.
For the sake of simplicity, let's say there is only one civilian and one convict on each boat and not focus on labeling them as innocent or guilty. Otherwise, this question devolves into the potential of the individual and forces us to confront countless what-ifs (there are GGG - good guy guards, wrongfully imprisoned criminals, uncaptured serial killers amongst the civilians, a child destined to grow up and become a murderer, etc.).
The first of outcome is that the criminal pushes the button and kills the civilian.
The second outcome is that the civilian pushes the button and kills the criminal.
The third outcome is that neither push the button and both live.
The fourth outcome is that neither push the button and both die.
It is not a question of who is more deserving. The point is that the Joker believes that when faced with a choice, the whole is corruptible. That's why the concept of Batman confounds the Joker and it is the reason why he devised that experiment. The whole experiment is a design and test of self-righteousness, of moral superiority (doesn't matter if it is the criminal's or the civilian's) to demonstrate that one can convince themselves that their action is of greater value to the other.
During the whole event, we have Batman and the Joker confronting one another and have the Joker frustratingly admit, "You…truly are incorruptible aren’t you? Huh? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness."
If you want to argue about the morality, the only truly moral action is inaction, whether the outcome is death or not. Because it maintains our moral superiority as a whole. The utilitarians here, I believe, have it wrong. The path that maintains that optimizes the overall happiness here is inaction.
If the civilian chooses to kill the convict, the system is corrupted and the effects will be felt by all.
If the convict kills the civilian, the convict will never escape the court of public opinion and it will diminish overall happiness as society's beliefs will be reinforced - that nothing is good.
If they both choose to do nothing, society will rally around the tragedy and overall happiness maximized in the longterm as both moral decisions come to light and faith in humanity restored.
I'm sorry I don't have the time to expand as this is a fascinating topic.
I just want to leave with another thing the Joker said to promote further discussion : "Until their spirit breaks completely. Until they get a good look at the real Harvey Dent. Huh? And all the heroic things he's done."
Edit: "So… who’s it gonna be? Harvey Dent’s most wanted scumbag collectionor the sweet and innocent civilians?" Please also note that the Joker framed the question so as to force each to confront the issue in very different ways. And note that it is not the first time in the movie he forced a moral choice out of a character - i.e. when he made Batman choose between Rachel and Harvey.
Really what this comes down to is which form of morality you subscribe to.
If one were to take the Kantian view people are ends in themselves, not means, then you would have to let yourself be blown up.
Utilitarianism says save yourself (prisoners=less good for society)
I have to disagree with the majority of the comments in favor of blowing up the prisoner ferry, and would like to point out that it's very likely that Christopher Nolan, being the brilliant man I think of him as, chose the scenario to demonstrate the point I'll be arguing.
We have to consider, first, what the criteria by which we're making the judgment is, and second, how or whether each group meets that criteria.
Imprisonment or legal punishment is justified by the existence of society (I don't like to use the term "social contract" but use it yourself if you'd like). The idea is that one person or group has any right to decide what happens to another person is only validated by a social structure in which their actions affect each other. That's why the (ideal) purpose of a prison system is to remove criminals from society for the benefit of the rest of society. Essentially, we can take away your right to be in society because we help make up society, but with the removal from society available, it's not possible to justify giving one individual the right to kill another. No one has the authority to say another person can't exist anymore, nothing gives them this right.
With that being said, the prisoners on the ferry were found guilty of crimes and are being punished for it; while they've lost their societal rights, they haven't, however, lost their right to live. Even if you're in support of the death penalty, given that these prisoners are alive and being transferred, we know that our judicial system tried them for their crimes and found that they did not deserve to die for their crimes (at the absolute least if you unreasonably assume every single one is on death row, they have been found to not deserve to die that night). This makes it so that killing a child or an old woman on the civilian ferry isn't actually more unfair to that person than it would be unfair to kill a prisoner who has the exact same right to live and grow as well as already being punished for his crimes in the way the justice system has decided was fair.
This is where the movie themes come in.
If I were forced to blow up one of the boats, even though most people (as these comments have evidenced) would say to blow up the criminals, I know that neither group deserves to live or die more than the other. The only fair way to decide which ferry to blow up would be by random, fair - chance. Frankly, I'd flip a coin.
This scene plays to the major philosophical themes of all three major forces in this movie. Along with Joker's theme of society's "plan" of deeming prisoners better to blow up than random civilians being irrational and Two-Face's theme of random decision being the only justified way of dealing with a situation where something terrible has to be done but no one deserves the consequences more or less than anyone else, there's also Batman's main theme throughout the movie of him not wanting to kill others. It would certainly make Gotham safer if he killed criminals (in fact, the "hero Gotham needs" him to be is someone who is willing to kill) but Batman himself can never justify taking someone's life away because, I like to think, that no matter how evil a villain or how horrendous their actions, nothing they do to society can validate taking away their life itself. I think of Batman as someone who watched his parents get killed for what seemed like no reason at all, and in his struggle to find understand that he's given a lot of thought to what could justify killing anyone. I like to think that deep inside, he's reluctantly realized that there is no reason that could justify him killing anyone.
TL:DR: Despite society's disposition, the criminals on the prisoner ferry don't deserve death any more than the civilians (joker's theme), which means that the only fair way to decide which ferry to blow up is by random chance (Two-Face's theme), and in the end none of them deserve to die because their societal actions doesn't give others the authority to take their life from them (Batman's theme).
I don't expect anyone to read this long of a post, this late into the conversation. So, if you did, I'm interested in why you agree or disagree.
Comment deleted by user
Hey, thanks for the flattery and interesting response! Getting right into it:
Exactly what I meant to say.
Not quite exactly what I meant to say.
In any system of punishment, the punisher needs some sort of authority. If I walk up to a random person and demand $100, I would be unjustified because I have no authority over that person. If, however, I walked up to a person who stole $100 from my wallet, I'd be justified in demanding $100.
So now we look at murder. Joe Chill murders Thomas and Martha Wayne and I want to impart consequences on him for it. He didn't actually harm me in any way, the only people who were harmed by the crime are dead and can't be appeased, but, since he is in society and I am in society, I can say that he is turning my society into something I (and the majority of people) don't want it to be. He's hurting my society so I'm going to demand either societal compensation (fees which goes to taxes to better society) or I'm going to make him lose his privilege to society (prison or exile). I am justified in this because Joe Chill harmed something that I have a personal stake in and rights over.
In the case of Joe Chill's life itself, I have no claim over that. There's nothing that I have rights to (that I'm aware of, maybe someone will prove me wrong) that give me the authority to say whether or not Joe Chill is allowed to breath anymore or if his heart is allowed to keep pumping blood.
In the Joker's conundrum, we value prisoners and civilians as being unequal because of their place in and rights to society, but our stake in society doesn't give us the right to kill. I'm not arguing that the civilians who make that call are outside of society during the bomb-threat and make their decisions in a moral landscape without society, I'm saying that they're in society and have a wide range of responses which they have rights to, but killing the other boat isn't one of these rights.
It's not so much about whether something is right or wrong and from and from whose perspective we analyze that, it's about what gives us the ethical permission to perform an action. I would argue that taking someone's life when you have no right over it is a fundamentally wrong thing (in self-defense and abortion cases, of course, you do have a personal stake in it outside of just being a part of society, your stake in your body and well-being give you that authority).
That's precisely what I'm arguing against. The right to live is not given by society. Society can only have claim to something that fundamentally affects it, like who someone is allowed to interact with and how they can treat others, but it has no direct right to say which brains are allowed to function and which aren't because being alive itself doesn't inherently affect society, it's outside of it.
Thanks for helping me kill the time between my classes by the way!
Comment deleted by user
What can I say? I'm a dirty little boy.
Ah! And now we get to the meat of it: is retribution a form of justice? I'd argue that it's not, but it's not as simple of a subject as I'd like for it to be, haha.
Never saw it, but you raise a very interesting scenario! But...
The criminals did choose to be criminals, but they didn't choose to be on those ferries or a part of the Joker's conundrum, and that's really the issue. If they had knowingly chosen to be on a ferry that might blow up and the other group had no idea their boat was rigged to blow, you'd be right, but since neither party had any possibility of knowing that being on a inter-boat-social-experiment-death-trap would be a consequence of the choices they made, those choices can't be held against one group more than the other.
Don't tell.
I think Plato or Socrates would argue it is better to have evil done to you, then to actually commit evil. So I think following that would probably make you end up in the same situation as in the movie, with neither blowing each other up.
Wargames