Should The Numbers Count John Tarek Summary

John Taurek addresses the moral dilemma of saving one person instead of five people in his book Should the Numbers Count?. He argues that is there is no reason that saving the one person over the five is wrong as long as there are no special obligations. In this paper, I will reconstruct Taurek’s argument and then raise an objection to it. Before explaining the argument, I will present the dilemma Taurek uses to demonstrate his argument. There exists a life-saving drug and six people are dying but with the drug they can be saved. However, there is only one dose available. Five of the six can survive if they are given a fifth of the dose and the remaining one, whom Taurek refers to as David, can only survive if given the full dose. When presented with this dilemma, most people would say that you should save the five over David because having five people is worse than …show more content…
He argues that it is not only not wrong to save David over the five, but it is permissible to do so. It is even permissible to save David just because you like him. He comes to his conclusion in the following ways:
P1. It would be permissible to save David over the five because you like David.
P2. If there is a moral requirement to save the five over David, it is not permissible to save David over the five because of a personal preference.
P3. That you like David is a personal preference.
P4. If there is a moral requirement to save the five over David, it is not permissible to save David over the five because you like David.
P5. If it is permissible to save David over the five because you like David, then there is no moral requirement to save the five over David.
P6. David does nothing wrong in saving himself rather than the five.
P7. If David does nothing wrong in saving himself rather than the five, then you do nothing wrong saving David over the five because you like David.
P8. You do nothing wrong saving David over the five because you like David (P6,