Lifeboat Dilemma Case Study

Decent Essays
The Lifeboat Dilemma
“THE QUEEN VERSUS DUDLEY AND STEPHENS” According to philosopher Michael Sandel, the case of The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens begins in the south pacific on a yacht named the Mignonette. The ship was hit by a large wave and began to sink, four members of the crew were able to escape to a lifeboat. The lifeboat’s crew consisted of Captain Dudley, First Mate Stephens, Brooks a sailor and Parker the Cabin Boy. All of the men were highly regarded, with the exception of the cabin boy who was a 17 year old orphan looking for an adventure at sea. The men escaped with only 2 cans of turnips and no water. After several days at sea, the young cabin boy drank seawater and started to appear very ill and as if he was dying. After 19 days, Dudley suggested they participate in a lottery as to who would be sacrificed to save the rest of the crew. Brooks was adamant and did not want to participate in the lottery. Ultimately, Captain Dudley killed Richard and even though Brooks originally objected, he shared in the new source of food. After 24 days the remaining crew was rescued (Sandel 2005). Brooks became the state witness and Dudley and Stevens went to trial. The
…show more content…
Those who reason categorically, the consequences are not a factor in the outcome. Immanuel Kant refers to categorical Imperative as a moral rule that is true in all circumstances. Based on the philosophy of duty based ethics, one should do the right thing regardless of the consequences, killing the cabin boy would be morally wrong, regardless if it increased the happiness of others. “The categorical imperative is Kant’s famous statement of this duty”: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” (Gregor 1996). Regardless of the outcome, it is ethically wrong to sacrifice the life of someone else. We should see the good in everyone and adhere to the reasoning of doing the right

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Lieutenant Commander Oram and Captain John Adam are lethal weapons. These characters are leaders; kings of their castles. Their emotions are storms that cloud their thoughts, making hard decisions similar to escaping from quicksand. When the submarine of Michael Bruce’s Gentlemen, Your Verdict lies helpless at the bottom of the ocean, Commander Oram must decide whether 15 innocent men should die for 5 to live or if all 20 men will die from oxygen deprivation. Colin McDougal’s The Firing Squad focuses on protagonist Captain John Adam, who is asked to be the executioner of a prisoner he feels innocent and whose execution he disagrees with.…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The life of a human being has a lot of value and significance. We should do everything possible to save a life, even if it involves sacrificing our own lives. This might seem debatable, but honorably it is the correct thing to do. Every life is equally important and we should help save as much lives…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this brief excerpt from Joseph Nye's, Hypothetical Situation, we see a very unethical action soon to take place just as we intervene. A local military officer is detected about to execute three villagers for the death of one officer who was shot the night prior. We intervene and we are given the choice to shoot one villager to save two. A quick glance at this and you experience a sense of a philosophical dilemma. There are various ways to go about solving this dilemma and each one of them has its benefits and risks.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Some people may think determining the morality of an action as an easy task, and fail to realize that it is no easy task. Every action is driven by other actions, and depending on the circumstances, an act may be moral in some cases and not in others. This is why Kant favors the Categorical Imperative when compared to other methods of determining morality. The Categorical Imperative does not deal with circumstances, instead it denotes an all-encompassing rule that, if obeyed, means actions would be moral no matter what the situation may be. He first describes the Categorical Imperative when he states, “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law” (Kant 14).…

    • 267 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    When first reading the experiment in regards to rescue I and rescues II, I did not like or want to make a choice, and really, I do not have to make a choice. My job is to tell you what Stuart Mill would do and what Immanuel Kant would do based on their philosophical views of utilitarianism and categorical imperatives respectfully. In Rescue I & II Mill. Utilitarianism is the basic principle to look at what is right and wrong. Depending on the consequences or the outcomes you can select the course of action not which is in your own best interest, but that which takes into account the best interest of others.…

    • 1542 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    What would you do if you were innocent but your friends thought you were guilty? When billy bud was accused with mutiny it was asked whether there should've been a trial or not. A proper trial should have been appointed for three reasons. Morally right to have one, possibility that a life would've been saved, billy bud’s innocence would have been proven. There is also the belief that there should not have been a proper trial because all of the facts were pointing against billy bud being innocent.…

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Whenever a person is in grief and is going through a lot or is sick, then his/her loved ones always support that person with love. That person’s friends and colleagues also show a lot of empathy to him/her. They make every effort to help that person without worrying about the consequences of their actions. They forget to think logically and do everything in that person’s interests. Love and empathy for a person they are related to or got to know over time, make people stop thinking logically and they end up doing something unethical just to help their loved ones.…

    • 1667 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Is the story, “A Horseman in the Sky”, of a young man’s decision to join the union military, which eventually lead him to a precarious circumstance; which he found himself confronted with an ethical and moral battle. A young Virginian man confronted his father with the news that he would be joining a military regiment in the state of Grafton, with this news the father, reluctantly, accepted the boys decision. The father, calling his son a traitor to the state of Virginia, added, “Should we both live to the end of the war, we will speak further into the matter” (pp. 98). The son departed soon after, and due to the broad knowledge of the landscape of Virginia soon found himself highly praised in his new military role fighting against the very state in which he resided. While resting following an extensive journey, the sentinel was awoken with an unsettling certainty; in an interesting twist of fate the…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In defense of the survivors’ guilt arising from not helping the poor, he claimed that “the net result of conscience-stricken people giving up their unjustly held seats is the elimination of that sort of conscience from the lifeboat”. He defined guilty about one’s good luck as a type of conscience and the newcomer’s lack of guilt about the rich people’s loss as conscience drain; but the author deliberately omitted the morality of rich people’s indifference to the poor asking for help. Counting the negative effects on total conscience in the lifeboat if no rescue is attempted, the final solution to the lifeboat dilemma might be changed. Essentially, the author’s negligence of social injustice against impoverished people and the ethical issue indifference is just a result of his bias for the rich countries.…

    • 708 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction: In the article “Living on a Lifeboat,” Garrett Hardin believes that our obligations to the poor and hungry are metaphors based on the ethics of living on a lifeboat and the tragedy of the common. The ethics of living on lifeboat is based upon the rich and the poor. Rich people are in the lifeboat and poor people are in the sea. The wealthy has only three options in the situation with the poor people.…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kant believed that the moral worth of an action depends solely on the motive of the action and that the supreme principle of morality is the categorical imperative. Now, consider that a man named Jones is terminally ill with only a week to live and his last week will be full of pain and misery. However, Jones, his family, and his physicians all agree that a drug-induced, painless death would be preferable; Jones just has to determine if an induced death is morally permissible. In order to do this Jones’, his family and his physicians must test their action as a categorical imperative by using Kant’s Universal Law, Law of Nature, and Humanity Formulation.…

    • 1363 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bernard Williams’s example of the moral dilemma involving Jim killing the one individual to save 19 is an interesting one that provokes much thought and it is a decision that utilitarian followers would find quite easy. Utilitarian’s subscribe to the view that everything that you do or do not do should be for the sake of maximizing total happiness, or utility. But individuals who subscribe to a different moral philosophy could potentially have a myriad of ethical concerns associated with making such a decision. In this paper, I will explain the moral dilemma that is presented in Bernard Williams’s piece, hypothesize what the utilitarian would do in that situation, why they would choose to do that. I will also demonstrate why Williams’s dilemma provides valid evidence to reject utilitarianism on the grounds that it weakens a person’s integrity, sense of responsibility, and their moral character.…

    • 1282 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Adrift in a Moral Sea Life often throws people some difficult challenges where there ends up being more than one right course of action. Everyone has their own different morals that they have acquired through out their life and this helps them decide which ethical perspective that they believe in. One instance, of where you can look at multiple ethical perspectives to solve a problem comes from the essay “Lifeboat Ethics” by Garrett Harden, which is about being shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean and having to choose who you want to let on the boat. There are 50 people who are on the boat and there is room for only 10 more people, while there are 100 people who are stranded in the water outside of the boat. There are various theories…

    • 1597 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ethical Dilemma: is it Ethical for Jack and his tribe to kill Simon The book, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, tells the story of a plane full of boys that have been evacuated from England. Their plane crashes on an island. Upon crashing, the pilot and all the other adults have died, and the young children have been left alone on the island. The oldest child is named Ralph, who is 12 years of age.…

    • 1294 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kant’s Categorical Imperative Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher remembered for his influence on ethics. Ethics is the philosophical study of moral actions. There are two particular ways of thinking regarding ethics: consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialism divides right and wrong entirely based on the consequences of an action - the end justifies the means. Deontology is the position arguing that consequences do not matter because moral judgement is based on the act alone, not the consequences.…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays