OrangePhilosophy

Ben,
thought you'd never ask! Before I give my opinion, may I know how the killling would be carried out, or would that be revealing too much?

Just in case...that was Kukla....

My initial bets are on murdering Baby. It would be worse to murder baby because one is depriving baby of more good than one would deprive student if one were to murder Student. Of course it isn't clear that the harming involved in the killing could be the same, there would (depending on how the case is described) be more harm in a similar murder of Student because Student would know the he is being murdered, losing out on life, and hence, would suffer mental harm that Baby wouldn't suffer do to Baby's inability to consider such things.

A good murderer needs to work out more specifics than "I want to inflict the most harmful death possible." Which of the following do you want to include under "most harmful"?

- The suffering of the victim during the killing process (advantage: Student)
- The suffering of survivors faced with the loss of their beloved Baby or Student (advantage: Student)
- The opportunity cost of quality life-years lost by the victim (advantage: Baby)
- The opportunity cost of what the victim would have contributed to the world (this one is a wash)
- The opportunity benefit to the victim's family & others who may now direct the resources that they would have spent on the victim to other causes (advantage: Student)

Now, most murderers looking to inflict maximally harmful deaths focus on the first item on this list, and perhaps factor in the second. But, being a philosopher and all, I suspect that you would be interested in the whole bag of direct & indirect harms (and those nasty countervailing benefits). If that's the case, I would recommend knocking off Student. He's likely to have a more profound & troubling death experience (though that depends on your methods, as others have noted). He's at the prime of his life, has already received 20 more years of resource input, and is on the verge of being a (more or less) productive member of society. You don't know what good Parents will do with the resources they would have used to raise Baby: they may even have another baby and undo much of your work. Plus, with 23 years behind him, Student has probably built up more & closer connections with others, and shown more promise of his future greatness, setting the stage for ripples of grief and anguish over his brutal murder to spread farther & more forcefully.

Best of luck!

Student has hopes, dreams, ambitions, and interests. Baby does not. Killing student, therefore, is taking more away from him. It's worse, and by quite a lot. I think it'd be better to kill several babies than student.

As far as just getting a head count, I'll walk in lock step with Christian above. Killing Baby is worse for Baby overall than killing Student is bad for Student overall.
This question just seems to be able to be re-phrased of course, as, would it be worse for a person to be killed as a baby or at 23. My thoughts, as you plunge the knife into my chest when I'm 23 is--as Baby. Gurgle, gurgle, choke...thanks for the time that I've had. At least I didn't die as Baby!
Killing Baby is of course worse than killing Student, since on the alternate way of asking the question that I have, which I think gets at the same issue, we're supposed to suppose that Baby's life is just a slice of Student's life. When you kill Student, you do not literally 'take away' his dreams and ambitions etc., you merely eliminate any chance to realize these things, and the possiblity of dreaming, desiring. But, you do the same thing to Baby, but moreso. Also, you rob Baby of all the intervening expereinces and goal achieving and so on.
I can see Jonathan's side of this as well, however. I have a feeling that how you answer this question will walk in step with how you regard the notion of 'internal' vs. 'external' reasons, and whether you believe there are any of the latter.

1) Killing the student would cause more emotional and practical harm to survivors. The student has been around for 23 years, giving a lot of people a chance to become attached to her. Unlike the infant, the student probably already assumed important responsibilities, like a job, marriage, parenthood, debts, etc.

2) If you want the most harmful killing, you've weigh perp factors. For example, does the killer intend to get away with this? If so, the students' killing is probably more harmful because the perp is less likely to get away with it. (If we're counting punishment as harm to the perp, however justified.)

3) The only factor that weighs in favor of killing the baby is the number of quality life-years lost.

Great comments so far, thanks! There seems to be no consensus so far, which is actually the best result for my purposes.

Just to clarify: when I ask which death would be more harmful, I mean just for the person who dies - not taking into account effects on anybody else (including myself, were I to get caught, which I won't).

Kukla - it's not supposed to matter how the killing is carried out, but let's say it's a painless lethal injection while the victim sleeps. (That doesn't go well with the idea that I want to cause the most harmful death I can, but it makes things simpler.)

Interesting question. I have Jonathan's intuition that there is something more intrinsically valuable about Student's life that makes murdering him better for our purposes. On the other hand, if I was asked whether I would prefer being murdered at 23 or at 3 weeks, I would easily choose the former - which suggests that I take being murdered at 23 to be *better* for me, and therefore being murdered at 3 weeks as *worse* for me.

You might prefer something for reasons other than that it's better for you, for instance perhaps it's just more enjoyable.

One problem I have with all this is that there isn't an easy answer to certain crucial questions. Is it worse to prevent someone from realizing dreams she already has or to prevent her from having such dreams in the first place, and does it matter if you can't think about the fact that you don't have such dreams? Is a good life better merely because it's longer? I don't think I have a view on any of these questions.

Here's another consideration in favor of the worse-ness of killing student: it's worse to kill an adult than it is to kill an animal -- even a rather well-developed, intelligent animal. Babies are like such animals in all morally significant respects. Therefore, it is worse to kill an adult than it is to kill a baby.

It's not clear that killing an animal is less harmful *for the animal* than killing a person is *for the person*. Killing the person might be a morally worse act (though I think it depends on the animal and the person), but that's a different question.

I got onto this problem from Jeff McMahan's The Ethics of Killing. He sides with Jonathan, and says that most people agree with him. Since I'm with Mark and Christian, I was sort of blown away by that claim and wanted to see how many people out there were on my side. I'm glad to see at least a few.

The reason McMahan thinks most people agree with him is that people don't get too worked up over all the spontaneous abortions that occur all the time. But, he says, we should get worked up about them if we think Baby's death is worse than Student's. I think that's wrong, but it's hard to say why in a blog post.

If people get worked up for primarily selfish reasons, they would naturally be more worked up over Student, as Dan pointed out. Is McMahan just being insufficiently cynical?

I'm in the student camp, and for largely the same reason as Jonathan. A baby doesn't have the same sense of self that an adult does. Now, if you had to come up with an ordering over a number of ages, that would be a tricky question (what age would be the "worst" death).

Of course, the implicit assumption that being a philosopher is consistent with an enjoyable life is questionable :)

Ben Bradley has a good paper on this topic.

If I remember correctly, "Death and Previous Gains".

Here are a few replies:

To Jonathon,

You write; "Babies are like such animals in all morally significant respects." But, they are not. Animals don't grow up to be adults and that is morally significant.

To Uriah,

You wrote; "I have Jonathan's intuition that there is something more intrinsically valuable about Student's life that makes murdering him better for our purposes." I think you mean 'worse', right? Even still, the suspicion that Student has some intrinsic feature that makes murdering him worse can't be right. These features are the same features Baby is being deprived of. Presumably it is no worse to take away something one already has than to perform an act that makes it the case that they will not acquire it.

How is this relevant to any real-world situation? Or to put it in other words, why is this framed in terms of a murder? If you framed in terms of whose life is worth saving, then you have a more realistic situation.

I would say the baby's life is worth less because its loss would negatively impact fewer people.

followed a link here from Crooked Timber...

Whenever philosphers ask hypothetical questions, I frequently want to change their hypotheses, particularly when those hypotheses deviate significantly from reality. Here, a problematic hypothesis is that the future lives of both Baby and Student -- absent any killing -- are fixed, and presumably known for the purposes of deciding which killing is worse.

But when forced to confront an actual killing, we don't know the future lives of the victims. I think that the fact that the future life of Baby is seemingly much less knowable than the future life of Student contributes heavily to *my* intuition that the killing of Student is a worse act.

(And interestingly, unlike Uriah, I would prefer to have been murdered at 3 weeks of age than at age 23 -- after all, the 3-week-old baby I once was is almost completely unlike me, while the 23-year-old me and the current 30-something version have much more in common.)

Consider the view of the commited believer in Christianity (assuming such believer is not an adherent of predestination):

Provided the baby is baptized, the baby is the one who can be killed with the least harm. The baby is not likely to have committed any mrtal sins.

The 23-year-old student, however, probably needs more time to repent . . .

Rea, predestination is irrelevant to your point, as far as I can tell. Student, as far as Ben has said, could be a committed Christian but might well not.

Your point does rest on the Catholic views on what original sin is and on what baptism does. Lots of committed Christians don't believe those things. Some Protestants think all children are saved (until they reach an age of understanding). Some think none are. Some try to hold intermediate positions. There isn't a uniform Christian view.

I am more like the 23-year old, and so am more distressed at the clear enormity of his loss.

This is a little off-topic, but anyway. According to a pop evolutionary psychology book I read a while back, one would expect an adolescent's life to be intuitively the most valuable. This is partially due to the resource issue, because they have cost all they're going to cost (in a precollegiate environment) and are just about to start "giving back" and having their own children, but also because in a pre-medical environment adolescents actually have the longest future life expectancy -- certainly the longest future fertile life expectancy.

I say murdering a student is worse than murdering a baby. As for the "wouldn't you rather die later than earlier" issue, well, what if the philosophy student was about to conceive a child of his own? It's weird to value the potential life of the baby but not value the potential life of the unborn child, in absence of consideration of the harm done to others. Anyway, that's one more data point for you.

PS: I like that I have the option to add a "direct sum" symbol to my comment.

To cause maximum disturbance in both victims’ lives: force the student to kill the baby. Two birds with one stone philosophy. Baby will die and all associated players in babies life will suffer (maybe worse since it was a murder). Potential lost, unknown will remain unknown, all that will be benefited from. Student will initially suffer from murdered soul (killing someone must kill something inside of a person) and with some luck student will eventually kill him or herself, thus perpetuating all the devastation benefit realized by such an even.

I gather from the above that most of your readers are not parents. Or economists.

The student's 23 years are "sunk costs" and a known value (C-sub-1, if you're building a DiffyQ). So the collateral impact (part of the error term, until such factors can be defined and measured) can be fairly well known.

The baby's impact over the next 22-23 years can be predicted from the group =around a median=. Without knowing the specifics, we can either (a) assume that the student IS the median, which you seem to do, and that the baby WILL BE the median, or (b) realise that the baby has greater potential at this point, even though the paths are likely to converge to the same spot. 23 years of "opportunity costs" are significant.

All of the above ignores the greatest likely collateral impact: the parents of a 23-year-old are much LESS likely to be considering having other children; the baby's parents are rather another story. (The flip side doesn't seem likely--I know very few 20-somethings who will stop having sex for any length of time because one of their peers died.)

All of the above said, Me lissa's solution is brilliant, and should be endorsed. A job in the Justice Department clearly awaits her(?).

Hi Ben,
Thanks for the interesting topic! I have to say, I think it's worse to kill Baby. But my reasons for it lead me to conflicting intuitions.

Jonathan said: "it is worse to kill an adult than it is to kill a baby"
This makes me think of another case. Suppose the murderer is choosing between an 80 year old and Baby. 80 year old is about to die. Who is it worse to kill? It seems clear to me that it's worse to kill Baby. So Jonathan's general principle seems false. Also, we can repeat the case, making the 80 year old younger by a day. It seems to me that our intuitions wouldn't change for any time that we did this. In fact, I can take this from the other direction: suppose we're asking whether it's worse to kill a baby that's 10 days old, or a baby that's 11 days old. Ignoring the effects to others (because I think that's irrelevant to what Ben wanted us to focus on - though there's a whole issue about whether you hurt Student by inflicting pain on Student's family, because Student has desires that his/her family not feel pain) it seems worse to kill the 10 day old: it seems better for Baby if Baby gets to live an extra day. But then we can repeat the case, comparing a 10 day old and a 12 day old, etc. We could also repeat it with a 10 day old and a 9 day old, etc, which would show us why all of this is relevant to abortion. This is where my intuitions conflict. I think that it's better for the victim to get to live an extra day, and so it's worse to murder him/her a day earlier, and I don't think that there's anything about the victim being born that makes much difference to the negative value of killing the victim, but I also don't think it's worse to kill Fetus than it is to kill Baby or Student. I'm hoping there's a nice way to explain away this one . . .
A quick note about the Christianity stuff: Universalists (in the religious sense) might question whether there's extra harm done in killing Student due to the sins that Student may have committed, since Student and Baby will both end up in the same place anyway. And one could appeal to the harm done to Baby by depriving Baby of the chance to freely chose to have a relationship with God, etc.

Ken,

Your sunk costs arguement doesn't really work here. Yes, the costs of the student have already been paid and so are sunk, but it is entirely rational to prefer a car for free (ie., that you've already paid for) over a car that you have to buy.

It looks like maybe you are taking the position that even during the first 23 years a child is contributing, but I'm not sure.

FYI, the sunk costs doctrine can be a good heuristic in order to avoid cons in some situations. e.g., a "I never sell below the price I bought this stock at (inflation adjusted, and including transaction costs)" strategy is robust against many forms of market manipulation.

Sheiva says:

This makes me think of another case. Suppose the murderer is choosing between an 80 year old and Baby. 80 year old is about to die. Who is it worse to kill? It seems clear to me that it's worse to kill Baby. So Jonathan's general principle seems false.

My general principle is not "it is always better to kill a baby than an adult". My general principle is, "much of the harm of death comes from frustrating our deeply-held interests, and since infants have no such things, they are harmed less by that aspect of dying."

For the record, however, I do think death harms the typical 80-year-old a good deal more than it harms the typical infant (if somewhat less than it does the typical 23-year-old). Now an 80-year-old with a terminal disease who would be expected to die within the week would be a different story.

Student.

The baby might not even be considered an individual. It does not think-therefore-is.

Depending upon neurological data we haven't collected yet, we have no idea how much of a fully functioning human being the baby is.

Potentia, schmentia.

Murder is wrong, but killing a dumb animal isn't murder, it's killing a living, thinking individual that's murder.

On behalf of the "dumb animals" I have to note that we may need an argument to justify the assumption that it is neccesarily worse to kill a human than an animal.

Also remember the question is who is it worse for, not what creates the greatest amount of disutility overall as a fair number of respondents have assumed.

Perhaps a better way to approach this is to try and find out all the relevant intuitions we have, and then figure out whether they are morally relevant. One way we can do this is to change factors about the case.

Something which might make a difference, as indicated by the eighty year old case is the life expectancy so for example if we are choosing between Student Alpha who will live for a week, and Student Beta who will live for 2 years then my intuitions say ceterius paribus if you want to do the most harm kill Student Beta.

However the question still remains has Beta been harmed any more than Alpha would have been? I actually think no, you do either one of them the same amount of harm by killing them it is just killing one wastes a greater potential for utility.

Likewise in the Baby vs Student case you do no more harm to the Baby or the Student by killing them, it is just killing the baby assuming ceterius paribus, wastes a greater potential for utility.

The next question to ask is what other factors intuitively make a difference, here are some canvassed so far:

"Student's hopes, dreams & ambitions are thwarted" This is true but implausibly assuming ceterius paribus this will always be true for the baby as well, they will eventually have hopes, dreams & ambitions which are thwarted by their earlier death, and whats more as has been pointed out by other posters they will have more of these interests thwarted. (What makes us dubious about this point I think is that in the real world uncertainty makes ceterius paribus unlikely) (Also note an anti-potentiality argument won't cut much mustard here, the thwarted interests of the student are just potentialities as well)

So it is unclear that given that the Baby will develop interests etc the Student's current position of these gives the Student priority. Whats more its fairly unclear to me that your interests being thwarted by your death is bad for you, after all you no longer have those interests, you are dead!

So I am going to take a new side and say in terms of the victim it is neither worse for the Baby nor worse for the Student to die, especially once they are dead.

Thanks again to everyone for the comments, and let me mention that the topic has been taken up at both Fake Barn Country and Pea Soup.

I'm glad at least a few people agree with me, though it seems most of them are people I know personally and might have already been corrupted by me. I'll put my paper on the topic online soon.

It is interesting to see that a question that has no ethics from the very onset is discussed as an ethical issue, as if it was a set of ethical principles that ultemately will decide it.

But, in answering the first question, I would need a philosophical clarification of the presuppositions. If you accept the concept that it is natural that humans die, why death in any age would be harmful? And if you accept the idea that death is sort of an evil that happens to someone, why don't you embrace the idea that humans should be immortal?

I think that assuming the death was indeed quick and painless, the most moral harm would be done to the infant.

This is because the infant is robbed of more choices than the student; that is to say, the student has had the opportunity to make choices, whereas the infant has not been able to make any.

I'm here via Carnival #1.

Chris and Tony Marmo almost hit on the question that soon formed in my mind, but not quite. You want to know which is worse *for the victim* -- which most of the comments here don't seem to fully contemplate, probably because then the problem is uninteresting. Once the deed is done, the point is moot. The victim can be no further harmed beyond his death -- or if you consider that he is harmed via lost opportunity, etc, then he will surely expend no energy regretting it. Summarized: dead men harbor no regrets.

So, given your scenario, I'd say it's a wash. You would harm each victim equally.

I think you could modify your hypothetical scenario to avoid this problem. Perhaps if the killer gave each a chance to plead his case for life (taking a cue from Chris's comment). (And suppose for the argument that they both have a sophisticated education because otherwise the three year old's argument in particular will be uninteresting.)

Wow. I suppose it's too much to say, duh, obviously it's worse to kill the baby. After all, this is what most people would say to the dilemma.

Suppose that most of these postings are just a demonstration of how overanalyzing an issue just makes us get it wrong?

YOU'RE ALL INSANE. MURDER IS WRONG. Have a nice day.

Wow, looks like there's lots of psycho killers out there 8-2

Interesting conversation. I haven't read all the comments, so forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but have you cosidered who has the best chances of survival? I think it would be worse to kill _them_.

It's worse to kill an adult than a baby. A baby has no dependents, no one has invested a lot of time and money raising it, fewer people are attached to it emotionally or economically. You kill a baby, people will just make more. Basically, you're wrecking more havoc on the world and creating more "destruction" when you kill an adult - UNLESS said adult is an evil, abusive bastard...in which case it would be better to kill the adult.

But those are all factors related to what's better for the world. Ben's asking which is worse for the person being killed.

This question is futile unless terms are more clearly defined. Inflict most harm? Define harm and all your other terms and explain how the killing is done etc. and you may have a chance to give some kind of an answer. Otherwise this is just pointless.

The exercise is to try to figure out what counts as harm and therefore what counts as greater harm. You certainly get an easy answer if you stipulate by definition what the answer will be, but that doesn't tell us what's really harmful or more harmful, just what your definition says is more harmful.