HU-222

Professional Ethics
Assignment No. 1

Group Members:
Name Reg. No.
Tauqir Hassan 209549
Muhammad Hamza 212548
Ashar Nasir 207879
Syed Muhammad Abbas Haider 173409
Muhammad Ali 211652

CLASS: BEE-9A

Dated: 23/04/2020
Submitted to: Sir Ehsan ul Hassan

The “Lifeboat” Dilemma

 CONTRIBUTOR: TAUQIR HASSAN (209549)
The following argument is based on the ‘Outcomes’ ethical perspective. In this approach, we
emphasize on the value a person generates for another person or the society. Hence for the scenario,
the six potential survivors would be chosen on the basis of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism simply
implies the greatest amount of good that can be done for the greatest number of people.

Supporting Argument
Following the above ethical approach, we start off with evaluating the value each individual
provides to the society or the survivors themselves. Owing to his navigational skills, some might
consider the ship captain to be one of the main survivors to board the lifeboat. However, a maritime
tradition and a legal bound restricts captain to the ship and requires him to provide a safe evacuation
to passengers. The lifeguard shall be included among lifeboat survivors because of his crucial skill
of safeguarding other from drowning. This skill would play a significant role in the whole rescue
operation. The second lifeboat survivor shall be the veteran surgeon. During the rescue operation,
the surgeon can be useful in case severe injuries take place on the ship or the lifeboat. Additionally,
a surgeon makes an important part of a society and a lot of human beings depends on a surgeon for
life threatening conditions. Pregnant woman would be adding a new, potentially valuable member
to the society. Thirteen-year old twins are new contributions to the society and hence the pregnant
woman and the twins shall survive. The young adults recently married but bear no children. The last
comparison is of the prominent professor and the senior citizen. It can be argued that a prominent
professor at a university would have a greater impact on the society through its students as
compared to the senior citizen who has not many years left to live.
The final list: lifeguard, veteran surgeon, pregnant woman, thirteen-year old twins, prominent
professor

Counter Argument

The decisions made above were based on the assumption of the value provided by these individuals
to the society. However, with a little more information regarding these people, the decisions could
drastically change. For instance, the woman might not be really pregnant. The professor may have a
fatal disease and may have only few months to live.
There are various other approaches to ethical perspectives which can also be put into account.

A different perspective
CONTRIBUTOR: SYED MUHAMMAD ABBAS HAIDER (173409)
The decision to get people on of off the boat can be based on 5 ethical perspectives. It can be based
on:-

Moral Rules: where we decide based on some rules of ethics or general goodwill.

Virtues: such as achievements and fairness can be made a priority, then each individual will be
judged and merited according to this priority.

Outcomes: analysis can be done as how they effect the society later on in life.

Care: sense of humanity can come into play where the strong stay and the weak are allowed to take
the upper and.

Principle: based case study would be difficult as here the principles governing the act are not
defined and can lead to confusion.

These all are valid arguments. However, there is an overlooked perspective. It is mostly judged as
unethical and could lead to quite a disaster if not followed properly but the same can be said about
all the above ones. Each of the above ones has a positive and a negative perspective that may or
may not lead a happy ending. Even in normal circumstances they have their own weaknesses. But
the overlooked perspective if looked at from an unbiased way could lead to a lot of solved problems
in cases where ethics is still undefined. And that perspective is leaving things to chance.

Yes, drawing lots in such cases should be the preferred way of doing things. This is because there
are inherent flaws with each of the above ethical deduction techniques as i will cover below. And
then also provide a reasoning as to why drawing lots is the most appropriate method in this
scenario.

Firstly lets discuss why the above techniques are not the best choices to begin with. The foremost
reason is that none of the above methods are inherently tangible and can be molded to suit situations
by any smooth talking individual. Imagine if some clever corporate executive was on the boat, he
would use principles like utilitarianism to justify his survival over the young twins who would not
be able to defend themselves in an argument against the clever man. This is even possible with the
moral rules argument, where he can say that he has more experience to serve people, and since
serving people is a moral duty of all others he must live.

The above argument I presented might seem like I am using some form of perspective that makes
me against the clever man, although in reality I am pointing out the biasness that can be injected
into the above perspectives themselves, even though the perspectives were supposed to be our tools.
Now if our tools of ethics (our perspectives) can be molded by anyone clever enough to manipulate
them, we cannot just solely depend on these tools/perspectives alone. A third party must exist to
judge and make unbiased judgement. And on a drowning boat there is no third party. That is why
we must use something so raw and cruel as the game of chance to get unbiased decisions.

CONTRIBUTOR: MUHAMMAD ALI (211652)

Now a proper reasoning to REJECT these above perspectives listed in start are given below:-
Moral Rules: The problem with this is that everyone has their own set of moral rules. Someone will
value every life as holy while others will think that all life might not be good. So based on this,
what if a person was selected according to a principle that states that all life is equal, but the person
we save actually thinks that all life is not holy, we would get a contradiction, where good intentions
of one person lead to bad outcomes. Now if we state that lets protect the old man since all life is
holy, but it turns out actually the old man is cruel to his children then we cant just judge based on
moral rules alone.

Virtues: The problem with virtues is simple, that we can not judge someone solely based on
achievements alone. What if the life circumstances of the professor was such that he could easily
become a professor. What if the lifeguard or captain of the ship rose from a very poor family and
becoming a captain was very difficult. In that case clearly the captain is merited higher than the
professor. Or on the slight chance the old man was a war hero or a retired general who held many
achievements to his name, then how can we discard him?

Outcomes: This is problematic as we can’t truly measure how impactful someone is in someone's
or peoples lives. For example the professor seems to be most impactful, but due to the sheer amount
of graduates the universities pump out, even if he dies some other might take his place. And even if
he is prominent it wouldn't matter as whatever his contributions are they can be termed as a luxury
product for society, not a necessary product. His findings could be used to make a better society but
with his dead there is no backlog to society. Same can be said for other professions and the veteran
surgeon, while the captain and lifeguard are a necessity without whom the ship cannot function.
This same argument can state that if we save the old man, maybe he is the only family member
alive of his grandchildren and without him they would be orphans, so now we must save him.

Care: The biggest problem in this argument is that if we save people based on them needing to be
cared for (women and children) or having some property that we hold valuable (young married
couple) we are not considering that they could be deceiving the others intentions. They might not
truly deserved to be saved in the first place. Example the women might be cared for here but what if
she has an abusive husband, maybe it would be better for her to die, that would be more caring for
her. Same can be said for the twins, maybe they are so poor that killing them would save be more
caring for them. Another argument is that it can be decided that whoever is younger will board first.
Then it turns out the lifeguard is younger than the pregnant women, how will that be catered for?

Principle: There could be some form of moral compensation that can be provided to them for their
services. Example if the passengers who lead a harsh life could be saved while those who lived a
posh life could be killed because well they lived a good life, but conversely the poor ones could be
killed and escaped from their misery while the rich ones could be saved. However that will not
apply here. Here lets say we kill the old man as he is old, and he has already lead his life.

CONTRIBUTOR: MUHAMMAD HAMZA (212548)

In light of the above discussion, there's an argument that can made be here. Imagine someone who
got a chance to board gave up their own seat for the other, that would be glorified as honor so we
won’t loose honor at all.
One more reason to look into the perspective of drawing lots is that in case of emergency everyone
is in a panic, and a riot could be started. The members will quarrel and waste more time than
actually in doing something. In this case if someone shouts lets draw lots, they are more likely to
actually draw lots than to spend extra energy in deciding who gets to live.

One counter argument that can be made is even if the lots are drawn then who is to apply them?
What if each individuals inner morality comes into play if he/she seems the lots were being unfair?
And yes these are true considerations, however in such case the captain of the ship is responsible to
implement the decision made by the lots. However if case is the members disagreeing, then how are
we to expect them to remain calm and accept the judgement based on the above morality tools we
used?

Utilitarianism Approach:

Lets look at it with the Utilitarian approach, it is something that goes in favour with the saying that
whatever makes triggers happiness is right and whatever causes sadness is not, According to this
approach it’s not only the happiness of the actor but also the people better affected by those actions.
But its not actually This black and white in real life. It can be argued that something that makes you
happy but is illegal can never be right. In short it says that:

 Whatever causes happiness is right.

 Happiness of everyone counts.

It is a reason based approach, that believes in providing as much good to as many people. But
obviously it has some limitations.

Utilitarianism is further divided into 2 types

1. Rule Utilitarian ethics.

2. Act Utilitarian ethics.

Rule Utilitarian ethics:

This is about helping as many people as possible with the fairest means available. Any acts is
justified if it satisfies a moral rule. And the question that comes with it is that how due we extract
those moral rules? The answer by rule utilitarian is that moral rules are justified if they add more
utility in our lives than other possible rules.

Act Utilitarian ethics:

Whereas this is about benefiting the people by taking the best ethical course of actions. The act
utilitarian places importance on the situation wise handling of the dilemma. Thus, morality depends
on that specific situation.

CONTRIBUTOR: ASHAR NASIR (207879)

Argument:

After above argument by Hamza, if we take a look at this situation keeping in mind the Rule
utilitarian ethics, Then the decision of saving the lifeguard seems to be the perfect match because
he provides the most benefit in such a situation to everyone else on the lifeboat, since he can save
their lives in face of any crisis, and the rest of the people on the boat do provide value or benefit,
but in the long run like the Professor would be the second best choice in this situation, after him
maybe the twins, since they are young and can be valuable for the society and ultimately adding
value to it. Whereas the captain may or may not be a good choice according to this approach
depending on the situation, like if there's a need of directions to the shore or some rescue plan
where the captain is required then he is a good choice otherwise he is not. Since

Whereas if we look at this situation with Act utilitarian ethics, we have to take into consideration
the ethical factors, like we can't take life of the weak, which means the ideal selection in this case
would be the pregnant lady, the twin kids and the Old man.

In previous arguments, we have seen that the drawing lots can be a savior in these situations as
they won’t have time to properly pass judgement and evaluate every situation. One very good
reason for this method is that the ones who will die will no longer die in shame that society morally
didn't deem them worthy of living. This will preserve their dignity in death. Even though it’s a catch
that there's no honor in it as well.

Limitations:

But this approach does come with some limitations, since it looks at the situation as either black or
white, which is usually not the case in real life scenarios, for example with this approach we have to
save the old man, but we don't know of he already has some fatal illness or not.

Another limitation is that it causes uncertainty, example of which is that one of the twins may turn
out to have negative impact on the society in future but since we can't predict that we have to make
our decision with this uncertainty and an optimistic approach that may or may not turn out as
expected.

Conclusion:
Excess amount of literature has tried to present an adequate view of morality requirements
associated with the problem, but they are no absolute answers to philosophical dilemmas. Actions
depend on the will of the stake holder that that varying instant, and we have some faith in utilitarian
approach. On the other hand, utilitarian opponents would reject the idea of choosing the lesser
between two evils, hence altering the available options largely.