Summer of Service

Some of the Monkey students need to discuss more complex ideas to get them stimulated intellectually, and many of them seemed interested in philosophy. In office this past week, I started a little philosophy club where we discussed some moral philosophy and tried to solve moral dilemmas. I took a Normative Ethics two year ago, and I tried to teach some of the basic ideas of moral philosophy.

We started with consequentialism, which is a lot like utilitarianism in the sense that the moral agent will take whatever action that results in the highest total neutral value. A consequentialist moral agent is a cool calculating machine that assesses possible outcomes in terms of overall happiness (neutral value) and chooses accordingly.

We moved quickly to Kant, which is kind of a large smorgasbord of moral thought. In the main idea of Kantian ethics is a respect for the rational agency of others. Kantian moral agents will never make decisions for others or take the fates of others into their own hands because they believe that everyone has the right to make their own decisions. Kantian agents also seek to promote happiness and develop their own talents and abilities, but above all they will respect the ability of others to make their own decisions.

A classic moral dilemma illustrates the difference between the Kantian and Consequentialist schools of thought. Imagine an enormously fat man standing next to a train track. Further on down the track are two young children playing on the track itself. A train is barreling down the track towards the children, and you are standing next the fat man. If you don't do anything, the train will kill the two children. If you push the fat man onto the track, the train will stop, the two children will be saved, and the fat man will die. What would you do?

The consequentialist would push the fat man in front of the train. Assuming each life is equal, the consequentialist would calculate that more happiness would result if only one person died instead of two. The consequentialist would kill the fat man to save two lives.

The Kantian agent would let the children die. The Kantian agent does not believe he/she has the right to decide the fates of others, and he respects the rational agency of all the other actors involved in the situation.

A lot of the students were consequentialist in this situation. Those students who leaned towards Kantianism actually changed their minds as more children were added onto the train track. If there were 10 children on the track instead of 2, all of the students would kill the fat man. This inconsistency would have driven my philosophy preceptor mad, but it may simply be the case that most people are not pure consequentialists or pure Kantians.

Then we tried to discuss moral philosophy in terms of nations. What would a Kantian country look like? What would a consequentialist country look like? I believe that China is very Kantian in the sense that it expounds national sovereignty and is against international interventionism. One could argue that the US is very consequentialist at times- we are willing to intervene if we think we can change things for the better.

We turned our discussion to the events in Rwanda. We discussed the nature of the genocide, the number of deaths, and the overall inaction by the international community. I asked if they thought someone should have intervened in Rwanda, and except for one student, they all said no. "This is Rwanda's business. No one has the right to change that." The same consequentialist students that were willing to push the fat man to save two children were unwilling to intervene in Rwanda because of their Kantian belief in national sovereignty.

I took it a step further because I was a little perplexed. I asked the 12 students in the room about their ethnicities. Seven of the students were Han (the majority ethnicity) and five were Tujia (a minority). I asked them to imagine a situation where there was no government in China, and the Han people suddenly decided to kill all the Tujia people. I asked them if the United Nations should intervene to stop the killing of innocent Tujia people.

All of them said no. "This matter would be China's business."

I was quite taken aback by their response. Many of the students have a lot of independent thought and deviate from the party line on many issues, but it seems that international interventionism is one matter where there is no flexibility. I explained that international law does allow for interventionism during times of genocide, but most of them thought this was "foolish."

It was a great office hour session and probably one of the more interesting teaching experiences I've ever had. Any reactions?