Imagine a runaway train. If it carries on down its present course it will kill five people. You cannot stop the train, but you can pull a switch and move the train on to another track, down which it will kill not five people but just one person. Should you pull the switch? This is the famous ‘trolley’ problem, a thought experiment first suggested by Philippa Foot in 1967, and which since has become since become one of the most important tools in contemporary moral philosophy. (In Foot’s original, the dilemma featured a runaway trolley, hence the common name of the problem.)

When faced with the question of whether or not to switch the runaway train, most people, unsurprisingly, say ‘Yes’. Now imagine that you are standing on a bridge under which the runaway train will pass. You can stop the train – and the certain death of five people – by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. There is, standing next to you, an exceedingly fat man. Would it be moral for you push him over the bridge and onto the track? Most people now say ‘No’, even though the moral dilemma is the same as before: should you kill one to save the five?

Or consider a dilemma first raised by Peter Singer forty years ago. You are driving along a country road when you hear a plea for help coming from some roadside bushes. You pull over, and see a man seriously injured, covered in blood and writhing in agony. He begs you to take him to a nearby hospital. You want to help, but realize that if you take him the blood will ruin the leather upholstery of your car. So you leave him and drive off. Most people would consider that a monstrous act.

Now suppose you receive a letter that asks for a donation to help save the life of a girl in India. You decide you cannot afford to give to charity since you are saving up to buy a sofa and bin the letter. Few would deem that to be immoral. Click Link to read interesting discussion.

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/the-moral-camera/

posted by f. sheikh

Looking at the quality of life of elderly in the nursing homes, majority of us do not wish to live and suffer such a life and instruct our loved ones to not prolong life by un-necessary means. But when the actual time comes, despite this suffering many change their minds and want to continue to hold on to thread of life as long as possible. This worth reading article is about a physician who always advocated letting the nature take its course and not prolong the suffering of life by un-necessary means, but when his own time came, he refused to follow his own advice. Some excerpts from the article (f.sheikh). 

“When it came to offering medical interventions to severely ill patients with no hope of recovery, my father had a fiercely strong opinion: They were inappropriate. For decades as an infectious diseases specialist, he had been asked to treat infections in dying patients. Whenever possible, he said no.

But when I approached my dad, who had developed end-stage Parkinson’s disease, to ask what his end-of-life wishes were, he indicated a desire for aggressive measures.

Bioethicists have long debated the issue of “precommitment.” Which wishes are more valid — ones that someone indicates in advance or those expressed during serious illness? My father’s case provided a vivid case study of this issue.”

“My father knew that infections were often the final straw in the deterioration of so many of the body’s vital organs and functions. In other words, infections were what helped terminally ill patients die. To perpetually treat infections in such cases, he often said, was “inhuman and morally wrong” as well as “professionally bankrupt.” My dad tried, whenever possible, to encourage patients, family members and his physician colleagues to reconsider the reflexive tendency to treat.”

“Finally, in November 2011, my mother had no choice but to admit him to a nursing home. I will never forget when I first saw him there. He was sitting in a wheelchair with his head almost on his lap. He was completely dependent on others. This image of my dad was particularly poignant: The last time I had been in a nursing home with him was when he was the medical director of one, caring for the same type of sad souls he had now become.

The time had come to clarify what types of interventions my father wanted. I knew what I hoped to hear. Not only did I know his opinions about inappropriate treatment, but he had written some notes when he began to seriously deteriorate. He said that he was “taking steps to ease my passage.” Some with his condition, he added, “have taken drugs.” Regarding his wife — my mother — he wrote that she “doesn’t deserve to struggle with me anymore.”

But when I asked what he wanted, these notions had disappeared. He said he would be willing to go to the hospital if he got sicker and even go on a ventilator. “Sometimes they can really help,” he said. Full article click link below.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/overruling-my-father/?ref=international

VALENTINE’S DAY is not a celebration of truth telling. God forbid! Relationships last only if we don’t always say exactly what we’re thinking. We have to disguise our feelings, to feint, to smile sometimes when we want to shout. In short, we have to lie.

We all tell lies, and tell them shockingly often: Research shows that on average in an ordinary conversation, people lie two to three times every 10 minutes. (It makes you want to be completely silent for a day or two just to throw off the statistics — but what about lies by omission?) And we lie particularly often when it comes to love, because we care more about love than we care about most things, and because love causes us more fear than most things do, and caring and fearing are two of the most common reasons for lying.

The people who find themselves most betrayed by the lies of lovers are those who have the most unrealistic expectations about truthfulness. And the people who are most inclined to believe the lies they shouldn’t are the ones who tell themselves the biggest lie of them all: “I never tell lies.”

If you want to have love in your life, you’d better be prepared to tell some lies and to believe some lies. If honesty is what matters most to you, you might as well embrace a life of silence and become a Trappist monk. These are, of course, options: Immanuel Kant, who argued that it was always wrong to lie, was a lifelong bachelor. And the notorious misanthrope Arthur Schopenhauer, also a champion of truthfulness and opponent of romantic love — he argued that to marry meant to do everything possible to disgust each other — saved his greatest devotion for his uninterrupted string of poodles.

But most of us do want to love and to be loved. So what are these lies we should tell and believe?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/good-lovers-lie.html?ref=opinion

Posted by F. Sheikh