Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

injustice occurring in order to fulfil a presumed good. Should, for instance, a billionaire be stripped of all their wealth because the wealth would bring more happiness if distributed amongst an entire nation rather than staying with one person? Perhaps yes, but this still seems unjust on the person concerned. Or, it could be asked, is it okay to kill one person in order to save others? (This is the basis of the famous ‘trolley problem’ — originally devised by Philippa Foot — where a trolley or railcar could be diverted from killing several people by sacrificing one life. Often this is achieved by way of throwing a fat man from a bridge! (See David Edmonds’ Would You Kill the Fat Man?) The trolley problem basically sets deontological (rules-based) ethics against utilitarianism. Kant would struggle with the idea of killing one person, even to save hundreds of others — killing, for him, is just wrong. So utilitarian solutions tend to be in the forefront of these thought experiments.

The idea that pleasure or happiness should be the sole determinant of our morality is, however, somewhat questionable. Egoism is generally taken to mean acting for one’s own self-interest — but few of us are so out and out egocentric. Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State and Utopia) gives the example of a ‘happiness machine’ of some sort — rather like the way in which people are hooked up to a simulated reality in The Matrix series of films. People, it turns out, are reluctant to enter the machine. In part, this suggests that we are not natural utilitarians — out simply to maximise our own pleasure. (Nozick’s happiness machine is also rejected because happiness is not just

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