The Moral Side of Murder

I have been told that I have begun writing exceptionally boring posts. So some damage control needs to be done to retain viewership (yea, right!). Now, I have sort of vowed or well, am making attempts to stay out of personal territory. That effectively means that I have very little to talk about. So in this post I will let a very learned person do the talking for me.

I will be his note taker...and here are some of those notes.!


Concepts of philosophy

There is problem with philosophy, especially political philosophy. It has the ability to turn familiar things into strange things. It doesn't provide us any new information but (only confuses us and) makes us think about the existing knowledge. It confronts a fact that we already know.

This post discusses about Murder. What sort of act could be termed as murder? Which act can be termed as criminal and which is done as a means of necessity? Does your being a spectator or participant change the way a situation can be viewed?


This post is interesting (hopefully) because here I am writing about a case study which is unique in it self. It is a 19th century British Law case : Queen v. Dudley

This dates back to the year 1884. Four people set sail on a ship called "The Mignonette", Thomas Dudley as captain, Edwin Stephens as mate, Edmund Brooks as able seaman, and a seventeen old boy, Richard Parker, as ordinary seaman. After a few weeks, they ran into bad weather and had to abandon Mignonette and saved themselves by getting into a small lifeboat. They (only Dudley) carried with themselves  two tins of turnip and sextant, which they finished soon. Left with no water or food, their only hope of survival was if any ship or boat passed by that route and spotted them. On the fourth day after shipwreck, they spotted a dead turtle which was floating and ate it. Occasionally it would rain and  they would manage to quench their thrust, but that as said was only...occasional. Out of thirst they started having their own urine and eventually Parker and Stevens started drinking sea water.

On the nineteenth day Dudley proposed a lottery by which one of them would be killed and eaten! However Stevens and Brooks were against that idea. By this time, Parker, the ordinary seaman who had no family back home, was quite unwell. Dudley, in consultation with Stevens then decided to kill Parker so that the three of them could survive. For the next four days, the three fed on Parker's body and drank his blood till a German ship spotted them and brought them back home. Once home, they were charged with murder/cannibalism and that actually surprised Dudley who insisted that he did whatever had to be done in that circumstance. Afterall, even in battlefields soldiers die to save others. Parker was probably going to die anyways, so why not sacrifice him for the other three. What was wrong in killing one to save three? Moreover, Parker didn't have any family back home, so his absence wouldn't be missed as much as theirs.


Now this is where a philosophical debate takes shape. 

An economist or a utilitarian like Bentham would state that  one must maximise collective happiness measured in terms of utility. In which case, Dudley took the right decision. The question of morality here is consequential, i.e., it depends upon the end result. 
But there is another school of thought, to which Kant belongs and that talks of the "categorical" form of moral reasoning. This means that morality is located in duties and rights. That there is more to morality than the end result. So, in such a situation,the difference between murder or an act which one would consider necessary is complex and not well defined.


So we see, a simple act which seems right (atleast to the  logical mind), stems questions about right or wrong in our mind. 
Another example to this end would be -

Suppose there were four patients in a room, one of whom was severely injured in an accident and needed immediate care and attention and you were the only doctor around. The other three did not suffer as much injury but needed help too. But, if you attended to one and left the other three, then they'd die. If you attended and took care of the other three, then they would survive for sure but the one man with severe injuries would definately die. In normal circumstances, most of us would say, even if Dudley was wrong because his act was cannibalistic in nature, the doctor would be right in saving the lives of three people at the cost of one. 
 But who is to decide that the collective utility from three lives is more than that of the life of one person? Who decides the worth...just numbers?

Dudley and the other two were released from prison after six months but their life was never the same. Dudley was haunted by the entire incident and started taking huge amounts of opium to relieve himself and later died of plague. Stephens did odd jobs and overtime became mad. Let us not get into the issue about why they were haunted by the incident when they had returned home and claimed that there was nothing wrong in their act. Instead dwell on this thought - if numbers are the measure of happiness and one would think that saving three lives is better than one, then what sort of utility/gain are we talking about here?

Now, suppose Dudley had asked for Parker's consent before killing him and suppose Parker, in his half-conscious, delusional state had given him his consent, would that be murder then? Would that be morally correct?

What is murder? An attempt to save one life by sacrificing another to achieve what we think is greater good or greater utility...can that be exempt from the definition of murder? Why would some people think that Dudley murdered the young boy but the doctor didn't do so by taking a call to not save one life?

What is morally correct? How and why does that definition change with every situation?

Philosophy, I guess confronts reality in a way that makes us question it. 


p.s- Tushi you had better leave a comment now or you'd see me in your nightmare, singing "Dil Ke Armaan..."...and yes, in a very nasal voice! Or I'd be Dudley and you'd be Parker (don't worry, I won't have any nightmares about you haunting me) !!!