Week 3 Assignment final

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Running head: IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 1 Is it Moral to Shoot Down a Hijacked Plane Case Study Barry T. Hollister University of Arizona Global Campus PHO 208: Ethical and Moral Reasoning Professor Micheal Pelt February 13, 2023

IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 2 Is it Moral to Shoot Down a Hijacked Plane Case Study While terrorist attacks like the one that happened on September 11th, 2001, are rare, they present us with an important ethical question and a moral controversy. This case study will examine whether it is moral to shoot down a hijacked passenger jet to prevent it from harming more people or simply is it moral to shoot down a hijacked airplane? Reflecting on philosophical texts and theories can help our understanding of philosophical theories and how they apply to our ethical questions. I will give an overview of utilitarianism, its theories, core principles, and philosophers. I will also explain and apply utilitarianism to the central moral controversy of the central ethical question in this paper. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, four passenger jets were hijacked by nineteen Islamic terrorists. American Airlines flight 11 and 77 and Unites Airlines flight 175 and 93 were targeted for hijacking. The Islamic terrorists used box cutters to attack and disable the crews of the four flights. One plane crashed into the World Trade Center North Tower, and a plane crashed into the South tower, collapsing them both. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth plane was partially retaken by passengers and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The critical planner of the attack was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid joined the Muslim brotherhood at 16. He went to school at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in the United States. Khalid met Osama Bin Laden in 1996 and presented the operation that would eventually become the 9/11 attacks. The plot's leaders ran the operation from Hamburg, Germany, and soon-to-be 9/11 hijackers to flying lessons in the United States.

IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 3 The central moral controversy of this study is one that people have had to make throughout history. In World War II, the German armed forces used an encrypted code to transmit orders and information to its forces. This encryption was dubbed the enigma code (Sebag-Montefiore, p. 1, 2001). If the Germans knew the allies cracked the code, they would change it. Which meant the allies would allow some attacks on their forces. In their eyes, this action was the greater good because, in the end, knowing the code would eventually save more allied lives than it cost. An example provided in How Should One Live: An Introduction to ETHICS & MORAL REASONING (Thames, 2018, Chapter 3) provides a valuable experiment to help grasp this moral controversy. Imagine a train is coming. You have control over the switch to change what track the train will go down. If the train travels down track A, it will run over and kill one person on the tracks. If the train travels down track B will kill ten people on the tracks. The ethical question we arrive at is whether it is moral to kill a person to save many more innocent lives. The philosophical text I will reflect on in this paper is a paragraph on utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill. The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded- namely, that pleasure, and

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IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 4 freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. (Mill, 1863). This text theorizes that utilitarians view actions as right or moral based on the number of positives they generate and the number of negatives they decrease. An action with the least negatives and most significant positives would be the right decision. It also states that the reduction of negatives and the increase of positives is the foundational desired outcome and that the action itself can create the positive or the action you are taking is the means by which you promote positive results and reduce negative results in the end. When I began reading John Stuart Mill’s passage it was initially overwhelming. The language he uses seems complex at first glance. After multiple readings to myself and privately, you start to see that he is conveying something straightforward. Things are good or bad depending on the portion of good or bad generated. It helped me to write down his main points in more common wording and grammar after I completed a few read-throughs. This tactic allowed me to comprehend better and visualize Mill's points. Jeremy Bentham created the ethical theory of utilitarianism in the 1700s. He developed a value for happiness which he labeled hedonism (Thames, 2018, Chapter 3). Using this value, one could weigh actions to see if they were good or bad based on the amount of pleasure or pain of that action. This form of utilitarianism is called hedonistic utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill refined and added to Bentham's theory of utilitarianism in 1861 (Thames, 2018, Chapter 3). Mill offered thorough defenses to common objections utilitarianism received. In addition to Bentham's hedonistic utilitarianism, there are two other varieties of utilitarianism worth considering in the

IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 5 case study: act and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism is what I have been discussing so far in this paper. Actions, inactions, and decisions are morally good or bad based on their net positive gain (Nathanson, 2023). Nathanson describes rule utilitarianism in his article Act and Rule utilitarianism as According to rule utilitarians, a) a specific action is morally justified if it conforms to a justified moral rule, and b) a moral rule is justified if its inclusion into our moral code would create more utility than other possible rules (or no rule at all). (Nathanson, 2023) Under this view murder for any reason might not be justified because it doesn’t conform to a justified moral rule and would not create a positive net gain (utility) if included in our moral code. The foundational utilitarian principle is that an action is good if it creates the most pleasure, happiness, and positives or reduces the opposite, pain, to the most significant number possible. Lastly, I will generate a theoretical ethical question and apply utilitarian principles to it. You are stationed at the international space station with four other astronauts. You also happened to oversee the station’s crew. A problem occurs that requires immediate evacuation of the station. However, one person must stay behind and launch the escape pod. Ted and Jane are the only two people that know how to launch the escape pod. Ted is single and lives alone; Jane has a spouse, four kids, and two dogs and runs the children's ministry at her local church on Sunday. If you were an act utilitarian, the decision on who would stay would be simple. Letting Ted stay and die to save you and the other three astronauts would be morally correct because that decision produces the most favorable outcomes for the most significant number or put the most utility. Ted's death is terrible, but he is one person with no one back on Earth that relies on him. His death saves four people and allows Jane to return to her spouse, children, and children's ministry.

IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 6 Her death produces far more unhappiness, pain, and negative outcomes. This decision to sacrifice Ted has a greater net utility, and the action is morally good because it produces a greater net utility. The core principles of utilitarianism are straightforward. The morality of something depends on the net positive “utility” of its outcome. The moral controversy of shooting down a hijacked passenger plane lends itself to analysis using utilitarianism. This case study at its core is picking the lesser of two evils, in the case of the September 11 th , 2001 hijackings, the killing of two hundred passengers, or letting 3,000 die when it could have been prevented. This case also provides an opportunity to discuss and challenge other factors of the utilitarian theory. An important question to analyze would be whether we could know if the passenger jets were going to crash in the first place. The overwhelming majority of hijackings do not end like the September 11 th hijacking. Most end in almost no fatalities (Ranter, 2023). Armed with this information the utility and morality of shooting down a hijacked commercial aircraft are far less black and white. If the plane was intended to land, shooting it down would cause less net utility, less happiness, and a much more negative outcome. Here I will focus on putting myself in the shoes of a utilitarian with the onerous responsibility of tackling the ethical question in this paper. Is it moral to shoot down a hijacked airplane? I will attempt to apply this ethical question to two potential scenarios. Firstly, we have a hijacked passenger with forty people on board the jet heading towards New York, New York. The plane has only made one transmission since the hijacking. The hijackers said they would "bring down" the empire state building in this transmission. In this scenario, I, the devote act utilitarian, would view this very simply. More than forty people will perish if the plane reaches the Empire State Building. When we sum up the net utility between shooting the plane down and

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IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 7 not shooting it down, we see that it produces the most significant gain (utility, happiness) for the most people and would be moral. Lastly, we have a passenger plane with 40 people on board that has been hijacked on its way to Casper, Wyoming. The plane has only sent one transmission since it was hijacked. The hijackers say once they land in Casper Wyoming, no one will be allowed off the plane until they are paid $100,000 U.S. dollars. If I follow act utilitarianism I might be killing forty innocent people for no reason. I then might make a rule that I would only shoot down hijacked planes if I knew they would crash into buildings. This type of provision would prevent me from shooting down planes unjustly. In that case, I would be using rule utilitarianism. In this case, shooting down the hijacked plan would not be moral. Is it moral to shoot down a hijacked airplane? The decision to shoot down a hijacked passenger plane presents a problematic moral controversy. Reflecting on philosophical texts from authors like John Stuart Mill helps us understand ethical theories that apply to our moral controversy—understanding the history and core principles of utilitarianism and its various varieties allowed them to be applied to the ethical question in this study. Ultimately, the answer to whether or not it is moral to shoot down a hijacked plan depends on the variety utilitarianism you apply to the scenario.

IS IT MORAL TO SHOOT DOWN A HIJACKLED PLANE STUDY 8 References Bergen, P. L. (2022, November 30). September 11th attacks. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/September-11-attacks Nathanson, S. (n.d.). Act and Rule Utilitarianism . Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved February 13thFebruary 13th, 2023, from https://iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/#H2 Ranter, H. (2023). Aviation Safety Network > Statistics > by period. Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved February 13thFebruary 13th, 2023, from https://aviation-safety.net/statistics/period/stats.php Sebag-Montefiore, H. (2001). Enigma : The Battle for the Code. Wiley. Thames, B. (2018). How should one live? An introduction to ethics and moral reasoning. Bridgepoint Education.

Week 3 Assignment final

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