Who Then Should I Kill?

I stumbled upon Richard Dawkins's website today. He wrote an article defending his recent tweets about rape and paedophilia and logic. It's his description of moral philosophy that's most intriguing, however. He begins the article with these paragraphs:

Are there kingdoms of emotion where logic is taboo, dare not show its face, zones where reason is too intimidated to speak? 

Moral philosophers make full use of the technique of thought experiment. In a hospital there are four dying men. Each could be saved by a transplant of a different organ, but no donors are available. In the hospital waiting room is a healthy man who, if we killed him, could provide the requisite organ to each dying patient, thereby saving four lives for the price of one. Is it morally right to kill the healthy man and harvest his organs? 

Everyone says no, but the moral philosopher wants to discuss the question further. Why is it wrong? Is it because of Kant’s Principle: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” How do we justify Kant’s principle? Are there ever exceptions? Could we imagine a hypothetical scenario in which . . . 

What if the dying men were Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein and Martin Luther King? Would it be then right to sacrifice a man who is homeless and friendless, dragged in from a ditch? And so on. 

Two miners are trapped underground by an explosion. They could be saved, but it would cost a million dollars. That million could be spent on saving the lives of thousands of starving people. Could it ever be morally right to abandon the miners to their fate and spend the money on saving the thousands? Most of us would say no. Would you? Or do you think it is wrong even to raise such questions? 

These dilemmas are uncomfortable. It is the business of moral philosophers to face up to the discomfort and teach their students to do the same.

It is true that moral philosophy has been (and continues to be) practised along these lines. But my word is this the most boring and pointless way to do moral philosophy, not to mention the most morbid. Moral philosophy, it seems, boils down to who we should kill!

You can either throw Andres Iniesta into a pool of piranhas or starve 2 homeless men to death. Which should you do?

Your father and mother are drowning in the ocean. You are only able to rescue one of them on your two-person dinghy. Your father is a surgeon who saves hundreds of lives a year. Your mother is a social worker who transforms the lives of families in poor communities. Your father has cancer and will die in a year. Your mother has a brain tumour, but she will live if it is operated on. The only person in the world who can operate on her is your father. Who should you save?

While fun for about three minutes, this is the worst form that moral philosophy can take. Rather than it being the business of moral philosophers to face up to these uncomfortable and useless dilemmas, it should be the business of moral philosophers to once and for all put this way of doing moral philosophy to death. Ironically, it has no utility.