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Here is an exercise from Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt that I thought was an interesting check of my understanding of good, evil, moral and immoral actions.

Philosophy involves standing back and thinking – intensely and rigorously – about aspects of our lives that are at once ordinary and fundamental.

And when the surface is scratched, what you find below is extraordinary – or, rather, extraordinarily difficult to make good, clear sense of. Lying in wait are arguments that lead to, if not sheer lunacy, then bullets we’re loathe to bite.

So, with World Philosophy Day upon us, here are some pesky arguments to apply your minds to:

1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?

Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?

Consider another case: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he’ll release you.)

If in this case you should kill one to save five, why not in the previous, organs case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you’re in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram on to the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram left, killing one to save five.

But then why not kill Bill?

After finding my own answers, I decided that this exercise needed an added level of difficulty.  So here they are:

1a.  What if the five people that Bill could save have diseases caused by their own actions?  i.e. cancer from smoking, liver damage from alcoholism, etc.

1b.  What if the five people worked at Bill’s company and were unknowingly exposed to harmful chemicals on Bill’s orders?

1c.  In the case of the runaway tram, what if the one person on the track fork is your best friend?

1d.  What if the one person on the track fork slept with your spouse?