Taking Scanlon (Too) Seriously
Behold, one of the most famous cases in modern ethics:
Suppose that Jones has suffered an accident in the transmitter room of a television station. Electrical equipment has fallen on his arm, and we cannot rescue him without turning off the transmitter for fifteen minutes. A World Cup match is in progress, watched by many people, and it will not be over for an hour. Jones’s injury will not get any worse if we wait, but his hand has been mashed and he is receiving extremely painful electrical shocks. Should we rescue him now or wait until the match is over?
— p.235 of Thomas Scanlon’s (1998) What We Owe to Each Other
Many people take this ‘Transmitter Room’ case to be a serious problem for utilitarianism and its neighbors. These views — the thought goes — imply that we should let Jones suffer, and that seems wrong.
But as written, Scanlon’s case presents no problem whatsoever for utilitarianism or its neighbors. As any football fan knows, games consist of a 45-minute first half, a 15-minute break for half-time, and a 45-minute second half. In knockout games, extra time is added if the scores are tied at the end of normal time. Since Scanlon stipulates that the game will end in an hour, it must be a group-stage game, and half-time must be just beginning. So we can spend the necessary 15 minutes rescuing Jones, safe in the knowledge that viewers will miss only punditry and ads!