Idle Talk is Rhodders’ philosophy based radio show/podcast aimed at making philosophy interesting and accessible for everyone. The show is live 9pm uk time Sunday 2nd Feb over at 1Radio.org. Join in the debate in the chart rooms and on Skype using the name- rhodders.com
Topic
“Why is saving two people better then one? A matter of fairness”
Imagine this scenario: A Coast Guard sees two ships in trouble and can only rescue one. One ship has 1 person aboard the other has 2. Most people would agree that Saving two people is the fair thing to do.
This is something that is often taken as an obvious truth but is it? In this episode we shall attempt to rationalise this assertion. We shall first examine Scanlon’s position which claims that we can justify saving the greater number of people because they have more claims to being rescued. We shall then examine some objections to Scanlon with our guest James Kirkpatrick a philosophy masters student at the University of St Andrews.