The train to Crazy Town

There are a ton of interesting challenges to utilitarianism, and I thought there might be some value in putting them together in one place. Most of the ‘classic’ challenges aren’t ones that I find particularly troubling. Take the ‘transplant problem’:

Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which there are five patients, each of whom will soon die unless they receive an appropriate transplanted organ⁠—a heart, two kidneys, a liver, and lungs. A healthy patient, Chuck, comes into the hospital for a routine check-up and the doctor finds that Chuck is a perfect match as a donor for all five patients. Should the doctor kill Chuck and use his organs to save the five others?

If you get rid of the common objections about whether this really passes a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis (‘will this create a norm that will deter people from going to hospital when they need to?’ and so on) and just assume that this really is the utilitarian thing to do by stating that nobody else will ever find out, then…