Judith Jarvis Thomson's Argument Analysis

For this essay, I have chosen to take on the prompt that covers the hypothetical scenario in which my sister is the person being hooked up to the violinist in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist thought experiment. I will begin by discussing my thoughts regarding this scenario and what advice I would offer my sister. I will then go on to take a more general look at this topic and try and establish whether my reasoning could be used as basic moral code for this issue or is there more complexity to it than that. Before we jump in to my own personal opinions on this subject, let’s start by establishing what exactly is going on in this scenario for those who may be unaware of Thomson’s thought experiment. Thomson came up with this as an analogy
However, I would argue that it is really not that simple. If we are looking at this purely as a numbers game then sure, nine months of life from one person for many years of life for another seems like a reasonable trade. In reality, nine months away from one’s career could set someone so far back that they may never be able to recover due to the amount of missed opportunities that could occur in that time. Furthermore, the spouses and families of those stuck in the hospital would also likely experience setbacks in their own lives as well. In the case of my sister, her husband would almost certainly have to adjust his own career path to compensate and he would also most likely require aid from nearby relatives as well. This would then result in even more lives being interrupted. In short, this isn’t as simple as trading nine months of one person’s life for many years of life for another. It is a much larger sacrifice which I believe is an unreasonable request for someone to do to save the
In other words, would I apply this same advice to everyone that finds themselves in this situation? Overall, I feel that my advice to unplug can pretty much apply to anyone face with this decision. However, this does not by any means mean that everyone should unplug or that those who don’t aren’t in the wrong for doing so. While I personally would unplug and would advise others to do the same, I respect those who are willing to go through with it. Some people will be totally willing to make the sacrifice of spending a good portion of their lives in the hospital if it means saving someone’s life. Others, such as my sister and myself, would probably like to help save a life, but are unable due to their own obligations or simply aren’t willing to inconvenience themselves to that degree to save an unrelated person’s life. Neither of these groups of people are morally wrong in their decisions. What I believe is important is that every person is given the right to choose between these two options. If there was any sort of law or moral standard that I would apply to this situation, it would be that everyone has the right to choose exactly what goes on with their own body. This I feel should be the key takeaway from this entirely hypothetical thought