Five Seats Infinite Questions – 30th May 2026

Can doing something cruel ever be justified if it prevents something even worse?

Imagine a man has planted a bomb that will kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people. He has been captured, but he refuses to reveal where the bomb is hidden. Torturing him will not work. He is too committed, too prepared, too hardened.

But there is another possibility. His innocent son has also been captured. The interrogators believe that, if the father is forced to watch his son being tortured, he will break and reveal the bomb’s location. The son has done nothing wrong. He is not a suspect, not an accomplice, not a threat. He is simply a person who might be made to suffer in order to save many others.

This is where the thought experiment becomes especially uncomfortable. It does not ask whether torture is pleasant, noble, or admirable. It asks whether an act we normally regard as morally forbidden could become permissible under extreme pressure. If refusing to torture means allowing many innocent people to die, is that refusal principled courage, or moral self-protection at others’ expense?

The case also raises a danger. Once we allow torture in one exceptional case, can we really contain it? Rules against cruelty exist partly because human beings are very good at convincing themselves that this time, just this once, the emergency is special.

Are there moral lines that must never be crossed, or does the scale of the consequences sometimes force us across them?

“The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
Jeremy Bentham – An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Are we responsible for suffering we did not cause, but could easily help to prevent?

Imagine a lifeboat floating safely after a disaster. There is plenty of room on board. There are enough supplies. The people already in the boat are not in immediate danger. They could rescue a drowning woman nearby without any serious risk to themselves.

But the self-appointed captain objects. If they save her, everyone will have to give up a little comfort: perhaps an extra biscuit, a small luxury, a slightly easier time. He argues that they did not push her into the water. Her drowning is not their fault. Why should they disturb their own peace to solve a problem they did not create?

The scenario is simple, but its target is much larger. The lifeboat stands for affluent societies, or perhaps for any comfortable person surrounded by preventable suffering. If we have enough to help others without seriously harming ourselves, is refusing to help merely ungenerous, or is it morally wrong?

This thought experiment challenges the comforting difference between killing and letting die. We usually think it is worse to actively harm someone than to fail to save them. But if rescue is easy, the need is urgent, and the cost to us is small, does that distinction still protect us?

Are we morally entitled to enjoy our extra biscuit while someone else drowns?

“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”
Peter Singer – “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”

Does someone else’s need give them a right to use your body?

Imagine waking up in a hospital bed to discover that you have been connected to another patient. This person cannot survive without your organs temporarily supporting theirs. If you disconnect yourself, they will die. If you stay connected, you must give up nine months of your life: your freedom, comfort, plans, privacy, and control over your own body.

The situation was not something you clearly agreed to. Perhaps there was a mistake. Perhaps you acted carelessly and ended up there through a mixture of irresponsibility and bad luck. Either way, another human life is now dependent on you.

The question is not whether it would be generous, noble, or compassionate to stay connected. Perhaps it would be. The harder question is whether you can be morally required to do so. Does another person’s right to life include a right to make use of your body? Or does bodily autonomy mean that even saving a life cannot be demanded from you in this way?

Baggini’s thought experiment draws on Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous violinist argument about abortion. It forces us to separate two questions that are often tangled together: whether a dependent being has moral value, and whether that value gives it a claim over another person’s body.

Are we obliged to keep someone alive if doing so turns our own body into their life-support system?

“The right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly.”
Judith Jarvis Thomson – “A Defense of Abortion”

Can it be just to punish someone for something they have not yet done?

Imagine a police force with technology so advanced that it can predict future crimes. It can identify who will steal, attack, or even murder before the act takes place. The system seems to work. Crime drops dramatically. Lives are saved. Victims who would have suffered are spared.

The people identified by the system are arrested before they commit the crime. The authorities insist this is not cruel, but merciful. A future murderer might receive treatment, supervision, or a shorter detention, rather than being allowed to kill someone and then spend life in prison. Better still, the intended victim remains alive.

But something feels deeply troubling. The person has not yet committed the crime. They have not chosen, acted, or harmed anyone. We may fear what they are predicted to do, but can prediction replace guilt? If we punish someone before the act, are we protecting society — or destroying the idea that people are responsible for what they actually do?

The thought experiment asks us to weigh safety against justice, prevention against freedom, and prediction against moral agency. A society with pre-emptive justice might be safer, but it may also become one in which people are treated as future criminals before they have had the chance to choose otherwise.

Are we responsible for the future we are predicted to create, or only for the actions we actually take?

“It was a fundamental rule of Precrime methodology that the existence of a majority logically implied a corresponding minority report.”
Philip K. Dick – “The Minority Report”

Is a belief meaningful if nothing could ever count against it?

Imagine two explorers who find a beautiful clearing in the jungle. The flowers are healthy, the grass is neat, and everything looks carefully tended. One explorer says, “There must be a gardener looking after this place.” The other is sceptical.

They watch and wait, but no gardener appears. Perhaps the gardener is invisible, says the believer. They set up traps, but nothing is caught. Perhaps the gardener is intangible. They listen for sounds, but hear nothing. Perhaps the gardener is silent. Bit by bit, every test that might reveal the gardener fails — but each failure is explained away.

Eventually, the sceptic asks: what is the difference between an invisible, silent, intangible gardener who leaves no trace, and no gardener at all?

The thought experiment is aimed at religious belief, but it reaches much wider. We often protect our beliefs by adjusting them whenever evidence goes against us. A failed prediction becomes a deeper mystery. A missing sign becomes a hidden sign. The absence of evidence becomes part of the story. At some point, a belief may become so flexible that it cannot be challenged by anything.

But if nothing could ever show a belief to be false, what does it really claim?

Are some beliefs acts of faith beyond evidence, or do meaningful claims need to risk being wrong?

“A fine brash hypothesis may thus be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.”
Antony Flew – “Theology and Falsification”

When does healthy scepticism become a conspiracy-shaped refusal to believe?

Imagine someone tells you that the moon is made of cheese. Not just any cheese: mozzarella. They know this sounds absurd, but they are ready for every objection. The moon landings? Faked. Moon rocks? Suppressed or planted. Scientists? Paid off, threatened, or part of the cover-up. Telescopes? Not powerful enough to show the truth. The fact that almost nobody believes it? Exactly what you would expect if the conspiracy were working.

At first, the belief seems easy to dismiss. But the troubling part is that it can be made to fit the evidence if enough surrounding beliefs are rearranged. Every challenge becomes part of the story. Every lack of proof becomes evidence of concealment. The theory survives not because it is strong, but because it has become slippery.

Baggini uses this absurd example to explore a serious problem: evidence rarely forces only one possible conclusion. Our beliefs form a web. If we are determined enough, we can protect almost any claim by changing the rest of the web around it. This helps explain why conspiracy theories can feel so persuasive from the inside and so ridiculous from the outside.

The question is not simply why some people believe strange things. It is how any of us decide when a belief is reasonable, when evidence is good enough, and when a theory has become so over-protected that it no longer deserves our trust.

Are conspiracy theories irrational because they contradict the evidence, or because they explain the evidence too easily?

“Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.”
W. V. O. Quine – “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”