Spock's Needs of the Many

A warning uncovered from Vulcan logic in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

“Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
- Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

At the climax of The Wrath of Khan, Spock sacrifices himself to save the USS Enterprise. He justifies this action by claiming that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... intuitively, we feel that this is, indeed, logical - especially since Spock’s altruistic death moves us emotionally. Yet this principle is not in fact consistent with logic, and risks being deeply unethical.

Why, then, does it seem to be valid...? The answer lies in a confusion of truths. It is a mathematical truth that many is greater than few, and all mathematical truths are logical truths - they are defined as true by the system of premises that makes mathematics valid. Yet mathematical truths are not ethical truths, the domains are entirely different, and principles of mathematics cannot substitute for principles of ethics without risking catastrophic mistakes.

There is a simple and well known thought experiment that demonstrates precisely why we cannot count on ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ as a principle for life. Suppose that there are four people who need a lung transplant, a heart transplant, a liver transplant, a kidney transplant, without which all four will die. If the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, it would be only logical to euthanise a healthy person who was a tissue match for these four people in order to save their lives. Unless you are a dangerous sociopath, you would not want to accept this premise (and if you are a dangerous sociopath, you probably don’t care about saving the four or the one).

The deception in Spock’s principle lies in its ambiguity. Its terms are deceptively ill-defined, such that we intuitively sense the mathematical truth (many is greater than few) and mistake it for a moral truth. But actually, moral truths are not subject to functions like inequalities (greater than or less than), because a good life cannot be calculated. Rather, the ethical principles we have reasons to accept are based on equality, which in the recent history of our species has been the only basis we have found that might lead to a just society. We can declare ourselves to be equal as a matter of moral judgement, but this is not a mathematical claim of any kind.

‘Needs’ itself is a troublesome construction. When my wife’s grandparent’s house was to be bulldozed to build an interstate bypass, it was presumed that ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’. Yet was the ‘need’ for commuters to shave a few minutes off their journey really comparable to allowing a married couple to end their time together in the house within which they lived their entire life? What kind of values would we have to hold to make such disparate situations into any kind of viable calculation…? The same kind of ethical nonsense plays a prominent role in the opening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when it is the Earth that is being demolished for a hyperspace bypass. The lunacy is the same, just elevated to an absurd extreme.

Rather than being logical or ethical, ‘the needs of the many’ is an excuse that governments have used to bully their people into accepting courses of action that one way or another benefit politicians and those funding them. Because we are emotional and imaginative beings, we can be drawn up into such deceptions and feel deeply that they are morally correct and necessary - but take care whenever you deny free choice to someone out of supposed necessity. You are almost always being hoodwinked.

Spock’s sacrifice is noble because he gives his own life, which is his to offer, to save the crew of his ship. It is logical, because without this sacrifice everyone (including Spock himself) would have died. This is not a matter of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few... it is rather a case of an individual acting on their own moral values to save the lives of others. It is logical solely because Spock’s sacrifice protects his ethical values, and it is noble precisely because it was a freely chosen action that defended not only the lives of his companions, but also their freedom.