Questions of Ethics

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by tonaderspeisung

i don't think so - for me it is a starting point of reference giving an intangible property (life) a value for the scenario equation.

i believe the equation allows for other factors to be added or subtracted e.g. family, military/police training, immobilizing fear

but we were only given the multiplying factors 5 and 1 so if i was asked to judge either outcome i would have to find both equally ethical

i can't find 5>1 to be the obvious answer
for me that leads down the road to 6 billion>5 and the unpleasant argument that five fewer people could be a greater advantage for the many

Yet, every person who puts on the uniform of their national military or police or fire departments is saying, with their choice, that they are willing to lay down their lives for the benefit of the rest of us. Whether we realize it consciously it's what we do. Every Marine, when it comes down to cases, is expected to be able to fight. Every soldier in the Army is expected, if need arises, to be in the infantry. That means taking the risk of dying.

Just last month we celebrated a whole bunch of men--our fathers or grandfathers or great-grandfathers--who stormed up a beach in France to defeat a *genuinely* evil regime. Those that died did not set out to die, but they had to know as the ramps dropped that they were taking that very risk.

As far as the idea that if we grant that saving five and losing one is better than saving one and losing five, we must *also* admit that saving 6,000,000,000 and losing five is *also* better, I think the only way to get there is to over-apply the rule. Any rule, over-applied, will break in a messy fashion and lead to obviously ludicrous answers If we over-apply the rule you're using, we don't save anyone. If you're going to die, you're going to die, that's your fate, no one intervene. Using that logic all our medicine, all our public health, all our public safety is getting in the way of events that would otherwise happen if not for those interventions.

But there's no reason to think that human beings are going to over-apply that particular rule in that particular fashion. At least I don't see a particularly good reason to believe that we would.

Yes, if we decide that saving five even at the cost of one life is morally praiseworthy and then decide that this means that without condition we should always apply that rule regardless of circumstance and without doing any kind of reasoning about the situation (as time allows), then yes we could see someone making the argument that in order for the rest of us to live five people must die. However, this would be using those five people as an *instrument* toward that end.

Do you see any reason why the 5>1 solution ineluctably leads to the 6,000,000,000>1 because I just don't see it unless one over-applies the rule. I don't even see why we should expect people would tend to over-apply that rule.


Cheers
Aj