Questions of Ethics

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

Yes, I agree with you AJ that using someone as an "instrument" isn't a morally defensible act. Another way to talk about this is to put it in terms of means and ends. The end is the outcome, the means is the way to get to the outcome. My belief is that human beings are ends in themselves, i.e. have value apart from what they can be used for in terms of actualizing a particular end result. So it can be said that it is not morally defensible to treat a person as a purely means to some other end, and not an end in her/himself.

I am glad you said this. I understand that statements like "X is not morally defensible" are out of fashion but I think that the above statement is as close to a moral absolute as we are likely to find. In fact, I would argue that all our talk of rights or social justice are predicated on human beings having intrinsic value and not being instrumental vehicles to achieve some end or another. This is why slavery is a moral stain because it takes a group of people and makes them instruments. This is why I think that both libertarians and conservatives of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s got it entirely wrong on the subject of civil rights. All the arguments used by conservatives to bolster the position of segregationists that did not just revolve around outright racist tropes were essentially grounded in the idea that while racial segregation was regrettable, it was a necessary evil to maintain either political stability or economic 'freedom'. In this construction, blacks were--still--merely present in the Americas as a means to an end but did not have intrinsic value.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by tapu

Ugh. Under utilitarianism (in the shorthand way I know it), the second scenario is better. It just comes down to math: One more person is left living--the pilot.

Well, now, that's not very attractive as moral principles go.

I think the using/letting-leave/instrument/agent/passive etc approaches are proving richer for thinking about the ethics. Of course, with that come the uncomfortable complications

This is why utilitarianism is of only very limited usefulness unless it is tempered by something like a Kantian imperative such as "human beings are ends to themselves". Without that we wind up exactly where you state--whatever will bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number is the correct action. However, if we insert the Kantian imperative then we can say:

Provided that it does not use people as a means to an end and all other things being equal, we should probably consider those actions that bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number the action most likely to be correct.

I would say that this is a more useful formulation of what Bentham and Mills were on about.

Cheers
Aj

[tonaderspeisung]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

This is why utilitarianism is of only very limited usefulness unless it is tempered by something like a Kantian imperative such as "human beings are ends to themselves". Without that we wind up exactly where you state--whatever will bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number is the correct action. However, if we insert the Kantian imperative then we can say:

Provided that it does not use people as a means to an end and all other things being equal, we should probably consider those actions that bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number the action most likely to be correct.

I would say that this is a more useful formulation of what Bentham and Mills were on about.

Cheers
Aj

with kant thinking wouldn't one have to find that 5 is always a better outcome than one

i personally give life the number value of zero - not as having no value but a number representation for both infinite potential and an absolute value of it's end

in this case 5x0=0 and 1x0=0
so i still can't conclude that actively participating is of greater good than non

[tapu]

If you carry the 0 value out that way, wiping out the human race would be equal to sacrificing 1.

And maybe it is in a sense.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by tonaderspeisung

with kant thinking wouldn't one have to find that 5 is always a better outcome than one

i personally give life the number value of zero - not as having no value but a number representation for both infinite potential and an absolute value of it's end

in this case 5x0=0 and 1x0=0
so i still can't conclude that actively participating is of greater good than non

I'm not sure that one would have to conclude that Kantian ethics would require one to conclude that five is always the right outcome. It depends upon what rule is being applied.

If the rule being applied is "in any situation where one has a choice between saving one person and saving multiple people always save multiple people" I do not think the Kantian imperative requires us to conclude that or act in that manner. Without any real effort we can all come up with reasons why that rule should not be applied.

If, on the other hand, the rule being applied is "in any situation where one has a choice between saving one person and saving multiple people and where this can be achieved without treating people as instruments instead of ends and where all other things are equal then the likely correct action is to save the most people" then I think that we might want to apply the Kantian maxim that we should not act on any principle that we would not be comfortable with if it were to become a universal law.

Even if I am the person who will die, I am actually rather comfortable with the idea that all other things being equal, we try to do what will be of greatest benefit to the largest number of people.

Keep in mind that things are not always equal. If I can save my son or I can save you and your child, I'm saving my son. That might seem to contradict but my level of concern for your well-being is necessarily dwarfed by my level of concern for my son's well-being. So the life of my son, compared to the life of the other 6 billion of y'all, is more important to me. All things are not equal in that situation. Even if we might wish that I would feel otherwise about my son, there are millions of years of primate evolution disagreeing with what we might wish.

If I understand your calculus, though, it militates for never doing anything to save people except, perhaps, your own kin. If the argument you are making is that if you save the five people they will still die eventually and if you save the one he will die eventually, then doesn't that just invite a nihilistic stance of not doing anything? Or am I missing something?

Cheers
Aj

[tapu]

DREADGEEK: "the life of my son, compared to the life of the other 6 billion of y'all, is more important to me."

I know exactly what you mean, but I did have an uncomfortable feeling when I read that: Would I not sacrifice my son to save the world?

Guess that doesn't really bear on the question at hand.... But I'm back to throwing poor little Asa under the train! >:-\

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by tapu

DREADGEEK: "the life of my son, compared to the life of the other 6 billion of y'all, is more important to me."

I know exactly what you mean, but I did have an uncomfortable feeling when I read that: Would I not sacrifice my son to save the world?

Guess that doesn't really bear on the question at hand.... But I'm back to throwing poor little Asa under the train! >:-\

It was uncomfortable for me to type it! It's one of those things that I know about myself that I might wish were otherwise but it's not.

As an aside, when my son was in his mid-teens I found myself going fully Cosby on him and saying "I brought you into this world, I'll take you out, make another one look just like you and in 15 years no one will know the difference".

Cheers
Aj

[tapu]

The discomfort for me was that I realized I might very well make that choice. Saving my son at the cost of destroying the world (and I'm speaking only of its human inhabitants) is not itself a livable scenario. Of course, I'd be dead, too, by my own hand, but 6 billion wouldn't be. That, to me, seems the moral choice and it's not just about the numbers. It's about the human endeavor having its own value, similar to how atomicZ framed the evaluation.

How do you view the interaction between that moral reasoning and the morality of evolution which would originate at least in the saving of one's own progeny?

(See why I felt sick?) >:-)

[tonaderspeisung]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

If I understand your calculus, though, it militates for never doing anything to save people except, perhaps, your own kin. If the argument you are making is that if you save the five people they will still die eventually and if you save the one he will die eventually, then doesn't that just invite a nihilistic stance of not doing anything? Or am I missing something?

Cheers
Aj

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

[tapu]

Then we reject 6bn > 1, as well. So, 6bn = 1. That would mean that killing one person is equal to killing 6 billion. And I'm not entirely displeased with that conclusion. Are you?

[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

[Chancie]

Originally Posted by http://www.askmoses.com

Question:

Where does the saying, "save a life, save a whole world" come from? I'm not even sure it's Jewish. Thanks, Milty N.

Answer:

The Talmud asks why the human race was created as a single human being, as opposed to creating many people at once (like the animals which were created en masse1 )?

This teaches us that just as Adam was created in the beginning, and he was the entire human population of the world, likewise we need to look at each individual as if he/she were the entire population of the world. Therefore, when you save one life it is as if you saved the entire world.

Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a states:

"FOR THIS REASON WAS MAN CREATED ALONE, TO TEACH THEE THAT WHOSOEVER DESTROYS A SINGLE SOUL... SCRIPTURE IMPUTES [GUILT] TO HIM AS THOUGH HE HAD DESTROYED A COMPLETE WORLD; AND WHOSOEVER PRESERVES A SINGLE SOUL..., SCRIPTURE ASCRIBES [MERIT] TO HIM AS THOUGH HE HAD PRESERVED A COMPLETE WORLD."

I personally do not believe that any of the famous religious texts come directly from a god/God's mouth, but I was thinking about this idea when I was reading the last few posts.

[tapu]

Ah. Again, 6bn = 1.